HISTORY

OF THE

CHRISTIAN CHURCH

GEORGE H. DRYER

Volume V

THE ADVANCE OF CHRISTENDOM

1800-1901 A. D.

PREFACE.

With this volume the endeavor to trace the unfolding of the drama of Christian life, Christian teaching, and Christian society through the Christian centuries reaches our day. As nothing else the illumination of the action of this drama lights the pathway of the Christian peoples, and gives a mighty impulse toward the evangelization of the world in this generation. If our eyes do not, or shall not, behold the consummation of the drama, they see enough to make sure that our Lord “shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied.”

This volume is the record of the mightiest of the centuries. The political changes were stupendous. The advance in the mastery of the physical world and in the weal of the peoples was immeasurable. Not less potent or transforming was the life of the Christian Church. The establishing of Christianity in North America, the founding of those missionary agencies which are to subdue the heathen world, and the grand successes of the first onset, are of the vastest significance of any changes which mark the chronicle of the century. In Christendom itself, the consciousness of the value of the Church, and the necessity of understanding her history, first awakened by the Oxford movement, has been felt to its farthest bounds. Beside this awakening consciousness has gone on the unfolding of the drama of the Roman Catholic Church until it culminated in the dogma of papal infallibility. In parallel development has been the progress of the life of the Evangelical Churches into a consciousness of essential unity and practical co-operation. In all lands the Christian faith has been strengthened. As never in history before, Christendom has been made ready for the great conquest of the world.

At the end of this record the Man of Calvary is not only the unique figure in the history of the world, not only the Savior of the individual soul, and the Head of his Church, but he stands before our vision as the Revelator saw him, “the King of the Ages.” If the work of these years shall aid in showing that there is a Divine plan in the unfolding life of the Christian Church, which should command our attention in order that thought and life and work may be at their best; if it shall make clear that the history of the Church is not an inextricable maze of contradictions, or a revolting record of crimes against our race, but that the labors of the Christian Church, humble and full of sacrifice, yet have cut deep the places for the feet of our humanity in the upward march toward purer heights of moral progress and of spiritual vision and communion, then the work of the author’s life shall not have been in vain. If this record shall in any wise aid to a more intelligent faith, a better guided, more earnest and successful endeavor for the union of the Churches of Jesus Christ, and a victorious attack upon heathenism both at home and abroad, his prayer shall be answered. May these volumes cheer those who work, and those who can only wait, for the coming Kingdom of God!

To the author the work of these ten years has been a delight and the inspiration of his life. He has spared no pains, but he knows that the best efforts leave many imperfections. He has written every line, and has read the text five times to eliminate errors. Knowing that some have escaped him, he will esteem any correction a favor.

The author’s warmest thanks are due to a crowd of as faithful friends as ever blessed a man’s life. If their names may not be recorded here, their work is ; for without their unfaltering aid these volumes could not have been. Their names are engraven here in living tables of the heart, and there in the Book of God’s Remembrance.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Part First.

THE REVOLUTION—THE REACTION—THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT—THE RENEWING AND PLANTING OF CHRISTENDOM.

Introduction. The Characteristics of the Century.

I. The French Revolution.

II. The Reaction.

III. The Romantic Movement.

IV. The Roman Catholic Church.

V. Evangelical Christendom.

VI. The Evangelical Church in England.

VII. The Evangelical Church in Scotland.

VIII. The Christian Church in America.

IX. The Oriental or Greek Catholic Church.

Part Second

NATIONAL UNION—SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT—THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF CHURCH LIFE AND ITS EXPANSION.

I. The Characteristics of the Period.

II. National Development.

III. The Political and Social Progress of Great Britain.

IV. The Scientific Movement.

V. The Papacy.

THE LITERATURE.

THE books here mentioned, as in the lists accompanying the other volumes, have been used in the preparation for this work.

The French Revolution and Reaction, 1789-1850.

Sources.

Pius VI, Pont. Max.; “ Acta quibus ecclesise Cathol-icse Calamitatibus in Gallia Consultum est,” 2 vols.; “Memoirs of Talleyrand,” 3 vols., Eng. trans.; “Memoirs of Madame de Remusat;” “History of Europe, 1789-1815,” A. Alison, 4 vols., 1850; “His-toire de la Revolution Fran9aise,” Eng. trans., A. Thiers, 2 vols., 1862; “Histoire de la Revolution Fran5aise,” F. A. Mignet, 1836;—best in one volume. “The Revolution,” H. A. Taine, Eng. trans., 2 vols., 1878-1888; “History of the French Revolution,” H. von Sybel, 4 vols., Eng. trans., 1868;—indispensable. “Geschichte Franzosischen Revolution, 1789-1799,” Ludwig Hausser, 1867;—valuable. Same, “ Lectures,” Max Lenz, Berlin; “ History of the French Revolution,” T. Carlyle, 2 vols.; “ The Flight to Varennes,” Oscar Browning;—a searching criticism of Carlyle’s methods and statements. “ The French Revolution,” H. Morse Stephens, 2 vols.; “ The Era of the Revolution,” H. Morse Stephens;—in “ Periods of European History;”—the best modern study. “TheGal-lican Church: a History of the Church of France,” 1516-1789; “The Church and the Revolution,” W.

H. Jervis, Vol. Ill, 2 vols., 1872; “Religion and the “Reign of Terror,” E. D. Pressense; “The Consulate and Empire,” A. Thiers, 20 vols., Eng. trans.; “His-toire de Napoleon I,” P. Lanfrey, 4 vols., 1S79, Eng. trans.; “ Bonaparte et son Temps,” T. Jung, 2 vols.; “ Life of Napoleon Bonaparte,” W. H. Sloane,j3 vols.:— the best work on Napoleon. “L’Eglise Romaine et le Premier Empire, 1800-1814,” Comte D’Haussonville, 5 vols., 1868; “Memoirs du Cardinal Consalvi,” Cretin Eau-Jely, 2 vols., 1864; “Vermischten Schrif-ten,” L. von Ranke; “The Administration of Cardinal Consalvi;” “ Histoire des Deux Concordats,” A. Thiers, 2 vols., 1869; “Histoire du Pape Pius VII,” Chevalier Artand, 2 vols., 1836; “ Memoire Storiche,” Cardinal Pacca, 1830; “ Storia d’ltalia,” C. Botta, 14 vols.; “Annali d’ltalia,” Coppi, 6 vols.; “Manuale del Sacerdozio ad uno principalmente de’ Semina-risti,” Guy de Cressi, 1838; “ Histoire Civile du Roy-aume de Naples ” (from the time of the Roman Empire to 1723), Pierre Giannone, 4 vols., 1742; French trans.; “Storia del Reame di Napoli,” 1734-1823, P. Colletta, 2 vols., 1834; “ The Life and Times of Stein, or Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic Age,” J. R. Seeley, 2 vols., 1879; “ Histoire General de Traites de Paix, 1648-1815,” Comte de Garden, 14 vols.; “ Le Congres de Vienne,” M. Capefigue, 2 vols., 1863; “History of Ten Years, 1830-1840,” Louis Blanc, 2 vols., 1844, Eng. trans.; “Vic de Monseigneur Du-panloup,” Le Grange, 3 vols., 1883; “ Lo Stato Romano, 1815-1850,” Luigi C. Farni, 4 vols., 1853; “ Moto Proprio della Santita di nostro Signore Papa Pio Settimo Sulla organizzazione dell’ Amministra-tion Pubblica, July 6, 1816,” 1816; “Storia Docu-menta della Diplomazia Europeain Italia, 1814-1861,” Nicomede Biandclii, 8 vols.; “ La Corte e la Societa Romaua nei Secoli XVIII e XIX,” David Salvagni, 3

vols.; “Roba di Roma,” W. W. Story; “Walks in Rome ” and “Days near Rome,” A. J. C. Have; “ Mademoiselle Mori,” a story of the Revolution of 1849;— good for Italian manners. “ Handbuch der Neuesten Kirchengeschichte,” F. Nippold, 3 vols.;—valuable for facts, theory all wrong. “ History of Protestant “ Theology,” J. A. Dorner, 2 vols.; “ Life and Letters of Schleiermacher,” 2 vols., Eng. trans.; “ Begrunding der Deutschen Reichs,” H. von Sybel, 7 vols.; now in Eng. trans. “ The Leading Currents in the History of the Literature in the Nineteenth Century,” George Brandes, 6 vols.; also the leading works on the Romantic Movement.

Secular and Ecclesiastical History, 1850-1901.

Sources.

“ Development of Theology,” Otto Pfleiderer, 1893, Eng. trans.; “ Economic Interpretation of History,” Thorold Rogers, 1888; “ History of Modern Europe,” A. C. Fyffe, 3 vols., 1880-1890; “Political History of Recent Times, 1816-1875,” W. Muller, 1882, Eng. trans.; “ The Nineteenth Century,” Robert Mackenzie; “ The History of Our Own Times,” Justin Ma-carty, 2 vols.; “Periods of European History, 1815

1899,” Alison Phillipsi, 1901; “History of the English Parliament,” G. Barnett Smith, 2 vols., 1892; “Essays,” T. B. Macaulay, 3 vols., 1876; “ Life and Letters of Macaulay,” G. O. Trevelyan, 2 vols., 1876; “Life of Stratford-Canning,” S. Lane-Poole, 2 vols., 1888; William Wilberforce,” John Stoughton, 1880; “ Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography,” James Stephen, 1867; “Theological Institutes,” Richard Watson, 2 vols.; “Life of Jabez Bunting,” Percival Bunting: “The Christian Year,” John Keble; “Apologia pro Vita Sua,” John H. Newman, 1867; “John H. Newman’s Letters and Correspondence to 1845,” 2 vols.;

“ Life of Edward B. Pusey,” H. P. Liddon and others, 4 vols,, 1897; “Spiritual Letters,” E. B. Pusey, 1897; “ Ireniconos,” E. B. Pusey; “Life of Cardinal Manning,” E. S. Purcell, 2 vols., 1896; “ William George Ward and the Oxford Movement,” Wilfrid Ward, 1889; “ Reminiscences chiefly of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement,” T. Mozeley, 2 vols.; “Historical and Theological Essays,” J. B. Mozeley, 2 vols., 1882; “ The Oxford Movement for Twelve Years, 1833-1845,” R. W. Church, 1891. Five great Oxford leaders—Keble, Newman, Pusey, Liddon, Church. These last two best, brief accounts, but they are partial, “The Secret History of the Oxford Movement,” Walter Walsh, 1899; “Works of S. T. Coleridge,” 7 vols.; “ Life of Frederick D. Maurice,” A. G. Donaldson, 1900; “The Memorials of a Quiet Life,”

A. J. C. Hare ; “ Life and Correspondence of Arthur P. Stanley,” R. E. Pothero, 2 vols.; “Life of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce,” R. Wilberforce, 1883; “Life of Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury,” R, T. Davidson, 2 vols., 1891; “ Life of Edward White Benson, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury,” A. C. Benson, 2 vols., 1900; “ Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K. G.,” E. Hodder, 3 vols., 1886; “ Sermons,” H. P. Liddon; “ The Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Bampton Lectures, 1866,” H. P. Liddon; “ The Tongue of Fire,” W. Arthur; “ Sermons,” C. H. Spurgeon; “Sermons,” Joseph Parker; “Come to Jesus.” Newman Hall; “Biblical Essays” and “Essays on Supernatural Religion,” J. B. Light-foot; “Life of Charles H. Spurgeon,” 4 vols.; “The Story of Nineteenth Century Science,” H. S. Williams; “The Wonderful Century,” Alfred R. Wallace.

“Religious Forces in the United States,” H. W. Carroll: Baptists, A. H. Newman; Congregationalists, W. Walker; Lutherans, G. E. Jacobs; Methodists, J. M. Buckley; Protestant Episcopalians, C. C. Tiffany; Dutch and German Reformed and Moravians, Corwin Dubbs; Roman Catholics, T. O’Gorman; Unitarians and Universalists, Allen and Eddy; Methodist Episcopal South, United Presbyterians, Cumberland Presbyterians, Presbyterians South, Disciples, Friends, United Brethren, Evangelical Association. “Religious Progress in the United States,” D. Dorchester; “History of American Churches,” L. W. Bacon ; “ The Founder of Mormonism,” T. W. Riley, 1902; “Sermons for the New Life,” Horace Bushnell, 1858; “Nature and the Supernatural,” Horace Bushnell, 1858; “Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell,” Mary

B. Cheney, 1880; “Faith and Philosophy,” H. B. Smith; “ System of Christian Theology,” H. B. Smith, 1884; “Henry Boynton Smith, His Life and Work,” Mrs. H. B. Smith, 1880; “Systematic Theology,” Charles Hodge, 3 vols., 1871; “Pastoral Sketches,”

I. Spencer, 2 vols.; “Revival Lectures,” Charles G. Finney; “Life of Charles G. Finney;” “The Life of Dwight L. Moody,” W. R. Moody, 1900; “Martin B. Anderson; A Biography,” A. C. Kendrick, 1895: “Ezekiel G. Robinson: An Autobiography,” E. H. Johnson, 1896; “Adoniram Judson,” Edward Judson, 1883; “The Life of Alexander Duff,” George Smith,

2 vols.; “ The Personal Life of David Livingstone,” W. G. Blaikie, 1881; “ Life of John Coleridge Patte-son,” C. M. Yonge, 2 vols., 1873; “Life of John G. Paton,” 2 vols.; “Life of Phillips Brooks,” A. V. Allen, 3 vols., 1902; “Life of Bishop Francis As-bury,” W. P. Strickland; “Autobiography of Peter

Cartwright,” W. P. Strickland; “ Life of Bishop L. L. Hatnline,” F. G. Hibbard; “Life of Bishop Matthew Simpson,” George R. Crooks, 1891; “Life of Bishop Gilbert Haven,” George Prentice; “Life of Bishop E. O. Haven,” C. C. Stratton; “Life of John P. Durbin,” J. A. Roche ; “ Life of Alfred Cookman,” H. B. Ridga-way; “ History of the Discipline,” David Sherman ; Constitutional History of American Methodism,” John J. Tigert; “Leben Albrecht Ritschl,” Otto Ritschl, 2 vols.

Lexicons.

“Real Encyclopadia fur Protestant Theologie und Kirche,” Herzog & Plitt, 23 vols.; new ed.; 11 vols. issued. “ Wetzer und Wolte Roman Catholic Kirchen-lexicon,” 11 vols.; “Meusel Kirchliches Hand Lexicon,” 6 vols. (High Church Lutheran); all three of these are of the highest authority. “ Encyclopedic des Sciences Religieuse,” Lichtenberger, 13 vols.; “ Dictionary of English Biography,” Leslie Stephen, 64 vols.; “Dictionary of American Biography,” Appleton, 5 vols.; “Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed., 24 vols.; Appleton’s “Annual Encyclopaedia,” 1880-1902; Dodd & Meade’s “International Annual,” 1900-1902; “Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1899

1900,” W. T. Harris; The Church Year-Books; Reviews, Theological and General—American, English, French, and German, 1890-1903; “ Grundlinien der Kirchengeschichte,” Fredreich Loofs, 1901;—brief, accurate, comprehensive; the best outline guide to the knowledge of Continental Church History.

In the Fine Arts.

“History of Architecture,” James Ferguson, 2 vols.; “ A History of Painting,” Woltman & Woermann, 2 vols.; “ Greek and Roman Sculpture,” W. G. Perry;

“ Franz von Assisi und die Anfange der Kunst der Renaissance in Italian,” H. Thode, 1885; “Grammar of Painting and Engraving,” Charles Blanc, 1884; Artists’ Biographies, like those in German, of Raphael, Holbein, Titian, and the George Bell & Sons Series in London, of Perugino, Giorgione, etc.

Part First.

THE REVOLUTION—THE REACTION— THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT—THE RENEWING AND PLANTING OF CHRISTENDOM.

INTRODUCTION.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CENTURY.

The greatest of the Christian centuries has been the century of the greatest conquests of the Christian faith. It has reconquered Europe, settled ^

and civilized America and Australia, taken ^T certury! ⁸ possession of Africa and Oceania, and dominated Asia. A century of war and change, of progress and reform, has ended in an era of armed peace. The political, economic, social, and religious life of Christendom in the course of this century passed through a development more profound and more far-reaching than the previous millennium. More of hope and of possibility has come into human life between 1800 and 1901 than in the thousand years preceding the nineteenth century.

It has been the century of the awakened life of the Christian peoples; -for the non-Christian peoples in neither ancient nor modern times, with the exception of city States, and these under great limitations, have ever come to political or social consciousness. The evident fact in the nineteenth century is that popular progress is known only among Christian peoples or those under Christian influence. Japan, the only seeming exception, proves the rule, as her progress is a direct importation from Christendom.

It has been the century of the awakened intellectual life of the people. It was the century of popular education, popular intelligence, the deepening and advance of popular culture. Compare the schools and universities, the popular literature, the periodical press, the libraries, museums, and art-galleries of the nineteenth century with all previous means of popular enlightenment in the history of the race; in the balance of the centuries how the former outweighs all others.

The awakened intellectual life brought to the people power. This power is gauged by the advance of popular government. At the begin-Government. ⁿ*ⁿ£ ^century ^the United States was a Republic with limited suffrage; France a Republic with limited suffrage verging quickly to a despotism, and her experiment had proven a tremendous and ghastly failure. At the close of the century popular opinion was the ultimate force in all civilized countries except Russia. Lincoln’s “ government of the people, by the people, and for the people ” was fast becoming the political standard of Christendom.

The awakened intellectual life of the people has always included an awakened social consciousness, and a demand for improved economic con-sctousness" ditions. How these have sprung from other causes will be further indicated; but the century closed with a strongly-accentuated demand for a Christian society which should be earnest and hopeful in attacking and removing great abuses and crimes in the social order, and which should steadfastly seek the economic amelioration of the poor. The century has been one of vast improvement in the well-being of the people. In providing food, clothing, homes; in the lightening of the heaviest toil, and

Characteristics of the Century. 15

in agencies ministering to the intellectual and spiritual life of the people, all preceding ones combined were surpassed by this century.

It has been a humane century. Never in the history of the race have such intelligence and devotion, such skill and financial resources, been put to effective use for the blind, the deaf, Effort"⁶ the insane, the cripple, the sick, the orphans, and the aged. Societies, brotherhoods, and insurance companies, far more than the State, seek to ameliorate the lot of those whose temporal dependence has been stricken by disease or accident, or removed by death. The demand in Europe for old-age pensions for working men is a striking indication of this tendency. This spirit has reached the prisoner and the outcast. Much remains undone, but never has more been accomplished.

This awakened intellectual life and social life of the people, with increased political power and wellbeing did not stand alone. There was an awakening of the conscience of the peo- ^ThLi^°^ral pie. The standard of popular morality, the test which it applied to public men, and the standard by which it judged public action became higher with the progress of the century. This was true in spite of the official immorality fostered by great financial corporations. But for this advance, there would have been no abolition of the slave-trade, and then of slavery. Nor would there have been a larger proportion of Christian people who wholly abstain from the use of intoxicants than in any other age of Christian history. •

It has also been a century of the awakened spirit

16 History of the Christian Church.

ual life of the people. In its religious leadership, in Christian scholarship, in founding Christian institutions, in building churches, in supporting ^TbC Life!*⁰⁸¹ Christian work and workers, both at home and in foreign mission fields, in the propagation of Christian Scriptures and of Christian literature, the last century shows the awakened religious life of the people. The nineteenth century wins, beyond all comparison, in the work done for the moral and religious life of the people, the Christian conquest of man. Though the work done has been great, yet considered in relation to need and opportunity, most imperfectly has it been wrought, with large omissions, and not a few retrogressions.

In material things, as is always the case, the task has been easier. The conquest of nature has been much less difficult than that of man. The nine- Nature.** teenth century was one of scientific discovery, of popular inventions, and of immense mechanical and engineering achievements. The steamship, canals, railroads, the telegraph, the telephone, electric lighting, electric motors, photography, and labor-saving machinery, have changed the whole aspect of the daily life of man. The spectroscope, the teaching of the conservation of energy and of the evolution of organic life, have pervaded and molded his thoughts. The discovery of the nature of cell-life in the human body, of the germs of prevalent and fatal diseases, of the appliances of sanitary medicine and of antiseptic surgery, has added years of health to the average duration of human life. Improved mechanical appliances and processes have revolutionized the industry and commerce of the world. The whole structure of society has felt the influence of the concentration of population and capital in great centers of production and exchange. The nineteenth century has been the era of the growth of great cities and of an immense urban population. All this advance of scientific discovery and mechanical invention has marked the century as one in which, more largely than in all others, man has come into possession of his inheritance and his promised and rightful dominion over nature. This realization of dominion promises to advance with accelerated velocity.

In this wonderful century of the awakened life of the Christian peoples what has been the record and the achievements of the Christian Church ? Has it been outclassed in the race? Has it par- ^Thchurch!^,an taken of the fate of the outworn creations of the past ? Has a more capable and fitting successor been found to take up and carry on its mighty task? On the other hand, will it prove, on careful examination, that upon it is the dew of a perpetual youth; that, among all the Titanic forces of this changeful age, it was of them all the most potent and far-reaching; that as never before it has been demonstrated that man is necessarily a religious being, and that spiritual forces must dominate his character and his civilization? The decision of these questions depends upon the unfolding of the record of its work, its influence, and its life. To this record the last volume of this history is devoted—a record oftenest unread, but not on that account less important or potential.

To understand rightly the work of the Christian Church in this century, there must be clearly seen and justly estimated the great factors in its secular life. In the first half of its duration we find

Great ractors

in the Life of these to be the Revolution, the Reaction, the Century. _an(j R_oman^_c Movement in literature. These must be considered before we can at all understand the work of the Christian Church in this great era of change.

Chapter I.

THE REVOLUTION.

The greatest political revolution of the Christian ages was in mid-career at the opening of the century. The Empire of Napoleon was but the continuation of the Revolution from which it sprung. The forms were different, the essential spirit and effects were the same. For twenty-six years, from 1789 to 1815, from the assembling of the States-General at Versailles to the battle of Waterloo, the Revolution dominated Europe. Its armies devastated the soil, pillaged the wealth, and decimated the inhabitants of the Continent from Lisbon to Moscow, and from Dantzic to Naples. It laid a million of men in the prime of life in bloody graves, and cost the lives of millions more. It was the bloody specter that sat in the Cabinets of European statesmen for seventy years. To banish it were devoted the life-long endeavors of Metternich of Austria, and of Nicholas of Russia, and their imitators great and small, until Thiers taught the world that a French Republic could command order and guarantee security. It was the bitter spirit of mockery and unbelief, of anarchy and despair, which every pope of the century before Leo XIII conjured up, to frighten the monarchs and the people into the embrace of the Roman Catholic Church as the sole defense of modern society against the destruction which infallibly followed the footsteps of the Revolution. It was this specter of ruin and anarchy which was invoked to show the absolute necessity of the temporal power of the pope and the intolerance, abuses, and corruptions with which it was accompanied. Let us see, then, briefly what, besides war and blood, besides this specter of negation and destruction, was the French Revolution.

It began with the assembling of the States-General at Versailles, May 5, 1789. A bankrupt State, a discredited government, a population whose Assembly?¹ l°^wer classes paid fifty per cent of their incomes in taxes, and whose privileged classes, the nobility and clergy, were untaxed, demanded the attention of the representatives of the nation. Reform was inevitable, revolution imminent. The first victory of the reform was the change of the States-General to the National Assembly, from a legislative body of three Chambers, each having a veto and each able to block all reform, to one where all sat in a single Chamber, and together undertook their legislative work for the reform of France. To hinder this result, the king ordered the hall in which met the Deputies of the Third Estate to be closed. The Deputies immediately adjourned to the Tennis Court, and there, on June 20, 1789, swore never to dissolve until they had given to France a Constitution. On June 23d the king called them before him, and ordered them to legislate as three different bodies, but already the lower clergy and some of the nobility had joined the Third Estate. The king, seeing the failure of his plan, then, June 27,

1789, commanded them to act together. Ten days before, the assembled Deputies had taken the title of the National Assembly. The States-General, thus converted into a Legislative Constituent Assembly, was composed of 308 deputies of the clergy, including 41 bishops, 205 of the nobility, and 621 of the Third Estate.

On July 14, 1789, the Bastile was stormed, the first act of the Revolution, and the act which revealed to the mob of Paris its power. It was now a contest between reform and revolution. The reform might have been accomplished and the revolution have been averted but for the folly of the Court, the irresolution of the king, and the ill-will of the queen. All three trusted far more in the regiments of Swiss and Germans in the service of the king, and in the queen’s brothers, Joseph and Leopold, successively Emperors of Germany, than in any reforms of the National Assembly.

There had been a failure of the harvest the year before, and famine stared Paris in the face. At this time, with measureless folly, the queen and the court party made a banquet for the officers of the royal guard at Versailles. They trampled under foot the tricolor; they wore the white cockade; they sang royalists’ songs, while the men of the regiments were feasted. The news of this reached Paris. Starving women led the procession which marched to Versailles on October 5, 1789. They invaded the palace, and pushed through the royal apartments. The next day the king and his family accompanied the mob back to Paris. Henceforth the king was in the hands of that Paris which had destroyed the Bastile.

In the meantime the Assembly had taken great strides in reform. It had adopted a Declaration of the Rights of Man, which stands side by side with the English Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence in setting forth the civil and religious liberties of the citizens. On the night of August 4, 1789, under the influence of that passion for equality which was the strongest motive force of the time, the nobility and clergy renounced all feudal and seignioral rights and privileges, and made way for the legislation which was to create modern France. The nobles who opposed both reform and its consequences began to emigrate in July, and still in greater numbers after the king left Versailles for Paris. These emigrants included most of the French Episcopate, which was thoroughly aristocratic, as but five of the one hundred and thirty-four bishops were not of noble birth. They soon included a large share of the officers of the army and navy, who were all of like descent. This emigration opposed any political change in France, and put its trust in the invasion of foreign princes. In this lay the tragic fate of Louis XVI, his queen and children.

The National Assembly ruled France until September 30, 1791. The king’s veto only suspended an The work of ^act Assembly for six months. The

the National Assembly, with untried men and no national traditions or precedents, conducted the great experiment of converting an absolute government and a feudal monarchy into a constitutional State. It made serious mistakes, but its success was signal, and upon its work rests, in large measure_t not only modern France, but modern Continental Europe. It faced a bankrupt State. The wealth of the clergy was enormous, and, as in England in the sixteenth century, and in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal in the nineteenth century, it made impossible the modern State. No modern nation can afford to have a corporation or class own one-half to two-thirds of its real estate. On October 10, 1789, Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, moved that the goods of the Church be the property of the nation. Two days later Mirabeau supported this proposition. On November 2d the Assembly, by a vote of 568 to 346, placed the property of the Church at the disposal of the nation, with the obligation to support the clergy. In December, 1789, assignats were issued based upon this real estate. The municipalities purchased the property of the State, and sold it to individuals, thus guaranteeing the title. This floated the assignats, and the assignats saved the Revolution. The main work of the National Assembly was the formation of a constitution for France. In this work it so limited the executive power as to make the legislature supreme, and then made the Legislature to consist of a single Chamber. This was its great blunder. To this it added another when it disqualified all members of the National Assembly for re-election.

Nevertheless the National Assembly rendered great service to France. On November 12, 1789, it made France from a congeries of provinces into a homogeneous nation by dividing its soil into eighty-three departments, and it organized a local administration which subsists to-day. All the intolerable internal custom and excise taxes were swept away. All restraint upon trade and industry by guilds and corporations was abolished. All titles of nobility, liveries, etc., were annulled, July 13, 1790. A civil constitution was given to the Church. The courts of law were thoroughly reformed on a basis which still exists. Trial by jury was allowed in criminal cases. All officials, even judges, bishops, and parish priests_> were elected. But none could vote unless he paid taxes equal in value to three days’ wages. Nor could he be voted for unless he paid taxes equal to a silver mark. The National Assembly, in harmony with men like Lafayette and Mirabeau, desired a Constitutional Monarchy. The flight to Varennes of the king and his family, June 20-21, 1791; the Emperor Leopold’s Declaration of Padua, July 7, 1791, making the cause of the King of France that of all kings; the Declaration of Pilnitz by Austria and Prussia, August 7, 1791; and the Papal Brief to Louis XVI before the pope learned of the failure of the king’s flight, made vain their endeavors. In the midst of the revelation that the king had no heart in the new order in France, and that France must soon face a foreign coalition to restore the old regime, the National Assembly, after proclaiming a general amnesty, finished its labors. Louis swore to obey the new Constitution, September 21, 1791.

The Legislative Assembly, which took the place of the most famous of the legislative bodies of France, The Legisia- ^was composed of untried men, as those of tive any political experience were barred out. Assembly, _en(j_ured f_rom October 26, 1791, to September 22, 1792. It could not inaugurate any change in the Constitution. Its energies were occupied in dealing with non-juring priests, who were often the agents of political disaffection, and with gathering forces of the foreign powers who sought to reinstate the absolute government of the king. In this Assembly the Deputies of the Gironde first became prominent. As the king refused his assent to an ecclesiastical measure, and the Prussians were gathering on the frontier, the mob of Paris invaded the Assembly, and then the Tuileries, the residence of the king. This ended all co-operation of the king with the people; he looked only for help to foreign arms. The insolent proclamation of the Duke of Brunswick, July 25th, and the advance of the Prussian army, caused the insurrection of the Paris Commune of the 10th of August, 1792. When the mob massacred the Swiss guards of the king, I,ouis XVI took refuge in the Assembly. Finally, on August 30th, he was transferred with his family to the Temple, which was their prison until he and his queen died on the scaffold: his son died in prison, June 8, 1795, at the age of ten years; his daughter was exchanged, December 20th of the same year.

On August 10th the royal power was declared suspended. This, of course, demanded a new Constitution, and hence a new legislative body.

This brought into being the National Convention. The Legislative Assembly having finished its labors, the Convention met September 21, 1792. Its first act was to decree the Republic, which was proclaimed the next day.

Immense excitement and a great political crime preceded the fall of the French monarchy. The Prussians overcame the resistance of the French at Longwy. Fearful of traitors at home, many thousands of persons suspected of sympathy with the invaders, notably those of the nobility and clergy who had not emigrated, were imprisoned. On September 2d and 3d thousands of these, thus detained, without

26 History of the Christian Church.

any pretext of trial, were foully murdered in the prisons. Only an insensate fear and a desire to rule by terror can explain a crime which stains forever the annals of the Revolution. September 20, 1792, the Prussians were repulsed at Valmy, and began an inglorious retreat. France was saved from the invaders, but the fate of the king was sealed.

The Convention consisted of 749 members; of these, 16 were bishops and 26 priests. The Convention ruled France for three years. The Girondists were in the majority. The Jacobins had on their side the Parisian mob and a fearless and unscrupulous patriotism. The first great question to be decided was the disposal of the king. He was tried, and condemned to death by a vote of 387 to 334. He mounted the scaffold January 21, 1793. Louis XVI died like a brave man and a Christian. Nothing in his life became him like his leaving it. A man less fitted to rule has seldom been called to reign. His weakness was the strength of the Revolution in its early days.

In September, 1792, Savoy and Nice had been overrun; in October, Spires, Worms, and Mainz, by Custine; and after the battle of Jemappes, November 6, 1792, Dumouriez had taken Austrian Flanders, or Belgium. Incited by these successes, the Girondists desired war with England. In February, 1793, the Convention declared war with England, Holland, and Spain. In November, 1792, it had proclaimed the war of the Republic against all monarchies.

But the fortune of war changed; March 18, 1793, Dumouriez was defeated at Neerwinden. The defeated general decided to march to Paris and disperse the Convention, but, finding this impracticable, he went over to the enemy. His treachery brought on the fall of the Girondists. An invasion of the Paris mob brought their overthrow, June 27, 1793. Two Ministers of State and thirty-one Deputies were arrested. Their leaders, who escaped arrest, fled to the provinces, where they sought to stir up rebellion and overthrow the Jacobins at Paris. The situation was desperate. France was threatened from all sides, from Flanders, Germany, Italy, and Spain. La Vendee, incited by refractory priests, royalists and English, rose in bloody revolt to resist the conscription. Toulon was taken by the English, and Lyons was in open, successful rebellion. The Jacobins were not frightened. They then organized a strong, central, executive power in the Committee of Public Safety. The second Committee of that name was in power from July 10, 1793, to July 27, 1794. The Jacobin Club, and its affiliated clubs in the departments, formed its chief support. It was a strong central power, ruling by terror. Its agents on mission ruled with more than proconsular authority in the provinces and the army. The Convention proclaimed a levy en masse. The Marseillaise began to be the hymn of the French conquest. Lyons was taken and sacked, October 9, 1793. The Austrians were defeated at Wattignies, October 16th. Wurmser was driven across the Rhine, and the Spaniards across the Pyrenees. The battle of Fleurus, the next June, brought again the subjugation of Flanders.

In October, 1793, the unfortunate Queen Marie Antoinette and the leaders of the Gironde mounted the scaffold. There could be no resistance to the Terror. The Terror, true to its name, successful in driving back invaders and quelling insurrection, now began to devour its own children. Hebert and his atheistic companions were guillotined, March 24, 1794; Danton and Camille Desmoulins, April 5, 1794. The Terror increased in its merciless slaughter. The average executions were three each week from April to September, 1793; thirty-two a week from September, 1793, to June, 1794; and one hundred and ninety-six a week from June to August, 1794; making a total of nearly 2,700 judicial murders. All the ages of history and the progress of mankind will never wash this stain of blood from the French Rev. olution. This Terror spread to the provinces, and Nantes and Lyons, like Paris, were defiled with the blood of the innocent. Robespierre, Couthon, and St. Just were overthrown in the Convention, July 27th, and were guillotined, July 28, 1794. In December of that year the Jacobin Club was closed forever.

The victories of the armies of France continued. Holland was invaded October 9, 1794, and during the next January the whole country and the fleet were in the hands of the French. The Batavian Republic was organized, and a treaty of peace between it and France was signed in March, 1795. The valley of the Rhine, and afterward the Moselle, were occupied. Spain and Piedmont were invaded. These conquests were followed by treaties of peace with Prussia, Spain, Tuscany, and Hesse-Cassel.

These treaties were a great gain for France, and a great service was rendered her by the men who overthrew Robespierre. The party of the Terrorists did not propose, however, tamely to submit. They rose

The Revolution.

in insurrection, April, 1795, and broke into the Convention. Their leaders, the old Terrorists, Billaud-Varennes, Callot d’Herbois, Barere, and Vadier, were sent to Guiana without trial. Another like attempt was made May 20, 1795, led by women called the Furies of the Guillotine. They were overpowered and disarmed, and the Jacobin party ceased to exist. The Convention ended its labors October 25, 1795, leaving a name at once memorable and infamous. Its chief work was to create the French Army of the Revolution. That crushed the insurrection at home, and carried the standard of France beyond her borders, annexing Belgium and making Holland a tributary Republic. These successes broke up the coalition against France, and gave her again a place in the comity of nations. A firm hand at the same time was kept upon the royalists, whose insurrection of October 5, 1795, was summarily suppressed.

The place of the Convention was taken by the Directory, which governed France from October, 1795, to November, 1799. The executive consisted of five Directors, one retiring each _Dir™^e_ory. year, who could not be re-elected. His successor was chosen by the Legislature. The legislative body consisted of two Chambers,—the Council of Five Hundred, whose members must be over twenty-five years of age, and the Council of Ancients, two hundred and fifty in number, the members of which must be at least forty years of age. Two-thirds of the members of each Council must have been members of the Convention. The terms of one-third of the members expired yearly, and their successors were chosen by the electorate. The new Constitution also

30 History of the Christian Church.

provided that the heads of local administration in the departments, the present prefects and sub-prefects, instead of being elected as before, should be appointed by the Central Government at Paris. This change, which is retained to this day, is the leading principle of the French administration, and under all changes of government has preserved its centralized character. A property qualification was required both of electors and of the candidates for the office.

The Directory, aided by armies which not only supported themselves but sent the spoils of conquest to Paris, succeeded in restoring the finances, ^Wmrector!^ie which were in great disorder through the fall in value of the assignats. The Directory also restored internal peace. La Vendee was completely pacified by July, 1796, and the government abolished the Commune of Paris.

The royalist Terror of the summer of 1795 in the south of France, which in pillage and murder equaled the worst deeds of the Terror in Paris, was again feared. English agents, aided by General Pichegru, sought to foment an insurrection in favor of the monarchy. These schemes were frustrated by the Directory, September 4, 1797, when Pichegru and fifty-five Deputies were arrested and sent to Guiana.

The Directory left an evil name for venality and corruption. In neither character nor conduct did it command the respect of France. Its chief function seemed to have been to prepare the way for Napoleon Bonaparte. As its general he fought the marvelous campaign of 1796. Two }^ears later he embarked for his campaign in Egypt and Syria. Having failed there in his main purpose, he returned to France in

The Revolution.

October, 1799. The restoration he planned he successfully carried out, November 8, 1799.

This brought the Consulate into being. It endured five years, until replaced by the Empire. These years were the most fruitful of Napoleon’s life in _The service rendered France. The Code Na- Consulate, poleon, of which he was not the author but ^,7^"^,8°4-the patron, will perpetuate his name longer than his victories. In the course of his conquests the political and social ideals of the Revolution came to prevail in Western Europe, in Italy, and even in Spain. The after conquests of Napoleon ministered mostly to the power and the vanity of the conqueror; they nevertheless broke the power of feudalism and privilege, abolished serfdom, and made possible the economic and political regeneration of the peoples of Europe. Napoleon was the incarnation of the Revolution, even under the Empire. He made its ideals prevail. It would be difficult to see how a united Italy or Germany could come into life without the destruction of abuses, and the inspiration of freedom and equality which followed the armies of Napoleon.

In a review of the Revolutionary period we see only small men in the 'midst of great events. The Girondists were rhetoricians; Robespierre ^ ,

. ,. ^r The Men of

was a sentimentalist; and Danton, the theRevoiu-ablest of the men of the Terror, scarcely an ^tion* able man of the second class. Compared with the men of the Puritan and American Revolution they seem small indeed. We see but four men of distinction among them all, though for his patriotism and pure life Lafayette will always be remembered.

Gabriel Riquetti, Count de Mirabeau (1749-1791),

32 History of the Christian Church.

was the one man in France who, through ability, study, reflection, knowledge of foreign countries and of his time, and noble traits, might have

nirabeau. . , , , _ . . -r-r'ii

safely guided the Revolution. He had been, however, so unrestrained and immoral in his conduct that when the time of trial came he had no character which could command the confidence of the different parties, or be a firm basis for his career as a statesman. Worn out with toils and excesses, he died an early death, April 2, 1791. His loss was an irretrievable one for France.

Lazar e Nicholas Marguerite Carnot (1753-1823) was a man of incorruptible integrity, of true patriotism, and whose attachment to Republican * institutions withstood alike the blandishments of office and the pains of exile. He was a member of the Committee of Public Safety during the reign of Terror, and led the charge in person at the battle of Wattignies. His great gifts as an administrator were shown in the organization and care of those armies whose victories saved from destruction Revolutionary France. His grandson, Sadi Carnot, President of the French Republic, 1887-1894, served the present Republic at a critical time, and, dying by the hand of an assassin, sustained well the Republican traditions of his family.

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord (17541838), Bishop of Autun, afterwards Grand Chamberlain, Vice-Grand Elector and Prince of Ben-

Talleyrand. .

ventum under the Empire, was the ablest Frenchman of that generation. He served all the governments of France from 1789 to 1834, and knew when to leave them. In knowledge of men, of crises

The Revolution.

in opinion and of the State, he had no superior among the diplomatists of the nineteenth century. Though a man utterly without scruple, venal and corrupt in his personal morals, he saved France after the overthrow ot Napoleon. It is doubtful if any other Frenchman in an hour of peril and defeat ever rendered a greater service to his country.

Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French and King of Italy (1769-1821), was by blood and birth and the main traits of his character an Italian. By the conquest of Corsica, and ^“^parte by training in a French military school, he was a Frenchman. Napoleon Bonaparte was the most consummate military genius of European history. Great were his gifts also in administration and government. In character he was utterly unscrupulous and selfish to the core. Death at St. Helena seems a light punishment for a man whose career had orphaned millions.

For these men there was no religious basis for either life or conduct. A consideration of the attitude of the Revolution towards religion is fundamental to an understanding of its significance and its relation to modern life.

The Christian Religion and the Revolution.

The generation of Frenchmen at the close of the eighteenth century represented the unbelief of that century, and not the Christianity of the Gospels. The majority of the aristocracy, of the Episcopate, of the literary and public men of France, were unbelievers. This was not true of the mass of the population, especially in the country; but it was true of the lead-

34 History of the Christian Church.

ers of the French people and the men who molded public opinion. Though one-fourth of the members of the National Assembly were clergy led by the forty-nine bishops, yet it may be doubted if the majority believed in the Christian religion. Certain it is that a vote to the effect that the Roman Catholic religion was that of the nation failed to carry in September, 1789, and again in April, 1790, although later on it became the first article in Napoleon’s Concordat of 1801.

The Church of France as an instrument for preserving and increasing the spiritual life of the nation in the eighteenth century was a measureless failure. Profoundly deficient in her work and duty, at the same time she was overloaded with wealth. Her reform was as inevitable as that of the State. The motion of Talleyrand, October 10, 1789, as we have seen, led to making the wealthiest Christian Church in the world the poorest of established Churches.

All pluralities were abolished. The archbishops received a salary of 50,000 francs; bishops of cities of fifty thousand inhabitants or more received a salary of 20,000 francs; those of a less number of inhabitants, 12,000 francs; the poorest parish priest was assured 1,200 francs, besides his residence and garden. This law passed November 2, 1789, and in the next March 4,000,000,000 francs of Church property were sold. February 12, 1790, all monasteries were dissolved, and all religious orders, except those devoted to teaching and charity. All titles were abolished April 14, 1790, when the final disposition of the ecclesiastical property was made.

The day before this Act was passed, the National

The Revolution.

Assembly decreed full religious liberty in France. Rabaut St. Etienne, son of the most celebrated Reformed pastor of the century, Paul Rabaut, was several times president of the National Assembly, and the days of persecution of the Evangelical faith in France, where its adherents had suffered so much, were ended.

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was reported from the Committee on Ecclesiastical Affairs, and after prolonged debate, was passed, July

12, 1790. The Constitution was largely constitution the work of the learned and able Jansenist, ^{of the} Camus, and was the long-delayed answer ^Clergy* to the Bull Unigenitus of the early years of the century. By this Constitution the dioceses of France were made of the same number and coincident in boundaries with the departments. Thus the Episcopal Sees were reduced from one hundred and thirty-four to eighty-three, fifty-one bishoprics being suppressed ; the papal jurisdiction was rejected, except as a center of doctrinal unity. Any French subject was forbidden to acknowledge, in any case or under any pretext whatever, the jurisdiction of “ any bishop or metropolitan whose See was within the dominions of foreign power, and likewise that of his delegates residing in France or elsewhere.” All bishops and all clerical incumbents must be elected by the people; this was stated to be a return to an early custom of the Christian Church. Confirmation of election and institution to Sees and benefices were to be by the French metropolitan, and not by the pope Strict residence was enforced upon the bishops and clergy. This Constitution, it has been claimed, affected the

36 History of the Christian Church.

Church only in its civil relations, and where it did so it only returned to primitive usage. The claim was well founded in the early history of the Christian Church; but the Constitution also formed of the Church of France a national Church as really as Henry VIII made such the Church of England. After some hesitation the king gave his consent to this Constitution, August 24, 1790.

Archbishop Boisgelin of Aix published an “Exposition of Principles upon the Civil Constitution of the Clergy,” which was made the basis of the papal condemnation of the Constitution in the following year. The reduction of the Episcopal Sees, upon which was made the principal objection, was but the same measure which was agreed upon by the pope in the Concordat with Napoleon.

The Civil Constitution might have been successful in a large measure with the progress of the Revolution, if the National Assembly, had not, with incredible folly and against every principle of liberty of conscience, required from the clergy an oath to support it. By its decree all ecclesiastics, on pain of deprivation, were to swear to be faithful to the nation, the law, and the king, and to maintain to the utmost of their power the Constitution of the Clergy decreed by the Assembly and accepted by the king. This oath was voted by the Assembly November 27,

1790, and received the royal assent with reluctance the 26th of December.

No graver mistake was made by the National Assembly. The division between constitutional and non-juring clergy was of most fateful consequence to the Church and to the Revolution. The clerical mem

The Revolution.

bers of the Assembly had to decide whether or not they would take the new oath. On December 27th, the day after the king’s assent, the Abbe Gregoire and sixty-five clerical Deputies took the oath. Talleyrand took it the following day, as did Gobel, Bishop of Lydda, on June 2, 1791. On January 4th, one hundred other clerical Deputies obeyed the law. In all, three bishops and two coadjutor bishops, led by Bri-enne, Cardinal Archbishop of Sens, took the oath. One hundred and twenty-five bishops and three-fourths of the clergy refused the oath. In Paris, of fifty-two cures, twenty-three took the oath, and twenty-nine refused. Of eighteen hundred^ Doctors of the Sorbonne, less than thirty took the oath.

The first consecration of the constitutional bishops took place February 24, 1791, when Louis Expilly was consecrated Bishop of Finisterre by Talleyrand, Gobel, and Miroudat; March 13th, five other bishops were consecrated, among them Abbe Gregoire as Bishop of Blois. March 27th, Gobel, Bishop of Lydda, was consecrated Archbishop of Paris, and within the next five months most of the Episcopal vacancies were filled.

The definite papal 'condemnation of the clergy came in the brief of Pius VI, entitled “Caritas,” April

13, 1791. The Assembly, August 27, 1791, declared marriage a civil contract. As the pope prematurely congratulated Louis XVI on his flight to Varennes, the National Assembly, September 14, 1791, declared Avignon and its surrounding territory annexed to France.

November 29, 1791, a drastic measure was passed. By its provision all non-juring clergy were summoned

38 History of the Christian Church.

to take the oath. Those who refused were to be deprived of all allowances from the public funds. They The Persecu- ^{were a}ls° considered as persons suspected tion and the of sedition and revolt. In any case where ciergyLawof disturbances occurred such clergy might November 29, be removed from their houses. If they resisted, the penalty was a year’s imprisonment. Those who excited others to disobey the law were liable to two years in prison. Churches maintained by the State could only be served by the constitutional clergy. Citizens might purchase or hire churches not used by the Establishment, but only priests who had taken the oath could officiate therein. December 19, 1791, the king vetoed this measure, but the veto suspended it only for six months. April 6,

1792, the congregations for teaching and charities were abolished.

The Legislative Assembly, on May, 1792, decreed that any non-juring ecclesiastic, on the petition of twenty inhabitants of a canton, approved ^L™, ^ the local magistrate, might be banished from the kingdom. If accused of stirring up sedition by overt acts, one person might denounce him. Clergy so condemned must quit their residence in twenty-four hours, the department in three days, and France in one month. A small sum was given them to take them to the frontier. If they resisted or returned they were liable to ten years in prison. On June 8th a law was passed that those refusing to swear were prescribed. June 20, 1792, the king vetoed both measures. This was followed by the invasion of the Assembly and the royal apartments in the Tuileries by the mob of Paris. August 4, 1792, all religious

The Revolution. 39

houses were ordered by the Assembly to be vacated and sold; this turned fifty thousand nuns into the street.

After the suspension of the king, August 10, 1792, the form of oath demanded of the clergy was necessarily changed. They were henceforth, after August 14, 1792, to swear “to main- ^TJ*_th^CW tain, to the utmost of their power, liberty and equality, or to die at their posts.” To many, this was much less objectionable than the former oath. The French prelates in France, fifteen or sixteen in number, took this oath. Among others who conformed was Abbe Emery, of St. Sulpice, the real head of the Roman Catholic Church in France during the troubled years of the Revolution. The Emigre bishops and clergy, and particularly Archbishop Maury, declared against it, as they wished no truce with the Revolution. Upon this oath the pope refused to pronounce, and it was accepted to a great extent by the clergy of France.

With this more acceptable form of oath went severer measures against the non-juring priests, and by decree of August 26, 1792, ^La^ of August those not taking the oath were banished within fifteen days.

The massacre of September put the inexpiable stain of blood upon the Revolution in its war with the non-juring clergy. About three hun- _Septem5er dred priests were massacred in Paris, and Massacre, probably a hundred more in the provinces.

Among those who perished in Paris were Du L,au, Archbishop of Uzes; the brothers De la Rochefoucauld, Bishops of Saintes and Beauvais; also

40 History of the Christian Church.

Hebert, confessor to the king; De Gres Vicar-General of Paris, and the celebrated preacher, Lenfant, lost their lives.

Forty thousand of the clergy are said to have fled from the country; an estimate much too large. Two thousand went to Rome, four thousand to England, where collections and subscriptions amounting to 75,

000 pounds sterling were made for them, and they were allowed a government pension. In a few months six hundred died in prison ships. Of three hundred clergy shipped at one time to Guiana, most of them died in a short time. By the law of 1793, priests were permitted to marry. Two thousand priests married, among whom were several bishops.

The penal legislation against the refractory priests, who were largely agents of disaffection against the Republic—and no wonder—was made in-

The Laws of . -

March 17 and creasmgly severe by the acts of March 17,

^2,»^and0cto° April 21, _an(j October 23, 1793. By this er 23,1793. i_eg-_sj_a^_{on
was or(}i_ere(i that those arrested abroad should be tried by military commission and shot within twenty-four hours, if their names were found on the list of emigrants, or if they had about them any counter-revolutionary badges. If in France and recognized by two witnesses as belonging to the class sentenced to transportation, they were to be shot within twenty-four hours. If, after complying with all laws, any six citizens of the canton preferred the charge of “ incivism,” they should be deported to Africa. Those in concealment were to report in ten days, and, if found after that time, the penalty was death. Every citizen was to denounce priests liable to deportation, and the reward was one hundred

The Revolution. 41

francs for every denunciation. Any citizen harboring such priests was liable to transportation. Thus culminated the penal legislation against the large majority of the Roman Catholic priesthood of France. It had some excuse or palliation in the notorious royalist sympathies of most of the persons under penalty or put to death; but the deeper cause for it was the bitter hostility to Christianity itself, of the men now at the head of the Revolution.

The sufferings of individuals did not answer the end of the men of the Convention. They, like the persecuting Roman Emperors, sought nothing less than the extirpation of the Christian _to Extirpate name. August 3, 1793, a Republican Calen- Christianity dar was adopted. Its year was divided into *

twelve months of thirty days; each month was divided by three decadis, or days of rest. Thus was the Christian Sabbath abolished, and all reckoning of time in common with Christendom past or present. The years were reckoned as the years after the Republic, and the era began September 22, 1792.

Fouche, a former Oratorian, a Terrorist, and afterwards Minister of Police for Napoleon, voiced the prevailing sentiment in Revolutionary cir- Anti-chris-cles when, at Nevers, October 10, 179^, he ^{t,an 0rders}

, . ’ of Fouche,

ordained: October,

1. That no forms of religious worship '793-be practiced except in their respective temples.

2. Since the Republic does not recognize any dominant or privileged worship, all religious symbols found in the highways, parades, or other public localities shall be demolished.

3. Ministers of religion are forbidden, under pain

42 History of the Christian Church.

of imprisonment, to wear their official costumes in any other place than their temples.

4. The corpses of citizens shall be conveyed by their relations in mourning, accompanied by a public officer and an armed detachment, to the place of common sepulture, the coffin being covered with a funeral pall on which shall be painted a representation of sleep.

5. The cemetery shall be planted with trees, under the shade of which shall be erected a statue representing sleep.

6. The following inscription shall be placed over this consecrated inclosure, out of respect to the manes of the dead: “ Death is an eternal sleep.”

A scene sad and shameful was enacted in the Convention, November 7, 1793, when Lindet and Gobel shameless publicly abjured the Christian faith amid scenes in the enthusiastic plaudits of the members. Gre-November * goire, Bishop of Blois, came in. He did 7.1793. not know what had happened, but he soon took in the significance of the scene. He was expected to lay down his trust and to abjure his faith. He felt that refusal was a sure sentence of death. Every word of his defense was interrupted by those who would force a repetition of the blasphemous proceedings. But Gregoire was a confessor worthy of the days of the Roman persecution, and nobly did he defend his office and his faith. Few scenes of the French Revolution are so worthy of the artist’s brush as Gregoire’s defense of the Christian faith from the Tribune of the Convention. Abjurations of Christianity were the fashion, and more than twenty constitutional bishops and many clergy abjured, among whom was the celebrated Abbe Sieyes.

The Revolution.

The Atheists under Hebert now held full sway. November 10, 1793, at Notre Dame, was held a Fete de Raison, or Feast of Reason. It was held worship of for the worship of the Goddess of Reason, the Goddess

of Reason,

Mile. Maillard, an actress, personated the November goddess, and was borne in triumph above ^lo» ‘793. the heads of the people to receive their worship, with all the pomp and display the promoters could invent. November 17th all the parish churches in Paris except three were closed. F£tes de Raison were held at Bordeaux and Lyons as well as at Paris.

November 26th the Commune at Paris ordered all churches and temples to be closed. All priests and ministers of religion were to be held personally responsible for any trouble which might arise from religious opinions. Whoever might demand the reopening of a church or temple should be arrested as a “suspect.” The fanaticism of Atheism worked its ruin. Robespierre attacked it with vehemence, and Danton joined with him. In response to these appeals the Convention, December 6, 1793, forbade all interference by violence or threats with religious worship. This did not produce real religious freedom, but it ended the heathen 'rites in honor of the Goddess of Reason. Hebert was executed March 23,

1794, and his party fell with him.

But it went ill with the constitutional bishops. Eight of them were guillotined. That was _{The Terror} the fate of La Mourette of Lyons, Janu- _and the ary 10, 1794; of the apostate Gobel, now Constitutional repentant, April 13th; of Expilly of *

Finesterre, June 21st; and of Fauchet of Calvados, October, 1794.

44 History of the Christian Church.

Robespierre, having overthrown the Hebertists and Danton, showed no mercy to the clergy. The Convention decreed, in March, that all sen-

Ferocious . . .

Law of the tences on the non-jurmg priests should be

Convention, executed without appeal, and all property March, 1794. . . ^

of such priests in France or in exile should

be confiscated. Any one sheltering a priest subject

to deportation should be punished with death. Thus

did the Revolution answer the decrees of Louis XIV

against the Reformed clergy. Louis did not spare the

flock; the Revolution in its maddest moments did.

Robespierre, a follower of Rousseau and a Deist,

determined the Convention to decree that the French

people recognize “ the existence of the DiFestival of ^r
& _r ,

the supreme vine Being, and the immortality of the Being, soul.” It also decreed that “ the sole wor-

June8,i794. . . . _r

ship worthy of the Deity is the practice of moral virtue,” and “ a service of festivals should be instituted in order to recall men to the thoughts of God and to the dignity of their nature.” With great pomp was celebrated, June 8,1794, the Festival of the Supreme Being at Paris. This preceded but a few weeks the overthrow of Robespierre.

The Convention had yet more than a year of life after the fall of Robespierre. It was a year of troubled Return to change and of hopes raised only to be over-Toieration. thrown. In December, 1794, Bishop Gre-

LawofFeb- . , , , ' . _r

ruary ai, goire appealed to the Convention for mercy •795. upon the priests who had been cruelly treated at the ports of deportation. Out of four hundred imprisoned, sixty only survived to be released in February, 1795.

By the law of February 21, 1795, the Convention

The Revolution.

decreed that no form of religious worship can be molested. The Republic grants no salary to any; does not recognize any ministers of religion; assigns no building for the exercise of religious rites or for the residence of ministers. No religious ceremonies are allowed outside of houses of worship. No one can wear in public a distinctive religious dress. No emblem of religion can be placed outside of any public edifice. No public proclamation or invitation can be made to induce the attendance of citizens. No endowments can be formed by parishes for the maintenance of religion, nor can any tax be levied for such a purpose.

This was at least toleration, although all recognition by the State was expressly denied. Roman Catholic churches began to be opened on every side.

In a still more favorable mood the Convention, in May, 1795, decreed that churches which had been sold should be opened free to citizens for wor

* . atvi 1 1 , Reopening of

ship. They were to be delivered without churches, cost to the parishes, but those who used ^{Lawof M}«y* them were to repair them without levying '^79s* a tax. No one was allowed to officiate in these churches who did not subscribe to a formal declaration of submission to the laws of the Republic. Under this law fifteen churches were opened in Paris. On the question of making this submission the non-constitutional clergy were again divided.

This favorable mood soon changed. The descent of the expedition from England in Quiberon Bay, June, ^J795> led to the renewal of the war in La Vendee. One bishop and seventeen priests, taken with the invaders, as well as seven hundred men who bore arms,

46 History of the Christian Church.

were shot. The imprudent zeal of the royalists and the returning emigrants brought on the severe laws of September, 1795, which renewed with heavy penalties the persecution against all such ecclesiastics as should not make the declaration of submission. The overthrow of the royalists on the Day of Sections, October 4, 1795, was as fatal to any tolerance of non-juring priests as to all hope of reviving the monarchy.

Two days before the dissolution on October 24,

1795, the Convention decreed “the laws against the refractory priests should be put into exe-

The Renewed . . '. ^r

Persecution. cution withm twenty-four hours through-

Lawof octo- _{out t}h_e territory of the Republic,” and that

ber24,1795. ,

“Magistrates neglecting to enforce them should be punished with imprisonment for two years.” The Directory in power from October 26, 1795, to November, 1799, did not persecute as did the Convention, but was no less bitterly hostile against Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church. In the early months of 1796 twenty-one priests were put to death without trial. In April of the same year the Council of Five Hundred passed a decree forbidding the ringing of church-bells, and would have renewed the most persecuting measures of the Convention but for the veto of the Council of Ancients.

In 1797 the public opinion seemed to favor a larger tolerance, and on July 18th, the penal laws against the Penai Acts P^ri^ests were repealed. The royalists again, Against by their exultation and lack of restraint, peI!ed!^Sj*uiy defeated the movement for better condi-18,1797. tions for the clergy and the churches. The Anti-Royalist stroke of state of September 4, 1797,

The Revolution.

dashed their hopes. The law repealing the penalties against priests was annulled. The Directors might banish at pleasure any priest whom they considered dangerous to the public safety.

All clergy henceforth were to take an oath of hatred to royalty and anarchy, of attachment and fidelity to the Republic, and to ^To*_tfc^ew the Constitution of the year III (1795).

In the midst of this turmoil was held the first National Council of the Constitutional Church of France. It held its sessions at Notre Dame, First National August 15 to November 12, 1797. Lecoz, Council, Bishop of Rennes, presided. There were November^ eighty-three members, of whom thirty were ^,797* bishops. The Council without hesitation took the oath of hatred to royalty.

The hatred to the emigrant priests and those sympathizing with them increased. In November,

1798, it was enacted that all priests subject _TheBitter to banishment by the laws of 1792 and Law of No-'

1793, if they re-entered France, were ^vember»^,798* ordered to present themselves to the authorities within one month, to be again sentenced to deportation ; and the same applied to all those who had not submitted to the law of September, 1795. All these classes of clergy incurred the penalty of death, if they were found on French territory. It also enacted that any one concealing a rebellious priest should be imprisoned, and the house which sheltered him be confiscated. It is hard to see how penal laws could go further. The execution of these laws, however, was more lax than under the Convention.

48 History of the Christian Church.

The prevailing sentiment of the Directory and the

The Directory P^arty ^{then rulin}§ France can be seen in and Pope the treatment of Pope Pius VI, and in the Pius vi. effort to suppress the Christian Sabbath. The relations of the Directory with the pope began to assume a practical character when Bonaparte had conquered Northern Italy. By the Treaty of Tolen-tino, February 9,1797, Pius VI had been compelled to part with a large portion of his territory, and pay a heavy ransom in money and works of art. On December 28, 1797, in a riot in Rome, the French General Duphot was shot and killed. In retaliation, February 10, 1798, the French army occupied Rome. On February 15th the temporal power of the pope was declared to be at an end, and the Roman Republic established in its stead. This endured until the disasters of the French army in 1799 led to its overthrow. In the spring of 1799 Pius VI was taken to France. Weak and sick, he reached Valence July 14, 1799, where, on the 29th of August following, he died at the age of eighty-two years.

The Directory worked with good will to replace Sunday by the Decadis. This was obligatory in all The Directory ^matters. It was sought to make such

and the Chris- in all religious observances. A commis-tian sabbath. _si_oner
Qf Directory, in 1798, expressed

the prevailing thought when he wrote: “ The Decadis must triumph over the Gregorian Calendar; reason must triumph over ignorance and errors which were fostered by priests of every sect for the sake of their own interests. Let those ministers who are well disposed give proof of their entire devotedness to the

The Revolution.

public welfare by declaring before the authorities that they transferred to the Decadi and the Quintidi all solemnities recognized by their respective creeds, and that they would no longer observe the ci-devant Di-manches (Sundays), with more ceremony than other days.’ ”

It is refreshing to know that this effort wholly failed with the Roman Catholic clergy, and with most of the clergy sworn to observe the Constitution. Some of the latter weakly yielded, and thus showed how feeble is the State Church before an oppressive government. The noble and devoted Bishop Gregoire, in the Council of Five Hundred, December 15, 1798, spoke against their efforts to break down the Christian Sabbath.

On August 4 and September 9, 1798, it was enacted that, on Decadi, no business should be transacted in the courts of law or the public offices; all shops and factories should be closed under penalty of fine and imprisonment. The local magistrates should repair in official costumes, to the public hall, and there announce to the assembled citizens the acts of government, the births, deaths, and marriages, together with the acts of adoption and divorce, which had taken place in the ten days preceding. Marriages should be celebrated on that day exclusively, in the same place of meeting. At Paris the Fetes Decadaires should be held in the parish churches. Religious worship must cease at 8.30 in the morning, and could not again begin until after the official proceedings.

The Consulate was more favorable to religion than the Directory, but the endeavor to enforce the Decadi

50 History of the Christian Church.

died hard. According to a decree of December 20,

1799, churches could be opened only on Decadi. But in the January following it was enacted

The Consulate, , , , ^ -

November, that churches could be opened on Sunday

1799 to De- _{as we}u _{as on} Decadi. On July, 1800, Deca-’ * di was declared to be obligatory only upon public officials. Nevertheless, the Republican Calendar was that of the State until 1806.

December 30, 1799, it was decreed that the oath required of the clergy had respect only to civil government. This satisfied seven of the ancient tionandRe- bishops who had remained in France, and peai of Perse- _many of the clergy. By the Act of October ’ 20, 1800, the refugee clergy were allowed to return, but not the emigrant bishops.

The years of the government of the Directory and the Consulate saw the rise and fall of a new religious body, who expected great things for them-^TIJ«^ph^|iaⁿ- _sei_ves i_n dechristianized France. They

thropists. ^

called themselves The Philanthropists; their patron was La Rivelliere Lepeaux, one of the Directors. It had begun in 1796, and a year later Lepeaux came to its leadership. It is said that when he asked Talleyrand what was necessary to found a new religion the latter replied: “Nothing but to be crucified and to rise from the dead the third day.” The leader of the new sect had no toleration for the old faiths. It was a Deistic religion, confessing only the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, and it inculcated the moral virtues. They took possession of the chief churches of Paris and extended into the country; but their time was short. The law

The Revolution.

of October 21, 1801, excluded them from all churches owned by the State, and they were soon forgotten.

The second National Council of the constitutional clergy was held at Paris, June 29 to August 16, 1801. Lecoz, as before, presided. There were _Second present forty-three bishops and fifty-two National clerical Deputies. The acceptance of the ^Councl1, Concordat of July 16, 1801, put an end at once to their labors, to the existence of a constitutional Church and clergy, and to the ecclesiastical legislation of the Revolution. The constitutional clergy lost all they had contended for, the Roman Catholic principles became supreme; but the name and fame of Gregoire, Bishop of Blois, will ever make illustrious their record. No other clergyman of this troubled time showed equal ability, courage, devotion to principle, and selfrestraint. No wonder that on his death Louis Philippe compelled the Roman Catholic Church to bury him in consecrated ground.

Thus ended the ecclesiastical legislation of the French Revolution. The legislation of the Empire, like that of Roman Catholic Europe in the

. , t i 1 Summary.

nineteenth century, was based upon the Concordat of 1801. The legislation of the Revolution, in its inconsistencies, is bigotry, and persecution, is the representative legislation of Anti-christianity in modern times. Never since Diocletian has the Anti-christian spirit so triumphed. No one now is proud of the ecclesiastical legislation of that era. Professing enlightenment and respect for religious convictions, the Revolution entered upon the old path of enforcing oaths contrary to conscience upon men, above all

52 History of the Christian Church.

others, who are pledged to regard their conscience. The Acts against the clergy showed how futile is such legislation, and might have proved a warning to Bismarck. The blood of the martyrs for conscience, religion, and Christianity is upon the French Revolution. The hatred felt toward it by monarchs and the aristocracy is easily explained. Often, however, we forget that the hatred of those to whom religion is a reality was far more widespread and enduring. It formed the center of resistance which now claims our attention, and which we call the Reaction.

Chapter II.

THE REACTION.

The Reaction began the day after the fall of the Bastile. Before the beginning of 1790 the chief of the aristocracy, led by the Comte d’Artois, the king’s brother, afterward Charles X, ,_rreco™j^ei_abies. and the most of the French Episcopate, were on foreign soil. These were the irreconcilables; they sought only the restoration of the absolute monarchy and the ancient regime. They cared nothing for the wishes of the French people, and looked to foreign armies for their return. To their undisguised hostility to any reform, and their alliance with foreign powers for the overthrow of France, may be ascribed the cause of some of the worst atrocities of the French Revolution.

To these irreconcilables were joined many like those driven from the provinces by the pillage and murder which distinguished that Jacquerie _{other PartIes} which destroyed by violence the feudal in the rights of the landed proprietors. To these ^Em|2^ratlon* came to be added the priests driven into exile by the successive proscriptions of the Revolution, and^; men and women endangered by the Terror who were able to flee from France. Of course the whole number, though considerable, was but a small portion of the population of the kingdom. It was estimated that fifteen thousand refugees found a home in England.

54 History of the Christian Church.

Some have placed the number of exiled clergy as high as forty thousand. But it must be remembered that, as the laws were relaxed after the era of the Convention, many returned. Those who were aged or infirm died. Many of all these parties to the emigration, but a small fraction of the whole, refused to return to broken fortunes and ruined homes under the Empire, and came back only with the accession of Louis XVIII.

These emigrants met with profuse hospitality, and yet often their lot was both sad and hard. On the character other hand, they were themselves the worst

of the condemnation of the ancient regime. In Emigrants. _exjj_{e t}key _sho_wed fatal defects in morals, in conduct, courage, and character. With abundant opportunities, none of them made any name in war or diplomacy. Moral levity, self-indulgence, and often unbelief, had left no basis for efficient manhood. Against this it may be said that the stress of trial, as well as their political convictions, drove them again to the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church. This was the party which in France led the extreme right of the Reaction until its final overthrow, in 1830.

To these were joined the large number who remained in France during all her changes of fortune, who believed republican institutions a fail-RoyallTts. ^ure> ^an^ were monarchists from conviction, and preferred the legitimate kings of France to a usurper. Many of these had been blinded by the glory of the Empire, and had followed the victor’s chariot. But when Napoleon immolated the Empire on the altar of his insatiable ambition, for him there could be no successor. A nation wearied of political

The Reaction.

change, drained of its life-blood by war, desired the peace guaranteed by all the powers of Continental Europe.

This brought about the unique opportunity for the Congress of Vienna to remodel the Continent of Europe. It brought also the unique mo- _{The Congress} ment for the genius of Talleyrand to show of its ascendency, and make France, defeated ^vlenna’ ^,8,s-and the helpless prey of deeply-injured conquerors, nevertheless the master of the situation. Talleyrand professed the principles of legitimacy as the standard of the action and the decision of the Congress; that is, that the restoration of the political power of the Continent of Europe after the fall of Napoleon should place in power, and with the same boundaries as far as possible, those princes dispossessed by the Revolution.

This principle assured the throne of France to the Bourbons, but also prevented any attempt, like that successful in 1870, to dismember her. France thus emerged from imperial rule and total overthrow, still the first nation in Europe. Of course, this principle, like all principles, had limits in its application. No one was bold enough to .propose that it should apply to Poland. The Ecclesiastical Electors of the Rhine were gone with the Middle Ages to which they belonged. Finally, Austrian Flanders, or Belgium, against every tie of race, language, or religion, was united with Holland. On the other hand, the old state of things returned in Spain and Portugal. Austria again ruled in Lombardy and Venice, the Spanish Bourbons in Naples and Sicily, and the pope again resumed his temporal power. Italy, which had felt the

56 History of the Christian Church.

first throbbing of national life under Napoleon, became once more a mere geographical expression.

In Germany, of course, the Old Empire could not be restored. Its place was taken by a Germanic Confederation. In this Napoleon’s new kings of Bavaria, Saxony and Wiirtemberg kept their title and their place. Prussia restored, became the largest Germanic power. On the other hand, Austria, with large interests in Italian and Slavonic lands, sought by alliances with the smaller States to secure the leadership of Germany. Her prime minister, Prince Metternich, the exponent of the policy of the Reaction, ruled in the Cabinets of Europe until 1830, and those of Germany until 1848.

Only Switzerland seemed by the efforts of the Congress to have come to a political condition much in advance of that prevailing at the outbreak of the Revolution. The Congress gave Russia the greater part of Poland to repay her for her effort to overthrow Napoleon. The policy of the Reaction was the maintenance of absolutist governments against all attempts in favor of constitutional liberty.

In France, Louis XVIII had granted a Charter or Constitution, and was willing to abide by it, as he had no wish again to go on his travels. But ^TJ^I* pr“nco°.^{n tlie} P^artT ^of Reaction had no such intention. Their bloody persecution in 1815 after Waterloo, in Central and Southern France, rivaled the worst excesses of the Revolution. The Liberal ministers were overthrown. In 1823, Charles X came to the throne. He was a monarch of good manners, bad morals, and no character, a tool of the Jesuits and reactionaries. All this time a strong Lib

The Reaction.

eral sentiment and party were growing in France. In 1830, Prince Polignac, the prime minister, thought it a good time to promulgate his “ Ordinances ” as a basis for arbitrary power. The reply of the French nation was the Revolution of 1830, and the permanent exile of the elder branch of the house of Bourbon.

In these years Metternich was unremitting, not only in stifling all attempts, so far as possible, to secure constitutional government in Bavaria,

.. The Reaction

Baden, and the smaller German States, but j_n Germany, he obtained the adherence of King Frederick William III to his policy. The Prussian king refused to grant the Constitution which he had promised, and ruled as a reactionist until his death in 1840. Metternich’s endeavors against all Liberal movements, or, as he would say, the Revolution, did not cease with his influence in Germany. With Alexander I of Russia he entered heartily into the Holy Alliance, and was a moving spirit in the Congress of Troppau, Laibach, and Verona, whose object was to crush all revolutionary movements. A revolution broke out in Spain. It was bloodily suppressed, but the faithless Ferdinand, it was felt, was not equal to the situation; so a French occupation of Spain was resolved upon. It took place in 1823, and continued for four years. In Naples a revolution to secure constitutional government was put down with great loss of life and merciless cruelty. The Emperor Alexander I of Russia died in 1825; his successor was Nicholas I, who put down in blood the Polish insurrection of 1830. Nicholas proved himself, until his death in 1854, the strongest support of the Reaction among the monarchs of Europe.

58 History of the Christian Church.

In England, the first effort of the French Revolution met with warm sympathy. Religious men all _ over Europe, like Schleiermacher in Prus-

The Reaction . , _T ^ .

in England, sia and Wilberforce and Jabez Bunting in

England, sympathized with it. But the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the blood of the Terror, and the Atheistic orgies of Notre Dame, turned the tide. The Evangelical party in general, both within and without the Church of England, supported the person and policy of Pitt and of the war, until Napoleon was overthrown. The Tory party, with a brief interval, had forty years of power. There were few Whigs at the University of Oxford as late as 1830. The country was governed by the Tory party as representing great interests, the West India slaveholding interest, the East India interest, and the Established Church interest. Doubtless the first occasion of the great Oxford movement was the political rise in power of the forces opposed to Reaction.

But all this array did not prevent the Revolution making notable gains. The Revolutions in Mexico Progress ^anc* Spanish America, in spite of Metter-

of the nich and the Holy Alliance, could not be Revolution. ^_own This _was largely owing to the

initiative of George Canning and the Monroe Doctrine enunciated by the President of the United vStates. In Greece also, against the wish of Russia and the English Tories, the Revolution was successful. The battle of Navarino October 20, 1827, broke forever the power of the Turk in the land of ancient Hellas. A new kingdom joined the comity of European nations. In the United States the breakdown

The Reaction.

of the Federal party, 1800-1816, brought in the extension of the suffrage and the advance of the United States to a democratic Republic.

But the year of 1830 marked an epoch in the struggle of Reaction with European Liberalism. Louis Philippe ascended the throne July 29, 1830. He was acknowledged by England, and under the guidance of able statesmen added Algeria to France, and proved that a monarchy born of the Revolution could conduct a stable and, on the whole, beneficent government. The same year saw dissolved the unnatural union between Belgium and Holland. To the fright of orthodox Tories, Brussels, and above all Antwerp, became great cities. The new King Leopold, a cousin of Queen Victoria, allayed their fears. In England the Reform Bill of 1832 made a great stride in the same direction. Henceforth England and France represented an entirely different scheme of political thought from the party of the Reaction.

The party of Reaction found sure support in the papacy. The Jesuits were restored in 1814, and from that time largely controlled the policy of the papacy, especially during the reign of Gregory XVI (1831-1846). The alliance between the throne and the altar was proclaimed and emphasized in every country in Europe. The leaders of the policy of Reaction were Nicholas I of Russia> an unbending autocrat, but an honest man, and Prince Metternich. Frederick William IV of Prussia (18401858) was a lover of the fine arts and a Romanticist. He was a brother-in-law of Nicholas I. His policy was as absolute as that of his father, and he showed

60 History of the Christian Church.

no desire to break from the leading-strings of Metter-nich. On the other hand, the founding and extension of the Zollverein, or Customs Union, made Prussia the economic leader of Germany in the near future, and opened her way to a political sovereignty through her royal house. In Italy the rule of the Austrians and of the pope grew increasingly unpopular. In Spain a civil war raged from the death of Ferdinand VII in 1833, between the partisans of his daughter Isabella, aged three years, and under the regency of her mother Christina, and those of his brother Don Carlos. One result was the confiscation of the monastic property in Spain.

In France the government of Louis Philippe, in spite of limited suffrage (there were but two hundred and fifty thousand voters, and half of these were officeholders), and of electoral corruption, gave France a rule under which she grew rich and powerful. But there was a strong Republican party. The government, through the king’s pursuit of riches, the death of his oldest son, and the Spanish marriages, weakened the character and the power of the monarchy.

The Revolution broke out at Paris, February 22,

1848. Two days later Louis Philippe abdicated the

_The throne, universal suffrage was proclaimed, Revolution and government workshops were opened, of 1848. j_atter p_roved _{a s}ig_nai _and costly fail

ure. The election in April unde.r universal suffrage returned a Chamber with a majority of moderate Republicans. There were a few Socialists, but more Monarchists. The Socialists, seeing that they could not control the Legislature, organized a revolt. It was thoroughly suppressed by that true Republican,

The Reaction. 61

General Cavaignac, June 24-26. In this he rendered a great service to his country. Nevertheless Prince Louis Napoleon was elected President of the Republic in December, 1848, by a vote of four to one to that received by General Cavaignac.

The February Revolution at Paris woke all Europe. In March, at Pressburg the Hungarians, and at Prague the Bohemians, rose in revolt. On March _The 13th the rule of Metternich came to an Revolution in end. The same month witnessed the dec- ^Austr,a* laration of war by Sardinia against Austria, and the revolt of Venice in the attempt to found a Republic-Rome, and apparently the pope, sympathized with these efforts until the Allocution of Pius IX, April 29, 1848, pronounced against war with Austria. The King of Sardinia was defeated at Custozza, July 25th, and evacuated Milan, August 5, 1848.

In Austria itself events moved rapidly. The Emperor Ferdinand abandoned Vienna May 16th, and again on October 1, 1848. Windischgratz took it for him, November 1, 1848. Ferdinand abdicated, and Francis Joseph ascended the throne, December 2,1848. On February 27, 1849, the Hungarians were defeated at Kapolona. They rallied, gained victories, and proclaimed the independence of Hungary, April 14, 1849. The government at Vienna had played off the Sclavs against the Magyars; now they call Russia to their aid. Her iron dice were too heavy in the scales of Mars, and the Hungarian General Gorgei capitulated, August 14, 1849. Hungary was at the mercy of the Reaction, Kossuth was a fugitive, and bloody executions stained the victory of the House of Hapsburg.

In Germany the revolt at Berlin had been success-

62 History of the Christian Church.

fill in securing the adhesion of the weak and irresolute Frederick William IV. A German Parliament _The was called to meet at Frankfort, May 18, Revolution in 1848, and in June there was established a Germany. p_rovj_sj_ona] government. The imperial crown was offered to the King of Prussia. After some days of consideration he rejected it, April 21,

1849. Prussia, influenced in part by Nicholas I, joined Austria in the Reaction. By the Convention of Olmiitz, November 25, 1850, Prussia took her place again under the leadership of Austria. In May, 1850, that body of weakness, the old Germanic Confederation, was restored. Two years of revolution and disruption had only made stronger the Austrian predominance in Germany. Prussia could hold but a subordinate place while the king lived and the policy of Reaction prevailed. The time had not come, but was ripening, for William I and Bismarck.

In Italy events moved decisively. At first Pius IX fell in with the Liberal movement, but, November 15, _The 1848, Count Rossi, the Pontifical Minister Revolution of Justice, was assassinated on the steps in Italy. Qiancelleria; November 24th the

pope fled from Rome to Gaeta. February 9, 1849, the Roman Chambers proclaimed the fall of the temporal power of the pope and the accession to power of the Roman Republic. February 18th a Tuscan Republic was proclaimed at Florence, and its grand-duke went to join the pope at Gaeta. March 24, 1849, Charles Albert was defeated by the Austrians at Novara, and he at once abdicated the throne of Sardinia. He had bravely played a losing game in the fortune of war, but he had made the house of Savoy the

The Reaction.

center of Italian unity. To reinstate the pope the French Republic sent a military expedition under General Oudinot. In thus planning to crush a sister Republic the French Republic invited its own fate a few years later. Principles remain, however much statesmen and politicians violate them. The Romans made a defense under General Garibaldi which made glorious the name of their Republic. They repulsed the] French troops with loss, April 30, 1849. After two months’ siege the French forced the San Pan-crazio gate, June 30, 1849, and the city surrendered. Garibaldi withdrew to wait in a happier hour the realization of that ideal for which he so bravely fought. Worthily stands his statue on the Janiculum overlooking Rome, and commanding the gate of San Pancrazio where he lost the day in defeat, but neither heart nor hope.

Louis Napoleon, by a stroke of state, breaking his oath to the Constitution, to which he had sworn with perjured lips, made himself Emperor of _France the French, December 2, 1852. By a series under Louis of blunders, both on the part of England ^NaP^oUon-and Russia, he was able to lead in a war against Nicholas I in behalf of Turkey. One can not help feeling for the broken-hearted Czar, who never intended to be led into war. This Crimean expedition had the least justification of any European war of the century after the Russian expedition of 1812. Whatever results it had in favor of Turkey did not survive thirty years. But this important gain was realized: it put an end to the political influence of Russia in Europe west of her boundaries. Nicholas had led the forces of Reaction for thirty years in European poli

64 History of the Christian Church.

tics. He had crushed the Hungarians, and so aided Austria in the reduction of Italy, and had kept in the path of the Reaction two kings of Prussia. With Nicholas died the political power of the Reaction of Europe. Louis Napoleon, who succeeded to the political leadership of Europe, owed his throne to the Revolution. He was to open up a new era in European history by his war with Austria in 1859. His successor in the politics of Europe, Bismarck, founded the new German Empire on universal suffrage. The era of Reaction was ended.

The Liberalism which led the Revolution of 1848 had much to learn. It made many mistakes, but it

has never been surpassed in enthusiasm

Summary. . _r . .

and devotion. In the white heat of their enthusiasm the peoples were fused for the mold of national unity. It supplied the motor force for the reorganization of Europe between 1860-1870. We may smile at the extravagance and follies of its leaders in their lack of experience, but they fashioned the ideals which inspired the peoples who made the new Europe. Mazzini and Manzoni, Manin and Garibaldi, will ever deserve the reverence of all who have lived in and seen the progress of united Italy. The doctrinaire German professors who had so little practical experience in government, and raised up so many obstacles to Bismarck, nevertheless, like the poets of the Fatherland, laid the foundation on which Bismarck builded. Citizens of the German Empire, strong in its might, can never forget the men of 1848, who, with all their lack of experience in government, yet saw the vision splendid of the United Fatherland, and prepared the people when the hour came for its realization.

Chapter III.

THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT.

IT is not possible to understand the history of Church or State in the nineteenth century without taking into account the great literary revolution of the age. The Romantic Movement has a sure place in the literary history of all lands in Christendom.

Its influence on political thought, both on the side of the Revolution and the Reaction, was most marked. Its exponents were the leading political _PolitJcaI philosophers of the Bourbon Restoration, influence and it was no insignificant factor in that Rev- ^{of the Move}*

° ment.

olution which in 1830 drove the Bourbons from the throne. In the Revolution of 1848 Lamartine and Victor Hugo, Thiers and Montalembert, were conspicuous figures. In Germany there was the like exaltation of the past and discontent with the present which was the true seed of the Revolution of 1848. In Italy even more clearly do Mazzini and Manzoni show how the Romantic Movement awakened the consciousness of the people.

Quite as important was its influence upon the history of the Christian Church. The Roman Catholic Church in the eighteenth century lost her hold on the intellect of Europe, and has church! never regained it. The Revolution despoiled it at once in France, and gradually in other Roman Catholic countries, of its wealth. Political power came back with the restoration of 1815, with

5 65

66 History of the Christian Church.

the proclaimed alliance of the altar and the throne. To justify this restoration of power, to justify it as the corner-stone of modern civilization, as a necessity for the security of the social order, was the task of writers like Chateaubriand, De Maistre, and Bonald.

These came from the center of the Romantic Movement, and in its course it swept many unbelievers, and not a few of Evangelical birth and training, into the Roman Catholic Church. Hardenberg and John H. Newman stand for a multitude of others.

But it is as a literary movement that Romanticism exerted its influence upon the thought and life of The charac- Europe. To see the source and power of teristic Fea- this influence we must discern the leading

tures of the . . . ~

Romantic characteristics of the Romantic Movement. Movement. _I# p{_rst it was a revolt. Its literature was a literature of revolt. This is seen in the earlier poems of Wordsworth, and in Byron and Shelley. Notably is this true in France of Madame de Stael, Chateaubriand, Madame Dudevant (George Sand), and Victor Hugo. Its discontent with the present, whether in its political conditions or literary or artistic forms, could only be satisfied with a revolution.

2. In its revolt from the eighteenth century depreciation of the Middle Ages, and of any true historic life of men and societies and nations, it by preference turned to those eras so long neglected and despised. Scott led the way in Britain, Michaud in France, and Von Raumer in Germany. The revival of Gothic architecture came from the same source. The British Houses of Parliament are a monument of this influence.

3. The Romantic Movement was a recall of the emotions and fancy to conscious life and legitimate

The Romantic Movement. 67

literary expression. In the eighteenth century, emotions and their expression were not good form. Works of fantasy and the imagination with any sense of mystery were simply ridiculous. The Romanticists were nothing if not emotional; they reveled in the fantastic in literature and art, and mystery was the keyword to their moods and plots.

4. The Romantic Movement was characterized by an intense appreciation of the beauty of nature. This was often like a religious devotion, as in Wordsworth. It immeasurably widened the literary horizon, and opened new and noble sources of joy and aspiration in the soul. Nature’s life, beauty, and rhythm became a part of our literary heritage.

5. This literary movement treasured the peculiarities, past and present, of peoples and races. It valued national and ecclesiastical legends, folk-lore, and popular ballads. These it gathered and preserved for all time. It saw, as the eighteenth century never did, the inner life of the people of the present and the historic past.

6. In philosophy the Romantic Movement was the direct opposite of the bald common-sense skepticism of the eighteenth century.' Kant had shown how insecure were the boasted solid foundations of this philosophy. The philosophy of the Romanticists was the German idealism which lay on the verge of pantheism, and not seldom crossed it.

7. But the revolt of the Romantic Movement, more than against anything else, was against the dry rationalism in religion of the eighteenth century. Whatever the Romanticists believed or did not believe, they had no use for a religion of denial and

68 History of the Christian Church.

negation. They reverenced the ages in which faith prevailed, and the mighty creations in architecture and plastic arts in which that faith found its expression. They could not deny the religious element in the nature of man. Many felt it in themselves, and sought in the Roman Catholic forms in architecture, in liturgy, and in the religious life derived from the Middle Ages, that satisfaction for it which too often the rationalized and anti-artistic Evangelical Church failed to afford. This was but the sure revenge for its neglect of the ages before the Reformation, and of the craving for art in the human soul.

Let us now trace the course of the Movement in its natural development in the different literatures of Europe. It is not to be understood that all traits above noticed will be seen equally in any literature or present in any author.

In England the movement may be traced from the publication of Bishop Percy’s “ Reliques of Ancient Romantic English Poetry” in 1765. It, however, reMovement ceived a mighty impulse when, in Septem-inEngland. _were published the “Lyrical

Ballads” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. This book, while containing some inferior poems, included also “The Ancient Mariner” and “ Lines upon Tintern Abbey,” enough to make the fortune of a literary movement at any time. Wordsworth brought to the Movement the revelation of nature as a revealing God to the soul, which is his marked contribution to English literature. He also, like Byron and Shelley, later gave voice to the spirit of revolt. The supreme gift of imagination and music in words of Coleridge would ennoble any literature.

The Romantic Movement.

Byron and Shelley are emphatic exponents of rebellion against moral standards and religious creeds, as well as political conditions. Byron died at thirty-seven, Shelley at thirty, and Keats at twenty-six. Byron’s verse has movement and passion, and has always been a favorite in Continental Europe. Shelley wrote some of the most beautiful verse in English poetry. Few poets, indeed, at his age have surpassed the work of Keats. In Sir Walter Scott (1770-1832), the Movement called the Middle Ages back to life, and powerfully affected his own and other lands. Southey and Lockhart trod in his steps.

Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and John Keble, differing as they do, yet represented the same literary movement. So did the earlier poetry of Alfred Tennyson and of Robert Browning, though in their after development they far outpassed the boundaries of the Romantic Movement.

In criticism the most notable men in the Romantic Movement in England were Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, and John H. Newman. Not only these great leaders, but all English literature of the time, felt the new life that throbbed in it. Macaulay seems their opposite in history and criticism, but in his historical ballads he is their companion in arms. The wave reached across the Atlantic, and Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott, with the New England Transcendentalists, are true children of the literary revolution.

In France the source of the Romantic Movement is found in Jean Jacques Rousseau. From him came that love of nature that marked so strongly the Romanticists, as well as the revolt against conventional standards in society, in literature, in politics, and re

70 History of the Christian Church.

ligion. The Revolution had to come before there was a way broken for the Romantic development; for no The Romantic literary ^or philosophic traditions could be Movement more triumphant, or more narrow and in France. j_nt₀lerant, than the philosophy of skepticism and enlightenment on the standards of literary taste then esteemed correct. Madame de Stael, the first great forerunner of the Movement in France, was at first disillusioned, and then brought to a wider acquaintance with life through the excesses of the Revolution and her banishment by Napoleon. Her novels “Delphine” and “Corinne,” her work on Germany, as well as her wonderful conversational powers, make her the first literary woman of her age, surpassed only in the century by Madame Dudevant. In her revolt she broke from moral standards. Her relations with Narbonne, and afterward with Benjamin Constant, who was the father of her daughter Alber-tine, later the Duchess de Broglie, during the life of her husband, whom she divorced in 1797, and nursed in his last sickness in 1802, are the too familiar accompaniments of the Romantic Movement. In her later years Madame de Stael returned to the Christian faith.

Chateaubriand was one in opinion with the skeptical nobility by which he was surrounded. The blood of the Terror revolted him, and he emigrated to America, where he visited and afterwards described the Falls of Niagara. On his return he published “ Atala” and “The Genius of Christianity.” Fervid in his professions of Christian belief, he was a defender of absolute monarchy and of extreme papal claims.

The Romantic Movement. 71

Alphonse de Lamartine—whose “ Meditations ” were published in 1820—Victor Hugo, De Musset, and Beranger represent the Romantic poetry of France. Theophile Gautier and Sainte Beuve represent its criticism. The latter, in many respects, was the first critic oi his time in Europe.

In fiction, Victor Hugo and Madame Dudevant are the great names, followed at a distance by Alexander Dumas and Eugene Sue. To this school Balzac, perhaps the most powerful French novelist of the century, did not belong. He did not S3^mpathize with the past. He belonged only to his own age and described it with a keenness of analysis, a minuteness of detail, and a display of morbid psychology never excelled. Balzac became the founder of a new school of fiction. When the school of Romantic fiction passed, the method of Balzac remained.

In Germany the Romantic Movement reaches back to Lessing, and comes through Goethe and Schiller to the beginning of the century. Goethe _{The Romantic} had his Romantic period in his “ Sorrows of Movement in Werther,” and Schiller, following Burger, ^Germany-preserved its power in his tragedies, by far the best in German language.

These men went far beyond the limit of any school. The leaders of the German Romantic Movement came after them in more senses than one. They were Hardenberg (Novalis), the brothers Schlegel, and Ludwig Tieck. Three out of these four became Roman Catholics. A poet of more value than any of these was Ludwig Uhland, whose ballads are a treasure in German literature. I11 fiction appears Jean Paul Richter, Hoffman, with his weird tales, and Heinrich

72 History of the Christian Church.

von Kleist. The same Movement carried over to Rome the artists Cornelius and Overbeck. Heinrich Heine, a gifted poet, with an exquisite lyric strain and a mocking spirit, is said by his ridicule to have put an end to the German Romantic Movement.

To this circle of Romanticists belong Fichte and Schelling, and the leader in the new era in theology, Ernest Frederick Schleiermacher. The latter, a roommate for years with Frederick Schlegel, has been called the high priest of Romanticism. He deserves longer space in another relation, but his connection with the Romantic Movement may be briefly sketched here.

The revolt of the German Romanticists was mainly against the institution of marriage. Political revolt would have been useless, and was unthought of, before Germany came to self-consciousness in the dark days of 1807-1813.

The German women married in their teens husbands chosen for them by others, and with whom they had little acquaintance and no real knowledge. Divorce was easy, and carried with it no moral stigma. The little German courts were often centers of social corruption. To this was added the impulse of the spirit of individual liberty and the right of the emotional life, and revolt against artificial conventions, and we see the sufficient source of the new gospel. There was in that age no purer or more truthful soul than Schleiermacher, yet he taught that if the marriage was a mere convention, and did not bind in union the souls of husband and wife, it was a duty to dissolve it. He changed his views in later life, but for years this was his belief. The practice ran beyond it. The influence of the first literary man in Germany,

The Romantic Movement.

Goethe, helped to this revolt. However much Goethe did for Germany and for the world in insisting on the right and duty of self-development and self-culture, certain it is that his life of immorality with women permanently lowered the moral tone in literary circles in Germany. After living with Christine Vulpius for years, he married her to make legitimate their children, but with no sense of moral obligation. Schiller, who was the best of them, was for a time a cavalier serventi to Charlotte von Kalb, and went to Paris with her long after his marriage.

The tone in Romantic circles may be understood from two or three notable examples. Dorothea Mendelssohn, daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, married young, and without choice on her part, the banker Viet. After a life of misery for some years—for the people cultivated these dangerous things, the feelings —she divorced him to live with Frederick Schlegel without marriage. Years after, they were married and both went into the Roman Catholic Church.

Henriette Herz was also a Jewess; her husband was a celebrated physician. Her house was open to all that was intellectual or distinguished in Berlin. Schleiermacher was her intimate friend and correspondent. He spent hours with her daily, teaching her Greek, and discussing philosophy and literature. Her husband died, and she found her fortune impaired. For a time she was a governess in the house of Schleiermacher’s sister-in-law. Then, with better times and fortune, she returned to Berlin, and died in the Evangelical Church.

During these years (1802-1805) Schleiermacher, then a man past thirty-four, though never passing the bounds of strictest friendship with Henriette Herz,

74 History of the Christian Church.

became enamored with Elenore Griinow, the wife of a Lutheran clergyman of Berlin. Her marriage was most unhappy, and she was a woman who lived in her emotions, and had great talent in describing them. Though Schleiermacher corresponded with her, he would listen to nothing clandestine in their intercourse. At last it was agreed with her husband, with Schleiermacher, and herself, that she should procure a divorce and marry Schleiermacher. All was ready for the legal steps to be taken. At the last her good angel prevailed,’and Elenore Griinow drew back. At the time Schleiermacher, now thirty-seven, felt that the blow destroyed all prospect of happiness. Four years later he married the widow of his friend, Ehren-fried Willich. Sixteen 3^ears later he met Elenore Griinow for the first time since she refused him. He went up to her and said, “ God has been very good to us, Elenore.” This incident in the life of one of the noblest men of the time will show the strength of the current.

A woman of even stronger intellect was Charlotte Michaelis. Her father was a celebrated professor of theology. When very young she married Dr. Boh-mer. He left her a widow at a little over twenty years of age with a daughter, Auguste Bohmer, who died at fifteen, but was a most remarkable child. In 1779 she joined in a Revolutionary movement at Mainz. The plot was detected, and she was imprisoned. There she carried on an intrigue with a Frenchman with serious consequences. A. W. Schlegel came to her rescue, and gave her to his brother Frederick to care for. Later A. W. Schlegel married her. Then, tiring of her, he went to live with Sophie Bernhardi, the sister of Ludwig Tieck, the novelist,

The Romantic Movement.

who divorced her husband for his sake. Then Charlotte Sclilegel procured a divorce and married the philosopher Schelling, with whom she lived until her death. The remarkable thing is the affection, and even reverence with which these men, who were themselves men of no ordinary ability, speak of this woman. The tribute of Schelling after her death is especially remarkable. They speak with a reverence of her intellect and character, which, in view of her career, is surprising. This relation shows something of the Germany of that period, as well as of the Romantic Movement. The sin, as always, brought its punishment. But this tangle of affinities shows something of what Christianity had to overcome in order to win Germany.

In Italy the movement made its way as in Spain, Portugal, the Scandinavian countries, and the Slavonic nationalities, like Bohemia, Poland and Russia. These last we have not space to consider. In Italy, Ugo Foscolo, and in other Leopardi represented the poets; Manzoni ^Lands-in his “ I Promesi Sposi,” fiction; Rosminni and Gio-berti, philosophy; and Carlo Botta, Pietro Colletta, and Caesare Cantu, the historians.

This record sums up the most remarkable literary result of the Romantic Movement in poetry, fiction, and criticism. Its faults and excesses have

. . . The Romantic

not been spared. A word may be given to Movement

efforts more indirect, but more far-reach- ^{and His}toricai

• ata-. ^ 1 • Learning.

mg. The Romantic Movement by its return to a reverence for the past, and a recognition of its necessary connection with the present, gave an immense impulse to the study of history, and criticism of its sources.

76 History of the Christian Church.

Niebuhr easily led the way in this work. In Church history he was followed by August Neander, Gieseler and Hase. Dahlman, Hausser, Von Ranke, and Von Sybel, with Mommsen and Curtius, Giese-brecht and Waitz, have made the German historicaJ scholarship renowned in this century. In France, Sismondi, Michaud, Thierry, Guizot, Michelet, and Thiers, while not so fundamental in research, added to the laurels of French historians. In England, Thirl wall and Grote, Hallam and Macaulay, made illustrious this era. In philosophy, the Romantic Movement left little trace, except in the idealism and nature-philosophy of Schelling, and perhaps the eclectic philosophy of Cousin.

But one thing the Romantic Movement had, and that covered many sins,—it had enthusiasm. It seems summary, sometimes as if the men of the first half of the nineteenth century, if they were ignorant of much that we know, and died without many comforts we enjoy and deem necessary to civilized life, yet had a richer, fuller existence. They had more in themselves; they felt themselves in such relations to the main currents in the stream of things that they easily kindled into great enthusiasm. Let us not despise such enthusiasms; for they fuse peoples and races, nations and Churches, so that they can take the impress of the new molds of the future. Whoever gathers the chief gems of the literature of Europe will find sparkling among them, with a luster all their own, the masterpieces of the Romantic literature of the nineteenth century. A movement of such power of thought, feeling, and expression, largely affected the life and problems of the Christian Church.

Chapter IV.

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

As the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful Christian Church in Europe, and the only Christian Church in France, Spain, Italy, Austria, and Bavaria, which was even tolerated by the law, the Roman Catholic Church suffered most by the Revolution and gained most by the Reaction. The vicissitudes of her fall and restoration have a dramatic unity and interest not surpassed by the history of any nation during the century, not excepting France herself. If she had no great pontiff, Pius VII was an amiable ruler and a good man. If there was no great character at the Court of Rome, Hercules Consalvi was a diplomatist little inferior in abilities and success to Talleyrand, and much his superior in character. Few great men adorned her annals, but De Lamennais and Lacordaire were great preachers, Mohler and Dol-linger must be mentioned in any record of scholarship, while Rosminni is the author of a well-wrought-out system of philosophy. Hence, without great genius or characters, Rome won back a large part of her old dominion by the sagacity and dexterity with which she sat still during the Revolution, and then turned all things to her profit in the Reaction which was sure to come. Whether this was the wisest statesmanship, and whether it did not bring on a greater disaster and permanent loss, the second half of the century was to disclose. For the present

78 History of the Christian Church.

Rome became more powerful than before for the one hundred years, since the death of Benedict XIV.

At the outbreak of the French Revolution the Church of Rome was supreme in all Latin lands. No The Church dissent, no Evangelical preaching or socie-of Rome ties, were allowed in France, Spain, Portu-outbreak of Belgium, or Austria. On the Continent the French of Europe she had nearly one hundred Revolution. _mj^j_ons
Qf adherents to less than twenty millions of Evangelical Christians in Germany, Scandinavia, and Holland. Throwing into the scale Great Britain and Ireland, she had over a hundred million to less than thirty million Evangelical believers in all Europe. In America, following the estimate of population given by Humboldt, she had twenty millions to five of the Evangelical faith. In the whole world she could count one hundred and twenty-five millions to probably half that number combining all populations of the Evangelical, Greek, and Oriental Confessions.

To put it differently: On the Continent, excluding Russia, five out of six of the population were Roman Catholics; in all Europe, excluding Russia, nearly four out of five; in all America, four out of five; and in the whole of Christendom, two out of three of the inhabitants were adherents of the Church of Rome.

With this preponderance in population went, in large measure, that of arts and arms. France was the leading military nation in Europe. With some slight eclipse, she had been such for one hundred and fifty years. She was to show herself its conqueror in the next twenty. She was also the center of refinement and culture. Paris was the leader in philosophy as

The Roman Catholic Church. 79

well as in fashion. The three most famous literary men of the eighteenth century, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau, made Paris splendid with their fame, Spain had the most wealthy and extended colonial empire in the world. Rome was the center of the world of art. The Church of Rome possessed in France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and Italy, from two-fifths to two-thirds of real estate, and had large revenues besides. The proportion was nearly as great in Germany. There the emperor was a Roman Catholic; there were no nobles in Europe who could vie in wealth and power with the ecclesiastical electors or the great prelates of the Rhine and Upper Germany. The archbishops in France, Spain, and Italy outranked all the nobility but the princes of the royal house, and their wealth was greater than their rank. The princes of the Church in Europe and America held the largest amount of real estate, and enjoyed the largest revenues of any subjects of the crown. In these countries the wealth of the clergy as a class was greater than that of the nobility. Tens of thousands of convents were amply endowed, while the hundreds of thousands of inmates of both sexes formed a standing army ever ready for active service.

There was, of course, another side. For one hundred years in France; for one hundred and fifty years in Austria, Bavaria, and the ecclesiastical The other territories of South Germany and the ^Side’^the

. _ . . Fruitful

Rhine; for two hundred years m Belgium, Mother of Spain, Portugal, and Italy, the Church of ^Revohltions-Rome had wrought her perfect work. She had controlled the education, the social and intellectual life of the people. There had been no toleration of

8o History of the Christian Church.

Evangelical worship or thought. The printed page, like the preacher, was banished. What was the result? Infidelity ran riot among all classes who could read, as never before in the history of Christendom. In the whole course of that unbelieving century, then nearing its end, we look in vain for one work of consequence or influence from the hand of a single representative of the wealthiest and most powerful and most numerous clergy that ever owned allegiance to the Church of Rome. The works of its most admired author, the canonized St. Alfonse de Liguori, are scarcely calculated to win to the faith a single unbeliever, to say nothing of staying the downfall of nations. Nor was there any popular movement for quickening the religious life among the people.

If the Church of Rome could have raised up leaders who could have dealt with French skepticism and Atheism as the leaders of Evangelical thought in England did with Deism, how different would have been the history of the last two centuries! If there could have been a revival of the religious life like that under Wesley, how different would have been the foundation in Latin Europe on which should rest the political reforms of the nineteenth and the social reforms of the twentieth century!

It is stating sober fact, without the least trace of ill-will, to say that the Church of Rome, in these lands where she had for generations crushed out all Evangelical teaching, and held unquestioned supremacy, betrayed the greatest trust ever committed to a Church. Unbelievers and roues sat in her episcopal and archiepiscopal seats. She chose to be persecuting, bigoted, and ignorant. The betrayal of that trust

The Roman Catholic Church. 81

was the fruitful parent of revolutions, not only that of 1789, but of the revolutions since, which have been the chronic curse of Latin lands.

The Church of Rome has never believed in popular intelligence; she has always relied upon authority. In the new era of popular government the populations under her care, whether in Ireland or Poland, in France or Spain or Italy, have shown themselves conspicuously unfitted for democratic government. The basis in popular intelligence, morality, and public spirit have yet to be supplied. The sin of those generations of neglect and abuse was immense, and grievous was the atonement paid.

Born of this sin was the Revolution. The wealth of the Church of Rome, gathered for a thousand years, went down in it. At one stroke the _{The Revolu}. title to Church property was destroyed tionandthe which had an annual income of 200,000,000 ^Church* livres, worth now nearly the same amount in dollars. One hundred and forty thousand monks and nuns were dispossessed of their houses and of their incomes, though some provision was made for their needs. In the course of the Revolution the old ecclesiastical organization was broken up. For ten years worship ceased in most of the forty thousand communes of France. The bells were cast into cannon, and in France, as later in Germany, some of the most ancient and stately edifices, hallowed by centuries of Christian worship, were used as barns for forage or as stables for the cavalry. The most ancient, famous, and wealthy abbeys were utterly destroyed.

This confiscation of Church and monastic prop-

82 History of the Christian Church.

erty passed from France to Germany in 1830, Austria *835-9, Portugal 1834, Spain 1836, Mexico 1863, and Italy in 1871. In all these Roman Catholic countries, within eighty years from the action initiated by the French National Assembly, the property of the Church has been as ruthlessly confiscated, and the monastic orders, with few exceptions, as thoroughly rooted out as in England under Henry VIII. In all these cases, except Italy, the pope has expressly confirmed these confiscations. How this was brought about we shall see when we consider the policy of the Concordats.

The popes of the nineteenth century, except Leo XII and Pius VIII, enjoyed long pontificates. Leo

XII reigned five years and five months,

The Papacy.

and Pius VIII one year and eight months. On the other hand, Gregory XVI reigned fifteen years; Pius VII, twenty-three years; Pius IX, almost thirty-two years, the longest reign of any Roman pontiff; and Leo XIII, at the end of the century, had reigned twenty-two years. These six popes added to but three names on the papal lists. There were three who took the name of Pius, two of Leo, and one of Gregory.

None of these popes could compare in learning or ability with Benedict XIV, or Clement XIV, in the preceding century. Not one of them could be called a great man. The progress of the Roman Catholic Church has been rather in spite of, than through, most of them. Only Pius VII and Leo XIII proved that they understood the times in which they lived. The pontificate of both showed the work of statesmen ; that of Pius through the genius and ability of

The Roman Catholic Church. 83

Consalvi, and that of L,eo through his own diplomatic aptitudes and training.

In the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, about three-quarters of a mile from San Marco, stands the cruciform church of San Giorgio, with _The a striking dome and fagade. It commands Conclave a noble view of the city, and is a conspicu- ^{of ,8o}°* ous object of interest from the piazetta of San Marco. Adjoining it, in 1800, was a large Benedictine convent, now used as barracks. The situation is isolated, yet accessible, and with ample accommodations for the cardinals, made it well adapted for the Conclave held under Austrian protection to elect a successor to Pius VI, who had died in hostile France. Rome was too unsettled for the cardinals to venture thither, to say nothing of assembling for a papal election. Here, on this island, the thirty-five cardinals sat in Conclave during the cold and damp Venetian winter of 1799 and 1800. Their session began December 1, 1799, and continued until March 14, 1800. Never since the Reformation, or even since the return from Avignon and the Councils of Constance and Basel, had a Conclave met with equal difficulties encompassing the Roman Catholic Church. The whole ecclesiastical constitution of the Church was uprooted in France, and overthrown in Italy and Germany. The temporal power of the pope had been completely overthrown, and, though restored by breaking up the Roman Republic, yet was on the most frail conceivable basis. How to preserve the Church in the midst of the triumphant Revolution which had overthrown the papacy as well as the Church of France, and had led away captive the last pope to die in exile, was the supreme

84 History of the Christian Church.

question. The Conclave met under Austrian protection, and Austrian arms had been supreme in Italy the preceding year; but Napoleon Bonaparte was now First Consul of France, and it required little prescience to discern who again would say the decisive word concerning the destiny of the Papal States and all Italy. Precisely three months after the dissolution of the Conclave came the battle of Marengo, which made the French supreme in Italy. Amid these difficulties the cardinals remained in Conclave for one hundred and four days, when the election of Pius VII terminated their labors. This result was due to the skill and ability of the secretary of the Conclave, Hercules Consalvi.

Consalvi was born at Rome, June 8, 1757. In his sixteenth year he entered the service of the Papal

Court as a page. He followed the regular

Consalvi. . \ _{1 1} ® ,

promotion of the papal law courts, and by 1797 became auditor of the Rota, an important position. He was a man of high character, of undaunted courage, of penetration and sagacity, and of great address. Face to face with Napoleon, he more than once held his own, and won that ruler’s respect and hatred. He never was ordained priest, but remained a simple deacon, though cardinal and virtual ruler for many years of the Papal States. Yet when he died he had accumulated but a moderate fortune, which he left mainly to the poor. Consalvi believed in and accomplished many political reforms in abolishing the abuses which brought on the Revolution. He opposed, but in vain, the restoration of the Jesuits; he was on excellent terms with Evangelical statesmen, artists, and men of letters; yet he gave the watch

The Roman Catholic Church. 85

word for the religious policy of the Roman Catholic Church in the new century in his own expression, “ The policy of the Roman Catholic Church is intolerance.” In matters of religion she must stand by the past. She could make no compromise nor in any way recognize or affiliate with other Christian Churches. He had rare knowledge and taste in the fine arts, and was their munificent patron, as the life of Canova testifies. He makes the impression of a man courageous, sincere, and humble. To him the Roman Catholic Church owes more than to any other man who lived in the nineteenth century. And the Evangelical believer who knows his virtues will stand in reverence before his humble tomb in San Marcello in the Corso at Rome.

Consalvi gained the election for his friend, Cardinal Chiaramonti, by winning the support of Cardinal Maury, who controlled the votes of a flying squadron of six cardinals. Cardinal Maury had been the most bitter and irreconcilable enemy of the French Revolution and all that belonged to it. Later, as Archbishop of Paris, he was to be the most pliant instrument of Napoleon’s tyranny over the Church of France. Midway between he gave the decisive voice in the Papal Conclave at San Giorgio, March 14, 1800.

Gregorio Barnaba Luigi Chiaramonti, who took the name of Pius VII, was born of a noble family in Cesena, the birthplace of his predecessor,

August 14, 1742. At the age of sixteen he ,8^!,823. entered the order of the Benedictines. He afterwards taught philosophy at Parma and Rome. When forty-three years of age he was made Cardinal and Bishop of Imola. He had in a measure sympa

86 History of the Christian Church.

thized with the revolutions which accompanied Napoleon’s campaign of 17.96. He made a favorable impression upon Napoleon, which was fully reciprocated. At the age of fifty-eight he came to the pontifical throne, entering Rome July 3, 1800. No pope of modern times has found the affairs of the Papal See and of the Roman Catholic Church in a condition so desperate. The Revolution had been everywhere triumphant. The man who was to rule the most of Roman Catholic Europe, to take away the temporal power, and to hold the pope himself a prisoner of state, and in exile for almost five years, was the most successful general, the most unscrupulous and imperious ruler ever seen in Christendom.

What qualities had Pius to meet these circumstances? He was upright and devout, he was meek and amiable to the verge of weakness, he was genuinely liberal in his tendencies, and sincerely pious. For him the genius and ability of Napoleon had a personal attraction. With all his gentleness, there was a firmness in adherence to what he considered duty which no personal interests or affections could affect. When subject to the most annoying espionage, when his papers were seized, when threatened to be reduced to an allowance of five cents a day, and forbidden all communication with the world without, he never flinched nor quailed. What the threats of Napoleon could not effect was won by his blandishments. The French Episcopal envoys to Savona in June, 1810, won an assent which no rigors could have extorted. The Concordat of 1813 was a terrible mistake, and, if Napoleon had been a victor at Leipzig and Waterloo, might have been a fatal one. The vigor and resolu

The Roman Catholic Church. 87

tion of Consalvi averted the danger, as his tact and wisdom made him the savior of the papacy after the overthrow of the Revolution. Pius proved the sincerity of his liberal convictions by bringing in more reforms in the administration of the Papal States than any of his predecessors. The capital mistake of his administration was the re-establishment of the Company of Jesus. It was not long before the sons of Loyola took possession as masters where they had sought admission as servants. In spite of his knitting and crocheting, Pius VII was the most liberal and attractive ruler among the popes of the nineteenth century. He had reached the age of eighty-one when he died, August 20, 1823.

A very different man was Annibale Della Genga, who succeeded to the papacy under the title of Leo XII. Leo was born of a noble family of Spoleto, August 22, 1760. In the first dec- ,8^3°.^”^ ade of the century he served as papal nuncio in Germany and France. While exercising these functions he was credited with a whole train of illegitimate children. Leo was an opponent of Con-salvi’s; but when the latter unfolded his policy, the comprehensiveness of his grasp and the penetration of his vision at once won the favor of the pope in his behalf.

But Leo had no sympathy with the liberal views of either Consalvi or his predecessor. In his first encyclical he condemned religious toleration and freedom of conscience, and was especially bitter against Bible Societies and the reading or exposition of the Bible in the tongue of the people. July 2, 1826, he said expressly: “ Every one separated from the Ro

88 History of the Christian Church.

man Catholic Church, however blameless he may-otherwise be, has already, on account of his own sin, because he is separated from the unity of Christ, no part in eternal life; the wrath of God hangs over him.” Leo, on entering his office, was in the sixty-fourth year and in broken health. In his life he was laborious and simple. He was firm and moderate in his foreign administration; but his restoration of the Inquisition, his favor of the Jesuits, his meddlesomeness and severity, made him the most unpopular pope for a century. In Rome he made himself universally hated. “ From prince to beggar no man was his friend.” In moral character he ranks the lowest among the popes of the century.

Francesco Xavier Castiglioni, Pius VIII, who followed Leo XII, was born in Cingoli, in Ancona, November 20, 1761. He was made Bishop of 1829-1830 Montalto in 1800, and cardinal in 1816. At the age of sixty-eight, and infirm in health, he was chosen pope, March 31, 1829; he died the next year, on the 30th of November. In disposition he was weak and gentle; but he showed himself narrow and intolerant. On his accession he solemnly cursed freedom of conscience, Bible Societies, and Freemasonry. He deserves grateful memory for his endeavors to suppress the slave-trade in Brazil. He was reputed the most learned canonist of the Papal Court.

Bartolommeo Alberto Capellari, who came to the tiara as Gregory XVI, was born at Belluno, September 18, 1765. He entered the Camaldolensian branch of the Benedictine order. At the age of twenty-five he was made Professor of Theology. In 1801 he became abbot of his monastery and two years later

The Roman Catholic Church. 89

general of his order. In 1825 he was created cardinal, and elected pope February 2, 1831. Though sixty years of age, he was vigorous in health and energetic in his rule. He favored the Jesuits in every way, and, like his predecessor, denounced Bible Societies. His rule of the States of the Church was an unbroken era of oppression. At his death more than two thousand prisoners were found in the papal dungeons.

Gregory was a thorough reactionist in Church and State; his is the most repellent figure among the popes of the century.

Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti was born of noble parents at Sinigaglia, May 13, 1792. In his youth he was subject to epileptic seizures. Having been disappointed in love, he entered the ,8^-1878. priesthood in 1819 at the age of twenty-seven. Though no scholar, he was quite gentle and devout. In 1823-1825 he was sent on a mission to South America. On his return, Leo XII made him a member of the papal household. Having been made Archbishop of Spoleto in 1829, he showed great wisdom in dealing with thejnsurgents of 1830. In 1832 he was made Bishop of Imola, and in 1839 cardinal. He was chosen the successor of Gregory XVI, June 16, 1846. His election was hailed with joy by the entire Liberal party of Italy. It was a dream of the time, favored by such men as Gioberti, that Italy would realize her unity under the rule of a liberal and reforming pope. The days of Pius’s attempt at constitutional rule were soon numbered. November 24, 1848, he escaped from Rome, and took refuge at Gaeta. The Roman Republic was formed. Garibaldi

90 History of the Christian Church.

bravely defended the papal city, but it fell before the French attack, July i, 1849. Pius did not return to his capital until April, 1850. For participation in this Revolution hundreds were executed, and thirty thousand were proscribed. From this time the policy of Pius IX was guided by Cardinal Antonelli, who left a fortune of over a million dollars at his death to an illegitimate daughter. The misgovernment of the Papal States was such as to shock the civilized world.

Thk Church in Franck.

The first and most famous of the Concordats, the pattern for the rest, was the Concordat with Napoleon in 1801. In that year Napo-Concordats. ^^{eon was} First Consul and Supreme Dictator of France. The delirium of the Revolution had run its course. The masses of the people were glad to sanction the usurpation whereby the ablest military genius of modern times put an end to the reign of violence, incompetence, and corruption, and assumed the control of the destinies of France. The glories of the conquest of Italy were remembered, the defeat of his Egyptian expedition was forgotten, the laurels of Marengo now encircled his brow. He, and he alone, could heal the wounds inflicted upon the Church by the Revolution. On his part, Napoleon wished an alliance with the Church. In all his plans for the reconstruction of France, the civil code, the system of education, the amnesty of the emigres, the reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church was easily first. It paved his way to a social recognition by the rulers of Europe,

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as well as aided to render stable the new order in France itself.

Thus arose the Concordat. The chief negotiators were, on the side of the pope, his faithful friend and guide, to whom he owed his election, the ablest statesman the Church of Rome produced in the nineteenth century, Cardinal Hercules Consalvi; on the side of Napoleon, his brother Joseph and the Abbe Bernier. The treaty, which formed the foundation of the new political system of the nineteenth century, is a short one of seventeen articles. In it the Roman Catholic religion is recognized as the religion of the great majority of the citizens of France, and the pope recognizes that the re-establishment of that Church and its worship is due to the act of the consuls of the Republic. This worship is allowed, provided it conforms to the regulations of the police which the government judges necessary for the public tranquillity. The succeeding articles treat of a new arrangement of French dioceses whereby the Archiepiscopal Sees are reduced from eighteen to ten, and the Episcopal Sees from one hundred and seventeen to fifty, or of both from one hundred and thirty-five to sixty. These, having no real estate or endowments, were to be paid by the State; the archbishops to receive from four to ten thousand dollars a year, and the bishops three thousand dollars, and the average for the cures was three hundred dollars. Compared with the immense income of the prelates of the old regime, or even the income of those of the Church of England, these salaries seem small indeed. This arrangement required the resignation, either voluntary or compul

92 History of the Christian Church.

sory, of all the then bishops of the Church in France. This the pope undertook to secure. The new bishops, and those to fill all future vacancies, were to be canonically instituted by the pope. But in this article there was no time set within which the pope must institute the nominee. This omission shattered all Napoleon’s plans for ruling the Roman Catholic Church in France. Both bishops and cures must swear allegiance to the existing French government, and promise to pray for it at each service of the mass. The churches not already sold are delivered to the proper incumbents for the uses of public worship. The pope on his part promises never, himself or his successors, to meddle with the title to church property seized and alienated by the State. On the other hand, the French government promises to pay the salaries of all the clergy from the cures of the parish to the archbishops. In case the chief executive of France should not be a Roman Catholic, then the nomination of bishops should be arranged by a new treaty. Such was the famous Concordat of Pius VII with Napoleon, which regulates ecclesiastical affairs to-day as the Code Napoleon does the law of its courts. This treaty practically made the papacy supreme in the Church of Rome. It crushed out the Episcopate, and the influence of any national sentiment in the Roman Catholic Church.

What was the loss to Pope Pius, and what his gain? Pius acknowledged the Revolution and its results. In spite of all after-claims as to the aid rendered by the papacy to the cause of legitimacy—the ancient rights and rulers who had been overthrown by the Revolution—the pope allowed the Revo

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lutionary government and its military usurper to restore the Roman Catholic Church in France, and to name each of its sixty prelates. ^LOSpop°e^the -^^{us a}^^so acknowledged the alienation of the immense property of the Church in France, and pledged that neither he nor his successors would ever interfere with it. There was no demand for the persecution or annoyance of Christians who did not belong to the Roman Catholic Church; on the other hand, the fullest right of the State to regulate the internal affairs of the Church is assumed. .

Pius VII obtained the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic worship in forty thousand communes in France. He obtained the complete submission or overthrow of the con- ^Qain_p^t₀°_pg_>^he stitutional clergy, who were making a most dangerous schism in the Church of France, and paving the way for national Roman Catholic Churches. He received the payment by the State of all salaries of the clergy, small though they were, and the right of the faithful to found and endow Churches. But, more than all, he secured the right and usage, which in the nineteenth century the Roman Curia has sought to raise to a universal precedent and custom, that all matters relating to the Roman Catholic Church, except doctrine, shall be arranged between the pope and the executives of the different governments without reference to the claims or desires of the clergy or the Episcopate. All legislative power is in the hands of the pope; even the initiation of it by the local Episcopate is most rarely allowed. For any efficient action upon or regulation of the Church

94 History of the Christian Church.

life, the Councils, diocesan or national, are almost non-existent. The Church of Rome used to consist of the clergy. The clergy no longer have any regular or constitutional voice.

The Concordat was signed after a most disreputable attempt on the part of Napoleon to change its terms without the knowledge of the papal ^T^r°cf_e^a_g"^iC negotiators, in July, 1800, and confirmed the next month by the pope. The resignation or deposition of the French bishops, and the other arrangements on the part of the pope for the fulfillment of the Concordat, delayed its proclamation until the next April. Napoleon eagerly awaited the termination of the affair. When at last the Concordat was proclaimed as the supreme law governing the Church of France, it was found to be accompanied by more than seventy Organic Articles regulating the entire internal administration of the Roman Catholic Church in France. This was a most disagreeable surprise to the pope, and he refused his assent to them. Nevertheless they, with the Concordat, received the assent of the legislative body, and were henceforth a part of the statute law of the country. With a few minor alterations, such they have remained until this day. The Roman Catholic Church in France has for more than one hundred years been governed by the Concordat and the Organic Articles.

Except in its foreign relations and in the institutions of bishops, no Evangelical State Church has ever been more entirely in the control of the government than has the Roman Catholic Church in France for the last century. This worked very well while the Church practically controlled the government, as

The Roman Catholic Church.

under the Bourbons, 1815-1830; or was preponderant in influence, as under Louis Philippe, 1830-1848; or had things her own way, as under Louis Napoleon, 1848-1870. But with the advent of the Republic, which came into the hands of Republicans in 1877, the scene changed. For the last twenty-five years the government of France has been largely hostile to the Roman Catholic Church, and the control of the Church by the State has been most vigorously asserted. The Organic Articles, and legislation based upon them, has struck hard the Roman Catholic Church, especially as respects the orders or congregations and its work in education, and the activity of ecclesiastics in the elections.

The arrangement on which the Roman Catholic Church was to rest in the nineteenth century was the work of Consalvi. He also favored Pius VII

. , Plus VII

going to Paris to crown Napoleon in 1804. and This the pope did, and also secured the mar- ^NaP°^,eon-riage of Josephine anew to Napoleon with Roman Catholic rites. . In return, Pius expected that Napoleon would restore to him Romagna and the Legations, and thus round out the States of the Church to their former boundaries. This request the emperor declined, postponing its consideration. Deeply disappointed and grieved, the pope returned to Rome; but worse was to follow. Rome, always hospitable, became a head-center where gathered all who hated or spoke ill of Napoleon. As an independent sovereign the pope could scarcely banish men for ill will or even bitter speech. Napoleon disliked the ability and integrity of Consalvi, and practically demanded his dismissal from the office of Papal Secretary of State, which he

96 History of the Christian Church.

had held since the election of the pope. He therefore resigned, June 17, 1807. The emperor demanded of the pope that he annul the marriage of his brother Jerome with Miss Paterson, of Baltimore. This the pope rightly refused to do, though he strove to make his refusal as inoffensive as possible, 1805-1807. Napoleon had already violated the neutrality of the Papal States in marching troops across them when he demanded that English ships should not be allowed to enter the harbor of Ancona, and the banishment of English, Russians, Swedes, and Sardinians from the Papal States. This was to treat with hostility powers with which Pius was in friendly relations, and Pius again declined to comply with the emperor’s wish. In the fall of 1808, Pius yielded to these demands, but the emperor, January 10, 1809, ordered Rome to be taken possession of by the French troops; the States of the Church were proclaimed as united to the French Empire, and the Papal Government to have ceased, June 9, 1809.

The pope then launched the thunderbolt which had been long in preparation. On the morning of June

1 ith, the Bull excommunicating Napoleon, though not directly by name, with all the lengthened and terrible cursings of the Middle Ages, was found affixed to the churches of St. Peters, St. Maria Maggiore, and the Lateran. On July 6, 1809, the pope was arrested in his palace on the Quirinal, and immediately removed under French escort, first to the Chartreuse at Florence ; then he was taken to France, arriving at Alessandria July 15th, and at Grenoble at the end of the month. From thence he was transferred to Valence and Avignon. The reception of the pope was so en

The Roman Catholic Church. 97

thusiastic that the prisoner soon was removed from French soil to Savona, a few miles west of Genoa, August 20, 1809, which became his residence for the next three years.

At Savona he was in charge of a French agent of the State police. December 18, 1810, the pope refused to accept the emperor’s appointment of Cardinal Maury as Archbishop of Paris. January, 1811, the expenses of the papal household were cut down to five cents a day for each person. At one time the papers of the pope were searched, and even his breviary was taken away. He was forbidden intercourse with any Church or subject of the Empire, but soon these rigors were relaxed.

The emperor felt that something must now be done to fill the vacant French bishoprics, amounting, by this time, June, 1811, to twenty-seven. Violence having failed to shake the pope, milder measures were taken. Three French Bishops, and Mannay, Bishop of Treves, were sent by the emperor to Savona in the greatest secrecy to secure some accommodations with the pope. The officer in charge of the pope did not scruple to bribe the pope’s physician to work on his feelings, and so make him more pliant. The envoys arrived May 9th, and May 18th had so worked on the pope, then weak and ill, that he assented to a paper he had dictated to and corrected with them. The effect of the paper was to agree to institute all imperial nominees to ecclesiastical positions in France and Italy who have been kept in waiting, and also to agree in the future to institute all persons so nominated within a term of six months. Pius signed nothing except a letter commendatory of the bishops; but that did not

g8 History of the Christian Church.

alter the obligation, which was not observed as to the future. On the other hand, all was done under duress and in a way that shames the oppressor far more than the oppressed.

Twenty-six cardinals had been invited to attend the marriage of Marie Louise to Napoleon. They attended the civil marriage, April i, 1810. Thirteen cardinals, led by Cardinal Consalvi, would not attend the relig-iou sceremony the next day. They were all banished from the court, and strictly confined to different cities, where they could not consult with each other for the next three years. Finally Napoleon determined to call a National Council, and such a body of French prelates convened at Notre Dame, June 17, 1811. To the surprise and chagrin of the emperor their first act, in which they were led by the uncle of Napoleon, Cardinal Fesch, was to take an oath of obedience to the pope. The emperor endeavored to intimidate the Council and to carry his end, but in vain. After the arrest and imprisonment of three prelates, leaders of the opposition, had failed to secure a majority for his measures, which were the same as those dictated by Pius VII and afterwards rejected by him, Napoleon felt compelled to dissolve the Council, July 12, 1811.

Napoleon being about to set out on his Russian campaign, ordered the pope to be brought from Savona to Fontainebleau, where he arrived June 20, 1812. He was very hospitably entertained in the old royal chateau at that place, and did not see his imperial oppressor until after the disastrous and terrible end of that campaign, begun with such arrogance and splendor.

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In January, after Napoleon’s return to Paris, he began to make approaches to the pope. He made his first visit January 19th, and was assiduous _Th in his attentions. After several interviews, concordat Pius was persuaded to sign the Concordat Fontaine-of Fontainebleau, which conceded the points in regard to clerical institutions, etc., for which he had been contending for the last five years. When Pius was again with his cardinals, especially Consalvi and Pacca, he recalled his assent, considering, he said, what he had signed but as a preliminary to a Concordat. It would be strange to call a document which conceded all the points at issue a preliminary agreement.

The principal article of this Concordat was the fourth, which provided that, within six months of the usual notifications and nominations to the archbishoprics and bishoprics of France and Italy, the pope shall give canonical institution according to the Concordat, and in virtue of the present indult. The first notification shall be given by the metropolitan. If six months expire without the pope according the institution, the metropolitan or, in his default, whoever acts as metropolitan, the senior bishop of the province, shall proceed to the institution of the bishop named, so that no See may be vacant more than one year. The cardinals were now allowed to see him. Cardinals Consalvi and Pacca, his former Secretaries of State, declared to him the fatal consequences of the Concordat now just signed. March 24, 1813, Pius VII took back all that had been done, and declared the second Concordat null and void. January 22, 1814, the pope left Fontainebleau, but did not enter Rome until May 24, 1814.

ioo History of the Christian Church.

However, the victory over a feeble old man could profit the emperor only if he could conquer the allied forces of his enemies. Leipzig gave terrible proof that he could not, and after that the Concordat of 1813 lost all of its significance except as showing how fallible a pope, and a good one, can be. The pope issued his protest against the Concordat concluded in January in the Allocution of the 24th of March. Napoleon kept the pope at Fontainebleau until January 23, 1814, when he was ordered to set out for Rome. A few weeks after, a new government was formed, and Louis XVIII came to the throne of France. Consalvi was the papal nuncio at Paris. The 24th of May, Pius made his solemn entry into Rome, which he had quitted nearly five years before.

Consalvi was away at Paris. Cardinal Pacca and the conservatives surrounded the pope. At this time _The Pacca obtained from the pope the refound-Refounding ing of the Society of Jesus by a Bull, dated Jesuit^, and August 7, 1814. Contrary to the desire of the those who had best served the Holy See, ^Re*^t_f°^^ion the Jesuits came back, and they came back states of the to rule. Consalvi was scarcely second to church. Talleyrand in his success at the Congress of Vienna. The States of the Church in all their former extent, and with unlimited authority, were given back to the pope. Then Consalvi came back to govern the territory thus regained. He served as Papal Secretary of State from his return in 1815 to the death of Pius VII in 1823. Though enjoying unexpected favor from Leo XII, Consalvi did not long survive his old master and friend, but died January 22, 1824. His expenditures, largely for artistic and architectural purposes, had necessitated heavy taxes,

The Roman Catholic Church. ioi

and when he died he had lost the popularity he had once enjoyed.

With the restoration of the Bourbons in France came an immense increase in the power of the pope of Rome. This came, not only from the Roman Cath-reaction from the Revolution in politics, o»cC^hurch

. , _ in France

but also from literature; and not only from after the the impulse of the Romantic Movement, Restoration, but as the eloquent plea for the papal power as the only stable support of modern society against the Revolution.

In 1796, Chateaubriand published in London his first work, “Essay upon Revolutions;” in the same year Joseph de Maistre published in Neufchatel his “Reflections upon France;” and Louis Gabriel Bo-nald published at Constance his “Theory of Political and Religious Power in the State.” These works were followed by others, notably by Chateaubriand’s “Genius of Christianity,” which appeared in 1802. These authors taught that the poison of the Revolution could find its antidote only in religion. With them religion was Christianity, Christianity was Roman Catholicism, and Roman Catholicism was the papacy. In the heavy sea of change they looked for some sure principle and institution of permanency, and thought they found it in the papacy. So De Maistre said, “ Thus, then, the more pope, the more sovereignty; the more sovereignty, the more unity; the more unity, the more authority; the more authority, the more faith.” The religious program of the Reaction did not find a better expression. Frederick William and Nicholas demurred in part to the first sentence, but agreed with all the rest.

In 1817, Lamennais woke Europe as with a trum

io2 History of the Christian Church.

pet-blast in his essay upon “Indifference.” In this work he denounced toleration as indifference, and the right of private judgment, and called for a return to the Roman Catholic faith. Seldom has there been given to man more burning eloquence. Leo XII offered him a cardinal’s hat, which he declined.

As the absolutist principles of the Bourbons developed, Lamennais, with Lacordaire and Montalem-bert, felt that religion, the Roman Catholic Church, and the papacy itself, must come into some accord with the progress of modern society. In September after the Revolution of 1830, they began the publication of L' Avenir, a journal which advocated the spiritual sovereignty of the pope and the political sovereignty of the people. Its mottoes were, “ God and Liberty,” " The Pope and the People.” They advocated in it, with an enlarged electorate, freedom of conscience, of instruction, of public meetings, and of the press. This strange alliance was at once discountenanced at Rome. In accordance with the papal command, L'Avenir was discontinued in 1831. The same year Lamennais, Lacordaire, and Monta-lembert went to Rome, but were not received by the pope.

In 1834, Lamennais published “Words of a Believer,” and from that time drifted farther and farther from the Church of Rome. He became an ardent Republican, and advocated, without qualification, the sovereignty of the people. In the Assembly of 1848 he sat with the Radical Republicans. Dying in 1854, he was buried, as he desired, without religious ceremonies. Lacordaire and Count Montalembert, his colleagues, were second only to him in eloquence.

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They submitted to the pope outwardly, but in inward convictions and political actions sought still the reconciliation of religion with modern progress. They had the persistent and virulent hostility of Louis Veuillot, the editor of the Ultramontane Univers. This contest divided the Roman Catholics of France. The Univers prevailed under the Second Empire, and its victory brought upon the Roman Catholic Church in France the full enmity of the Republic from 1879 to the end of the century. Montalem-bert and Lacordaire, with Dupanloup and the Jesuit Ravignan, gave character and splendor to the Church of France at the middle of the century. Through their efforts the Falloux law concerning education was passed in 1850. It freed from State supervision the Episcopal seminaries, and gave liberty to the religious orders, to found schools and colleges carried on without the co-operation of the State. In 1872 the Roman Catholics obtained the right to found univers sities which could confer degrees equally with the University of France. This mixed State and religious education prevailed through the rest of the century.

The Revolution destroyed the organization ot the Roman Catholic Church in Germany. The old ecclesiastical electorates of the Rhine and the ^

Roman

prince bishops of South Germany went catholic down in the flood. In 1814 there were liv- ^Church,n

Germany.

ing but five German bishops, and four of these were over seventy years of age. In the reorganization of the German Episcopate there was no longer a head. Mainz, where had been the primacy for a thousand years since the days of St. Boniface, became

104 History of the Christian Church.

a simple bishopric. The title without the primacy was transferred from Mainz to Regensburg, and then to Munich. In Prussia there were recognized the two archbishoprics of Cologne and Posen. The result of all this was the complete subordination of the German Episcopate to the Church of Rome. In theology the same result came through the papal condemnation of Hermes and Gunther. The ablest German theologians, Mohler, Dollinger, and Hefele were conected with Munich. John Adam Mohler (1796-1838) was an admirable man, a learned professor, and an able theologian. His “ Symbolik” presented an idealized Roman Catholicism as against a caricatured Evangelical Church. Yet it was the ablest work of a Roman Catholic theologian of the century. The greatest influence of Dollinger and Hefele fall in the succeeding period.

Roman Catholic affairs in Germany took a significant turn, and the papacy won a significant victory through the tergiversations and folly of the Prussian administration. The Congress of Vienna gave the old Westphalian bishoprics to Prussia. The Prussian government had come to a satisfactory settlement of its relations with the Roman Catholic populations of Posen and Silesia, and was anxious to conciliate and make a like arrangement with Westphalia.

Niebuhr was the Prussian ambassador at Rome. He was anxious that the Prussian regulations should have the sanction of the Papal See, and so made the control of the Episcopate and Roman Catholic Church in the Circumscriptions Bull of 1818 rest almost entirely in the pope. The Prussian government wished to settle the question of the education of the children

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of mixed marriages of Roman Catholics and Evangelicals as in Silesia, where the sons were educated in the faith of the fathers, and the daughters in that of their mothers. This was satisfactory to Count Von Spiegel, Archbishop of Cologne, 1825-1835. When later Christian, later Baron, Von Bunsen succeeded Niebuhr in 1828, negotiations were opened with Pius VIII for a satisfactory settlement. In a Brief of March 25, 1830, Pius declared: 1. A mixed marriage to be a sin, and that Catholic women should be warned against it. 2. Yet Catholics contracting such marriages shall not be punished with ecclesiastical censures. 3. Priests shall withhold from such marriages every sign of favor, and, when present, render only passive assistance. 4. From this date mixed marriages not solemnized by the priest shall be considered legitimate, and those contracted before this date shall be made legitimate by the bishop. It will be noticed that in all this nothing is said about the pivotal question, What shall be the education and religion of the children ?

The Prussian government did not consider these concessions—which, in truth, were small indeed—as sufficient, and in February, 1831, sent back the Brief for a more favorable adjustment. In the meantime Gregory XIV had assumed the tiara. As cardinal he had favored the Brief, but now he was not willing to allow even these concessions. The utmost efforts of Bunsen only succeeded in securing its reissue without change in March, 1834. The next month the Prussian government sought to obtain its ends by a convention or agreement between the Archbishops of Cologne and Treves and the Bishops of Pader-

io6 History of the Christian Church.

bann and Munster. This was signed June 19, 1834. The bishops understood that it was to be at once communicated to the pope, but the Prussian government sought to conceal it from the Papal Court. The Archbishop of Treves, dying, confessed it, and informed the Curia. They charged it upon Bunsen, the Prussian ambassador. He had not been informed of the step, and denied it. The evasions of the Prussian government were no credit to it, nor did they profit by it, as the Curia was well informed. Count Spiegel died in August, 1835, and in December, 1835, the Prussian government, relying on assurances which the candidate never fulfilled, with incredible blindness and folly, presented Clement Auguste Von Droste-Vischering for the Archbishopric of Cologne. When Bunsen announced the appoinmtent at Rome, Cardinal Lambruschini, who knew the candidate’s character and record, said, “ What! is your government mad?”

He was now seventy-two years old and had already showed himself a narrow-minded fanatic, having resigned the See of Munster in 1820 rather than conform to arrangements sanctioned by the Court of Rome. Once installed in the place, he repudiated the conventions of his predecessor, and soon was in open and violent conflict with the Prussian government. The archbishop was arrested and confined without trial, November 25, 1837. The Papal Allocution condemning the act followed, December 10th. The next month appeared Gorres’ “Athanasius,” which created a great excitement. Instead of trying the archbishop in open court for his broken word, the government had so mismanaged the case from the

The Roman Catholic Church. 107

start that it appeared like religious persecution, and the public opinion was decidedly against it. It was charged with too great appearance of truth, that it had used both fraud and violence to secure illegitimate ends; that is, ends against the prelate’s conscience.

Bunsen was recalled in disfavor from Rome in April, 1838. In June, 1840, while the conflict was raging, Frederick William III died, and was succeeded by the cultivated but visionary Frederick William IV. The new king arranged a settlement as little creditable to his political wisdom as to his Evangelical principles. The king granted more than the Curia had dared to ask: 1. The withdrawal of the demand of the administration regarding mixed marriages ; 2. Papal briefs, etc., to be published without inspection or consent of the government; 3. A separate cabinet division and minister for the Roman Catholics. Thus all Prussian Roman Catholics were delivered, without the slightest safeguard, to the See of Rome. On the other hand, Droste-Vischering must hand over the administration of his diocese to the Bishop of Speyer, and go into exile, where he died on a journey to Rome in 1845. No wonder that Von Ketteler, the Bishop of Mainz, said, “Never in our century has a prince rendered greater service to the Roman Catholic Church than this Protestant King.” From this folly came, not only the Kultur-kampf, but the predominance of the Center party in Prussian and Imperial politics.

In Ireland the great advance made by the Roman Catholic Church was the carrying through the British Parliament of the Act of Catholic Emancipation of

io8 History of the Christian Church.

1829. This repealed the penal legislation against Roman Catholics in Ireland, which had been in force since 1689; legislation which was as im-

Great Britain. .

politic as it was unjust. In 1845, Parliament voted $150,000 for the enlargement of the buildings of Maynooth College for the education of Roman Catholic priests, and an annual subsidy of $130,000. This was paid until 1871, when it was commuted by the payment of over $1,500,000.

The Roman Catholic Church in England entered upon a new era when Nicholas Wiseman was made bishop in 1840, and Pro-Vicar Apostolic of London in 1847. It then begun to be in a position to profit by the secession from the Church of England accompanying the Oxford Movement which marked the middle of the century. The famine of 1845-1847 cost 300,000 lives and an emigration of four times that number. Ireland has never regained her former population.

The political changes of the century, in spite of the strong Roman Catholic character of the population, brought about the suppression of the Portugal! monasteries and confiscation of monastic property.

Two marked features of the history of the Roman Catholic Church of this period were the principles The General embodied in the Concordats and the

Roman c'a'tho- ascendency of the revived Order of lie Church. JeSUS.

The policy of the Concordats initiated by Consalvi was carried out with greater thoroughness and advancing claims by his successors after the Concordats. Restoration. Such treaties were signed with Bavaria, Sicily, Spain, Austria, the Rhine countries of Germany, Sardinia, Tuscany, Bel

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109

gium, Portugal, and Russia; and, in America, with Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, San Salvador, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Bulls of Circumscription to the same intent were arranged with Prussia, Hanover, and Holland.

The aim of the Concordats was the exaltation of the papal power as against the Episcopate and clergy, and to secure the uncontested supremacy of the Church of Rome in all matters concerning the family and the educational and religious life of the people. To be more specific, it sought the freedom of the clergy from all jurisdiction of the civil law, and, whenever possible, the punishment of heretics by the civil power; that all marriages and divorces should be invalid when not celebrated or granted by the Roman Catholic Church; the full dependence of the schools upon the clergy; the Episcopal censorship of the press and the prohibition of the reading and sale of forbidden books; and the unrestricted increase of Church property.

This aim was not realized, but was sometimes closely approximated. The Concordat with Spain in 1851 provided that the Roman Catholic religion should be recognized to the exclusion of every other religious worship; that public instruction should be under the control of the bishops; that the government should assist the bishops in maintaining purity of doctrine and morals and in the censorship of books; under this latter head would come copies of the Scriptures in the mother tongue. On the other hand, holders of Church property were not to be disturbed. Once and again, in Bavaria, the pope sought to place the Concordats above the Constitution. In 1868 the pope ventured to declare the regularly-

no History of the Christian Church.

enacted laws of the Austrian Empire invalid because of the contradiction of some of the provisions of the Concordat. Those days are past. The governments now reserve the right to amend the Concordat as did Austria in 1870, and have a free hand in all domestic affairs, as the course of the French Republic has proved.

With the Restoration came the revival of the Jesuits; the overthrow of the chief reform of the th j its -^-^oman Catholic Church in the eighteenth

* century; the chief reform, indeed, since the Council of Trent. The papacy recalled the Jesuits, but only, like the author of “ Frankenstein,” to find in the revived culprit a master. While Cardinal Con-salvi lived, their influence did not prevail at Rome. But from 1824, with the exception of the opening years of Pius IX and Leo XIII, who was their pupil, their influence has ruled the policy of the Vatican through the century. It has controlled the actions of the popes and prevailed in the councils of the Church. They have dominated the theological field. Their old opponents, the Dominicans, no longer put in an appearance. The leaders of the opposition to their policy, Lamennais, Gioberti, Rosminni, Hermes, and Gunther, have been condemned. They have been the chief educators of the clergy in the countries from which they have not been driven out. There is no more significant fact in the history of the Roman Catholic Church in the nineteenth century than that the greatest ecclesiastical organization in the world, in a period of the greatest enlightenment and progress, has been ruled by an irresponsible secret society. At the end of this period the political and

The Roman Catholic Church. hi

theological policy of the Jesuits seemed everywhere triumphant in the Church of Rome.

By 1850 the Church of Rome had regained its lost position and prestige, in good part, from the overthrow of the Revolution. It had identified itself almost wholly with the policy of po- ' litical reaction. It had not the slightest sympathy with democracy in any form. It looked, and looked only, to the past for the secret of its power. It seemed to be the great obstacle to be overthrown in the battle of political freedom and religious progress in Christendom. Granted that it had rallied the Conservative forces against the Revolution, it had rallied them to a position from whence there was neither defense nor exit. If human progress and the march of the human mind could not be stayed—and they could not be—then the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church must suffer loss and suffer change. How loss and change came, and with what result, will be the task of the next half-century to reveal.

Chapter V.

EVANGELICAL CHRISTENDOM.

The Roman Catholic Church in this period bent all its efforts at re-establishment, so far as possible, on the basis of things before the Revolution. ufEurop”' ^The Evangelical Churches led Christendom in theological science; in missionary endeavors ; in founding Christian nations in America, Australia, and Africa; in their organized efforts for popular religious education, a religious press, and their humane and philanthropic enterprises, which have changed the face of the moral and religious world in the nineteenth century. The vigor and aggressiveness of the religious life of Evangelical Christendom was amazing. Its efforts and results are as wonderful and as transforming as anything in the political or scientific world. The new life of Evangelical Christendom found new agencies and new methods, and in their use took the lead in the work of the Church of Christ in this period, whether in evangelizing the people of Christian nations or in carrying the gospel to heathen lands. In these years the banner of Christian growth and progress passed definitely over to Evangelical Christendom. There were perversions and excrescences. There was a multiplication of sects and reduction to a minimum of Christian comprehension and charity. There were wild social and religious experiments, like the Shakers, the Oneida Community, and Brook Farm. There were impostures and apostasies,

112

Evangelical Christendom. 113

like Mormonism; and delusions, like the Adventism of William Miller’s. These were the results of an exuberant life in a social order where it seemed as if all could be made new. But Evangelical Christendom looked to the future rather than to the past, and there was the secret of its success; looked often to the future with utter disregard of the past, and there was the secret of most of the failures which marred the record of these years, aside from the human infirmities, ambitions, and perversities, which, in every age and in every Church, check the realization of the kingdom of God among men.

The great event in the German Church history was the union in Prussia of the Reformed and Lutheran Churches in the United Evangelical Church. _Th The intolerant and absolutist policy of the Evangelical government, the jealousy of Prussia in other ^{Church in} German States, and the zeal of the old con- ’

fessional Lutherans, marred this union. With all these drawbacks, added to the difficulties and burdens of a State Church, nevertheless it has endured for nearly one hundred years, and has achieved such success that no one in Prussia would think of undoing its work.

The gain has been great in all Germany in the birth of a new theological science in which the old differences, if mentioned, occupy only a subordinate place, and in an enlarged local administration and government of the Church. The founding of the Gustavus Adolphus Union was an advanced step for the aggressive Evangelical faith. This society looks after the interests of Evangelical Christians in Roman or Greek Catholic countries, and aids and plants Evangelical Churches where there is occasion or opportunity.

ii4 History of the Christian Church.

But great as was the gain in union and aggressiveness, by the movement organized on the third centennial of the posting of Luther’s “Theses,” the task of the Evangelical Church in Germany was different and higher than any remodeling of her constitution.

Germany had been desolated by Rationalism, her leading thinkers and educated men were under the spell of a pantheistic philosophy, and the Revolution, and later the Reaction, had wrought their will in Germany and Holland, while Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were comparatively untouched.

In the midst of these elemental forces, in Titanic conflict with the influence of Romanticism pervading her literature, the task of the German Evangelical Christians was to win their native land back to the Christian faith. In more than one respect the task was harder than in France, though in Germany there had not been such riot of revolution. With all failures and deflections confessed, yet the success of the Evangelical Church in Germany in making and keeping Christian the population has been greater than that of the Roman Catholic Church in France. In theological science there is no comparison; the epoch-making works in theology have not come from Roman Catholic France, but from Evangelical Germany. She has, in the allied branches of theological learning, been the teacher of all Churches and of all lands. Well may a little space be given to the men who, with all deficiencies, have wrought such a marvelous work for the Christian Church in the nineteenth century.

The man who led in this great work was Frederick Daniel Ernest Schleiermacher, who made his name

Evangelical Christendom. 115

great and influential in philosophy, in education, and in politics, while in theological science he was preeminent as an exegete, a critic, a theologian, and a preacher. Schleiermacher was ^acher' the son of a Reformed preacher, who served as chaplain in the Prussian army. The father was a man of wide learning and deep piety. The son was born at Breslau, November 21, 1768, and was educated at the Moravian schools connected with the Community at Herrnhut, at Niesky and Barby. His sister, Charlotte, joined the Community, and was a devoted member her life long. She died in their house in Berlin.

In consequence of his failure to receive the doctrines of the Divinity and atonement of Christ, he implored his father to allow him to leave the Moravians and attend the University of Halle. The correspondence with his father was a painful one, but reveals at once the truthfulness and openmindness of the son and the deep piety of the father.

As Schleiermacher predicted, only by a personal and thorough examination could he come to possess the great virtues of the Christian faith. From 1787 to 1790 he studied at Halle. For the next two years he served as a tutor in a nobleman’s family at Schlo-bitten in Prussia, where he made lifelong friends. The next year he taught in Berlin ; then for two years he served as country pastor at Landsberg. In 1796 he returned to Berlin as chaplain to the Charite Hospital. Here in the next six years he entered into those relations to the Romantic Movement of which mention has been made.

For some years Frederick Schlegel was his room

ii6 History of the Christian Church.

mate, and with him he began the translation of Plato, which he soon assumed as his life work, publishing it in successive volumes from 1804 to 1828. In 1802, and for two years, he officiated as court preacher at Stolpe. This change was of great importance to him as liberating him from the evil tendencies of the Romantic Movement. In 1804 he was appointed Professor of Theology at Halle. There he remained until after the battle of Jena, leaving there in 1807, as he did not wish to remain under Napoleon. Before going to Halle, in 1799, he had published his “Reden” or “Discourses Concerning Religion,” in which he vindicated religion as a necessary part of man’s nature.

In 1800 he published his “Monologues,” and in 1803 his “ Criticism of Existing Systems of Ethics,” a work of profound learning and reflection and of penetrating judgment. In 1807 he returned to Berlin as pastor of the Trinity Church. In October of that year his warm friend Eberhard Von Willich died, leaving a widow twenty-one years old and two children. In May, 1809, Schleiermacher married Henrietta Von Willich, he being then forty-one years of age. Few men have developed more in the family circle than this man of great intellect and profound feeling, and few men have had a happier married life. He had three children, two daughters who survived him, and a son, Nathaniel, who died aged nine, in 1829. Besides these he brought up in his house the two children of his wife by her former husband, and two adopted children, one the child of his half-sister, and the other of a friend. His sister lived with him until her marriage to the poet Arndt in 1817.

In 1810, Schleiermacher was called as Professor of

Evangelical Christendom. h 7

Philosophy to the newly-founded University of Berlin, which chair he filled until his death. He also preached regularly in the Trinity Church, and was the most celebrated preacher in Germany. From his Moravian training, his personal experience, and his value of the emotional life, there came from his pulpit a warmth of devotion, with thoughts of scope and power, and a penetrating spiritual insight. There were no gifts of the orator; in person he was like Paul, small and slightly deformed ; nor was there the charm of a finished literary style, for nothing was written but the text, the topic, and a few leading divisions. But in his sermons a great soul made great truths live for men, so that their strength and power entered into the spiritual being. In that circular church, with its five tiers of galleries, the great preacher’s presence seems potent still, while Dryander crowds every foot of space, and, in simplicity and power, recalls the throngs and might of the Word of the century’s early days.

Schleiermacher was great as a philosopher and teacher of ethics. He learned much from Plato and Spinoza, though Leibnitz and Kant were his masters. The latter system he largely recast, accepting elements from Fichte and Jacobi. His great work in theology was his “ Christian Faith According to the Fundamental Principles of the Evangelical Church,” 1821-2, and 1831-2.

The fundamental position of Schleiermacher was, that religious feeling is the highest form of thought and life; in it we are conscious of our unity with the world and God. This lies at the basis of all knowledge. Christianity is specifically the mediatorial re

118 History of the Christian Church.

ligion uniting the individual with the infinite whole in God, and this mediation is by Jesus Christ. Thus he transcends the difference between rationalists and supernaturalists in a higher conception, and renders religion superior to changing systems of metaphysics. In his work, in his influence as a preacher, in his devotion as an enlightened patriot, above all in his character as a man, as much as by the comprehensiveness, the penetration and value of his thought, he may well be called the restorer of the Christian faith in Germany. Like Origen fifteen hundred years before, he made Christianity the religion of the educated men as well as of the people. The value of that work, even now, can scarcely be estimated. His defects were a pantheistic influence, which affected his conception of the Trinity and of human immortality.

Great as was Schleiermacher in his endowments and service, he was greater in himself. His was a rich, a deep, and a harmoniously-developed nature, trained through severe trial as well as profound study. His “ Letters ” may well be called the mirror of a noble soul. His passion for truth, his high, warm, and true affections, the elevation and scope of his thoughts, are apparent on every page. To read them is to realize something of the possibilities of communion with the saints and of the truthfulness of the human spirit.

February 12, 1834, Schleiermacher lay dying in his home in Berlin. He suffered greatly. Then he said: “ I have never clung to the dead letter, and we have the atoning death of Jesus Christ, his body, and his blood. I have ever believed, and still believe, that the Lord Jesus Christ gave the communion in water and wine.” He then raised himself up, consecrated the elements,

Evangelical Christendom. 119

and administered the communion to his household, and said: “On these words of the Scripture [‘take, eat,’ etc.] I rely. They are the foundation of my faith.” Then, after the blessing, with a look full of love he said, “In this love and communion we are, and ever will remain, united.” In a few minutes he was gone.

The most influential and truest scholar of Schleier-macher was David Mendel, the son of a Jewish ped-ler, born at Gottingen, January 17, 1789, _n ^ who took at his baptism the name of August Neander (1789-1850). He derived his talents and disposition from his mother. When quite young his parents removed to Hamburg. In the Johaneum and gymnasium of that city he prepared for the university. While so engaged he became absorbed in Plato, and Plato led him to Christ. He was baptized at Hamburg, February 25, 1806. The same year he went to Halle, and heard and came to know Schleier-macher. When Schleiermacher left, Neander went to Gottingen, where he studied under Planck, the Church historian. There finishing his course, he was ordained at Hamburg, but rarely preached. In 1811 he was called to Heidelberg, as'Professor of Theology. In 1813 he was called to Berlin, where, with Schleier-macher and De Wette, he formed a brilliant trio, teaching until his death.

Thus was trained the man whose massive erudition, profound philosophic insight into the genetic relations of opinion, whose catholic spirit and depth of personal piety, made him the founder of the new science of Church history. Recognizing all that others have done, and his limitations, the work of no other

i2o History of the Christian Church.

man so revolutionized the study and laid such deep and broad foundations on which, since, all have built. His monographs on “The Emperor Julian,” 1812, “St. Bernard,” 1813, “Gnosticism,” 1818, “Chrysostom,” and “ Tertullian,” gave him fame for their learning and use of original sources, and their Christian spirit. In 1832 appeared his “ Planting and Training of the Christian Church,” and in 1837 his “Life of Jesus Christ ” in answer to Strauss, the ablest contemporary reply. In 1822 he published his interesting and valuable “ Memorabilia of the Christian Life.” But his great work was his “ History of the Christian Religion and Church,” in five volumes, 1826-1845. The sixth volume, published after his death, carried the great work down to 1438. In 1857 appeared his “ Lectures on History of Dogma.”

Whatever else the student of Church history reads, he must read Neander. His heavy style and lack of conception of the value of the institutional, or artistic in Christendom, may repel; but there is a power of thought, a grasp of the essential elements in character, situation, the development of opinion and of the permanent in Christian history, which will never lose their value or cease to inspire. No other German theologian of the century has probably been more widely read in English-speaking lands, with the possible and doubtful exception of Tholuck.

Neander never married. His dress and personal oddities made him often appear to the stranger ridiculous ; but to those who knew him, the subtlety and comprehension of his thought, the simplicity of his character, and his unselfish and affectionate disposi

Evangelical Christendom. 121

tion, made him loved, as his iron industry and immense learning made him revered.

The third in this famous trio of Berlin theologians was William Martin Lieberecht DeWette( 1780-1849). He, like the other two, produced a new and most important science, and laid foun- ^DeWette‘ dations on which all the world builds. DeWette is the founder of modern Biblical criticism and Biblical theology. DeWette was born in a parsonage-house near Weimar, January 12, 1780. He entered the University of Jena in 1799, and there heard Griesbach, Gab-ler, and Paulus, taking his degree in 1805. In 1807 he was Professor of Exegesis at Heidelberg, and was called to the same chair in Berlin in 1810. DeWette did not have the same warm religious experience as Schleiermacher or Neander, and was more rationalistic in his opinions. Schleiermacher said of him, “DeWette is, of course, very neological, but he is an earnest, profound, truth-loving man, whose researches will lead to real results, and perhaps he will also for himself yet come to another outlook.”

In March, 1819, DeWette wrote a confidential letter of consolation to the mother of Karl Sand, who was executed for the' assassination of Kotzebue. There are some imprudent sentences in it, and the act is compared to that of Charlotte Corday; but if its character, as written to a heart-broken mother whose guest he had been, is taken into account, there is little that is blameworthy. But hatred and fear of the Revolution predominated over every other motive, and Baron von Kottwitz, one of the noblest Christians of that generation, denounced DeWette to

i22 History of the Christian Church.

the government. In September he was deprived of his professorship. For the next two years he was near his birthplace at Weimar, and to these years we owe his unrivaled collection of Luther’s “Letters,” in six volumes. From 1821 until his death in 1849 he was professor at Basel.

He was a diligent student and author. His most noted works are “ Introduction to the New Testament,” 1826, and “ Exegetical Handbook of the New Testament,” 1838-1848.

As Schleiermacher predicted, he grew less rationalistic, and died in earnest Christian faith, giving his final confession in these words: “This I know, that in no other is salvation but in the name of Jesus Christ the crucified, and that for mankind there is nothing higher than the in-him-realized God-humanity, and the in-him-planted kingdom of God.”

No man had had so great influence in forming the United Church as Schleiermacher, but Schleiermacher wished it to have independence and liberty ^ThLifur^fgy^{Ced
as we}^ ^{as un}i°ⁿ- He desired a Presbyterian constitution, with regular assemblies of elders and clergy. Schleiermacher deeply sympathized with the liberal movement in politics of which Arndt and Stein were the exponents. The dismissal of DeWette affected them all, and in 1820, and again in 1823, Schleiermacher expected to be dismissed for his political opinions. But this did not prevent him from speaking out against the enforced use of the liturgy prepared by the royal commission and made obligatory, first in 1824, and throughout the kingdom in 1828-1839. Nothing else so hurt the cause of Union.

Evangelical Christendom.

But finally there came some recognition of Schleier-macher’s work. The king conferred upon him the order of the Black Eagle in 1831. At his funeral thirty-six students took turns in bearing the body to the cemetery. Then came the mourners on foot, extending a mile; and then one hundred carriages, led by those of the king and the crown princes. Thus was borne to his burial the man, who with Generals Scharnhorst and Guersenau in the army, and Stein in the State, ranks as the restorer of Germany.

One of the most attractive characters in the history of the Church in the century, and a potent force for the ennobling and extension of the Christian life, was Frederick August Gottlieb Tho- ^ThoIuck* luck (1799 ^I^77)> who, like Schleiermacher, was born in Breslau, where he first saw the light, March 30, ^T799- He was the son of a goldsmith, and the son was a remarkable boy. At thirteen he had read two thousand volumes, and at seventeen he knew nineteen languages. At eighteen he resolved to go to Berlin and study Arabic. He had no introduction, and resolved, if he failed, to commit suicide. He went to Dietz, the most famous Arabic scholar in the university. Dietz took him to'his own house, and Tholuck had at once friends in the leading men of the university. Soon after, Dietz died in his student’s arms. Tholuck was greatly influenced by Schleiermacher and Neander, and, through Baron Von Kottwitz, came to a personal experience of the forgiveness of sins. In 1820 he determined to be a theologian rather than a missionary in the East, as he at first planned. He began teaching at Berlin, 1821—1825, but was called to Halle in 1825, and began his duties there the next

124 History of the Christian Church.

Easter. There he taught until his death in 1877. He traveled in Holland and England, and spent the years 1827-1829 in Rome with Bunsen, as chaplain of the Prussian embassy. From 1833 served as university preacher, and from 1842 was in charge of Church affairs as a member of the Magdeburg Consistory. Tholuck lectured on Old and New Testament exegeses, and in 1838 wrote against Strauss on the “Credibility of the Gospel History.” In his later years he wrote a “ History of Rationalism,” which he left unfinished.

No work he left behind gives an adequate idea of his powers, though his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans was translated into English, and still has high rank. He married in 1829, but his wife died within the year. After eight years he married again, and the union was a most happy one, but proved childless. In part, perhaps, for this reason, Tholuck’s home was a resort for students, and one or more accompanied him on his daily walks. Tholuck spoke English fluently, and delighted in the company of English and American students.

No German professor had more friends, or loved them more. He built no theological system, but warm and evangelistic in his sympathies, he conquered persons and warmly attached them to himself, and won them to his Lord. Eminent as a philologist and exegete, and more so as a theologian, he excelled as a preacher. His great impress on his generation was as a seeker after the souls of men. He is an example of what, by personal influence, a university professor can accomplish.

Evangelical Christendom. 125

With these men labored, but on very different lines, Ernest Wilhelm Hengstenberg (1802-1869), who was born in the house of a Reformed

. . . Hengstenberg.

pastor m Westphalia, in 1802. He was educated at Bonn, and began his work in Berlin University in 1824, where he taught in the Theological Faculty until his death in 1869. In 1827 he founded the “Kirchenzeitung,” which he made the organ of the most rigid orthodoxy, and edited it until his decease. In 1830 he caused the denunciation of two rationalistic professors on the ground of the lecture notes of some students. The act was not countenanced by either Schleiermacher or Tholuck, and aroused great indignation. The professors kept their places. He sympathized with the efforts to enforce a common liturgy in Prussia. His lectures and his periodical were devoted to combating rationalistic and infidel critics, of which, after Strauss’s attack, there were always plenty. He also kept an eye on all ecclesiastical appointments in the same interest. He was narrow and dogmatic, and his published works represent very little value to-day; but as it was a time when Germany seemed to see the foundation of the faith dissolving in the fires of criticism, doubtless there was room and need of a sturdy fighter* though the cause must be won by other men and other means.

What Hengstenberg did in the United Evangelical Church, Gottlieb Christoff Adolph Harless (18061879) sought to accomplish by reviving

. . . Adolf Harless.

a strict confessional Lutheranism. He was

born at Nuremberg, November 21, 1806. He taught at

126 History of the Christian Church.

Erlangen and Leipzig, 1828-1850. He published his “ Jesuit’s Mirror” in 1839, but his “ Christian Ethics” is his most important work. He had charge of the affairs of the Evangelical Church of Bavaria for many years. After a two years’ residence in Dresden he was made, in 1852, the president of the Supreme Con-sistorial Council of Bavaria, which position he held for twenty-six years. He was the leader of the Lutheran movement in Germany, and the ablest and most influential of its theologians.

The course of the recall to the Christian faith under men like Schleiermacher, Neander, and Tholuck was grievously interrupted by the attack of the left wing of the Hegelian philosophy, led by Strauss, Baur, and Feuerbach. Hegel was personally a devout Christian, according to the testimony of his wife. But his teaching, that all human development and history is but the unfolding of the idea through the realization of contrary tendencies which are reconciled in the synthesis of a higher principle, led men to interpret history in the terms of philosophy, to the detriment of both.

David Frederick Strauss (1808-1874) graduated in Tubingen in 1830, and studied for a time in Berlin.

He began his career as a teacher in 1832. crick Strauss. In i§35 appeared, with a very insufficient foundation of scholarship, his epoch-making, “ Life of Jesus.” He held that we knew very little of the historical Jesus. The Christ of the Gospels is the product of the unconscious deception caused by the growth of myth; Jesus Christ is an idea for humanity; as an historical person he is myth. The theory was well worked out, and the work was writ

Evangelical Christendom. 127

ten in vigorous German. It compelled a critical examination of the sources of the New Testament history, but as an historical hypothesis it has been completely discredited by a better knowledge of the facts.

A much abler attack was that of another Hegelian, and a thorough historical student, Christian Ferdinand Baur, (1792-1860). Though Baur _ChrislIan gave himself to a study of the sources, Ferdinand and was no mere theorist like Strauss, yet ^Baur* his theories so controlled his investigations as to make it necessary to reject them almost entire. His teaching is the application of the Hegelian theory to the history of the Christian Scriptures and the Christian Church. As he said, “ Without philosophy, history remained to me eternally dead and dumb.”

Baur was an indefatigable worker and a prolific writer. Able men, like his son-in-law Zeller, and Schwegler, with, at one time, Kostlin and Ritschl, and later Hilgenfeld and Pfleiderer, formed his school. They taught that the New Testament is the result of the conflicting parties of Paul and the Judaizing Christians, and an effort to reconcile them represented by Peter and John. Baur held that the Epistles to the Galatians, those to the Corinthians, and to the Romans, alone were genuine. The other New Testament books were from the latter part of the second century. The impartial historic criticism of the last fifty years has made Baur’s standpoint like that of Strauss, one entirely overcome. Historical study and investigation have passed forever beyond them. Neither Strauss nor Baur knew Christianity except on its intellectual side, and both died in unbelief, Strauss even denying the immortality of the soul.

128 History of the Christian Church.

This stage was quickly reached by Anton Feuerbach in his “Essence of Christianity, 1842, which is a complete rejection of historic Christianity,

Feuerbach. .... . * * . , --v

which has its value only as idea. From this it was but a step to the pessimism of Schopenhauer and Hartmann and the materialism of Buchner and Haeckel. Unbelief won a great hold on the educated and middle classes from 1840 to 1880; but all these theories and hypotheses have lost standing at the bar of history, of philosophy, and of the common reason. The Hegelian attack is as dead as the overestimate of the philosophy on which it was founded. Christianity was never stronger than to-day in spite of Nietsche and the Social Democracy. Educated opinion stands more unitedly than at any time since Schleiermacher’s day on the side of the Christian faith.

In refreshing contrast with these ephemeral creations, which so quickly pass, is the career and work „ of Richard Rothe (1799-1867), who, as a

Richard , , . , ,

Rothe. speculative theologian, has not been surpassed in the century. He was born at Posen, January 28, 1799, and was educated at Breslau. In 1819-1820 he was at Berlin as a teacher, and 18201822 at Wittenberg, where he came under decidedly Pietistic influences, which markedly deepened his religious experience. He spent five fruitful years in Rome, 1823-1828, with Bunsen as chaplain to the Prussian embassy. Returning, he taught at Wittenberg, 1828-1839. In the latter year he was called to Heidelberg, where he spent the rest of his life, except for a five years’ stay at Bonn, 1849-1854. Rothe was simple, modest, and pure, with a singularly harmo

Evangelical Christendom.

nious intellectual and spiritual development. In 1837 he published his “ Christian Church,” but his great work was his “ Theological Ethics,” 1845-1848, 1872, in five volumes.

Rothe was not so versatile as Schleiermacher, nor had he the like talent for society, the pulpit, or leadership ; but he was the most profound and comprehensive theological thinker of the century. Yet no man was more truly or humbly Christian.

In 1845, in the midst of the commotion raised by Strauss and Baur, he could write: “The ground of all my thinking, I can truly say, is the simple faith of Christ, not yet a dogma, much less a theology, which for eighteen hundred years has overcome the world. It is my highest joy to oppose constantly and determinedly every other pretended knowledge which asserts itself against the faith. I know no other firm ground on which I could anchor my whole being, and particularly my speculations, except that historical phenomenon, Jesus Christ. He is to me the unimpeachable Holy of Holies of humanity, the highest Being known to man, and a sun rising in history, whence has come the light by which we see the world.” '

Charitable) Work in Evangelical Germany.

The labors of Evangelical Germany marked an epoch in these years in the history of Christian theology. Scarcely less remarkable was its leadership in Christian charity. After for- Adolphus eign missions, the first organized work of ^Verein. the Churches of Evangelical Germany was °^{r Union}* to provide for its brethren of like common faith and

130 History of the Christian Church.

language in Roman Catholic countries. This union was called into being on the two hundreth anniversary of the death of Gustavus Adolphus, November 6, 1832. On the ninth of the following December, it was organized. The Saxon administration approved of it in 1834. It received the patronage of Charles XIV of Sweden, and of Frederick William III, and of Frederick William IV, of Prussia. In 1841 its funded capital was 12,850 thalers. In 1842, aroused by the work of the preachers, Le Grand and Zimmer-mann, it took on new life. The Union has a Central Committee at Leipzig, and Chief Committees in each of the principal German States, with Branch Committees in each diocese. Once in three years is convened an Assembly of Deputies. In 1844 the Union was excluded from Bavaria, but in 1849 the prohibition was withdrawn. The chief objects of the Gustavus Adolphus Verein are to assist in building Evangelical churches, schools, parsonages, and orphan-houses, and to secure Evangelical Christians from intolerance and oppression in Roman Catholic lands. In this period it had scarcely begun its work, but before the century’s end it had spent on these objects nearly $10,000,000, and given a sense of Evangelical Union and protection before unknown.

The Evangelical Order of Deaconesses in modern

Church life owes its revival to Theodore

Deaconesses. _v

Fliedner (1798-1864).

He was the son of an Evangelical pastor in Rhenish Prussia, and received his education from his father.

He felt called rather to be a teacher than a

Fliedner.

pastor, but accepted the pastorate of the little village of Kaiserwerth ,011 the Rhine, in 1820.

Evangelical Christendom. 131

Two years later the manufactory on which the villagers depended for a living failed. The next year Fliedner went to England to obtain aid for his distressed parishioners. This he accomplished; but, more important still, there he met Elizabeth Fry, and became acquainted with her work. On his return, he visited the jails and prisons near Kaiserwerth. He found practically the same state of things as had Mrs. Fry at Newgate. At once he began personal work among the prisoners. In 1826 he organized the first society in Germany for the improvement of prisons. By proper classifications he sought to remove the worst abuses. In trying to find a matron for female prisoners at Diisseldorf he found a wife. She had duties indeed, as, besides all the charities under his care, Fliedner was the father of eighteen children. He saw two of them become Evangelical pastors, and others become connected with the work of the deaconesses.

Fliedner had seen something like the trained care of the deaconesses among the Mennonites in Holland. His personal charge of the outcasts began in 1833 with a discharged female prisoner in the summer-house in his garden. In 1836 he purchased a house, and opened the first Deaconess House, with no assets but faith. His hospital was started with “ one table, a few broken chairs, some well-worn knives and two-pronged forks, seven sheets, and four severe cases of illness.” Afterwards he added a lunatic asylum, and then a training establishment for schoolmistresses and governesses, one for schoolmasters, and a school for boys. All these institutions were utilized for the training of his deaconesses. In 1838. he sent out two as the first

132 History of the Christian Church.

fruits of Kaiserwerth. In 1849 he came to America, and four deaconesses, the first to cross the Atlantic, accompanied him to Dr. Passavant’s work at Pittsburg, Pa. The great growth and spread of the order came in the last half of the century.

Pastor Fliedner was not great nor learned, but simple and devout. In his work he was practical, earnest, and thorough. He never forgot the words of a brother pastor when, in deep discouragement, he undertook the work of finding aid for his distressed congregation ; his friend told him the three essentials he needed were patience, impudence, and a ready tongue. He became a most accomplished solicitor of funds in France, Germany, England, and America, and even royal favor shone upon him. Fliedner had rare and original gifts as a teacher. Thus this simple Evangelical pastor began a work of world-wide influence and beneficence.

A great man, of far greater intellectual gifts, was John Henry Wichern (1808-1881). Wichern was edu-inner Mission. cated at Gottingen, and studied theology at John Henry Berlin. At the university, Wichern had wichern. k_een i_mp_ressed with his need of unusual consecration and his call to some special work for God. There seemed no immediate prospect for this, as his father died when he was little more than an infant and his mother was dependent upon him. But Wichern, like many another, found the way of duty the way of opportunity. W^Thile working in the Sunday-school at Hamburg, after his return from the university, Wich-ern’s heart was touched by the condition of the street urchins of that city, who were growing up in ignorance and to a life of crime. He succeeded in interesting the

Evangelical Christendom. 133

wealthy and generous Syndic Sieveking in his project; his daughter Amalie ever proved Wichern’s strong friend. Sieveking gave him a garden-house on his estate at Horn, three miles from Hamburg, known as the Rauhe Haus, for his experiment.

It had a thatched roof, small windows, and low ceilings. Wichern began with three boys, which number soon increased to twelve. He lived with them. His mother was the house-mother ^ThH*_u^a“^he and the mother of every boy. They looked upon her with love and veneration. The Bible was most carefully taught and thoroughly studied. Three times as much time was given to the study of the Bible, the Catechism, Church history, and music as to all other studies. From the first the boys were taught that God loved them, and showed that love in Jesus Christ; that they could by his help be something, do something, and own something; and that labor alone gives title to a living.

When the boys increased in numbers, another house was provided, the numbers in one house always ranging from twelve to fifteen. When the first division was made, and the second cottage was ready for occupancy, “on a bright Sabbath morning, in the presence of several hundred friends, the new cottage was dedicated to the Good Shepherd through whose love and help twenty-seven boys had already been gathered into a sheltering fold.” In 1851 there were seventy boys and twenty-five girls in four families of the former, and two of the latter at the Rauhe Haus. They had a chapel, a bakery, a wash-house, workshops, and a printing-office, though the work generally taught was farming for the boys, and domestic

134 History of the Christian Church.

service for the girls. The boys stay at the Rauhe Haus four, and the girls five years; the coming or remaining is entirely voluntary. When they leave the Rauhe Haus, places are obtained for them in the city. All the furniture and surroundings are of the simplest character, and the boys and girls are trained to a life of honorable poverty. On the average, eighty per cent of those received are permanently reformed.

In 1844, Wichern began here the publication of the Fliegende Blatter, or Flying Leaves, which became the organ of the Inner Mission, and is still published at the Rauhe Haus.

In 1858, Wichern founded at Berlin the Evangelical Johannes Stift on the same lines as the Rauhe Haus at Hamburg, and served by trained “ attendants of devout life and special call, known as the Johannes Brotherhood. It is designed, not only to care for the neglected, but to train for like service throughout Germany.

At the Kirchentag, or Church Diet, of 1848, Wichern sounded a note which struck a responsive chord throughout Evangelical Germany, Miasiong^ ^atl(^ called into life the Inner Missions.

These seek to oppose anti-religion and anti-Christian influence among the populations. They favor street preaching, the better observance of the Sabbath, and Bible distribution. They aim, as the source of all, to deepen the religious life. But the method of the Inner Missions is constructive, like our city missions, only with a wider range. It includes the care of the poor, and the neglected, the discharged criminals and work in prisons, Magdalen asylums, etc., but also Christian lodging-houses for

Evangelical Christendom.

traveling apprentices, and “ Christliche Hospices” for the Christian traveler, night-schools, and the different and changing needs for charitable effort in our time. It has greatly quickened the religious life of Germany.

In 1851, Wichern was chosen to inspect and report upon the correctional institutions of Prussia. In 1858, he was called to the Council of the Interior, with especial charge of these in- ^LastDay^8of

tt 1 ... Wichern.

terests. He kept up his interest in prison reform, and founded a Prussian military diaconate. In 1872 he was stricken with paralysis. He lingered on nine years, but his great lifework was done. Seldom have two men in the same generation done as much for their country and for mankind, or exerted an influence at once so practically helpful and widespread, as Theodore Fliedner and John Henry Wichern. They brought trained service for Christ’s sake to the sick, the neglected, and the criminal. They marked a new era in the Church life of Evangelical Christendom.

The Reformed Church was not unaffected by the Revolution and the speculations of German theology ; but independently of them it had, like the _The Presbyterians of England and the Congre- Evangelical gationalists of Eastern Massachusetts, be- _C^c*^{urch in}

, . . ’ Switzerland

come largely Socmian or Anan. The most and marked feature of the religious life of this ^France-period was the new awaking which came to the lands of Calvin from Scotland. Thus was John Knox’s debt to Geneva repaid. Erskine and the Haldanes brought the warmth of Evangelical life and teaching which renewed the life of this ancient Church. The

136 History of the Christian Church.

change may be traced in the religious experience and work of the most distinguished leaders.

Jean Monod (1765-1836) was educated at Geneva, and ordained in 1786. In 1793 he married at Copenhagen, and the next year he began his min-

Jean Monod. . . , i,r*i •. r •> •

istry m the French Church of that city, where he remained for the next fourteen years. He then accepted a call to Paris, where he labored as pastor, 1808-1835. He was a “Moderate” in his religious experience, and ethical in his preaching. His character and ability gave him wide influence.

His son, Frederick Monod (1794-1863), was an eloquent preacher, with a different religious experience and a widely different influence. He ^FMonod.^k
studied at Geneva, 1815-1818, and while there he was converted to a religious life through the teaching and influence of Robert Haldane. In 1825 he was called as pastor to Paris, where he founded the first Sunday-school. From 1820 to 1863 he edited the “Archives of Christianity.”

In 1848, in the ferment of that time, he withdrew from the Reformed State Church of France, and, with Count Agenor De Gasparin, founded a Free Church, “The Union Evangelical Church of France.” He came to America, and raised funds to build his church. The movement, however, did not acquire any great importance.

A man of greater ability and influence was Frederick’s younger brother, Adolphe Monod (1802-1856).

From 1820 to 1824 he was a student at Ivionod? Geneva. In the latter year he was awakened to the need of a new religious life by Thomas Erskine. In 1826 he was pastor at Naples,

Evangelical Christendom. 137

where he was converted. The same year he became pastor at Lyons. After six years he was dismissed from his Church on account of his Evangelical fervor; but he established a new Church at Lyons on a deeper apprehension of Evangelical truth, and remained there for the next six years. In 1836 he was called to the theological seminary of Montauban as Professor of Sacred Eloquence; in 1839 he exchanged it for the chair of Hebrew, and, in 1841, this for the chair of Biblical Criticism.

While at Montauban he published “Lucile; or, Reading the Bible.” In 1847 he became pastor at Paris. Unlike his brother, he did not leave the State Church. He preached in London in 1846 during the sessions of the Evangelical Alliance. For three years he lay dying, and, face to face with death, he composed what has been called a new Imitation of Christ, “The Adieux of Adolphe Monod to his Friends and to the Church,” 1853-1856. He was, perhaps, the most eloquent French preacher of his Church and time.

Of an Evangelical type even more intense was Abraham Caesar Malan (1787-1864). He graduated at Geneva, and was converted through

, __ , , ^ ^ , Caesar Malan.

Robert Haldane. From 1809 to 1818 he was regent of the university. Because of his Evangelical preaching, he was dismissed from this position, and forbidden to preach in any pulpit in Geneva. In the same year he began to hold “Reunions,” or religious meetings for prayer and conference. This met with such success that his name was erased from the list of Genevan pastors in 1823. He built the Chapel of The Testimony on his own property, in which to hold these “Reunions.” From 1823 to 1830

138 History of the Christian Church.

the Church of The Testimony to which he ministered flourished. Through a division in the latter year, one-third of its members seceded. He then began preaching-tours in Switzerland, France, England, and Holland. He published different works, among them a volume of hymns entitled “ Songs of Zion.” Malan was a true poet, a fiery evangelist, and a faithful pastor. His hymn, “ It is not death to die,” is one of the noblest written in the nineteenth century.

Jean Henri Merle, who took his maternal grandmother’s name of D’Aubigne (1794-1872), was converted while a student through the influ-

D’Aubigne. _ __ ,

ence of Robert Haldane. In 1817 he studied in Germany under Neander and DeWette. From 1818 to 1823 he was pastor of the French Church at Hamburg, and in 1823 to 1830 court preacher at Brussels. In 1830 he returned to Geneva, and in 1833 he withdrew from the State Church and joined the Free Church, of which he remained a member until his death. He was during these years Professor of Church History at Geneva. His “ History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century,” 1835-1853 (new edition in 5 vols, (1861-1862), and “ History of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin,”

8 vols. 1862-1877, are his chief works. They show acquaintance and use of the sources and sympathy with the Reformers and with the Evangelical faith, but they are too highly colored and too partial for reliable guides. Of the first of these works in the English translation it is said that two hundred thousand copies were sold in England and four hundred thousand in the United States.

Evangelical Christendom.

Alexander Rodolphe Vinet (1797-1847) was, as a thinker and a writer, a much abler man than D’Au-bigne. In originality of thought and bril- _AIexander liancy of style he recalls Pascal. Sainte Rodolphe Beuve called him, as a literary critic, sa- ^v,net* gacious, precise, and far-seeing. He was educated at Lausanne, and for twenty years, 1817-1837, taught French language and literature at Basel. In 1823 he was converted, and in 1829 he was ordained to the Christian ministry. About this time he married his cousin, Mdlle. Rotaz. In 1824-25 he distinguished himself in a debate on religious liberty. The opinions then formed grew stronger until his death. From 1837 to 1845 he taught Practical Theology at Lausanne, and made his reputation as “ the most original of the theologians of the French language since Calvin.” In 1845 resigned his professorship, and joined the Free Church. The last two years of his life he taught French Literature at Lausanne. His chief works are five volumes of “ Sermons,” “ Outlines of French Literature,” “History of French Literature of the Eighteenth Century,” and “Studies of Pascal and Kant.”

Personally, Vinet was modest, humble, and painfully timid, Vinet was not a systematic thinker; but few men are more suggestive, and all he has written has clearness, precision, and grace. A few sentences will show his peculiar value. Faith he defines as “ a life in communion with an object which it knows,” and again as the “ Gospel understood by the heart.” Of Christianity he says : “Does not Christianity in its last analysis consist only of

140 History of the Christian Church.

this, to reproduce all that Christ has done? It is necessary that we relive spiritually all the life of Christ; and to be in the truth, that only is to know the truth.”

The record of these men and their work will give some idea of the new life in the Evangelical Church in France and Switzerland.

Chapter VI.

THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH IN ENGLAND.

Thb history of the Christian Church in England during the first half of the nineteenth century is a history of great achievements and of the beginning of a great movement, which, emphasizing historic and institutional Christianity, has made itself felt, directly and indirectly, throughout Evangelical Christendom. The Oxford Movement, with all its limitations and defects, still was the great moral force and exponent of ecclesiastical life in English Christianity in the nineteenth century. It did not come into being itself, but was born of the fullness and earnestness of English religious life flowing from the Evangelical Revival. It did not stand alone, but about it were the vigorous forces of the Evangelical and Broad Church parties in the English Church, and of the Evangelical Dissenters, never before so vigorous and aggressive. Over against these were the differing shades of unbelief, Utilitarian and later Positivist, whose organ was the Westminster Review, and whose creed was a political and religious liberalism. This period was one of laying the foundation on which other generations should build; in it also were the usual sporadic, and sometimes permanent, manifestations of sectarianism, individualism, and also of communistic endeavor. The vigorous religious life of England and Scotland affected that of the Evangelical

141

142 History of the Christian Church.

Churches of the Continent, and it was also influenced in a degree by the religious life of the United States of America.

The course of English history, and even that of the Church of England, was very little influenced in

The Arch- ^^rSt ^^{ie centur}y the OCCU-

bishops of pants of the See of Canterbury. They, canterbury. _an(j _a i_arg_e p_0rti₀n of the English Episcopate, preserved the traditions of the Georgian era but little modified.

Charles Manners Sutton’s (1755-1828) chief claim to ecclesiastical promotion was his aristocratic con-Archbishop ^necti^Qn> his fine personal appearance, and sutton, his attractive manners. Of average intel-1805-1828. i_ectuaj ability, his moral character and influence were good. He was the son of Lord George M. Sutton, and the grandson of the Duke of Rutland. Charterhouse and Cambridge were responsible for his intellectual training. He took his Master’s degree in 1780. In 1785 he received the two family livings of Aversham and Whit well. In 1791 he became Dean of Peterborough; the next year Bishop of Norwich, to which was added, two years later, the office of Dean of Windsor. To such rapid promotion there could come but one other. On the death of Archbishop Moore, in 1805, he was made Archbishop of Canterbury, which office he held until his death in 1828. The chief event of his administration of twenty-three years was the sale of the ancient country seat of the archbishops at Croydon, and the purchase in its stead of Addington. Sutton opposed the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill, but favored the removal of political disabilities from the Nonconformists.

The Evangelical Church.

i43

William Howley (1765-1848), was the son of an English vicar, and did not owe his promotion to his connections so much as to the fact that, _Archbishop after graduation, he was tutor to the Prince Howiey, of Orange at Oxford. There he took his ^,8*⁸“^,84⁸-degrees in 1787 and 1791. In 1794 he became Fellow of Winchester, and in 1804 canon of Christ Church, Oxford. From 1809 to 1813 he was Professor of Divinity at Oxford. In these years he did not avoid pluralities, holding the Vicarage of Bishop-Sutton from 1796, that of Andover from 1802, and the rectory of Bradford-Powell from 1811. From 1813 to 1828 he was Bishop of London. He sided with the king against Queen Charlotte, and is quoted as saying in connection with the trial that “The king could do no wrong, either morally or physically.” From 1828 to 1848 he was Archbishop of Canterbury.

He was a consistent Tory, opposing the Roman Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bills. He greatly improved, in repairing at large expense, Lambeth palace, the city residence of the archbishops. There is nothing in his record to change Greville’s opinion that “he was a A;ery ordinary man.”

The next occupant of the English primacy was a much stronger man. John Bird Sumner (1780-1862) was a student and an author of books once _Archbishop widely read. He received his education at Sumner, Eton, and King’s College, Cambridge, tak- ^,84⁸“'⁸⁶²-ing his degrees in 1803 and 1807. In 1802 he received a Fellowship at King’s, and became assistant master at Eton. The next year he was ordained and married.

Pluralities do not seem to have avoided him in their course. In 1817 he became Fellow of Eton; the

i44 History of the Christian Church.

next year the valuable living of Maple-Durham came to him. From 1820 to 1848 he was also prebend of Durham; and from 1828 to 1848 he was Bishop of Chester; and from 1848 to 1862, Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a popular writer, and published, 1815-1829, “Evangelical Theology.” Intellectually and religiously, he leads the Archbishops of Canterbury for the preceding one hundred years.

We may briefly indicate some of the general characteristics of this period. It was an era of preaching.

. Never did preaching count for so much in

* English Christianity. It was a period of political oratory addressed to great mass-meetings. These were the years of the Catholic Emancipation, of the Reform Bill, of the Repeal of the Corn Laws, and of the Chartist movement. They were also the years of the influence and power of the great religious assemblies and anniversaries at Exeter Hall.

The political and social reforms of those days were carried more by public meetings and oratory than by the press. This which was true in political life, where shone, as agitators, Daniel O’Connell, William Cob-bett, Richard Cobden, and John Bright, as well as Parliamentary orators like Macaulay, Lord Stanley, and young Gladstone, was even more true of the religious life of England.

The Evangelicals had men whose throne was the pulpit, and who always spoke to crowded houses. Such were John Newton, the converted slaver, and author of the Olney Hymns; Rowland Hill, Richard Cecil, Charles Simeon, and William Jay. In the Baptist pulpit were Robert Hall and Andrew Fuller. The Methodists excelled all others in this form of popular

The Evangelical Church. 145

religious address. They had great preachers. Such were Richard Watson, Robert Newton, and Jabez Bunting. Then their itinerants and local ministers brought the gospel to the common people as never before since Christianity was planted in Britain. The itinerants preached week-nights as well as Sundays, and often averaged over three hundred sermons a year. In this way the English people, especially the middle and lower classes, became thoroughly indoctrinated with the teaching of the gospel.

The substance of this preaching was a personal appeal to begin a Christian life, and then for the young convert to seek to persuade others to follow _Evangei_isin his example, and to engage in active Chris- and tian work. With this was set forth a high ^MlssIon5* standard of moral character and of self-denial for Christ’s sake. This, of course, meant always an earnest Evangelism, and led at once to the founding and support of Christian missions. Everywhere they were born of the Evangelical Revival, which showed to the world Christianity in earnest. The Baptist Missionary Society was the first of these organizations. It was founded in 1792, and sent out its first missionary, William Carey, in 1793. The great London Missionary Society came next in 1795, and the Church of England Missionary Society came next in 1797. A year later began the work of the Scotch and Glasgow Missionary Societies. In 1829 the Scotch Church sent Alexander Duff to Calcutta. The United Presbyterian Mission was founded in 1835, and the Free Church Mission in 1843.

Thus came into being the Wesleyan Missionary Society in 1813, the General Baptist Missionary Society 10

146 History of the Christian Church.

in 1815, the Primitive Methodist Missionary Society in 1842, and the English Presbyterian Missionary Society in 1844. A different line of work was taken up by the Edinburgh Medical Mission in 1841. Work had been begun among the Jews in 1808, and in South America in 1844.

The impulse of this movement extended to other Evangelical lands. The Danish and Moravian missions dated from the early part of the eighteenth century. Other Missionary Societies were now founded,—the Netherlands, 1797; Basel Evangelical, 1815; Danish, 1821; Paris Evangelical, 1822; Berlin, 1823; Rhenish, 1828; Swedish, 1837; Norwegian, 1842 ; North Germany (at Bremen), 1835 ; The Evangelical Mission Union of Berlin, in 1842. Thus began the great Evangelical Foreign Mission movement, which, before the century ended, placed the Christian Scriptures in nearly all the tongues spoken by men, and preached the gospel in all lands.

The zeal for foreign missions only quickened that for home missions. The work of the religious instruction of the young was felt to be of

Education. , _ .

the first importance. The great. Sunday-school movement, instituted by Robert Raikes in 1780, had five years later, it is estimated, two hundred and fifty thousand scholars; soon it passed from the teaching of the rudiments of a secular education to purely religious instruction, and from teachers paid for their services to those who gave them voluntarily to this work. These were the great modifications on which depended its future success. Then, through the work of the Bible and Tract Societies, came cheap Testaments and Bibles, and the founding of Sunday-

The Evangelical Church.

school music, and the Sunday-school press just began to make evident their importance at the close of this period. Sunday-school architecture is of later date. The oldest of the Sunday-school Societies, the London Sunday-school Union, was organized in 1803. By 1850 it is estimated that there were in English-speaking lands six millions of Sunday-school scholars in the Evangelical Churches. This interest in religious education did not slacken the interest of its promoters in the secular education of the children of the people, and they were forward in all the plans to that end until the passage of the English Education Act of

1873-

John Wesley led the way in the publication of tracts and in the establishment of a powerful religious periodical press. He sought to organize his tract work in 1782. Hannah More’s ^TheRe,1s^iou*

. . Press.

religious tracts began in 1795. The first year two millions of copies were sold. This led to the formation of the London Religious Tract Society in 1799; in 1810 it began to publish works suitable to the Sunday-school. Before its semi-centennial it had published its tracts in one hundred and twenty-three different languages, and co-operated with Evangelical missions in every land.

The religious periodical press, first largely utilized by Wesley, and distinctly developed among those favoring the Evangelical Revival so as to be the expression of its life, has since found its place among all Churches and religious organizations. Next to the pulpit it is the most efficient means of reaching the masses of the people, and of guarding and elevating the moral and religious life of nations. Since the ab

148 History of the Christian Church.

olition of press censorship in all Christendom except Russia, it has come to unexampled circulation and influence. It rests upon popular education, and, though increasing each decade in scope and power, may be said to be in its infancy, as an organized power, to present Christ, to appeal to man’s religious nature, to show the relation of Christianity to all human interests, and to bring in the kingdom of God.

Baron Canstein’s Bible Society was founded in 1710, and up to 1843 it had circulated five millions of copies of the Bible and three millions of Societies, copies of the New Testament in the German tongue. This Society sprang from the Pietistic movement. So the Evangelical Revival resulted in the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804. This was largely through the initiative of Rev. Mr. Charles, a clergyman of the Church of England at Bala in Wales, and Rev. Joseph Hughes, a Baptist.

From the same need and impulse later came the American Bible Society. In 1805 the first New Testament was printed from stereotyped plates; this at once greatly reduced the price. Before the century ended, a New Testament could be bought for two cents; within sixty years of its founding it had issued over fifty millions of copies of the Bible, or parts of it, and had published it in more than one hundred languages and dialects.

The labors of the Bible Societies are the foundation of all Sunday-school, Evangelistic, and missionary work of Evangelical Christendom throughout the world. Though they may not publish one-half of the Bibles sold and read, yet it is through their efforts that there is the immense demand for them, and that

The Evangelical Church.

149

they are in price within the reach of all classes. On this immense popular circulation of the Christian Scriptures in the language of the people rests the power of the Evangelical pulpit and Sunday-school, the intelligence and moral character of Evangelical Christendom, the permanence of its influence, and the assurance of a higher type of civilization.

This period was marked by an expenditure of money before unparalleled for religion and charitable purposes. Robert Newton, the secretary _#

of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, is *

said to have raised more money for these purposes than any other man of his time. Where money was given for such ends, there was a noticeable refinement in manner and decrease in gross forms of selfindulgence. The spirit of Christ in them sought out the poorest and most degraded to make them partakers of the riches and righteousness of Christ. Elizabeth Fry, of the Society of Friends, will always be a notable example of this tendency.

Upon the political history of the time the deepest impression was made by the abolition of the slave-trade and the emancipation of the slaves in the British Colonies. This was carried out *

by the Evangelical party, aided by the political Liberals, but against the vested interests in the Established Church as well as those in the commercial and political world. There are few brighter pages in the history of the influence of the Evangelical Revival. The men and their successors of the same faith who stood by Wilberforce and Buxton stood by the reforms forever associated with the names of Sir Rowland Hill and Lord Shaftesbury.

This is certainly a record of great achievements

150 History of the Christian Church.

for half a century. The movement or party which surpasses it has yet to come into existence. These results were largely, indeed almost altogether, the work of men within and without the Church of England who were called Evangelicals, and who were the product or the heirs of the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century.

We will now consider them more in detail.

At the opening of the century John Wesley had been dead nearly nine years, but the spirit of the Evangelical Revival ruled the aggressive and constructive religious life of England. The achievements of this life, above noted, were the achievements of that spirit. But the finest fruit of a great religious movement, and its most permanent result, both for time and eternity, is in human character. This is the test from which the Evangelical Christians of the early part of the century need not shrink. Our own lives will be richer for their acquaintance.

Two of the most eminent of the Evangelical preachers of the metropolis, John Newton and Row-john Newton *^and were sketched in the preceding

and volume. Newton will be remembered by Rowland Hiii. j^_s “Authentic Narrative ” of his early life and conversion, by some of the most justly popular of the hymns of the Evangelical Revival, and by his spiritual letters in his “ Cardiphonia,” and elsewhere. In the latter kind of writing he was unexcelled in the English Church.

But more important than these was the service in his generation in winning many to a Christian life. Among these were such men and women as rarely owe their conversion to a single preacher. The list

The Evangelical Church. 151

included Thomas Scott, the commentator; William Wilberforce; Claudius Buchanan, noted as an Indian chaplain; Hannah More, Charles Simeon, and William Jay; the latter regarded by Jabez Bunting, no mean judge, as the ablest preacher of his time. Old and blind, but richly blest of God in soul and work, in 1807, John Newton went to his rest.

Rowland Hill continued his ministry for more than thirty years in the new century. He filled Surrey Chapel in London, and each summer made preaching tours in rural England after the manner of Wesley.

The ablest of the second generation of preachers of the Evangelical party in London was Richard Cecil (1748-1810). Born after his mother

, . Richard Cecil.

was fifty years ot age, and much indulged, he showed a special preference for literature and art. He became, after the reigning fashion, an infidel and profligate. A mother’s love did not forsake him, and, like Monica, she saw the child of her love turn to God to become eminent in his service. Converted in 1772, after four years at Oxford he was ordained in 1777. For three years he held two small livings in Sussex. In 1780 he was called to St. John’s, Bedford Row, London, where he ministered for nearly thirty years. He held the Sussex livings for seventeen years while in residence in London. When he resigned them in favor of his curate, who had performed the service they required, he accepted two others in Surrey, where he remained three months each year, and wrought much good by his preaching.

Cecil surpassed all his contemporaries in the

152 History of the Christian Church.

Evangelical pulpit by the originality of his thought and the force of his style. His “ Sermons ” and “ Remains” attest his piety and the vigor of his mind.

Charles Simeon (1759-1836) who led the Evangelical party in the Church of England, was born of a good family in 1759. His brother was Sir Simeon. John Simeon, the first baronet, and he was educated at Eton. From this training school of the nobility he went to King’s College, Cambridge. There he was converted to a religious life in 1779. He became a Fellow in 1782, and was ordained the following year. He was appointed rector of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, the same year, and so remained until his death in 1836. He was an earnest Evangelical, and at first was disliked, but his service in pestilence, his high character, and his powerful preaching won the day. He influenced, as no other man in England, for more than forty-five years, the academic youth at Cambridge. Bishop Charles Wordsworth says he “ had a large following of young men—larger and not less devoted than that which followed Newman, and for a longer time.” He was one of the founders of the Church Missionary Society and of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Another enterprise which he founded can hardly find favor in the eyes of American Christians; that was a fund for acquiring and administering Church patronage so as to secure a succession of Evangelical pastors. In his later years he was a venerated leader, and his influence was felt in Cambridge fifty years after his death. His “ Skeleton Sermons on the Bible,” in eleven volumes, brought him $25,000. Three-fifths of this he gave away—one-fifth to the

The Evangelical Church. 153

Church Missionary Society, one-fifth to the Society for the Conversion of the Jews, and one-fifth for the education of the clergy.

John Venn was the son of Wesley’s friend, and the rector of Clapham. Henry Venn, his son (17961873) succeeded Simeon as the leader of _{John Venn} the Evangelical, or Low Church party in and the Church of England. Henry Venn be- ^Henr5,
Venn' came Secretary of the Church Missionary Society in 1841, and held that office until his death. In these years he sent out five hundred clergymen to foreign mission fields. In character, as well as attainments, he stood worthily in the third generation of Evangelical preachers.

This movement produced remarkable characters among the laymen attached to it. Quite a number resided at Clapham Common, London, whence they were at one time ridiculed as the Clapham sect. England has never known a nobler or more devoted group of men. In this circle lived at once the best traditions of the Puritan Reform and of the Evangelical Revival. They supported Pitt and his policy during the wars against Napoleon, but favored the Liberal measures, the Roman Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill of 1832.

At the head of these men stood William Wilber-force (1759-1833). The man who abolished the African slave-trade in the British Empire, and

- . . , 1 • i , . William

made it impossible that it could exist any- wuberforce.

where, deserves honor among the great benefactors of mankind. Eminent as a Christian, he was also the polished gentleman, welcomed in all circles. Madame de Stael declared, after meeting him,

154 History of the Christian Church.

that the most religious was the wittiest man in England.

Wilberforce was heir to a large fortune, his father having died when he was nine years old. He was educated at St. John’s, Cambridge, and at twenty-one was elected to Parliament from his native town, Hull. This election cost him between forty and forty-five thousand dollars. Going up to London, he was a universal favorite, and plunged into the fashionable dissipation of the time, joining five clubs. One evening he won in gambling three thousand dollars, much of it from men who could not afford to lose it. From that time he would have nothing to do with such play. In 1784 he was elected to Parliament from Yorkshire, which seat he retained for the next thirty years, although the election for 1807 cost him $185,000, while it cost his opponents a million of dollars. Often, however, he was returned without a contest. He was a warm friend of William Pitt, whose lead he generally followed in political action; but he was an advocate of Roman Catholic Emancipation as early as 1813. His character, his charm of manner, his absolute disinterestedness, made him respected and influential with men of all parties. As no other man he was often an umpire between them. To lessen his cares, from 1812 to 1825 he sat for the small borough of Bramber, thus filling out forty-five years of continuous service in the British Parliament.

In September and October, 1784, he took a trip on the Continent with his mother and Isaac Milner, the Church historian, with whom he read the Greek Testament and Doddridge’s “ Rise and Progress of True Religion.” This was the means of his religious conver

The Evangelical Church. 155

sion at the age of twenty-five. On his return he met John Newton, who became his spiritual adviser. In 1787 he founded the Society for the Reformation of Manners, which, in 1802, became the Society for the Suppression of Vice. In 1796 he published his “Practical View of Christianity,” which was a kind of platform of the Evangelical party. It was translated into French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch; by 1824 it had passed through fifteen editions in England and twenty-five in America. Wilberforce was active in all plans for the education and morals of the people and in the cause of missions. He was one of the founders of the Church Missionary and Bible Society, and in 1815 promoted the Parliamentary action which founded the See of Calcutta.

The abolition of the slave-trade and of slavery had been agitated by the Quakers both of England and America. In 1783 was founded the first society for the discouragement of the slave-trade. In 1785 Dr. Peckard, vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, offered a prize for a Latin essay on human slavery. Thomas Clarkson won the prize, and it was published the next year with the title “ Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species.” This was the first important and successful literary attack on the monstrous system.

In May 22, 1787, a committee for the abolition of the slave-trade was founded under the presidency of the Quaker reformer, Granville Sharp. Wilberforce had before independently been studying the question, and in 1787 he assumed the leadership of the movement in Parliament, though he did not join the Society until some years later. Among those who so joined

156 History of the Christian Church.

were Josiah Wedgwood, Zachary Macaulay, James Stephen, and Lord Brougham. In 1788, Pitt carried a motion of inquiry into the slave-trade. In 1792, Wilberforce carried through the Commons a bill to suppress the trade after 1796. The tactics of the slave-dealers was to delay all action; year after year bills would be presented, only to fail. In 1806 it was evident that the measure must succeed. It passed, and became a law, March 25, 1807. The Act of 1811, making slave-trading a felony and punishable with transportation, put a stop to the traffic. In 1823, Wilberforce became a member of the Antislavery Society which brought about the abolition of slavery in the British Colonies the year after his death.

From ill-health Wilberforce retired from Parliament in 1825. The last effort of an eloquence which had charmed two generations was made in a speech for the Antislavery Society in 1830. Wilberforce for many years actively supported Parliamentary Reform, which came in 1832. In 1831 he lost his fortune, and died July 29, 1833. Wilberforce married in 1798. Three of his children became clergymen. Henry and Robert, in the progress of the Oxford Movement, went over to the Church of Rome; their children, however, did not follow them. Robert was the best theologian of those connected with that party. Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, and afterward of Winchester, was the most eminent bishop of the century in the Church of England, and one of the most eminent orators of a generation which heard Bright and Gladstone. In character, devotion, and success, William Wilberforce stands at the head of the reformers of the nineteenth century. Their names, like his,

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lend undying glory to the work of the Christian Church. Because they lived and wrought, habitations of cruelty and lust, and systems of injustice, have perished from the earth, and public opinion more increasingly and successfully applies to human society the principles of the teaching of Jesus Christ.

A neighbor of Wilberforce at Clapham, and a relative by marriage, was the banker, Henry Thornton (1760-1815). Thornton was for thirty years a governor and director of the Bank _Xh₀™ton. of England and for thirty-three years,

1782-1815, a member of Parliament. He was an authority in all financial measures, and aided in drawing up the celebrated Bullion Report. This man was an earnest Evangelical layman. He was active in every good cause. Before his marriage he gave away six-sevenths, and after it one-third, of an income that ranged from $45,000 to $60,000 a year. His son was an eminent banker.

A neighbor and friend of Wilberforce and Thornton, and a man who warmly sympathized with their views was James Stephen (1758-1832), who married for his second wife* the wid- 5]^** owed sister of William Wilberforce. He was a member of Parliament, 1808-1815, and a master in Chancery from 1811 to 1831. His son, the author of “Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography,” was Sir James Stephen (1789-1859), who married the daughter of the rector of Clapham, Rev. John Venn, and was a warm Evangelical. He was under-secretary for the British Colonies from 1836 to 1847, and afterwards Professor of History at Cambridge. One of his sons was the historian of English Criminal Law, and judge, Sir

158 History of the Christian Church.

Fitz James Stephen; another is Leslie Stephen, the English essayist and editor of the “ English National Dictionary of Biography,” in sixty-four volumes.

Another noted Evangelical layman was Zachary Macaulay (1768-1838). Early in life Macaulay was in the West Indies in mercantile pursuits, and Macaulay, there imbibed a bitter hatred of the slave-trade. From 1793 to 1799, with a brief interval in England, he had charge of the colony of liberated slaves in Sierra Leone. In the latter year he married. He was secretary of the Sierra Leone Society, with a salary of $2,500 per year, and later, with his brother-in-law, Thomas Babington, engaged in the West African trade. He prospered for many years, and considered himself worth $100,000, but in 1819 there came symptoms of disaster. Later the firm did not fail, but ceased to exist, and Macaulay’s sons labored for years to discharge the last of their father’s debts. Zachary Macaulay was a man of cultivated and thoughtful mind; he spoke and wrote French with ease and precision. He was the soul of the movement to abolish the slave-trade. He was not an orator, but he supplied the facts. He knew the business on both sides of the ocean. Few men worked harder for the great result, and few cared less for praise. His son was the celebrated orator, politician, essayist, and historian, Lord Macaulay (1800-1859), one of the great characters and great masters of English prose in the record of a great century.

Lord Macaulay was the first man of mark in letters to do justice to the Puritans. To-day his judgments, strange then, are those of the world.

Zachary Macaulay, was earnest and self-denying;

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but his piety was of a gloomy type, and his son, while professing himself a Christian, was far from being an Evangelical. Zachary Macaulay’s grandson, George Otto Trevelyan, has made a lasting name in both English politics and letters. There are few biographies so interesting in any language as “The Early Days of Charles James Fox” and “The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay.” It is pleasant to know that Trevelyan’s “ Life of Wyclif ” by his son, maintains the reputation of the family.

Nor did the Evangelical circle lack in women of ability and character. Hannah More (1745-1833) was the daughter of a schoolmaster near Bristol. Her father taught her Latin and mathematics, and her elder sister, French.

She afterward learned Spanish and Italian. At twenty-two she became engaged to a Mr. Turner, a gentleman of property and character, but of a very eccentric disposition. The marriage was postponed by him from time to time until she was thirty years of age. The engagement was then broken off, and Miss More determined never to marry. Turner left her $5,000, and $1,000 a year during her life. From this time she began to be the friend of Garrick, of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and of Dr. Johnson. Garrick’s death in 1779 made a change in her life, and weaned her from gay society. But for twenty years she spent her winters with his widow.

She had begun to write before twenty, and at twenty-two had published a play, which was acted with favor. In 1785, Newton’s “ Cardiphonia,” and two years later his sermons, made a great impression upon her. He became her spiritual counselor, and at

160 History of the Christian Church.

that time her active religious life began. In 1788 she published her “ Thoughts upon the Manners of the Great, and Their Importance to General Society.” The next year she retired from her school work with, her four unmarried sisters, having acquired a competency, at the age of forty-four. In the same year she gathered some five hundred neglected children at Cheddar, in Somersetshire, and founded a school for them. She also established three other schools, which ran successfully for forty years. She would not teach the children to write lest it should unfit them for their station in life, but they were taught to read and also good manners and morals. She also wrote religious tracts at the rate of three a month for three years. These sold by the million at two cents each, and led to the establishment of modern Tract Societies. In 1809 she published her most successful work, “Ccelebs in Search of a Wife.” Her profit was $10,000.

All her works have a high moral purpose, and show a strong common sense. She was a decided Evangelical, and in sympathy with the great work of that party.

Hannah More died at the age of eighty-eight, universally respected. Lord Macaulay’s mother had been one of her pupils, and he was a great favorite with her. She left a fortune of $150,000. In her life and character were strongly developed the Evangelical virtues of common sense, industry, thrift, and generosity.

Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) was the most successful female philanthropist of this age. She was the daugh

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ter of the Quaker banker, John Gurney. Through the preaching of an American Quaker she was converted. At twenty she was married to

t i. -i , j . Elizabeth Fry.

Joseph Fry, by whom she had a large

family of children, to whom she was a devoted mother.

After her father’s death, at twenty-nine, much against her wishes, she felt called to preach. From that time she was a preacher among the Friends. At thirty-three she began her work among the female prisoners at Newgate. Here women of all ages and conditions, the convicted criminal and the woman, perhaps innocent and held for trial, were huddled together. Here they ate and slept on the floor in the garments they wore by day. The begging, cursing, and fighting, she said, were beyond description. The language and scenes were so vile that she could not take a young person with her. She began by clothing the naked, and providing for evident physical necessities; then she arranged to teach them the rudiments of a common education. In all her work, having gained their confidence, the Bible was the center. The American Minister at the Court of St. James said he had seen a greater marvel than Westminster Abbey or St. Paul’s; he had seen Elizabeth Fry reading to attentive listeners at Newgate.

In 1817 she formed an “Association for Female Prisoners.” She traveled on the Continent. She was received by Louis Philippe, and her influence was especially potent in Germany. Much she learned from Fliedner at Kaiserwerth of the value of trained service. In 1819 and 1820 she founded shelters for the homeless, and later a society to aid discharged

162 History of the Christian Church.

prisoners. In 1828 her husband lost his fortune; but she continued until the end of life her work as preacher and reformer. These years afford no picture of more Christlike service than that of Elizabeth Fry reading God’s Good News to the prisoners at Newgate.

To this noble group of elect spirits, in sympathy and aim, were connected the bankers who were the fathers of Cardinals Newman and Manning, and the family of William E. Gladstone. This is a group of men and women of whom any Church might be proud. They laid firm and deep the foundations on which the Church of England has since built.

The religious life of the Independents, Baptists, Presbyterians, and of course the Methodists, in this century, was predominantly, if not exclusively, Evangelical. This was true of all Nonconforming Churches, except the Unitarians and the Universalists.

The oldest of these, the Presbyterians, never recovered from their overthrow by Cromwell, and their

worse disaster, their lapse into Unitarian-

Presbyterians. . ... . * .

ism, or Ananism, m the eighteenth century. This took most of their propertjr and membership. They were kept alive in their original form and purpose mainly from affiliation with the Church of Scotland. These formed, in 1836, the Synod of the Presbyterian Church in England. In 1843 came the founding of the Free Church of Scotland. Those who adhered to the Scotch Establishment took the old name; those who clave to the Free Church took the name of United Presbyterians. In 1872 the former body had twenty-three thousand communicants, and the latter seventeen thousand.

The Evangelical Church.

In this period the English Independents formally adopted the name of Congregationalists. They are a much more numerous and influential body than the Presbyterians. In 18was ^TheCon*^re-

r j ,•« /"» . ~ _ ⁰⁰ Rationalists.

formed the Congregational Union for England and Wales. The London Missionary Society is largely under their influence and receives their contributions. In this period Henry Rogers, the author of the “Eclipse of Faith,” John Angel James, a fervent Evangelical minister, and Thomas Binney, well sustained the record for Evangelical piety and influence made by Isaac Watts and Philip Doddridge in the preceding century. In 1880 the Congregationalists in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, were estimated at three hundred and sixty thousand.

These years were years of growth and influence in the Baptist Churches of Great Britain.

Their leading writer and representative ^{The Baptlsts}* man was Andrew Fuller (1754-1815).

At twenty-one he began to preach, with very slight educational advantages. At the age of twenty-eight he became pastor of the Baptist Church in Kettering, Northamptonshire, lⁿ?_f^rew

1*1 i , • Fuller.

which relation he held until his death, thirty-three years later. In 1784, in a sermon, he showed his interest in missions. The Baptist Missionary Society was organized at his church in 1792. He became its first secretary and main promoter. Its success was more largely due to him than to any other man. He was the first of the modern missionary secretaries. Fuller was an earnest controversialist and a voluminous writer. He sought to draw the Baptist Churches to a moderate Calvinism, and to

164 History of the Christian Church.

guard against the Antinomian tendencies of its extreme type.

A name ever honored in Baptist annals is that of William Carey (1761-1834). Carey was the first of modern English-speaking missionaries, and Carey¹” ^e **^rst ^at noble band of pioneer translators who not only gave to heathen millions the Bible in their own tongue, but made those languages accessible to Europeans by their learned labors in preparing, as the work of their lives, grammars and dictionaries for their companions and successors in the work of Christian missions. Carey’s father taught a small school. From him he received the rudiments of an English education. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a shoemaker. At twenty-two he joined the Baptist Church. In 1786, just married, and so poor that he seldom ate meat, he became pastor of the Baptist Church at Multon. He now worked at Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. From 1789 to 1792 he was pastor at Leicester. He was present at the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792. He offered himself as a missionary to India, saying to Andrew Fuller in miner’s phrase, “ I will go down if you will hold the rope.” He arrived at Calcutta, November, 1793, and found the cost of living so high that he was soon out of funds. He accepted a position in an indigo factory at Maldah, where he worked for five years, 1794-1799. In 1795 he established a church near the factory, and devoted himself to learning the vernacular.

In 1799 he established himself with Marshman and Ward and their families under Danish jurisdiction at Serampore. There he founded a school and a

The Evangelical Church. 165

mission press. His main work for the rest of his life was mastering the native tongues and making them accessible to his countrymen.

In 1801 he became Professor of Sanscrit and Mahratta in the college at Fort William. In 1805 he published a Mahratta grammar, and opened a chapel in Calcutta. This mission spread until, in 1814, it had twenty stations. In 1806 he published a Sanscrit grammar; in 1812, one of Punjabi; 1814, one of Telinga; 1826, one of Bhotana. These were followed by dictionaries. In 1806-1810 he published an English translation in three volumes of the great Sanscrit and Hindoo Epic, “The Ramayana.” But all this work was but preparatory or auxiliary to his translation of the Bible into Bengali, Mahratta, and Tamil. Full of years and honored by all who knew him, this remarkable pioneer scholar and missionary founder passed to his rest in 1834.

Unquestionably the interest in foreign missions strengthened the Baptist Church in England. Its influence was greatly extended England.’ by one of the ablest preachers of his generation, Robert Hall.

Robert Hall (1764-1831), the son of a Baptist preacher, was the youngest of fourteen children. He joined the Church at fourteen, and the

, , „ . - . _ Robert Hall.

next year preached his first sermon. After three years of preparatory training, he spent three years at Aberdeen University, where he graduated in 1784. For the next five years he was pastor at Bristol, and for the following sixteen at Cambridge, 1785-1806, working hard, and, ignorant of the evil effects of narcotics, through the use of tobacco and

166 History of the Christian Church.

laudanum, the latter in large quantities, he became mentally unbalanced.

For two periods, November 26, 1804, to February 19, 1805, and November 26, 1805, to February, 1806, he was in an insane hospital. In 1806 he experienced a religious change, which he called his real conversion. In 1808 he married. Robert Hall preached in Leicester, 1807-1826, and again at Bristol, 1826-1831. Hall was a powerful preacher. His native eloquence and thorough preparation made his sermons attractive to large circles of persons who never before attended a Baptist chapel. His works are published in five volumes.

Another Baptist minister who never had large congregations, and who was unable to hold even small ones, but who, through the vigor and ’ originality of his thought and the power of his pen, brought honor to the Baptist name, was John Foster (1770-1843). His father was a Baptist farmer. At seventeen he joined the Church, and soon after began to preach. For three years he studied with Rev. John Fawcett, the Baptist author of “ Blest be the tie that binds.” He spent a year at the Baptist College at Bristol. From 1793 to 1796, with a year’s interval, he was in Ireland. In 1805 he made a name for himself by his celebrated “ Essays.” For the rest of his life he gave himself to literature, though he tried preaching without success, 1817-1821. For thirty-three years, 1806-1839, he was a regular contributor to the Eclectic Review. In politics Foster was a republican, and in religion had little use for Church organizations or ordinances. Original in his thought he was an intense individualist. In 1881 the Baptists

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167

in the British Islands numbered two hundred and eighty-one thousand.

The largest of the Nonconforming Churches was the Methodist. It made unbroken progress during this entire period in numbers. It came to be no longer a society, but a regularly- _MethodLts. organized Church. In 1813 its Missionary Society was established. In 1834 its theological institution was founded, which now has four colleges. In 1836 its ministers were, and since have been, ordained by the imposition of hands. In 1803 its first committee with laymen upon it was appointed. In 1815 they were given seats in the District Meetings. From that time for the next twenty years they were given increased power and participation in the management of the funds and departments of the work of the Church. This was the favorite policy of Jabez Bunting. The first secession of this era was that of those who founded the Primitive Methodists.

The Conference in 1807 pronounced against camp-meetings. They were an American novelty, which did not find favor in the eyes of the Wesleyan brethren. Two ministers of that body, Hugh Bourne and William Clowes, formed on that issue, in 1810, a body of men devoted mainly to Evangelism. They have been a laborious and successful Church. In 1880 they numbered one hundred and eighty thousand members. In 1815 a similar secession took place in Cornwall under the leadership of a minister named O’Bryan. They called themselves, Bible Christians, and in 1880 they numbered twenty thousand. The other secessions were born largely of the political unrest and democratic tendencies of the time.

168 History of the Christian Church.

Jabez Bunting, the ruling spirit in the Wesleyan body for these fifty years, favored Roman Catholic Emancipation and the antislavery movement. If he favored a Reform Bill, it was with important modifications. In 1824 he stated that democracy and Methodism were a contradiction in terms. While he favored an increasing lay element on committees of administration, he sought to keep the power in the hands of the pastors. In 1828 there came a secession at Leeds because of the erection of an organ in the Brunswick Street Chapel. Although it had been allowed by the Conference, it was felt to be the beginning of the entrance of class and social distinctions in the primitive equality of the Methodist body; for although John Wesley loved organ music, yet the majority of the Methodist chapels could not afford organs. This secession took the name of Protestant Methodist; they were absorbed in the pronounced movement of 1836. In that year Dr. Samuel Warren, author of “ Ten Thousand a Year/’ offended at the founding of a theological institute which he at first favored, with others who were disaffected through the ordination of ministers by laying on of hands, formed a secession known as the Wesleyan Association, which absorbed the Protestant Methodists. In a few months Dr. Warren became a clergyman in the Church of England.

These defections did not affect the steady increase in the membership. The centennial offering of 1839 was over a million dollars. But from 1844 ^{to x}^49 there came a movement which led to serious disaster.

In 1836 the Quarterly Conference was given the right of direct petition to the Conference, but with so

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many restrictions as to make it worthless. This caused irritation, and awakened suspicion. There began to be circulated anonymous fly-leaves reflecting in severe and scurrilous terms upon Dr. Bunting, his policy, and his friends. Finally, at the Manchester Conference in 1849, William Griffith, James Everett, and Samuel Dunn were expelled from the Conference without any notice of charges, without trial, and without any evidence which showed any violation of law or obligations. This high-handed proceeding resulted in the formation, in 1850, of the Reformed Methodists and the Methodist Reformed Union. This absorbed the Wesleyan Association of 1836; but the two branches came together in 1857, when they numbered forty-one thousand members. The loss to the Wesleyan connection in the next five years was one hundred thousand members, or one-third of the body. The Wesleyans numbered, in 1800, one hundred and nine thousand; in 1850, three hundred and fifty-eight thousand members. This remarkable growth came from a full and faithful preaching of the Gospel, and through the devoted labors of many itinerants of the third generation, led by some men of remarkable gifts and attainments. Such, among others were, Adam Clarke, Richard Watson, Robert Newton, and Jabez Bunting.

Adam Clarke (1762-1832) was born near Londonderry, Ireland, and was educated at the Kingswood School. He became a Methodist at sixteen,

. Adam Clarke.

and four years later began to travel his first circuit. He preached in Ireland, Scotland, and the Shetland and Channel Islands. After 1805 his home was in London. In all these years, while excelling as

170 History of the Christian Church.

a preacher, he was indefatigable in his studies. He read in Greek and Latin, first the classics, and then the Fathers. Then he turned his attention to Oriental languages, learning Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Sanscrit, and others. From 1808 to 1818 he was employed to collect and arrange the documents for Rymer’s “ Foedera.” The first volume and the first part of the second appeared under his editorship. He made important contributions to bibliography, was greatly interested in geology, and was a member of many learned societies. His most important work was his “ Commentary” on the whole Bible in eight volumes, published 1810-1826. This work shows good sense and scholarship, though never the work of a specialist. It did good work, and a large part of it still has value, though no one man could satisfactorily accomplish such a task. In character, purity, disposition, and learning, Adam Clarke was an ornament to the Christian Church. He was three times president of the Conference.

A very different order of mind, but a man of not less ability, was Richard Watson (1781-1833). His father was a saddler, and in religion a Cal-Watson. vinistie Dissenter. Richard was the seventh of eighteen children, and acquired a good education, including a knowledge of Latin, before he was fourteen, when he was apprenticed to a carpenter. The next year he preached his first sermon. He was already six feet two inches in height. The same year he was received on trial, and five years later in full connection in the ministry. He married the daughter of Alexander Kilham, the founder of the Methodist New Connection. He affiliated with that

The Evangelical Church.

body for three years from 1803, but rejoined the Wes-leyans in 1806, and was again received in the Conference in 1812. He was active in the founding of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, and was its secretary from 1816 to 1827, and from 1832 until his death. From 1827 to 1832 he traveled as a circuit preacher. Devotedly pious and humble as a preacher of rare intellectual power, he ranked with Thomas Chalmers and Robert Hall.

He is the author of a popular Biblical Dictionary, good for its time. His great work, however, is his “ Theological Institutes,” which, more than any other work, has been the standard of Methodist theology. Though now, of course, largely superseded by a new metaphysic and the new studies of Biblical theology and Biblical Criticism, yet for its purpose it has an undecaying value, and received high commendation from men differing from many positions he holds, such as Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, and Dr. Hodge and Dr. J. W. Alexander, of Princeton. It will ever be a standard in Arminian theology.

The great master of the platform as of the pulpit of these years was Robert Newton (1780-1854). He was self-educated, and at eighteen began preaching, being admitted to the Conference on trial the next year. In 1803 he was stationed at Glasgow. In 1812 he was appointed to London, and from that time until his death he probably addressed more persons than any other man of his generation. To a musical voice, manly bearing, and pleasing delivery, he added not original thought, but rare vigor of mind. He was the prince of missionary advocates, and is said to have raised

172 History of the Christian Church.

more money for missions and charities than any other minister of his time. He was four times president of the Conference. In 1839-40 he visited the United States. A volume of sermons shows the range and value of his thought.

The legislator and administrator of Methodism, its ruling spirit for fifty years, was Jabez Bunting

(1779-1858). Jabez Bunting was born of ‘ Bunting. pi°^us parents, and early converted. He had not the advantages of scholastic training, but secured a good English and Latin training, with the manners of good society, from his residence in the family of Dr. Percival, of Liverpool, who was his guide, counselor, and friend, and made him his executor. He joined the Conference in 1799, and soon came to the best appointments. In 1803 he was secretary of the Conference, which office he held for many years. He was four times its president. For eighteen years he was secretary of the Missionary Society, from 1833 to 1851. When the Theological Institute was founded, he was chosen president. He married a lady with a private fortune of $10,000.

For fifty years he swaj^ed the fortunes and ruled the destinies of a great Church, and his saiary averaged $750 a year. From 1803 to 1836 his influence was salutary and progressive; from 1836 to 1849, always conservative and often repressive. Few men were more maligned or more beloved. Men of all shades of opinion came to see the genuineness of his piety and the sincerity of his motives. Intellectually, he was noted for the clearness, penetration, and sagacity of his thought and judgment. Wesleyan Methodism represents his thought in its constitution

The Evangelical Church. 173

more than that of any other. As a preacher, he was clear and pungent and popular. More than any other man he made friends for Methodism beyond its bounds.

This group of four untrained men who came to eminence teaches some things. First, that Nonconformists had no opportunity of university edu- _Nonconform. cation in England until the founding of tsts and London University in 1827. They were ^Educat,on-not admitted to Oxford and Cambridge until 1871. Robert Hall had to go to a Scotch university. This monopoly of university education was the most grievous sin of the Established Church in this century. These facts teach also that work is the true educator; but it should be borne in mind that what was justifiable when privileges were scant or impossible is presumptuous when these are everywhere available. This exclusion from the English public schools and universities led to the establishment of denominational schools and theological institutes by Congrega-tionalists, Baptists, and Methodists.

The Test and Corporation Acts, making Nonconformists ineligible for political office, were not repealed until 1828, though for years they had been ignored. In spite of these disadvantages in this period, the Nonconforming Churches increased greatly in numbers and influence. In 1699 they were estimated at 214,000, or a little over four per cent of the population, in 1850 at 1,938,000, or nearly eleven per cent of the inhabitants. Of these, the Unitarians and the Universalists formed but a small fraction, numbering probably not more than four hundred small congregations.

174 History of the Christian Church.

From these facts something of the strength of the Evangelical sentiment in England may be estimated, scope of the ^^ow Church and Evangelical Noncon-Evangeiicai formists formed the great majority of the Movement. p₀p_Ui_ati₀n. i_n sympathy with them in doctrine, practice, and sentiment was the strongest element of the Scotch and Irish Churches and of the Churches of America. Yet the Evangelical party in the Church of England were on the brink of a disastrous overthrow; soon power was to pass to other hands. What is the explanation of this apparently strange vicissitude?

There can be no question as to the permanent value and influence upon the English character and nation of the Evangelical movement, but Decay in the like all things human it had its defects; Evangelical these came to be very grave and to demand Movement. _rectj£_catj_on> ^e endeavor to do this

marks the progress of English Christianity in the nineteenth century.

The fundamental mistake of the Evangelical leaders was that their whole conception of Christianity and the Christian life was static, not dy-DynnnJc? namic. That is, it was conceived as always uniform; they did not admit the idea of growth. This was more true of the second and third generation than of the founders. So the apostolic type was the rule of Christian experience and life. This was at once to be reproduced in the Church of their time. Then, also, what had been blessed at the first outbreak of the Evangelical Revival was to be the standard of teaching, practice, and experience. The result was the repetition of words, phrases, and

The Evangelical Church. 175

forms that had once been vital, but had now no living meaning to those who repeated them. This is the penalty of every successful religious movement. It is so much easier to say something that was once alive and powerful, than to have God make us alive with his new living truth. Hence there was no progress in doctrines or in experience. There were no new or larger intellectual or spiritual horizons. Thus there came upon them the curse of narrowness and barrenness. The world was growing wider and full of new forces; they were confining the wine perpetually new of the gospel in the old bcttles. For the Evangelicals there was no new light or truth to break forth from God’s Word. There was no room for Biblical criticism or progress in theology; all was stationary. So in Christian experience, while they preached the greatest of truths in regard to conversion and the sanctification of believers, these were conceived of as states to be retained, not as stages in the growth of the new man in Christ Jesus. This was carried to such an extent that the experience was sometimes conceived as doing away with moral conflict or ethical endeavor.

Three things marked this view: First, the neglect of personal pastoral knowledge and sympathy. Preaching was relied upon to do all that was needed. The guidance of souls was left to general inference from the preaching.

Another result was that in a world whose intellectual outlook was immensely broadening, and whose social conditions were becoming more and more complex, there was no effort made to understand the sit

176 History of the Christian Church.

uation, to make the gospel so applied as to be of transforming value. Few books of deep or original thought, or of permanent value, came from Barrenness^{1 tlie} Evangelical Movement. That adjustment which must come, came from other sources. There can be no neglect of study, of the demands of the intellectual life of the times, without permanent loss of power and influence.

Another result was the demand for a type of religion which should embrace the whole life; one which should have place for childhood and youth, ^Pa<rf Life^,eW f°^{r an(}^ recreation; one which could know and love art and beauty, and could consecrate and not stifle human affections; one in which joy and gladness mingled in the strain, as well as pain and sorrow; in a word, a religion which not only redeemed, but developed the whole man. The Evangelical ideal was a high one, and resulted in noble characters in those who endeavored to realize it. Duty was the motive force, and duty alone can make noble men. But the tendency was often to gloom, as with Zachary Macaulay. The inspiration of life must know and make felt love and joy. Too often this was a forgotten note to be recovered in the gospel song.

We do not have to go to the caricaturist, like Dickens, to see perversions of Evangelical teaching.

To intellectual indolence came sometimes

Perversions. .

carelessness m manners and dress. Then the calumny and scurrility, the uncharitableness and censoriousness, revealed in the Fly-leaf Controversy and its calamitous results, show that there were hateful faults deeply ingrained in the spiritual life. Oftentimes Evangelical Churchmen were the most unchris

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tian in their treatment of Nonconformists. Hence there must come to English Christianity a new force, to purify and to supplement its religious life, that the building of the new time should not be a mere repetition of the old, but that fairer structure which should enhance and show the true worth of the work and workmen who had preceded it.

This came on one side from the demand for a freer, while reverent thought, and a wider intellectual horizon. This Broad Church Movement put

, • j 11 * *^{he B}»*oad

stress on intellectual honesty, on making Church your own your beliefs, and on intellectual ^Movement* hospitality, a readiness to welcome all new truth and set at once to adjust the new message, whether from the rocks or from the stars, with the old Evangel. Hence it was intensely practical and ethical in its conception of the religious life. Its chief thinker was Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

A poet with the most regal imagination since Shakespeare; a thinker whose comprehensive grasp and penetration, though his work was most _5amue, fragmentary, has not been surpassed among Tayior Englishmen of the nineteenth century, and ^Co,erid*^e-whose knowledge of the rarest qualities of the English language and of English poetry by no Englishman of any time, was Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). His father was an English clergyman, and he was the youngest of ten children. His father died young, and at an early age he was sent to Christ’s Hospital, where Charles Lamb and Bishop Middleton, of Calcutta, were among his schoolmates. In 1791 he entered Jesus College, Cambridge. Having imbibed Republican opinions in politics, and Unitarian ones in religion,

178 History of the Christian Church.

lie became disgusted with university life, and enlisted as a common soldier. By the influence of friends he was discharged, and returned to Cambridge. He left, however, the university in 1794 without taking his degree. In the same year he met Southey, and conceived his scheme of a settlement on the banks of the Susquehanna, where, in a “ Pantisocracy,” should begin a new era of unselfish brotherhood for humanity.

In 1795, for lack of funds, this was dropped; then Coleridge married Miss Sarah Fricker, and Southey married her sister. In 1796 Coleridge published his “Juvenile Poems,” for which he received $150. He then made the acquaintance of Wordsworth, and with him, in 1798, published “Lyrical Ballads,” in which appeared “The Ancient Mariner.”

In the same year, through the liberality of the Wedgwood brothers, he went to Germany and studied German philosophy and literature. On his return, after a stay of fourteen months, he published in 1800, a translation of Schiller’s “ Wallenstein,” which, as a translation, is unsurpassed in our literature. The next year Coleridge became a victim of the opium habit, in whose bonds of bitterness and impotence he was bound for fifteen years. When he did at last break away and recover himself, health and prospects were ruined. He lived yet eighteen years, and made his marvelous genius felt, but only fragments remain of the whole, strong and beautiful, of which he was capable.

In these years Coleridge turned from the Unitarian faith and the Utilitarian philosophy. He became a devout communicant of the Church of England, and sought on grounds of reason to preserve her Es

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tablishment. In politics he remained a Liberal, and in theory a Republican. As a religious thinker Coleridge sought to broaden the basis and insure in personal conviction the certitude of the religious life. It is a phase of the same movement which meets us in Schleiermacher in Germany, and in Vinet in France. In this endeavor Coleridge followed Kant and the German idealists, like Schelling. His great service may be said to be that he introduced German thought to Englishmen, and taught them to think in a plane above the popular Utilitarianism of the time. Coleridge founded no school, but he taught men to verify their religious convictions, instead of taking them on trust, and he led them in a passionate devotion to truth. He left his impress on the whole Broad Church school, and upon such eminent Americans as Professor Henry B. Smith and Bishop Phillips Brooks.

The great master of English schools in this generation, and the man who did most for educational ideals in England in this century was Thomas Arnold (1795-1842). Thomas Arnold was the son of an officer in the customs service, who died when his son was but six years old. Thomas was educated at Winchester, 1807-1811, and at Corpus Christi, Oxford, 1811-1815. In the latter year he gained a Fellowship at Oriel, and remained in residence for the next four years. In 1819-1828 he resided at Laleham, near Staines, where he devoted himself to preparing a few young men each year for the university. In these years, as at Oxford, he gave himself particularly to classics, history, and social politics. His especial study was

180 History of the Christian Church.

Thucydides and Aristotle, and they ever remained his favorite authors. At this time, after thorough examination, he became a convinced Christian. Thomas Arnold was a deeply religious man, and his religion was of a profoundly ethical type. With him religion meant the supremacy of the moral and spiritual elements in our being; it included as foundation-stones in character, justice, honesty, and truth. In June, 1828, he was ordained, and in August he entered upon his work as headmaster at Rugby, 1828-1841. It may be said with truth that these years mark an epoch in the history of English education. According to Arnold’s thought, education was much more than training the intellect; it included as chief elements the development of the moral and religious nature. The impression he made upon his students was ineffaceable. Archbishop Benson says of the effect of his work, and no one could speak with better right, “ His never-dying glory is to have utterly reformed the public schools.” It is scarcely too much to say that he found the great schools of England heathen, and that his work and its influence made them Christian. In 1841 he was appointed Professor of History at Oxford. Arnold made history live. His edition of Thucydides and “ History of Rome,” are not the work of a profound scholar, but they made men see the ancient world alive again. His essay on a National Church, in 1833, was a failure. His standards of thought and work are seen in his five volumes of “Sermons.” Most fortunate was Arnold in his biographer, Dean Stanley, whose “ Life of Arnold ” remains a classic. Matthew Arnold, the poet

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and critic, was his son, and Mrs. Humphrey Ward, the novelist, his granddaughter.

If Thomas Arnold was the teacher of the Broad Church movement, Julius Hare (1795-1855) was its most distinguished scholar. Hare was born in Italy and partly educated in Ger- ^Junu^charies many, before he entered Charterhouse School. From there he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. Being elected Fellow of Trinity in 1818, he traveled on the Continent. After reading law for a time, he returned to Trinity as assistant tutor, 18231832. In 1827, with his brother, he published “Guesses at the Truth.” In 1832 he became rector of the rich benefice of Hurstmonceaux; in 1840 he was made Archdeacon of Lewes, in 1853, chaplain to the queen. In 1840 he published “The Victory of Faith,” and in 1846 “The Mission of the Comforter;” in 1848 appeared the “Remains of John Sterling,” who had been his curate. Hare was strong in his admiration of Luther and the Reformation, and in 1854, he published against High Church detraction, “A Vindication of Luther against his Recent English Assailants.”

Hare's influence was greater than his works. His large acquaintance with the thought of his time is shown in his library of twelve thousand volumes, in which German philosophy and theology were largely represented. In range and depth of knowledge he was without superior in the English Church. While his views in general were those of his school, yet he combined them with those of an Evangelical Arminian cast.

182 History of the Christian Church.

The great preacher of this school was Frederick W. Robertson (1816-1853), who made famous Trinity Frederick Church, Brighton. Robertson’s father was wiiiiam a captain of artillery, and the son had the Robertson. _mjii_tary _vi_rtues and a desire for the military life. At fourteen he spent a year at Tours, in France, and then returned to take up his work in the Academy and University of Edinburgh. All through his youth and young manhood he was noted for purity and truth. At eighteen he began the study of law; but his health suffered from the confinement. He sought a commission in the army, but finally determined to study for the ministry. He entered Brase-nose College, Oxford, in 1837. There he worked hard reading Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, and Jonathan Edwards. He also committed to memory the New Testament, both in English and Greek. In 1840 he was ordained. His ascetic life, in 1841, broke his health. In 1842 he traveled in Switzerland, and this year he married. He was curate at Cheltenham, 1842-1846. In 1846-47, he traveled in Germany and the Tyrol. There he passed through a religious crisis. The one fixed point in his theological thought was the nobility of the humanity of the Son of man. From that as a firm basis he made his own the other Christian truths. From 1847 to 1853 he was pastor of Trinity Church, Brighton. It may be doubted if six years of the ministry of any other man of the century left a mark so deep or an influence so wide. No other English preacher has so appealed to German thinkers, and his influence has been potent in America.

It is but just to say that Robertson specially ap

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peals to those who seek final certitude for the minimum of Christian truth, and from that accept farther truth. His own experience made him, for such, an admirable guide. For those to whom God is the surest as the greatest of realities, and his revelation in Christ the culmination of the religious education and the spiritual development of the race—that one focal point in which all lines of historical tendency converge, and without whom they can not be understood—to such, much of Robertson’s thought will seem without special illumination or help. His “ Life and Sermons” are among the most popular religious works of the last half of the century.

The leading bishops of the Broad Church party were Richard Whately and Connop Thirlwall.

Richard Whately (1787-1863) was the youngest of the large family of an English clergyman. From a private school at Bristol he went to Oriel College, Oxford, in 1805, and three years later he graduated with the highest honors.

In 1811 he was elected Fellow of Oriel; in 1814 he was ordained. In 1821, Whately married, thus vacating his Fellowship. For the next two years he prepared students for the university at Oxford. The years from 1823-1825 were spent in successful pastoral work at Halesworth; but the health of his wife required a change of location. In 1825 he became principal of St. Alban’s Hall, Oxford. His vigorous administration there opened a new era in its history. In 1831 he was made Archbishop of Dublin. The thirty-two years of his administration did not reach a large measure of success; but the situation was such that success seemed well-nigh impossible.

184 History of the Christian Church.

Whately was admirably adapted for a teacher, but had little fitness for the leadership of clergy and people in a crisis where sympathy only could win a tolerable success. Whately had a strong and well-trained mind, a vigorous understanding, and a keen wit, He was Liberal in his politics, and his religion, though genuine, was of the intellect, not of the heart. An able and logical thinker, he detested the Oxford Movement.

Whately wrote much and well. Three of his works were largely popular and of permanent value: “Historic Doubts Concerning Napoleon Bonaparte;” “Logic,” 1826; and “Rhetoric,” 1828. His logic marked an era in the study among Englishmen. Whately’s daughter founded and carried on successfully a school for native girls at Cairo.

A man of large thought and equal vigor of intellect was Connop Thirl wall (1797-1875). Thirlwall was distinguished as a scholar, a critic, and Thiriwaii. ^a statesman. He was a remarkable child.

The son of an English rector, he learned Latin at three years of age and Greek at four, and wrote sermons at seven. He prepared for the university at Charterhouse with Julius Hare and Grote, the historian of Greece. He was at Trinity, Cambridge, 1814-1818, and then spent a year on the Continent. On his return he studied law, and translated Schleier-macher’s essay on the Gospel of Luke. John Stuart Mill called him the best speaker, in debate, he ever heard. Finding, in spite of a most judicial mind, in himself no fitness for law, he was ordained deacon in 1827. In 1828, with Julius Hare, he translated Niebuhr’s “History of Rome.” In 1832 he accepted the

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assistant tutorship of Trinity, Cambridge, vacated by Julius Hare. Two years later he resigned, and accepted the living of Kirby. In 1834 he began his “History of Greece,” completing it in 1847. This work is surpassed in English only by that of his schoolfellow Grote. In 1840 he was appointed to the See of St. David’s, which he held until 1874. He learned to preach in Welsh.

Thirlwall never married, and his aloofness and sharpness at retort prevented his being popular with his clergy. He was said to be tender toward all weak things except weak-minded clergy. For years he showed the insight of a statesman in the House of Lords. He favored the grant to the Roman Catholic college at Maynooth, the admission to Parliament of the Jews, and the Gorham Judgment of the Privy Council. He voted for the disestablishment of the Irish Church, though he would have favored, rather, concurrent endowment with the Roman Catholics. His Episcopal “Charges” and his “Letters,” all attest the scope and grasp of his thought and the breadth and tenderness of his sympathies.

The influence of these men was an intellectual ferment, but did not crystallize into associated or institutional effort, and so soon was overshadowed; but, like leaven, it wrought on and effectively.

There were men in England who went much farther than the Broad Church men. Such a man was Thomas Carlyle, who, through German pan- _CarIyIe theism, came to doubt immortality and a personal God, but in his later years returned to his earlier faith. His “ Life of Sterling” was a blow at the teaching of Coleridge.

186 History of the Christian Church.

Jeremy Bentham; Lord Brougham; John Mill, and his son, John Stuart Mill; George Grote, the historian ; and Harriet Martineau, the novelist

Radicals.

and traveler, were Utilitarians, while the last named became a Positivist, they rejected Christianity altogether.

Gray old Oxford has been the seat of three great religious movements, which have transfused themselves into the life of the English people.

Movement! ^was Wyclif and his “ Poor

Preachers,” which heralded that sure coming Reformation which should wrest the greater part of Christendom from Rome. The second was that of the Wesleys, which brought Christ to the common people, and made his gospel effective among them as never before in the history of the Christian Church. The third was that of Newman and Pusey, which aimed to make clear that the Church had an independent, self-sufficient, and historic life. It was the sharpest blow ever struck in Europe at the State Church system. For that, if for nothing else, it deserves our gratitude; that it was much else this history will show.

Cambridge also had its religious movements of which it was the source and hearth, and which have equally affected English life. The first of these was the Reformation. So far as it was a popular movement it came from Cambridge men. If Oxford burnt Cranmer and Ridley and Latimer, Cambridge trained them. The second was the Puritan Reform, which, from the days of Queen Elizabeth to those of Oliver Cromwell, had its headquarters at Cambridge, where not only Milton and Hampden, but Wilberforce and Macaulay, were trained. The third movement was

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that awakening of English Christian scholarship in tjie last half of the nineteenth century, forever associated with the names of Lightfoot, Westcott, and Hort. This will show something of the debt the religious life of England owes to her two great universities.

Among the larger foundations of Oxford, Oriel College is not prominent. But between 1820 and 1840 there met in its common room a remarkable group of men—men whose words and * character changed the face of affairs in the Church of England, and whose influence has been felt throughout Evangelical Christendom. Easily the first among these was John H. Newman.

John H. Newman (1801-189^, was the son of an Evangelical banker and a Huguenot mother. He was born in 1801. Trained at Oxford, he was elected Fellow of Oriel in 1822. Outside J^ohnH-

Newman.

of his home his chief religious influences in early life came from Scott, the Evangelical commentator, from Bishop Butler, and from Whately, afterward Archbishop of Dublin. Newman had a keen literary taste and appreciation, as became one who was to become one of the great masters of English prose jn his century, and a poet whose words, though few, are fit, and will never die from the accents of English speech. Newman felt, his life long, the influence of the Romantic Movement through the writings of Scott, Coleridge, and Wordsworth.

In mental equipment and scholarship, Newman shows well among the men of his time. He knew the classics and philosophy, English literature and English theology. Of history, either secular or ecclesias

188 History of the Christian Church.

tical, he had never any critical appreciation or understanding; nor was he ever a theologian. He was a master of moral distinctions, of clear and subtle thought, with a power of expression which, in vigor, clearness, and beauty, has seldom been equaled in English literature.

Newman was of a masterful disposition and a natural leader of men. This was felt at Oriel College, where he lived for twenty years, 1822-1842, and especially as Vicar of St. Mary’s, Oxford, from 1828 to 1843. As a preacher to young men, especially to students, his spiritual vision, his penetrating moral criticism, his enforcement of the authority of conscience, and his making real the attractiveness of great Christian ideas, made the pulpit of St. Mary’s a power which the men of that generation never forgot.

But the source of Newman’s influence was not chiefly intellectual or due to rare gifts, which were his as a thinker, a writer, or a preacher. The source of Newman’s influence was his character and his manner. It was his sincere love of truth as he conceived it, and willingness to follow wherever it might lead, his disinterestedness, his humility, and that elevation of character which was at once a gentle and effective inspiration to a moral and religious life, which,, with manners of unusual grace and attraction, made so potent his influence.

Next to Newman stood a man in many respects his opposite, but through all changes, his lifelong friend, Edward B. Pusey (1800-1882). Pusey was ^Edpusey ^B k°^rn in a landed family of wealth and influence, and inherited large means. His training was that of a strict High Church family. He says

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he learned to love the Prayer-book from his mother’s teachings. His piety, nevertheless, had ever the tone of Augustinian Calvinism. Sin, duty, penitence, and work are its chief notes. The piety of his “ Spiritual Letters ” contrasts sadly with the New Testament, or with even such “ Letters ” as thqse of Fenelon.

Pusey was trained at Oxford, and was a good student in what was there taught. In 1823 he was elected Fellow of Oriel. In 1825, and again in 1826, he spent some time in Germany studying Hebrew, Syriac, and especially Arabic. He had a favorable idea of the German theological movement, which he soon lost when he came to adopt his fixed principle, which was his lifelong guide and that of his party,—that there is no defense against unbelief except an authoritative Church doctrine and tradition. From this point of view all criticism is barred from touching the Bible, or Church doctrine and often Church tradition, as an enemy to the faith. Pusey, within these limits was a profound Hebrew scholar; but, of course, the limits were such that his work is of minor importance. As a thinker, Pusey does not count; his ignorance of Church history and of the Roman Catholic Church of his time was phenome'nal. In no sense was he original. In his ecclesiastical reforms he copied, without improvements, the conventual life, the Roman Catholic books of devotion, and the practice of auricular confession from the Church of Rome. It was a strange comment on his own practice, that he should be compelled to say, in 1877, “The misery is with the pedantic copiers of Rome.” Yet Pusey never left the English Church for Rome, though in practice more Roman than Newman. Manning discerned the reason

190 History of the Christian Church.

when he wrote, in 1850, “They both [Keble and Pusey] seem to me to have given up the Divine tradition as the supreme authority, and to apply private judgment to antiquity.” Pusey did dare to criticise the claims of the Roman Catholic Church, although he could arrange even the doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass according to the Council of Trent, so as to swallow it.

As a thinker, Pusey can not command our respect ; any fact or argument against his position made no more impression on him than a cannon-shot on a bale of cotton. On the other hand, his humility, his selfsacrifice, his self-discipline, his generosity and sympathy with those in spiritual difficulties, and the settled peace of his self-mastery, were sources of increasing influence until his death.

In 1828, Pusey was appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew in Oxford, a position he held until his death. The same year he married. His happy wedded life ended in a brief nine years. His children were an increasing blessing to him. From this experience came two results: he never ceased to mourn the death of his wife, nor to regard it as a punishment of his sin ; and also he never believed in an enforced celibacy for the English clergy.

In 1826 four men were elected Fellows of Oriel, who influenced the Oxford Movement in its development, but were of much less importance ^ThBrothers^y than these leaders. These were Thomas Mozeley, who later married Newman’s sister, and was editor of the British Critic when it was leading Romanwards as fast as thought could carry it without any brakes or restraint. He was a brother

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of Canon James B. Mozeley. Neither of the brothers left the English Church.

Another was William G. Ward, the most ardent Roman Catholic among them, who pushed Newman on the Romeward way, and after creating an intense excitement by his defense of Tract ^G‘

No. 90, and his “ Ideal Church,” changed a tragedy into a farce by marrying. His genial goodnature, his abounding animal spirits, his perfect frankness and honesty, made the enemies of his opinions his friends. Almost immediately after his marriage, he and his wife entered the Roman Catholic Church. A large fortune falling to him, he was useful to the Roman Catholic Church and the advocate of the most extreme views of the Vatican party.

The fourth was Hurrell Froude, the elder brother of James A. Froude, the historian, who died ten years later. Froude’s influence brought Newman into the Movement. Newman was “^urr*ⁿ

Froude.

with him in a Mediterranean voyage in 1832-1833. It was on this voyage that Newman wrote “ Lead, Kindly Light.” Froude must have been a man of great attractiveness in manner and spirit. He seems to have been chiefly remarkable for saying what he thought without much consideration or respect for the meaning or effect of his words. At this distance the poverty of his knowledge and his thought, and the violence of his language, especially against the Reformation, seem to have been his chief characteristics.

These men were together at Oriel; one other of the historic group preceded them, and one other came more than a decade later.

192 History of the Christian Church.

The true founder of the Oxford Movement, though never its leader, was John Keble (1792-1866). Keble’s

father was a clergyman of the Church of

John Keble. — r

England. Keble, like Pusey, came of a High Church family. He went to Oxford in 1807, and was elected Fellow of Oriel in 1811. In 1816 he was ordained. He remained at Oxford as tutor until 1823, a year after Newman had been elected Fellow.

In 1823 he accepted a curacy at Fairford, where he labored as his father’s assistant until 1835. In 1827 he published the “Christian Year,” which largely helped the Oxford Movement by its reverence and exaltation of the services of the Church. One hundred and forty-eight thousand copies were sold before 1854. From 1831 to 1841 he held the position of “ Lecturer upon Poetry ” at Oxford, delivering three lectures each year. He identified himself thoroughly with the Movement, defending Tract No. 90, though he wrote but four tracts, and those not of great importance. In 1836 he married, at the age of forty-three, the sister of his brother’s wife. The marriage, although childless, was a very happy one. In the same year he became vicar of Hursley, which he held until his death.

Keble’s character was one of rare attractiveness. He had “ a strong depreciation of mere intellect compared with the less showy excellencies of faithfulness to conscience and duty, and a horror and hatred of everything that seemed like display, or the desire of applause, or of immediate effect.” He had a holy severity toward himself, and was quite ascetic. With his value of Divine truth and sense of the personality

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of Christ came a courage and gentleness that won to the man, if not to his views.

Keble believed in confession and absolution. He was John H. Newman’s confessor in his Oxford days, but he took little part in ritualism. Keble published an edition of the works of Richard Hooker and some volumes of sermons. The sermons have sympathy, reality, and power.

Perhaps Pusey relates that which best reveals Keble as a man, and the secret of his influence. Pusey says: “I sent one to dear John Keble to get settled as to some Romeward unsettlement. He staid a fortnight at Hursley. John Keble did not say a word of controversy, but at the end of the time my friend told me that he was quite settled, and could work heartily in the English Church.”

Keble and Newman had been close friends. Their intercourse was broken off when Newman went over to Rome in 1845. Twenty years later, when Pusey was at Hursley, they had a most affecting meeting. The three men once so intimate, then so separated, now were meeting for the last time.

None of these men have more charm for men of our time than Richard'William Church (1815-1890), Dean of St. Paul’s Church, who was born .

. ' Richard

at Lisbon, Portugal, of a family of Quaker wuiiam descent and strong Evangelical tendencies. ^Church-His uncle, Richard Church, was a distinguished general. His father was a merchant, and the boy lived abroad until his father’s death in 1828, spending most of his life in Italy. In 1838 he was elected Fellow of Oriel, and was a fast friend of the Oxford Move-

194 History of the Christian Church.

ment. In 1847 he visited Italy and Greece. In 1846 he assisted in founding The Guardian, the organ of the Movement, to which he was a frequent contributor.

He married the niece of Dr. Moberly in 1853. In 1852 he accepted the charge of Whately in Somersetshire, a parish of three hundred inhabitants, ten miles from a railway station, where he remained for nineteen years. Then he was made Dean of St. Paul’s in London, which office he held until his death.

Dean Church had more learning, more knowledge of the realties of the world, more sympathy, a clearer vision of truth and of humanity than any other man at all prominent in the Oxford Movement. His English style is one of power and charm, and his “Dante,” “St. Anselm,” and “Sermons” will be read when most of the works of his friends are forgotten. His “Oxford Movement,” though a fragment, and far too partial, is the best single volume on the subject.

That which brought these men into a concerted Movement to change the religious life and the Church The Causes England came from many causes. The of the Oxford first of these was undoubtedly political. Movement. ^_ory p_arty had been in power, with

Political. k_ut a brief interval, for forty years, when the political revolution which carried the Reform Bill of 1832 gave the ascendency to the Whigs. The Church interest, like the slaveholding interest and the East India interest, had been allied with the Tory party. Oxford was the fervent heart of that political faith. The Revolution of 1830 in France, the passage of the Reform Bill, and the advent of the people to

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some limited share of political power, all seemed to portend at Oxford, where the Liberals were few indeed, the breaking up of the foundations. The Church of England, they felt, might pass from the control of its friends, stanch and tried, to those of its enemies and the enemies of the Christian faith as well; for were not Bentham, Mill, and their school all Liberals, and was not Brougham a leader of that party ?

In 1833 the new government suppressed a number of the Irish Sees of the Episcopal Church. There was abundant reason for this step, and the pope, at the demand of Napoleon, had done the same thing in France; but if this were the beginning, where would the end be? Newman says : “ No time was to be lost, for the Whigs had come to do their worst, and the rescue might come too late. Bishoprics were already in course of suppression; church property was in course of confiscation; Sees would soon be receiving unsuitable occupants.” The Church of England was a State Church, and this political revolution was held to presage an ecclesiastical one, as the bishops had already been told “to put their house in order.”

The second cause,' and the one which weighed most with Pusey, was the power and assaults of unbelief in France and Germany. Pusey had

^ . „ . , ^ . Theological.

no faith m the use of right reason; only authority could restore, or even keep, the faith. The authority must be that of the divinely-constituted Church, enforcing the authoritative doctrines and traditional deposit of the Church, and, by consequence, discipline and worship through the plenitude of its

196 History of the Christian Church.

power. From this point of view criticism, however reverent, is an enemy of the Christian faith.

The Evangelical Revival had effected but little, except indirectly, in the upper classes. For these there was a crying need that religion should

Religious. . . .

be made a reality, and a reality with the

power of the Supreme Imperative. Church says: “In the hands of the average teachers of the school [the Evangelical] the idea of religion was becoming poor, thin, and unreal.” There was certainly need to make religion real and powerful to the wealthy and the intelligent.

It was felt that the emphasis on faith in the Evangelical teaching often made void the necessity of accordant works. The best answer to this

Moral. . . .

was the discipline of the Methodists, and works of philanthropy which are the glory of that school. But these were outward, and it was felt that there was need for an inward and continuous moral discipline. William G. Ward put it strongly thus: “Careful moral discipline is the necessary foundation whereon alone Christian faith and practice can be reared.” Of course, no Evangelical Christian would agree that this discipline is the foundation, but all would allow that it was essential.

The leaders of this movement believed in a Church founded by Christ and his apostles, and which had never ceased to exist. The conception of

Historic. . *

a break in the continuity of Christian life and history from the apostles to the Reformation was a most mischievous one, and the leaders of the Oxford Movement rectified it by an error equally great. They either ignored or denounced the Reformation.

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William G. Ward declared that “ The Lutheran doctrine of justification, and the principle of private judgment, in their abstract nature and necessary tendency, sink below Atheism itself.” The leaders of the Movement would not subscribe to the Martyrs’ Memorial, erected at Oxford to the memory of Cran-mer, Ridley, and Latimer.

Then there was the push of the Romantic Movement, which was keenly felt. Newman wrote to Dr. Jelf in 1841: “ There is at this moment a great progress of the religious mind of ^endenay.**⁰ our Church to something deeper and truer than satisfied the mind of the last century. . . . The poets and philosophers of the age have borne witness to it for many years. Those great names in our literature, Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Coleridge—though in different ways and with essential differences one from the other, and perhaps from any Church system—bear witness to it. The age is moving toward something, and most unhappily the one religious communion among us which has of late years been practically in possession of that something is the Church of Rome. She alone, amid all the errors and evils of her practical system, has given free scope to the feelings of awe, mystery, tenderness, reverence, devotedness, and other feelings which may especially be called Catholic.”

From these causes it is not strange that such a Movement should arise. What, it may be asked, were its aims—especially those of its leaders? _The Aims of Thomas Mozeley says: “For my part, I the

„ . , 1 . Movement.

never knew where it was all to end, except somewhere in the first three centuries of the Church,

198 History of the Christian Church.

and I have to confess that I knew very little, indeed, about them.” On the other hand, Dean Church tells us that Newman and Hurrell Froude derived their view of the Church from Whately’s definition, in 1826, of the Church as “An organized body, introduced into the world by Christ himself, endowed with definite spiritual powers and with no other, and, whether connected with the State or not, having an independent existence, and unalienable claims, with its own objects and laws, with its own moral standard, and spirit, and character.” This claim of independent and self-sufficient existence, with power of discipline, sounded strange in the England of those days, but it was very real to the men at Oxford. Hurrell Froude said: “Let us tell the truth and shame the devil; let us give up a national Church and have a real one.”

The aim of the leaders went much further. As the Church of England did not have these characteristics and the Church of Rome did, the way to bring about the “second and better Reformation of the Church of England ” was to make her as like the Church of Rome as possible. Of what the Church of Rome really was they knew even less than of the first three centuries. All that they saw of her, or read of her, provoked a most childlike admiration and imitation. Of the other side of her life and doctrines ani history they made no investigation, and gave it no attention. What was “Catholic” was the thing desired, with little care as to its source, its nature, or effect. The time came when transubstantiation and papal supremacy offered little difficulty, though the worship of the Virgin, purgatory, and indulgences, were felt to be real difficulties. The aim then became, both of Pusey

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and Newman, until the Vatican Council, to become united directly with the Roman Catholic Church, but in some way so as to secure their own Episcopal organization, and to perpetuate it independent of the pope, to retain the service in the English tongue, the reading of the Scriptures by the people, and the marriage of the clergy. That these men thought these things possible, and made it the great aim of their life and work, shows the depth of their ignorance.

The Vatican Council came; they looked to it to realize this ideal, and it shattered forever their plans and hopes. In 1882, Dr. Pusey wrote, “The Vatican Council was the greatest sorrow I ever had in a long life.” In this great aim, at least, the Movement utterly failed, and its failure was for the health of Christendom.

The defects of the Movement became evident in its progress. In its main endeavor to unite the Church of England and that of Rome it permanently _{The Defects} failed. This is so plain that none can fail of the Oxford to understand its significance. The failure ^Movement* of the leaders was necessary through their abysmal ignorance. Dr. Lightfoot once lamented Augustine’s ignorance of Greek as a Joss and harm to Christendom. The same can be said of John H. Newman’s ignorance of the history of the Christian Church.

Dr. Bonamy Price gives a ludicrous instance of this in a conversation with William G. Ward, who had come to Rugby to convert him to the new faith. “ I said to him, ‘You assume that a certain fact occurred, and a certain doctrine existed at the very beginning of the Church different from the opinion held in the Protestant Church of England; have you examined the evi

200 History of the Christian Church.

dence on which you make that objection ?’ ‘O dear, no!’ he said. Then why do you adopt it?’ ‘John Newman says it is so.' After a while he again brought forward a doctrine built on an alleged fact, which differed from the view taken in the English Church. Again I asked, ‘ Have you searched out, and can you state the evidence on which you contradict the view you have hitherto held?’ Again the answer, ‘No,’ rolled from his lips, and again he took his stand on what Newman said.”

The Oxford Movement had most enthusiastic adherents. Where there is great enthusiasm, the way is short to extravagances; and of extravagances*" & ^ances the Oxford Movement had no lack,— incongruous association, achronistic and tasteless architecture and decoration, ascetic extravagances of all kinds that not seldom injured health and shortened life. Whatever extravagances marred the Wesleyan Movement among the lower classes in the previous century can be matched, though of course of a different order, in the Oxford Movement of the nineteenth century. After this view of the characteristics of the Oxford Movement and its leaders, it is time to trace its progress.

Its initial date has been set as July 14, 1833, when John Keble preached his Assize Sermon on “ National Course of Apostasy,” moved thereto by the suppres-the Oxford sion of the Irish Bishoprics. On July 26th, Movement. _{a meet}i_ng _was ^eld _at Hadleigh vicarage. There were present Mr. Hugh J. Rose, the most eminent theologian among them; Mr. Palmer, a man of liturgical learning; Mr, Percival, and Hurrell Froude. The manifesto of the Church Defense Association had

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received the signatures of seven thousand clergy. At this meeting the “Tracts for the Times” were resolved upon. The first one appeared in September, 1833; it was from the pen of John H. Newman, and grounded the whole movement and the standing of the Church of England as a Christian Church, and the value of her ministry to the individual and to the community, upon the doctrine of Apostolical Succession; that is, upon a teaching of which there is not a trace in the New Testament nor among the Apostolic Fathers of the second century. But this was, and remains, a corner-stone of the Movement.

Pusey wrote in 1879, “ If I were not absolutely certain of having received the power [through true succession from the apostles], every absolution I pronounce would be a horrible blasphemy.” That is, upon a doctrine which can never be proved, against which are the strongest presumptions, and which, if allowed, would prove to come through such tainted hands as to make it, as an exclusive channel of the gift of the Holy Ghost, as incredible as it is ludicrous, if it, indeed, were not refuted in the practical life of Christendom in every generation.

The Movement was now fairly launched, and the next year Pusey joined it, and the year following wrote his “ Tract on Baptism,” a good-sized volume in itself. In 1836 was begun the Oxford Library of Translations from the Christian Fathers. Those who performed the work were good classical scholars, but with neither knowledge of the times nor of the men which would qualify them for the task. The work, with these limitations, has value, and value beyond that indicated by Thomas Mozeley when he says:

202 History of the Christian Church.

“ Perhaps it is impossible to translate a Christian Father so as to make him pleasant reading, or to satisfy even the requirements of common sense. Every attempt at a translation only brought out the immense superiority of that Book which is the unfailing delight of the rich and the poor, the learned and the unlearned, in all places and times.”

In 1835, Dr. Pusey and his followers resisted in vain the appointment of Dr. Hampden as Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford on account of the position taken in his Bampton Lectures. The Oxford men were in the habit of identifying the Church tradition with the scholastic philosophy, which made them unusually sensitive. They did not scruple to use every means of academic opposition, not to say oppression, to prevent Dr. Hampden’s appointment or to make it disagreeable if he were appointed. When the same academic pressure was brought to bear upon Dr. Pusey and his friends, he, of all men, had no reason to complain. Of course he was within his legal right in taking this action, but it was neither generous nor wise. Yet, with all errors of judgment and mistakes, the Movement kept gathering influence and numbers. The “Tracts” were the talk of the day, and the sale kept increasing. One by Isaac Williams, on “ Reserve in Religious Teaching,” stirred up the strongest kind of opposition and censure from the adversaries of the Movement. Granted that the abstract principles of the tract were true, the practice by the promoters of the Movement was such as to awaken the liveliest apprehension if it were known.

As early as 1838 Dr. Pusey began to receive auricular confession, and to pronounce absolution. He

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carried the doctrine to extreme lengths beyond that of Roman Catholic confession, taking upon himself “the responsibility before God of the souls of his penitents,” which seems little short of blasphemy. So far, often, do unthinking imitators go beyond the original. Pusey himself says, “ The first use of the confession, for anything other than adultery, murder, or apostasy, was in the latter part of the fourth century when the monks of St. Basil used it as a discipline.” So Newman, writing to Manning, September

1, 1839, declared that his wish was that “Rome and the Church of England should be one.”

In the same year Newman wrote that, when the secession to Rome takes place, “ We must boldly say to the Protestant section of our Church, You are the cause, you are the cause of all this; you must concede; give us more services, more vestments and decoration ; give us monasteries. Till then you will have continual secessions to Rome.” In his “Apologia Pro Vita Sua,” speaking of this demand in 1841, he further specifies: “ Such, for instance, would be confraternities, particular devotions, reverence for the Blessed Virgin, prayers for the dead, beautiful Churches, magnificent offerings, for them and in them.”

If there was anything the English mind revolted against more than against auricular confession, it was against the monastic life; but February 21, 1840, we find Newman writing that “ Pusey is at present eager about setting up Sisters of Mercy.” No wonder that Father Perry as late as 1869, wrote, “They must be as candid as they can, but they must observe such reticence as is necessary.” But the Articles of the

204 flSTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

Church of England, which must be subscribed by every English clergyman and every Academic Fellow, were definite and specific in denouncing all such Roman Catholic observances.

In Tract 90, February, 1841, Newman attempts such an interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles as will justify these. Of course, it is false to the historic circumstances and sense; for whatever the Reformation did or did not do in England, it abolished the mass, auricular confession, and monasteries.

The pleading was evidently for a purpose, and that was to annul the law by an interpretation foreign to its original intent, and contrary to the interpretation which had prevailed for almost three hundred years. It is true that the scope of laws are sometimes enlarged, and their purpose changed with an entire change in the situation they are to govern and control; but this is a dangerous power, and in each in. stance must legitimate itself as essentially necessary and just. True it is that we may not blame Newman for making the attempt; certain it is that those must not be blamed whose opposition caused the censure of the University to fall upon it. Newman showed himself the courteous Christian gentleman and the adroit controversialist. At the request of his bishop, the publication of the Tracts ceased, but this fact must not blind us to the evil of the course Newman and his friends pursued. Such a course could be possible only in a State Church where there was no exercise of ecclesiastical discipline.

Suppose, for instance, it were tried in the Roman Catholic Church, how long would it be before the Church authorities would act ? Indeed, from the

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point of view of an independent, self-governing Church, Newman and his friends were most indulgently dealt with. Their purpose was deliberately to work to change the doctrine, worship, and religious life of the English Church, and so to revolutionize it as to make it become a part of its lifelong, bitterest, and strongest adversary. Newman seemed to be greatly surprised that he was checked in his course. The only surprise is that the check was not anticipated and did not come earlier. In 1842, Newman removed to a monastic establishment he had founded at Iyittlemore, near Oxford. In 1843 he resigned his charge at St. Mary’s, and the voice of the most influential preacher at Oxford of that generation was hushed. In 1844 appeared Ward’s “ Ideal Church.” After a struggle of three years, most faithfully and pathetically described in his “Apologia Pro Vita Sua,” with an interest that will never cease to hold the reader, John H. Newman, on October 9, 1845, was received into the Church of Rome. Great was the consternation among the friends of the Oxford Movement. It set it back for years, while it sent a crowd of converts to Rome. It is customary to lament Newman’s secession. He himself does not seem to have done so, and in the interests of truth, and of the weal of Christendom, Evangelical and Roman Catholic alike, it seems to have been for the best. If Rome could make no use of the greatest convert she has received since the Reformation, the fact certainly is a most illuminating one, and not without lessons of permanent value. That Newman submitted himself, and bowed to the yoke, and found content and peace, does not make it any less a yoke,

206 History of the Christian Church.

or lessen the fact that Rome does not know what to do with a great soul whose spirit is truthful and whose loyalty to his conscience is supreme.

The same month of Newman’s secession, Pusey consecrated St. Savior’s at Leeds, a church which he built with his own money, and from which five clergymen in a few years seceded to Rome; thus verifying Keble’s statement in 1850, “A larger number, possibly, has seceded to Rome from under his [Dr. Pusey’s] special teaching than from any other individual among us.”

In 1845 h^e organized his first Sisterhood, and the next year he spent some months in Ireland studying the Irish convents. In the same year The Guardian was founded. In 1850 came the Gorham judgment, by which it was decided that a man could be a clergyman of the Church of England and not believe in baptismal regeneration. This interpretation seemed to Manning, Allies, and others, as equivalent to doctrinal legislation for the Church by laymen. This was certainly a fallacy. But Manning resigned his charge as Dean of Chichester, and entered the Roman Catholic Church. This seemed the favorable time to Pius IX to re-establish the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England and Scotland. Of course, the excitement was intense, and resulted in the passage of the Papal Agressions Bill.

At the close of this period Newman was sanguine in his belief that the Roman Catholic Church in England had come to its “second spring,” and would be the dominant religious force in England. Newman, in 1845, published his “ Essay on Development,” the only possible defense for the changes of the Ro

The Evangelical Church. 207

man Catholic creed and ritual, based on the lines of Mohler’s “ Symbolik.” He spent more than a year in Rome in 1846-1847. He then founded a congregation of the Oratorians of St. Filippo Neri, where he remained until 1852.

Thus, with the secession of Newman and Manning, and those which soon followed of Henry and Robert Wilberforce, the sons of William Wilberforce, and of the son of Thomas Arnold, father of Mrs. Humphrey Ward, it seemed as if the influences drawing men to Rome from the Church of England were to be the controlling ones of the new era, and that this, rather than the reinvigoration of the Church of England, was to be the result of the Oxford Movement. That the result was far otherwise, time only could show.

That the Church of England put on new and unlooked-for strength rather than tottered to her fall was due to other influences than the Oxford Movement. Not least among these was the establishment in 1832 of a Commission to inquire into the Revenues and Patronage of the Established Church in England and Wales. This Commission made a thorough investigation, and reported; as a result, the Act of 1836 constituted them a perpetual corporation, entitled “ Ecclesiastical Commissioners for England and Wales.” This Commission has power to fix the salaries of the bishops and other dignitaries of the Church. It could also, with the consent of the queen and Council, arrange the boundaries of the dioceses and parishes. In this way many grievous abuses were abolished, and the path opened for permanent progress. From the Conquest to the Reformation but

2o8 History of the Christian Church.

two new Sees were founded, Ely and Carlisle in the twelfth century. Five were added at the Reformation. None were erected from that time until 1836^ when that of Ripon, and 1847, when that of Manchester were founded.

The bishop’s salaries were rearranged and equalized. The Archbishop of Canterbury received $75,000 per annum; the Archbishop of York, $50,000; the Bishop of London, $50,000; of Durham, $40,000 of Winchester, $35,000. The other bishops received from twenty to thirty thousand dollars each.

An earnest endeavor was also made to increase the salaries of the poor clergy, of whom more than a thousand had salaries of less than $250 each. But pluralities were untouched, and awaited a more vigorous public opinion, while many and multiform abuses of patronge and evil-living clergy were as yet beyond the reach of law or Episcopal supervision.

A crude and startling contrast to the Oxford Movement, and its opposite extreme, was the rise of the Plymouth Brethren. The same cause—the Brethren^ worldliness of, and secular power controlling, the Church, and the sectarian divisions which drove Newman into the Roman Catholic Church—drove the founder of the Plymouth Brethren to conclude that there had been no Christian Church on earth since the days of the apostles. Only a new apostolate could refound such a Church; hence the real Church is in heaven; only as small assemblies of believers become endowed with the Holy Spirit, and so receive the gift of the correct interpretation of the Scriptures, do they come into communion with this

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only real and heavenly Church. Their three principles were:

1. The existing Churches are evil, and only evil.

2. The absolute authority of the Holy Scriptures.

3. The Spirit interpreting the Scripture requires unanimity in the assembly.

Hence, all who do not agree with the interpretations of the majority are excluded. With these views goes a pessimistic conception of all history, and religious progress, and the expectation of the speedy personal coming of the Savior to establish his millennial reign. This . sect—for it would not call itself a Church—arose from weekly meetings held in his own house in Dublin by Edward Cronin, a former Roman Catholic, in 1827. He soon secured the adhesion of Rev. John N. Darby, a clergyman of the Church of England, who became henceforth the leader of the new sect. Darby came from a wealthy family in England. He studied and practiced law, but felt he must enter the ministry. This so displeased his father that he disinherited him. After entering upon his work, he came to disbelieve the doctrine of Apostolical Succession, and then the validity of all Church organization. In 1828 he published “Nature and Unity of the Church of Christ.” In 1830 he visited Paris, Cambridge, and Oxford, where he won B. W. Newton, who became an able and zealous adherent. About that time Captain Hall built Providence Chapel, at Plymouth, and that became the center of the new sect. The policy of exclusion above noted was rigorously carried out by Mr. Darby.

In 1845, Mr. Newton revolted, and led a secession.

210 History of the Christian Church.

Newton differed from Darby on the interpretation of prophecy. George Muller, of the Bristol orphanages, led a party of Neutrals, as between the Exclusive Brethren of Darby and the Open Brethren of Newton. Many other secessions from the Exclusive Brethren have followed. They have not increased in numbers, though their opinions have been widely influential. They give most careful study to the Scriptures; they win mainly from the Churches and little from the world. Those they reach are conscientious and earnest Christians. The Biblical scholar, Samuel P. Tre-gelles, was of their number, and Dwight L. Moody, and many workers in the Young Men’s Christian Association, have been influenced by their method of Scriptural interpretation. They rejected the limited election and reprobation of Calvinism, but carried the teaching of the final perseverance of the saints to the verge of Antinomianism. Mr. Darby believed in infant baptism, but most of the Brethren reject it.

The development of the Christian spirit among men, and the progress of the Christian faith in the last half of the nineteenth century, show how far both Newman and Darby were mistaken. . Never were the Christian Churches stronger or more vigorous, and never was there among them more of the unity of the Spirit of God. But the earnestness and choice of both Newman and Darby show the impression the situation made upon sensitive minds, and enables us to measure the progress of the last fifty years.

Chapter VII.

THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.

For the last sixty years of the eighteenth century the Moderate party controlled the Church of Scotland. They stood for an educated ministry, and had distinguished men among the clergy. They offered little or no resistance to lay patronage. The Church was dignified, and a powerful social force.

The Dissenters increased in numbers, and the visits of the Evangelical ministers from England had a warm welcome from the people, if not from the clergy. Such were Rowland Hill and Charles Simeon. The parents of Alexander Duff blessed the coming of Simeon to their dying day. At the opening of the new century the Evangelical Revival reached Scotland effectively, and mainly through the labors of the brothers Haldane. By 1810, under the lead of Andrew Thomson, the Evangelicals became the leading force in the Scotch Church. Chalmers, Guthrie, and Duff were leaders of Evangelical spirit worthy of their cause.

Three men, one a lawyer and the other two sea captains, broke the lethargy of that Moderatism which marked the Georgian era in Scotland.

Thomas Erskine (1788-1870) was a man of large knowledge, wide sympathies, and earnest thinking. He graduated from the Uni- Thomas versity, and studied and practiced law. ^Erskine* In 1816 he fell heir to a large estate. He retired

211

2i2 History of the Christian Church

from his profession, and, being unmarried, gave his attention to theology. Earnest and Evangelical, he was also a Broad Churchman. With McLeod Campbell, he held the moral theory of the atonement. He also believed in the final restoration of all men. The most distinguished men of the time were his friends— Carlyle, Stanley, Maurice, Vinet, Adolphe Monod, and also the Duchess de Broglie, the daughter of Madam de Stael, were of the number. The Bible, Plato, and Shakespeare were his favorite books.

An earnest and successful evangelist, and an able preacher was Robert Haldane (1764-1842). He entered the navy and rose in his profes-HaWane. ^si°ⁿ> inheriting a large property, he retired from the service. At the first outbreak of the French Revolution he welcomed it as a thorough democrat. In 1793 he was converted. Later, with Rowland Hill, he preached on extensive Evangelistic tours throughout Scotland, and this resulted in gracious revivals. This was too much for the leaders of the Scotch Church, and the General Assembly, in 1800, forbade field-preaching and discouraged revivals. This caused Haldane to withdraw from it. He then wished, with some friends, to go as a missionary to India; but the East India Company would not allow it. Robert Haldane was influential in private intercourse as in public address. In 1816, in Geneva, he greatly influenced Adolphe Monod and Caesar Malan. Haldane spent $300,000 on home mission work in Scotland. He built Tabernacles in all the large cities, and educated three hundred young men for the ministry. At Paris he established a theological school, and educated native Africans in Scot

Evangelical Church in Scotland. 213

land. In respect to baptism he held views in common with the Baptist Churches. He wrote a popular treatise on Evangelical Theology.

James A. Haldane (1768-1851), brother of Robert, ably seconded his brother in Evangelical work. In 1793 he was captain of the ship Mellville _Jaineg Castle. Having been converted, he sold his Alexander command and share of the cargo for $75,000, ^Haldane* and retired to Scotland in 1794. He then spent much time in itinerant preaching in towns, and in establishing Sunday-schools. Finally he settled at the Tabernacle in Edinburgh, which he served for fifty years without salary.

Four Christian ministers make memorable the annals of Christianity in Scotland in the earlier half of the nineteenth century.

Few men in the Christian pulpit in weight of thought, in massive strength of argument and powerful effect, have equaled Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847). Great as was Chalmers in the _Chai°mers. pulpit, he was equally great as a Church leader, and even greater as a man. Chalmers’s father was a merchant, and he the sixth of fourteen children. He received his education at St. Andrew’s, where he showed himself especially strong in mathematics. Two winters following his graduation he studied at Edinburgh.

As pastor of Kilmeny he served from 1803 to 1815. In 1810 he experienced what he called his conversion, largely through reading Wilberforce’s “ Practical Christianity.” From that time Chalmers was a man of power. From 1815 to 1820 he served Tron parish, in Glasgow. In 1817 he preached in London, where

214 History of the Christian Church.

his eloquence was as effective as in Glasgow. Lockhart said he knew “ none whose eloquence is capable of producing an effect so strong and irresistible.” In 1811 he preached his “Astronomical Discourses,” of which twenty thousand copies were sold within a year. From 1819 to 1823 he was pastor of St. John’s, at Glasgow. In the latter year he was called as Professor of Moral Philosophy to St. Andrew’s, where he remained five years, when he went to Edinburgh as Professor of Theology, 1828-1843. After the disruption he served in the Chair of Divinity in the Free Church College, in Edinburgh. He also ministered as royal chaplain from 1830 to 1847. In 1833 he published a Bridgewater Treatise on the “Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man.” This was afterward expanded into his “ Natural Theology.”

Chalmers was profoundly attached to the Scottish Kirk as by law established, and only injustice and op-The Disrupt pression could have driven him from it.

tionand In 1838 he lectured in London in favor of ^F theFree°^f establishment. Chalmers threw his soul Church of into the Church life of his native land. In Scotland. his labors resulted in the erection of

twenty new churches in Glasgow and two hundred and twenty in Scotland, costing $1,500,000. From the original constitution of the Scottish Church the congregation had a vote in the election of pastors. This right was destroyed by the Patronage Act of Queen Anne, 1712, which vested the choice in the patron. In 1833, Chalmers secured the passage of the Veto Act, by which the male heads of families in the congregation had a vote on the choice of the patron.

Evangelical Church in Scotland. 215

This right of vote the courts pronounced illegal in the celebrated Auchtenrader case, where, in a parish of three thousand souls, but two persons signed the call, while two hundred and eighty-seven out of three hundred, who under the Veto Act had the right to vote, protested. Other cases were even worse. The Presbytery would not allow this disregard of the Veto Act, but the civil courts held that that Act was illegal, and the decision was upheld on appeal by the House of Lords, in 1839. In answer the General Assembly affirmed the principle of “ Non-intrusion ’’ of the lay patron against the will of the Church and General Assembly.

The Assembly ot 1842 presented a petition to the queen, asking for redress. In November, 1842, a large number of ministers signed and published a declaration that if no relief were afforded, they would resign their livings. The Home Secretary in January, 1843, gave them to understand that no relief would be afforded; the House of Commons took action to the same effect in March. On May 18, 1843, four hundred and seventy ministers, led by Dr. Chalmers, withdrew from the General Assembly, and formed the Free Church ot Scotland. ^ After the deed was done, Lord Aberdeen granted a tardy and partial concession by the vScottish Benefices Act of 1843, which provided, that “ The people might state objections personal to a presentee and bearing on his fitness to the particular charge to which he was presented, and also authorized the Presbyteries, in dealing with the objections, to look to the character and number of the objectors.” This Act was no remedy, and in 1874 all patronage was abolished, and the congregation was given the

216 History of the Christian Church.

right to elect. This ended a long struggle of one hundred and fifty years. If the formation of the Free Church had no other effect than to cause this reform in the parent body, it had wrought well.

Over one-third of the ministry, fully one-third of the membership, and all the foreign missionaries ex-The Free ^cept ^one> the Established Church, formed Church of the new Free Church. All endowments Scotland. _an^ g_{tate were} renounced, and churches, schoolhouses, parsonages, and the payment of all salaries had to come from the voluntary gifts of the people. Within four years, over seven hundred churches had been built, costing $1,250,000. The New College at Edinburgh was built, costing over $200,000; and by 1847 five hundred and thirteen schools were provided for, instructing forty-four thousand scholars. Before 1845, $400,000 had been raised for the support of the ministers, and for the first ten years the annual amount raised was over $400,000, affording a support of $625 each. This was steadily increased in the years following. In the meantime it generally sustained and extended its Foreign Mission work.

Nothing finer in devotion to moral principle, in selfsacrifice and generosity, is on the record of these years than the spirit which made successful and illustrious the founding of the Free Church of Scotland.

The work of Dr. Chalmers in founding the Free Church will always be memorable and historic; but Chalmers’s ^{even m}o^re attractive and instructive was Parish his parish work in Glasgow and Edinburgh, work. j_n John’s parish, Glasgow, he found that out of two thousand families, eight hundred had no connection with any Church. The children were

Evangelical Church in Scotland. 217

growing up in ignorance. He caused two commodious schoolhouses to be built, and employed four well-qualified teachers. He opened forty or fifty Sabbath-schools, in which one thousand children were taught. The parish was divided into twenty-five districts of from sixty to one hundred families; to each was assigned an elder to look after their spiritual welfare, and a deacon to aid in their temporal well-being. Dr. Chalmers undertook the relief of the poor of the parish, and, by this system of supervision and investigation, he reduced the charge to the city from $7,000 to $1,400 a year.

In 1845-1847 he took charge of Westport, Edinburgh, a parish of two thousand souls in the worst part of the city. He most successfully applied his system tried at Glasgow to the new situation. No other man in the century made such an impression on the religious life of Scotland. He made it more Evangelical, more practical, more intellectual and refined.

An able assistant of Dr. Chalmers in founding the Free Church, and a most eloquent preacher, was Thomas Guthrie (1803-1873). His father was a trader and banker. He studied at the University of Edinburgh, 1815-1825, finishing the course for the A. B. degree. In 18261827 he studied Medicine and Natural Theology at Paris. He married and accepted the pastorate at Ar-bilot, near Arbroath, where he remained, 1830-1837. Besides his regular parish duties here, he interested himself in savings banks and parish libraries, as well as Sunday-schools. From 1837 to 1840 he was pastor at Grey Friars, Edinburgh, and from 1840 to 1864 at St.

218 History of the Christian Church.

John’s Church in the same city. From June, 1845, to June, 1846, he raised $580,000 for manses for Free Church clergymen. From 1844 he was that rare thing, at that time in Britain, a total abstainer. In 1847, and even afterwards, he was greatly interested in ragged schools. He published “ The City, its Sins and Sorrows,” 1851.

In 1853 he secured the Sunday closing of the liquor shops. In 1855 appeared his “ Gospel in Ezekiel,” which is a good example of his sermons. In 1862 he was presented with a purse of $25,000. He preached for twenty years after his physician had forbidden him, on account of the weak action of his heart. At his grave a ragged-school girl gave the finest tribute to his work and worth, as she said, amid falling tears, “He was all the father I ever knew.” One of the greatest of modern missionaries, and one of the most eloquent who ever appeared on a missionary platform, was Alexander Duff ^AIeDulf^der (ⁱ⁸°6^_i87⁸)* He was born in a peasant farmer’s cottage. His education was received at St. Andrew’s, and he studied under Chalmers. In 1829 he was ordained and sailed as a missionary, arriving at Calcutta in May, 1830. There he began his educational work, seeking to train native preachers. In 1834 he was again in Scotland, and made a great speech before the General Assembly. By 1840 he had a college-building costing $150,000, and seven hundred students. In 1843 went with the Free Church, and all had to be given up. He edited the Calcutta Review, 1845-1849, and then failing health made imperative his return to Scotland. In

Evangelical Church in Scotland. 219

1854 he visited the United States, and charmed great congregations with his impassioned oratory. In 1856 he returned to India, where he wrought for the next seven years. He was vice-chancellor and founder of the University of Calcutta. His chief endeavor was to teach the English language and the Bible to the native students, and thus reach the intellectual classes. He saw the number of native Evangelical Christians in India increase from 127,000 in 1850 to 318,000 in 1871. From 1864 until his death he was missionary secretary of the Free Church of Scotland and professor in its college at Edinburgh.

The power of the new life which made possible the founding of the Free Church of Scotland made itself felt in the old Established Kirk. The achievements of that life fall into the next period, but no better example of it could be named than the manly and attractive career of Norman McLeod.

Norman McLeod (1812-1872) was the son of Rev. Dr. McLeod, a distinguished minister of the Scotch Church. He took his college course at Glasgow, and studied Divinity under Chal- ^L™od. mers at Edinburgh. He taught as a private tutor, 1832-1835, and in the college at Glasgow, 1835-1837. He was a pastor at London, 1838-1843, and at Dalkeith, 1843-1851. He took part in the Evangelical Alliance at London, 1846. He was pastor of Barony Church, 1851-1872, and royal chaplain, 1857. From 1860 he was editor of Good Wot'ds. In 1864 he became missionary secretary. In the same year he visited Egypt and Palestine, and three years later, India. In 1869 he was chosen moderator.

220 History of the Christian Church.

His influence was very great through Good Words. His personal character and manners were most attractive, and he was a favorite chaplain with the queen.

In Ireland the Established Church scarcely held its own; the Presbyterians of Ulster and the Methodists were diminished by emigration to America.

Chapter VIII.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN AMERICA.

In the United States.

This period in the history of the United States, from 1800 to 1850, was a period of the expansion of its territory. The Louisiana purchase in _{The Era of} 1803 added Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, settlement, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, North ^,8oo"^l85°* and South Dakota, most of Montana, Wyoming, and the Indian Territory, and a part of Colorado and Oklahoma; by exploration and settlement came, before 1812, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho; by Spanish cession, 1819, Florida; by conquest and purchase from Mexico, California, Nevada, Arizona, and a part of Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. The total area thus acquired in the fifty years was more than twice that under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government at the opening of the nineteenth century.

This expansion in territory preceded, but was not greater in proportion than that of settlement and the advance of civilization. In these years the line of frontier changed from the Genesee River to the Mississippi; and beyond it, not only Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas, but on the Pacific Coast, Oregon and California. But the great area of settlement was in the Central Basin of the West, bounded on the South by the Ohio, on the north by the Great Lakes, and extending to the Mississippi. The settle-

221

222 History of the Christian Church.

ment was facilitated by important canals in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Ohio. The greatest of these by far was the Erie Canal. These canals, and steam transportation on the lakes and on rivers, like the Ohio and Mississippi, were the only means of travel and of transport except the canvas-topped wagons, now called “prairie schooners.” National and State roads were opened along the chief lines of intercourse to a limited extent; but the early settlers, in the main, made their roads as they won their farms, by conquering them from the forest or prairie by the sweat of their brows.

As the railroads did not begin to improve the primitive condition of communication until the last decade of this period, the canals did much to determine the tide of emigration from the East. They also often made evident the best route for great systems ot railways. Then, when the tide of foreign emigration came, these canals, notably the Erie Canal, the watercourse of the Great Lakes, and the new railways through the river valleys and over the prairies, directed its flow and settlement. Thus Western New York and Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin were opened for settlement in this period.

South of the Ohio the same westward movement went on; but the settlers were slaveholders, and took their slaves with them. Their civilization was essentially agricultural and commercial. There was very little manufacturing, few large cities, and no foreign emigration. Large estates and slaves formed a society little desired by free labor, either from the East or from Europe.

The Christian Church in America. 223

The conditions of life in the new country were hard; many died from malarial fevers or exposure, or for lack of medical aid, and not a few from mere homesickness. The size of the cemeteries in many of these early settlements reveals the cost of conquering the wilderness. On the other hand, the boundless hospitality, the universal readiness to aid in trouble, and the genuine S3^mpathy, the quick improvement in the economic conditions, the hearty democracy in society and politics, made the life greatly enjoyed by those who mastered the early hard conditions, and it thrilled them with the pride of conquest over savage nature, and also afforded an unequaled field for the strong and the enterprising among them.

This society in its crude condition afforded scope for all kinds of social and political experiments. Communistic societies, from that of the elder Shakers to those of Robert Owen in Indiana and the Zoar Community, flourished. It was this same plastic social condition which made possible the Mormon experiment and the earlier successes of the Spiritualists. Its unrest made good soil for every kind of fad, from the Brook Farm and Fourierite phalansteries to “Graham flour” diet and water-cure establishments. Amid all this desire for change and conditions favoring it, two things are remarkable—the general political conservatism and conformity to the normal democratic type, and the great liberality and the humane spirit these settlers showed in their care for the defective classes and adherence to the new methods of prison reform.

This era was one of unbounded hope. Of history and its lessons they knew little and cared less. They

224 History of the Christian Church.

believed they were well able to make all things new. This was the great era of American “buncombe.” The eagle rampant, with spread wings

Hopefulness. ^{r r} %

and harsh scream, was the symbol of this ignorant and arrogant but good-natured Americanism. Generations who had made such conquests for their country and from nature, and who offered such unparalleled opportunities to the common man from the ends of the earth, and made their democracy the political and social gospel for all the oppressed peoples of the world, had a right to a generous pride, and may be pardoned a little boastfulness.

These eager, restless, masterful men, full of selfconfidence, cared little for what the world had done, American ^or ^^or intellectual treasure of the race. Character- Culture and art were beyond their hori-^i8t,cs* zon; but for daring enterprise, for resource, for ingenuity, for humor and generosity, no generation of Americans has surpassed them. Two Frenchmen have left lasting record of their characteristics. No American can read De Tocqueville’s “ Democracy in America” without profit, as the best contemporary picture of these times, and the imaginative type is well represented in Harris in Edmond About’s “Le Roi des Montagnes,” or “King of the Mountains.”

This picture is not true of the Eastern or Middle States. Washington Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck, and William Cullen Bryant, with James Development. Fenimore Cooper, began the literary record of New York. Charles Brockden Brown, William Gilmore Simms, Henry T. Tucker-man, and Edgar Allan Poe, came from the States

The Christian Church in America. 225

South; but the Romantic Movement reached New England, and there arose a school of poets, critics, and historians which made American literature known beyond the Atlantic, though Irving, Cooper, and notably Poe, had then conquered their public. William Hickling Prescott’s “ Ferdinand and Isabella,” “ Philip Second,” and “Conquest of Mexico” and “Conquest of Peru;” George Ticknor’s “Spanish Literature,” and Bancroft’s “History of the United States,” made American historical scholarship respected in all lands. Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, and Holmes joined, not unworthily, the choir of English poets of the century. Hawthorne, as the first great American novelist, showed a purity and mastery of English which makes his work rank among the treasures of the mother tongue. Ralph Waldo Emerson and James Russell Lowell, in brilliant, penetrating, and suggestive criticism, brought honor to American letters. In art and music little was done. The architects were mostly foreigners; but William W. Story and Hiram Powers began the race of American sculptors, as Gilbert Stuart and Washington Allston had begun that of American painters.

The great intellectual advance in this period was the founding and development of the public-school system, the establishment of denomina-

• ^ 1 1 1 1 Education.

tional schools, and the rise and ascendency of the newspaper press. No government in all the history of the race, when both the university and the high average achievement in common and secondary schools are taken into account, has done so much for the education of the people as the States of the American Union. There is now, and always has been, *5

226 History of the Christian Church.

abundant chance for improvement; but in any wide and general comparison the American public school stands well in the lead. In special branches and in the development of artistic and musical taste and aptitudes, other nations surpass it, but it has given a higher average of intellectual acquirement, among a most miscellaneous and heterogeneous population than the world before had seen. Horace Mann, secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, led in the establishment and development of the common-school system, especially by founding normal schools.

In these years slavery disappeared in the Northern States, and was immensely strengthened in the South, which imposed its policy on the Federal

Politic*. ^ i

Government. The suffrage came to be without restriction as to property or intelligence. In these years the last Church Establishment was abolished. The principle of rotation in office came to prevail with most disastrous consequences, which culminated in the succeeding generation. The one absorbing political theme from 1830 to i860 was the extension or the restriction of Slave States and Territory.

The emigration from Europe did not reach 1,000 a year until 1820, and it did not reach 30,000 until 1840. From that year until 1846 it ranged

Emigration. _r ^ °

from 78,000 to 150,000 annually. In 1846, the year of the Irish famine, it rose to 250,000. The Revolution of 1848, and the reaction following, increased the flood. By that time railways and steamships made swift and plain the path of the emigrant, and the fate of the United States was fixed as the most cosmopolitan of nations.

The Christian Church in America. 227

The Work of the Christian Church.

The great work of the Christian Church was to win the scattered settlers and their children to a religious life and service, and to found the _Planting Church, its worship, instruction, and means in the of grace in the nascent communities. The ^Wllderness* Church in almost all cases was begun in the house of a godly man, or of a new convert. When enough people of like views and desires were gathered, the first thing was a place of worship, at first in the schoolhouse, and then in a church of the most primitive pattern. The community, including men of all creeds and of no creed, responded generously as the new building and organization added to the attractiveness of the village or town as a place of residence. Yet with all this, the task of clearing and building, the cost all coming from the resources of the community itself, as there were no Church Extension Societies in those days, was a serious problem, involving much toil and sacrifice. If the place grew, then the log church had to give way to a better one, and within the same generation the Church society would rebuild two or three times, or, after building twice, make repairs and enlargements which were almost equal to rebuilding. These sums probably, in the aggregate, thus voluntarily given and expended, were the largest, in comparison with the wealth ot the givers, raised in Christendom in the Christian centuries.

The building of the church, of course, signified the establishment of stated Christian services, the preaching of the Word, the reading of the Bible, teach

228 History of the Christian Church.

ing of the children, public prayer and Christian song, and the administration of the sacraments, with the exercise of a Christian discipline more or less strict. These taken out or added to the life of a community just bringing the wilderness from savagery to cultivation, made all the difference between a community which held to all the great common traditions and ethical standards of a Christian civilization, and one which did not; between a community in which people wished to live and rear their children in the Christian faith, and one in which they did not.

The New England settlers as soon as possible proceeded to erect a schoolhouse and a church. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, in 1822, made the journey from Albany to Niagara Falls before the opening of the Erie Canal. He noted with pleasure that in the newest and smallest communities there was always a church. This was not the case with settlers from the South sometimes, as in a case known to the writer in Western New York, where the horse-race and the theater had twenty years the start of the church. This was largely true at first in the South and Middle West. Often the early settlers were not only irreligious, but positive unbelievers of the Thomas Paine type. In all these conditions, to plant the Christian Church so universally and so permanently has been the greatest achievement of Christian conquest since the conversion of the Teutonic people, if not since that of the Roman Empire.

To arrest the tide of infidelity, of ungodliness, of religious indifference, and often of gross immorality, required heroic efforts and the strongest appeals to

The Christian Church in America. 229

the conscience and the will. In some communities the members of the bar, the men prominent in political and business life, were followers of the teachings of the “Age of Reason.” When the Christian preachers began to make converts, the opposition of such men often was aroused. Sometimes even mock celebrations of the Lord’s Supper were held by the blasphemers. In the other communities, organized bands of law-breakers had the upper hand. Amid such conditions the ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed both the Law and the Gospel. The entire period was marked by great revivals of religion. The conquests won in the wilderness were won by the Trinitarian and non-liturgical Churches. The teaching was of the strong Evangelical type. Those Churches which were willing to employ a pious and self-denying though unlearned ministry in the stress of the great emergency, were most successful as the pioneers of the Christian Church.

Such men could do needed work among the settlers of the great West and South. 'Under their labors broke out the great revivals of the

Revivals.

close of the eighteenth century and at the opening years of its successor. In July, 1800, under the ministry of two brothers, William and John McGee, the one a Presbyterian minister and the other a Methodist local preacher, revival meetings were held throughout the Cumberland region of Tennessee and Kentucky. The people were so engaged in the revival that they came out and camped together for a week, during which services were held constantly,

230 History of the Christian Church.

with many clear conversions and consequent reformations of life. This was the origin of camp-meetings, which became a feature of American Church life, especially among the Methodists, and from which sprang the Chautauquas and Ocean Groves of the present day. From this movement also arose the Cumberland Presbyterian and the Primitive Methodist Churches. Such revival meetings followed almost invariably the preaching of the Methodist itinerants, and also often that of the Baptists and Presbyterians. In this manner were organized the infant Churches of the West and South. Those who renewed their vows oi Christian faith and service, and the new converts, founded the first Churches of the wilderness. Then came in their train the settled services of the Christian Church, and the blessings of Christian civilization. Thus was the West first won, and through the self-denying labors of the frontier preachers it was Christianized.

The same revival services in the better-settled frontiers of the country were the means of overcoming the infidelity, the religious indifference, and the ungodliness of the people, and of building up the Christian Church. Here, as in the West, the Methodist itinerants were always at the front; but noted among the revival preachers of this period were Charles G. Finney, Edwin N. Kirk, Lyman Beecher and Jacob Knapp; the three first Congregationalists, and the last a Baptist. The great work of founding and building up the Christian Church in the United States in the first half of the century was largely wrought out through the instrumentality of the religious revival.

The Christian Church in America. 231

The Church thus founded or replenished undertook a much larger and more varied work than any previous generation had known. As the The teaching and life of the Church was of the Enlarged

-r-v «. 1 . . ... Activities

Evangelical type, so were its activities. ₀f th©

The first new and transforming agency Church, was the Sunday-school. By 1825 the Sunday-school movement took possession of nearly all American Churches except the Primitive, or so-called Hardshell Baptists. This, of course, made ^Th5_<?_h^u₀"‘J^ay’ a great demand for Bibles, for religious books and periodicals, adapted to the use of children and youth. It also made necessary a closer study of the Bible by a large body of intellectual laymen and women, the most intelligent and self-sacrificing persons connected with the Church. Thus the children early in life became connected with Christian people and conversant with the great truths of the Christian religion. From this time each generation, came to know the Christian Church, Christian people, and Christian truth. Thus were laid the foundations of Christian, individual, and national life.

Next after caring for the religious instruction of the children the Churches felt upon them the burden of fulfilling our Lord’s last command, to “disciplethe nations.” The Mission Band, first formed at Williams College, and afterward at Andover Theological Seminary, consisting of Mills, Newell, Rice, and Judson, led to the founding of the American Board of Foreign Missions among the Con-gregationalists in 1810. The conversion of Judson to Baptist opinions in 1813 led to the formation of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1814. The Methodists

232 History of the Christian Church.

followed in 1819, but sent out no foreign missionary until 1832. In 1824 the Episcopalians organized their Missionary Society. The Presbyterians at first worked with the American Board, but in 1836 was founded the first Presbyterian Missionary Society, followed in this period by the Reformed Dutch Church and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1832. The Lutheran Missionary Society was founded in 1837, the Free-will Baptists in 1834, and the Southern Baptist and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1845. Thus most of the American Churches had by 1850 able representatives on foreign mission fields.

These works of instruction demanded the use of many copies of the Bible, and the Evangelical ideal was not only a Bible in every family, but Societies ^one ^^{or ever}y adult person in the communities. This led to the foundation of the American Bible Society in 1816, an agency which is fundamental to the work of the Evangelical Churches in this and foreign lands.

Before, and especially following, the work of the Bible Societies, came the Tract Societies, to furnish religious and revivalistic literature for the Societies Churches. The Massachusetts Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, in 1803; the Connecticut Religious Tract Society, in 1807; Vermont Religious Tract Society, in 1808; New York Religious Tract Society, in 1812; New England Tract Society, in 1814. Then the Church Tract Societies: The Protestant Episcopal Tract Society, 1809; the Methodist Tract Society, 1817; the Baptist General Tract Society, 1824; and the American Tract Society, 1825.

The Christian Church in America. 233

After these Societies came usually the founding of the great publishing-houses, though that of the Methodist Episcopal Church dated from 1789. _Church Thus came into being that agency second Publication only to preaching, the religious periodical ^Hou8es-press. It must increase in interest and power as the work of the Church and the evangelization of the world advances; but it can never in any measure take the place of the Christian pulpit. Thus it is seen that in the work of Sunday-schools, missions, and a Church press, all the American Churches except a fraction of the Baptists, and excluding the Roman Catholics, are united in a large and more varied Church work than any other century has known. This applies to all the Evangelical Churches in regard to the publication of the Bible and of religious literature. As the Church of Rome was not friendly to popular education, and has several times vigorously denounced Bible Societies, its work in these lines is necessarily later and more limited than among the Evangelical Churches.

The Churches began about 1820 to realize the necessity of increased facilities for affording a Christian education in secondary schools and colleges,

^ « Education.

and the necessity for theological schools.

The latter came first in the older Churches. The founding of Andover in 1808, of Yale Divinity School in 1822, and those of Bangor in 1816, and Hartford in 1834, supplied the needs of the Congregationalists. The Presbyterians founded Princeton Theological Seminary in 1812; Auburn in 1816; Western at Allegheny, in 1826; Lane at Cincinnati, in 1827; Columbia, S. C., and Danville, Ky., in 1828; and Union at New York, in 1836.

234 History of the Christian Church.

The Episcopalians founded the General Theological Seminary in New York in 1822, and at Alexandria, Va., in 1823; the Baptists did the same work at Newton, Mass., 1826; the Methodists were last, beginning at Concord in 1849. The Methodists, however, were in the advance in founding their numerous Conference seminaries. All the Churches vied with each other in founding colleges in the Middle West.

In the reform, the Churches showed the ethical spirit of Christianity in denouncing dueling and securing its abolition. The death of Alexander Dueling! Hamilton by the hand of Aaron Burr emphasized the necessity of this reform. But the sermons of Dr. John M. Mason, Dr. Eliphalet Nott, and Lyman Beecher contributed powerfully to that end.

They also fell into line in the course of time, under the lead of Lyman Beecher, against the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor. He preached

Temperance. , . _

his famous “ Six Sermons on Intemperance ” in 1825. The advance was slow but permanent. It is said that Albert Barnes’s Church in Morristown, N. J., in 1836, had a Temperance Society which was pledged to reduce daily the ration of applejack from a quart to a pint. The Washingtonian movement in 1840, and Father Mathew’s visit in 1849, greatly advanced the cause, and at the end of this period the Congregational, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist Churches were committed to total abstinence.

The attitude of the Church in regard to slavery is far less honorable. At the beginning of the century all Churches regarded slavery as an evil. This position was held in theory, though the practice did not correspond, until about 1830.

The Christian Church in America. 235

The Churches in the South had bowed to the social, political, and economic necessity so long that they were glad to discover that slavery was a divine institution, and sheltered under the aegis of the practice of the patriarchs and the Jewish law; the further steps of applying the same reasoning to polygamy was taken by the Mormons within ten years. Few things could show more clearly the necessity of a view of the Bible which should see in it a progress of theological and ethical teachings, instead of that mechanical view which esteemed every part as equally inspired and obligatory. From the time that Southern Christians supposed that they had Biblical sanction for their peculiar institution until its final overthrow in a bloody and destructive Civil War, they grew more sensitive and more imperious and arrogant. Their intolerance, which stifled all dissent or discussion south of the Ohio and the Potomac, reached beyond to resent all criticism and crush all opposition in the North; the system was so contrary to the whole movement for liberty and the sentiment of humanity which characterized the century, and to the spirit of the institutions of the Republic, that this attitude of intolerance and armed precaution'seemed a necessity.

On the other hand, those forces gathered intensity and strength. While the South looked forward to the reopening of the African slave-trade, Great Britain freed all her slaves in her colonies in 1833. France did the same in 1848. The New England Antislavery Society was founded in 1834, and the American Antislavery Society in 1836. William Lloyd Garrison and his followers were tremendously in earnest. Often narrow and unwise, they at last aroused increasingly the con

236 History of the Christian Church.

science and the intellect of the North. The Churches of the North could not resist the tremendous moral pressure of the categorical imperative which, in secular politics, phrased itself in William H. Seward’s “ Irrepressible Conflict,” and in Abraham Lincoln’s “ The country can not remain half slave and half free.”

The day of decision came earlier to the Churches than to the nation. The situation was difficult and delicate. Possibly if, at the beginning, the Churches had stood together against the iniquitous system before cotton became a great staple, emancipation could have been secured. The difficulties were certainly immense. On the other hand, after 1830, a Church which should forbid its members to hold slaves would simply have to emigrate and leave the South. Nevertheless, nothing could stifle the voice of conscience in the North and the whole civilized world. This made inevitable the Civil War. We can not say that it might not have been avoided, but we may safely say that only a united movement of all the moral forces of the South could have averted it. The separation of the strongest Churches in the South—the Presbyterians in 1837, the Methodists in 1844, and the Baptists in 1845—made any such union impossible. The Churches did not secure peaceful emancipation. Those in the South became the apologists and strong supporters of slavery, some even feeling called solemnly to declare that it was of divine appointment.

In the North the Antislavery sentiment strengthened with each passing year. The Northern Churches fortified the sentiment in favor of Union, and, at the same time, declaring necessary the restriction of slavery to the territory it already occupied. Thus was

The Christian Church in America. 237

prepared that great uprising which surprised the world when the echoes of the first gun of Sumter reached the North. Not less than of first historical importance were the efforts of the Northern Churches in preparation, and then in effort and endurance, when came the crisis out of which was born a free nation.

Slavery divided most of the Churches; but, aside from this, it was an era of sectarian separation. The division in each denominational group will be mentioned later. Aside from these _DJ_visions. there arose the Christian denomination, the Disciple, the Cumberland Presbyterian, and the Methodist Protestant, which may fairly be called Churches. It was an era of eager sectarian and denominational rivalry. The divisions of this time show that there did not exist the idea of an Evangelical catholic Church. If we have missions we must have a catholic Church, and neither national or racial barriers can prevent its spread or divide it into sections. The time of these troubles is overpast, but the results remain. On the other hand, the rapid Christianization of North America was due largely to those sectarian divisions and the rivalry they called forth. No one organization, however venerable, or well disciplined, or wealthy, could have so reached the people, or so planted the Christian Church in the little communities, as well as cities, towns, and villages throughout the land. In the light of this fact the sectarian separation and attendant rivalry may be called providential. To sow this great land with the gospel and the institutions of the Christian Church was the first great need. This was done, and 110 generation of men before ever saw so many places of

238 History of the Christian Church.

worship erected and consecrated to the service of the Christian faith. Poor and humble though most of them were, they were the forerunners of stately edifices which should worthily express in enduring form the faith and devotion of one of the greatest peoples of the race. The sectarian controversy, bitterness, and waste have largely passed away, as in the latter day a truer light has shone from God’s Word upon the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

To these divergencies from the normal type were added direct perversions. From William Miller arose

the Advent societies. Miller had com-

Perverslons.

puted that the world would end in 1843, and drew away tens of thousands to his convictions. The failure of his predictions brought wide-spread religious disaster, as most of his followers were exemplary and devout Christians, and great was the shock to their faith.

Another delusion was of an altogether different kind. Joseph Smith, Heber Kimball, and Brigham Young were men brought up near each other in Western New York, a few miles east of Rochester. In 1839, Smith moved to Illinois, and at Nauvoo he built a Mormon temple. He was killed by a mob in 1844, and his followers were compelled to leave the country. They made a perilous and weary march beyond the Rocky Mountains. This, like Mohammed’s Hegira to Medina, was the turning-point in their history. In 1843 polygamy was revealed as a part of the Mormon faith. The early Mormon leaders were ignorant, shrewd, and unscrupulous. They made chief gain from the lower classes of the Evangelically-trained population of the British Isles and

The Christian Church in America. 239

Scandinavia. Few or none came from Roman Catholic countries or families.

This gigantic imposture is in part a mixture of Christianity and Feeemasonry, and in part a retrogression to stark heathenism. Its estimate of woman and practice of polygamy shows a permanent debasing of the Christian ideal. Its power is first in caring for and providing for the economic future of the poor who come to its folds in a new country with an advance of working capital. This power is then conserved and mercilessly used to further the ends of the organization by the strictest and most minute forms of hierarchical discipline. Its ability to send missionaries to the ends of the earth comes from the oath every adult male is compelled to take to serve two years as Mormon missionaries for his expenses. These missionaries preach, for the most part, ordinary Christian doctrine. The sting is in the tail, a few words at the close of the address. Polygamy is forbidden by law, but is secretly practiced, and is openly defended. The missionaries are generally ignorant young men, knowing nothing of the Christian religion or Church except what they have been taught among the Mormons. - They necessarily learn many things, and are not the same Mormons when they return. They gather no converts from the Roman Catholic or the Episcopal Churches, where their people are instructed as to the meaning and value of the Christian Church.

The Evangelical Churches have paid no higher price in loss and shame for their neglect to emphasize the nature and significance of the Christian Church than in the rise and growth of Mormonism, though

240 History of the Christian Church.

this unfortunately is not alone. Probably no successful effort can be made to reach the Mormon people with the religion of Christ which does not add to the work of the Church and school an organization, discipline, and economic provision equal to that afforded by the Mormon Church. Failing this, the work of increasing popular intelligence and changed economic conditions must prepare the way for a return to the Christian faith.

In 1849, a few miles east from the early home of the Mormon leaders, lived the Fox sisters, from whose rappings arose modern Spiritualism, which at one time drew hundreds of thousands into its maelstrom of delusion, and alienated them from the Christian faith.

Among the mass of Christian believers there was little doctrinal change except in the rejection of the harsher tenets of Calvinism. The entire Chang"^{81 s}y^stem
was rejected by the Methodists, the Free-will Baptists, and the so-called Christians, as well as the Disciples. The Cumberland Presbyterians struck out its cardinal tenets; the Oberlin Congregationalists omitted the articles in regard to preterition and reprobation from their creed. In the very stronghold of New England Calvinism the Yale Divinity was a marked declension from the teaching of Hopkins and Emmons. The man in New England, probably, who did most to loosen its hold was Horace Bushnell. The necessity for it he clearly sets forth in the following paragraph:

“ To see brought up in distinct array before us the multitudes of leaders and schools and theologic wars of only the century past,—the supralapsarians

The Christian Church in America. 241

and sublapsarians; the Artninianizers and the Calvinists ; the Pelagians and the Augustinians; the Fasters and Exorcisers; Exercisers by Divine efficiency, and by human self-efficiency; the love-to-being-general virtue, and the willing-to-be-damned virtue, and the love-to-one’s-greatest-happiness virtue; no ability, all ability, and moral and natural ability distinguished; disciples by new-creating act of omnipotence, and by change of the governing purpose; atonement by punishment and by expression, limited and general, by imputation and without imputation,—nothing, I think, would more certainly disenchant us of our confidence in systematic orthodoxy, and the possibility in human language of an exact theological science, than an exposition so practical and serious, and withal so indisputably mournful—so mournfully indisputable.”

It was high time for the religion of the Puritans to get out of this wilderness and to face realities— to preach a faith that could evangelize and win the heathen. On the other hand, the Presbyterians remained true to the old Calvinist standards, the Old School strictly so. At Princeton, Dr. Charles Hodge taught a limited atonement—that Christ died for the elect only-—but he regarded the Arminian doctrine as not an essential error, and that men holding it could be, and were, greatly blessed of God in building up his kingdom. How strong was the Calvinism of the ordinary Presbyterian pastor may be seen by any one who will read Dr. Ichabod Spencer’s “ Pastoral Sketches.” Nor did most of them, especially in the West, hold Dr. Hodge’s charitable view in regard to Arminianism. Father Daniel Rice, of Kentucky,

242 History of the Christian Church.

stated-the process of descent to be as follows: “Calvinism to Arminianism, Arminianism to Pelagianism, Pelagianism to Deism, Deism to Atheism.” So, according to his statement, Arminianism led directly to Atheism. If it did not arrive there, it was no fault of the logic of the process.

As a rule, the Baptists were strong Calvinists; the Primitive, or so-called Hardshell, Baptists were the sternest of all in their adherence to the system of the Reformer of Geneva. The deflection in regard to the Divinity of Christ, and in regard to the future punishment of the wicked, will be treated in connection with the Unitarians and Universalists.

There were some ministers whose influence reached far beyond the bounds of the Church or denomination they served, and affected all the Churches, ^Clergy!"^2
anc^ even the nation itself. There were others whose influence was only indirectly felt beyond their Church, but whose work in this sphere was permanent and often transforming. An attempt will be made to group together the representative clergymen of this era belonging to the first class. This group would include, in the Congregational Churches, Timothy Dwight, Lyman Beecher, and Charles G. Finney; among the Unitarians, William E. Channing, Ralph W. Emerson, and Theodore Parker; among the Baptists, Adoniram Judson and Francis Wayland; in the Presbyterian Church, Dr. John M. Mason and Albert Barnes; in the Episcopalian, Bishop White and Bishop Mcllvaine; among the Methodists, Francis Asbury, Peter Cartwright, Thomas H. Stockton, John Summerfield, and George G. Cookman. These men all made their work felt, in

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wider or narrower circles, far beyond the bounds of their own Communion. These were all remarkable men, and they wrought together mightily to make Christian the people of the United States.

Timothy Dwight (1752-1817) is known ,to all Christians as the author of the hymn, “ I love thy kingdom, Lord;” to all who know the religious history of the United States, as the man who first stemmed the current of French infidelity among men of education while president of Yale College, 1795-1817. For this service he was admirably fitted by descent and training. His grandfather was Jonathan Edwards, and he was born, the eldest of thirteen children, at Northampton, Mass. At seventeen he graduated at Yale, and, after two years, was called there to serve as tutor for the next six years. In 1777 he resigned, to serve as chaplain in the Continental Army. After a year’s service, the death of his father called him home to care for the orphans. For the next five years he taught school to add to the financial resources of his own and his father’s family. In 1783 he became pastor at Greenfield, Conn., and remained until called to the presidency of Yale College. ' While at Greenfield, to add to his slender resources, and make them adequate to the care of the family, he conducted an academy, in which, in these years, he taught a thousand students. When he came to Yale, infidelity was rife. Thomas Paine was a favorite author, and but few of the students were Christians. President Dwight was the man for such a crisis. He taught, and in the lecture-room solicited questions in regard to the Christian religion, and answered them. He preached, and in each

244 History of the Christian Church.

four years brought before the students a complete body of Divinity. He wrote “The Nature and Danger of Infidel Philosophy,” and infidelity was ban. ished from Yale, while extensive and fervent revivals, from 1797 on, made the students almost universally Christians. This marked the turning of the tide in favor of the Christian faith. The whole land profited by his manly and successful work.

Lyman Beecher (1775-1863), a scholar of Dwight’s, was a man of national reputation as a preacher and a reformer. Next after Dr. Benjamin Rush Beecher. ^e ^stan(i^s iⁿ the lead of the temperance reform in America. His six “ Sermons on Intemperance” have never been surpassed in their effect. Lyman Beecher was an independent thinker, a strong reasoner in the pulpit, mingling humor with pathos, but most effective in practical application and fervent appeal. While his occasional sermons are models of pulpit eloquence, he was a most earnest and successful revival preacher. He graduated from Yale in 1797. After studying Divinity for a year with President Dwight, he accepted a pastorate at East-hampton, Long Island, where he remained on a salary of $300 a year for twelve years. While there he preached his famous sermon against dueling. In 1810 he removed to Litchfield, Conn., which was the scene of his labors for the ensuing sixteen years. The next six years he served Hanover Street Church, Boston. There he was at his best as a successful revivalist and a sturdy and successful opponent of the prevalent Unitarianism. In 1832 he was called to Cincinnati, Ohio, as the president of Lane Theological Seminary and the pastor of the Second Presbyterian

The Christian Church in America. 245

Church. This position he held for twenty years. Though seventy students left Lane to found Oberlin, and he was in 1835 tried and acquitted for heresy, his influence increased as a preacher, an antislavery reformer, and a man. Lyman Beecher’s three wives bore him thirteen children, among them Henry Ward Beecher and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” He was said to be the father of more brains than any other man in America.

Charles G. Finney (1792-1875) had a different training. After getting what education he could in the schools of Northern New York, and after teaching school for some time, he pinney. * studied law and practiced. At the age of twenty-nine he was converted; three years later he was licensed to preach, and became the most successful revivalist of the first half of the nineteenth century. From 1824 to 1832 he labored as a revivalist, and the influence of his labors yet remains. For the next two years he was at the Tabernacle Church in New York. In 1835 he went to Oberlin College as president, where he remained for forty years. His work and influence there have made the town and college, and their spirit, his best monument.

The men best known beyond the bounds of the Baptist Church were Adoniram Judson and Francis Wayland.

Adoniram Judson (1788-1850) was the first American Baptist missionary, and his noble wife, Ann Has-seltine, the first American woman engaged in foreign mission work. He graduated judson!" from Providence College (now Brown University) in 1807. Though not a professing Christian,

246 History of the Christian Church.

lie went to Andover Theological Seminary, and there was converted in 1809; the next year he resolved to become a missionary. On business connected with missions, he went to London in 1811. With Newell and Rice he sailed for India, February, 1812. November 1, 1812, he was baptized by Ward, the Baptist missionary, having changed his views on baptism during the voyage. Judson was not allowed to remain in Hindustan by the Hast India Company, and, after sailing to the Isle of France, he returned to Bur-mah, making that the land of his labors, and arriving there in July, 1813. June 27, 1819, Judson baptized his first Burmese convert. In 1820 he went to the capital, Ava, and sought, without success, to obtain protection for his mission. Twice afterwards he was at the capital to found there, if possible, a mission. When war broke out between England and Burmah, in June, 1824, Judson and his heroic wife endured the horrors of a loathsome imprisonment and threatened death. Judson was in prison one year and nine months—nine months in three pairs, and two months in five pairs of fetters; then six months in one pair. His wife never recovered the strain of those days, dying October 24, 1826. Six months later her last child followed her. In 1828, Judson and Boardman began the successful mission to the Karens, one of the triumphs of modern missions. In 1834 he completed the translation of the Bible into Burmese. Later he finished a Burmese and English Dictionary. Few missionaries ever mastered a native tongue as did Adoniram Judson, and this was one of the secrets of his success.

Mrs. Judson had visited America in 1824. Her

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husband refused an invitation to return for a season to his native land. After the death of his wife he remained a widower for more than seven years. Then he married, April, 1834, Mrs. Sarah H. Boardman^ whose missionary husband, George D. Boardman, died in February, 1831.

After thirty-two years’ absence, Judson sailed for America in April, 1845, on account of the health of his wife. She, after bearing him eight children, died at St. Helena, September, 1845. Judson sailed on to America, where he aroused great enthusiasm for the cause of missions. In June, 1846, he married Miss Emily Chubbock, and they sailed for Burmah in July of the same year. For more than three years he toiled in the land of his love and missionary labors, and then, under medical advice, he sailed for the Isle of Bourbon, but died at sea, April 12, 1850, in the sixty-second year of his age. The first of American foreign missionaries proved one of the most heroic, laborious, and successful.

Few men had a more permanent influence in the Baptist Church than Francis Wayland (1796-1865). His parents came to the United States from England three years before his birth. His Wayland. father became a Baptist minister. The son was able to enter Union College in the sophomore year, and graduated in 1813. He studied medicine, and began its practice, when his conversion made a change in his career. He studied for the ministry for one year at Andover, and then he was offered the position of tutor at Union College. There he taught for the next four years. At twenty-five years of age he was called to the pastorate of the First Baptist

248 History of the Christian Church.

Church in Boston. For five years he was pastor at Boston, building up an enviable reputation as a strong thinker and a hard worker. In 1826 he was called to the chair of Moral Philosophy at Union College; but after a few months’ service he left the position, to become president of Brown Uuiversity, 1827-1855. There his high educational ideals, and success in realizing them, made him a name among college instructors of his time. His literary work and sermons, and especially his text-books on Moral and Intellectual Philosophy and Political Economy widened his influence. His thought was always clear, and his illustrations often admirable. Few can estimate the value of his work at Brown University to that institution, to his Church, and to American Christianity.

William Ellery Channing (1780-1842) was the most distinguished American clergyman of this william P^eri°d in literary work and its influence in

Eiiery Europe and America. His character, his Channing. g_enerous nature, his eloquence, and his unfaltering labors for the enslaved, the poor, and the distressed, gave him a unique reputation. In many respects he was the most famous American clergyman in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Channing was born at Newport, R. I., and in his nineteenth year graduated at Harvard College. For two years he taught as a private tutor in Richmond^ Va. He held a subordinate position at Harvard for the two ensuing years, and in June, 1803, he began his pastorate at Federal Street Church, Boston, which ceased only with his death. All these years he was the most popular preacher in Boston. His sermon in Baltimore in 1819 makes the distinctive outward

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separation of the Unitarians from the orthodox Churches, though he was always more of an Arian than a Socinian. In 1822 he visited Europe, and in 1830 the West Indies. His literary career began in 1826, and his work for the slave in 1835. For high ethical impulse and ideal, and for a certain intellectual breadth, though not profound in thought, and for a transparent clearness of style, Channing will always hold his place.

A different man was Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). A descendant of a long series of New England divines, he was the American _RaIph exponent of the Romantic Movement, and Waldo was influenced by the pantheism with ^Emerson-which it was allied in Germany. As a poet and essayist he has left his lasting mark upon American literature. His theology was too hazy to allow him ever to be a preacher. In 1829 he was called to Second Church in Boston, but resigned in 1832 because of doctrinal divergence, and because he wished to abolish, or entirely change, the significance of the Lord’s Supper. In 1836 he delivered his pantheistic address on “ Nature,” and two years later his Divinity School address^ in which he broke with historic Christianity. As a clergyman, Emerson had little influence, but he led the new departure of the Unitarians from the school of Channing, Buckminster_j and Ware to that represented by Theodore Parker and the radical wing of the later generation. As a thinker he became less iconoclastic in his later years, though he always was an idealistic individualist, who had little perception of the meaning or value of historic institutions, or even those of more recent date.

250 History of the Christian Church.

Theodore Parker (i810-1860) was a man of intense intellectual vigor and indefatigable industry.

Self-reliant and courageous, he knew no barker? reverence, could not appreciate the intellectual position of those who differed from him, and had no historical perspective. From Emerson he derived his denials, but more than any other man of his time he was a furious iconoclast. In constructive thought he left no mark. For temperance, for the Antislavery cause, and against political, social, and religious shams he struck sturdy blows. He was a popular lecturer, but little permanent effect remained from his work after his decease. His ancestors were participants in the Revolutionary struggle, and stood high in the community. His father had a small shop and a farm. There was nourished in study and toil one of the most keenly-acquisitive intellects of the century. At eight he had already read a good deal of history and poetry. At seventeen he began to teach district school, and at twenty entered Harvard College. The next year financial stress drove him to teaching in Boston; there he gave instruction in Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, mathematics, and philosophy. The following year he opened a private school at Watertown, Mass. There he read Greek and Latin authors, Cousin’s Philosophy in French, and Goethe, Schiller, and Klopstock in German, besides reciting in Hebrew at Cambridge. In 1834 he entered the Cambridge (Unitarian) Divinity School, where he remained until the summer of 1836. This was the chief systematic instruction he enjoyed. After candi-dating, he settled at West Roxbury in 1837, where he remained until Januury, 1845. There he dipped into

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various studies, read enormously, giving the chief place to German philosophy, and richly storing a marvelously capacious and retentive memory. Here also he translated DeWette’s “Introduction to the New Testament.” In May, 1841, he preached a sermon on “The Permanent and the Transient in Christianity.” In this he declared against the inspiration of the Bible, the Divinity of Jesus Christ, the Church, the ministry, and the Sabbath as divine institutions. In 1842 he published a “Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion.” In this he said: “ Man’s religion is a just development from the nature within him and the outward world; God, duty, and immortality are conceptions which arise of themselves in human souls. Out of these fundamental ideas all religious systems have been built up.”

In 1843, Parker went to Europe for a year’s sojourn. On returning, in January, 1845, he began his work as the pastor of an independent congregation meeting in a public hall in Boston. There was no Church organization, and there were no sacraments. There was one address each Sunday, which was literary or philanthropic quite as often as religious. The audience were mostly free religionists out of touch with the orthodox Churches. These never failed to come in for a scourging of stinging sarcasm, so that many felt that the great revival of 1858 was the fitting answer to his irreverent attacks. Through overwork and lack of care for his health, his strong physique began to give away in 1859. He sailed for Santa Cruz, and then for Europe. In May, i860, he died in Florence. He was a typical selfmade American, with high moral ideals and intense

252 History of the Christian Church.

energy. The failure of his work is a most impressive lesson.

The Presbyterian Church stood at the farthest extreme from Unitarian denial and theological radicalism. Its intelligent ministry, and the high average of wealth and social position in its congregations, gave it great influence. While the average ability of its pastors was probably surpassed only by the Con-gregationalists, if by them, it did not produce many men of national reputation, certainly none the equal of two presidents of Princeton College in the preceding century—Jonathan Edwards and John Witherspoon . *

John Mitchell Mason (1770-1829) worthily represented this Church in these years. He was born in New York City, and graduated from Colum-Maso^ ^^ia College in 1789. He then pursued his divinity studies at Edinburgh. The death of his father recalled him in 1792. The same year he was chosen pastor of the Associated Reformed Church of New York City, of which his father had been pastor for thirty-one years. This position he filled until 1810, when he resigned, to establish a new congregation. In 1804 he was associated in the founding of the Union Theological Seminary, in which he accepted a professorship. In 1811 he became also Provost of Columbia College and largely increased the efficiency of that institution. In 1802 and 1816 he visited Europe. From 1821 to 1824 he was president of Dickinson College. In 1822 he united with the Presbyterian Church. From 1824 to 1829 he lived in retirement in New York. John M. Mason was an earnest Christian, a high-minded con

The Christian Church in America. 253

troversialist, as shown in his polemic with Bishop Hobart. But he was a prince of pulpit orators ; few men in America ever preached such occasional sermons. His sermon upon the death of Alexander Hamilton concentrated public indignation against dueling. His sermon before the London Missionary Society on “Messiah’s Throne” made Robert Hall say, “ I can never preach again.”

A man of extraordinary force of character, of great ability and accomplishment, was Eliphalet Nott (1773-1866), the founder, and for sixty

^ /--r-r* 11 TT Eliphalet

years the president, of Union College. Me _Nott was born at Ashford, Wyndham County,

Conn. At four years of age he read through the Bible; at sixteen he began teaching school, and was the head of Plainfield Academy at eighteen. He spent a year in Brown University, and then studied theology under his brother, and was licensed to preach in 1796. He labored as a schoolteacher and missionary at Otsego Lake and Cherry Valley, i795~ 1798. In the latter year he became pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Albany, and was the most influential pastor in that city. In 1804 his sermon on the death of Alexander Hamilton gave him a national reputation. In the same year he was elected president of Union College, and this became his life work. In it he achieved marvelous success, drawing to it students from all parts of the Union, especially from the South. He was an expert mechanic and a successful inventor. As a financier he brought wealth to his college and to himself. His “Counsels to Young Men on the Formation of Character” and “ Lectures on Temperance were not only popular, but of great value. But Dr.

254 History of the Christian Church.

Nott was at his best as a preacher; carefully preparing, and yet never reading, he influenced the four thousand young men who graduated from his training as no other college president of that day in America. Even to great age he preserved his vigor and influence.

In this century, until his death in 1836, William White (1748-1836) was easily the foremost figure in the Episcopal Church, and the most influ-whlte” ential clergyman of that communion in the United States. His spotless character, his wide sympathies, his evangelical teaching, and his position as the dean of the Episcopate for all these years, and practically the founder and leader of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, gave him unique claims upon the public men of the nation of all communions. He linked together in public service and acquaintance the administrations of Washington and Jackson. He died respected and honored by Christians of every name.

Next to Bishop White in national influence was Charles P. Mcllvaine (1798-1873). His father was United States Senator from New Jersey, Mc^vatne.’ ^an(* y^oung Mcllvaine graduated from Princeton in 1816. He was ordained deacon by Bishop White in 1820, and priest two years later. From 1825 to 1827 he was Professor of Ethics and chaplain at West Point. From 1827 to 1832 he was Rector of St. Ann’s in Brooklyn, N. Y. In the latter year he was elected Bishop of Ohio, and did honor to the Episcopate for the remaining years of his life. He published a popular treatise on “Christian Evidences.” He was a lifelong opponent of the Oxford Movement. In 1841 appeared his “Oxford

The Christian Church in America. 255

Divinity Compared with that of the Romish and Anglican Churches;” in 1844, “No Priest, no Altar, no Sacrifice, but Christ;” in 1855, a volume of “Sermons.” These were highly commended and enjoyed by such men as Lord Shaftesbury. Mcllvaine’s position as the leader of the Low Church party in this country gave him a wide and lasting reputation and influence. His warm Evangelical sympathies, shown in his “Life of Simeon,” as well as his personal conduct, made him one of the founders and a lifelong friend of the Evangelical Alliance. His influence as a patriot during the Civil War was widespread and commanding.

The Methodist Church in the early part of this period was best known through the heroic labors and matchless self-denial of Francis Asbury (1745-1816). In these years, amid many Xsbury. infirmities and the burdens of advancing age, he kept up his arduous labors and his extended travels. Thus he finished one of the most successful careers of Gospel Evangelism the Christian Church has ever known. He laid the foundation of a great Church and of the civilization of a great empire in the heart of the American Continent. No other man laid the molding hand of future destiny on so many great communities and commonwealths.

The typical pioneer Methodist itinerant in many respects, in the New West in these days, was Peter Cartwright (1785-1872). He was born in Virginia, and in 1793, with his father’s _CartwHght. family, removed to Logan County, Ky.

There, at the age of sixteen, he was converted. The next year he was licensed to exhort, and for a few

256 History of the Christian Church.

months attended Brown’s Academy. In 1804 he entered the Kentucky Conference, and four years later was ordained elder. From 1812 to 1816 he was presiding elder. For the succeeding four years he traveled as a circuit preacher in Kentucky. In 1821 he was again appointed presiding elder, an office which he held until within three years of his death in 1872. The wit, the muscular Christianity, and the famous “Autobiography” of Peter Cartwright, made him "known in two continents. He was elected to twelve General Conferences from 1816 to 1858. In 1869 he took a superannuate relation. He was a man of superior mental vigor, keen knowledge of human nature, and warm sympathies. For all time his figure stands out among the backwoods preachers who subdued sinners and formed spiritual empires.

Two young men of English birth brought the Methodist Episcopal Church more before the public than the long and successful labors of men of a different order of gifts.

John Summerfield (1798-1825) was a child of genius as a pulpit orator. From early youth he de-_John lighted to hear the best speakers of the Summer- pulpit, the bar, the legislature, or the stage, field. _a p_recoci_ous intellectual development

and a nature equally intense and sympathetic, he had the gifts of pleasing popular address as few men of his time. A signal conversion in 1819 led him to an earnestness, devoutness, and grace of spirit, as well as speech, seldom equaled. His career was brief, but his name was as ointment poured forth. In 1818 he was received on trial in Ireland, and came to America

The Christian Church in America. 257

in March, 1821. His first appearance at the Anniversary of the American Bible Society marked him as a power in the pulpit. The largest churches could not contain those who crowded to hear him until his health broke down in June, 1822. He spent the next year in France for the Bible Society until April, 1824. Then, returning, he took up work as a missionary speaker, and aided in the organization of the American Tract Society. In June, 1825, his work was done, and he left behind the fragrance of a saintly life of rare sweetness and charm.

George G. Cookman (1800-1841) had but a little longer span of life before he went down in the ill-fated steamer Preside?it. Like Summer-field, he was the son of a Wesleyan local cookman. preacher. When twenty years of age he came to this country on business for his father, and was licensed as a local preacher at Schenectady, N. Y. In 1821 he returned to Hull, England, and entered into business with his father, at the same time doing the work of a Methodist preacher. In 1825 he came to Philadelphia, and was received the next year into the Philadelphia Conference. The remainder of his life was spent as an itinerant in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and in the city of Washington. In 1838-1839 he served as chaplain to the House of Representatives. His chaste language, the vividness of his imagination, and his earnest appeals gave him a national reputation, which he did not live to enjoy, but which came as a legacy to his son, Alfred Cookman, a man of eloquence, of rare purity and personal attraction.

258 History of the Christian Church.

A man of equal or greater eloquence, and of greater ability, was Thomas H. Stockton (1808-1868).

He was born at Mount Holly, N. J., and in Thomas h. g _{wag conver}t_e(j _an(j united with the

Stockton. “

Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. In 1829 he began to preach in the Methodist Protestant Church, of which he became a member. In 1833 he was chosen chaplain to Congress, and held this position for three successive sessions. He was again chosen to this office in 1862. He resided in Philadelphia from 1838 to 1847; from 1847 to 1850 he was in Cincinnati; in Baltimore, 1850 to 1856; and again in Philadelphia from 1856 to 1868. In all these places he served as pastor of a congregation of the Church of which he was the most distinguished minister.

Thomas H. Stockton offered the prayer at Gettysburg before Abraham Lincoln delivered his celebrated Address. Those who knew him well and had a wide experience in hearing eloquent men, pronounced him as without a peer as a pulpit orator in this country.

These were the men most prominently before the people of the whole country without reference to Church communions or denominational preferences. They were great men, and their influence was marked and lasting. But often effects of wider and more permanent value came from the labors of those who were little known outside of their own communions, but whose lives and work made those Churches a power in the land and the world. We shall therefore sketch briefly the history of the Churches of this period, and, in outline, the lives of those who most influenced their development.

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The Congregational Church.

The Congregationalists in this period worked with the Presyterians through the Plan of Union. They led the American Churches in the organization of the first Foreign Missionary Society, and in theological education in the founding of Andover Theological Seminary. New theological opinions at Yale and Oberlin produced controversies. They suffered the loss of the oldest historic Churches of Massachusetts, and the wealthiest of Boston, and of Harvard College, through the Unitarian Schism. They made large gains in the newer West, and held their own in New England through extensive revivals. Their colleges, Yale, Williams, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, and Amherst, gave them an intellectual leadership.

In 1801 the Congregationalists and Presbyterians arranged that, in all the new Churches in the West, the Churches composed of Congregational- _pjan ists and Presbyterians should belong to ₀i union, the Church of which the pastor was a minister, unless the congregation objected. This arrangement brought almost all the New England emigrants, the most enterprising citizens of the new communities, into the Presbyterian Church, as the Congregationalists made little effort to plant Churches west of New York until after the founding of Oberlin. But this New England element in Presbyterian-ism brought in a more Congregationalist form of Church government, and also a more liberal form of Calvinistic theology. These things were an offense to the more rigid Presbyterians.

On the other hand, the Presbyterians supported

260 History of the Christian Church.

the Congregational foreign missions through the American Board. It thus came to pass that in the new West the gain was to the Presbyterians, while the Foreign Mission Churches were Congregational. The separation of the Presbyterians in 1837 caused the Old School Presbyterians to withdraw from the Plan of Union and to begin their own foreign missions. The Congregationalists themselves renounced the Plan of Union in the Albany Convention of 1854, and from that date began an active, aggressive campaign in the West; but the ground lost in these first fifty years can never be made up. Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians then secured a leadership which will not soon pass away. In 1869, on the reunion of the Old and New School Presbyterians, the New School ceased to co-operate with the Congregationalists, and the American Board of Foreign Missions became for the first time exclusively a Congregational Society. During this period the first Congregational Churches were founded in the West as follows: Oregon, 1836; Iowa, 1840; Michigan, 1842; Illinois, 1846.

The first open breach between the orthodox Congregationalists and the Unitarian party came in 1803,

_The in the election of the Hollis Professor of Unitarian Divinity at Harvard College. The proschism. f_esSorship was founded in 1721 by an English Baptist; but in February, 1803, Rev. Henry Ware, a Unitarian, was chosen professor, and practically from that date Harvard College became a Unitarian institution. In the same year Channing began his ministry in Boston. In the same year also was founded the new organ of the party, the Monthly Anthology. In

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June, 1805, the leader of the Orthodox Congregation-alists founded the Panoplist, a vigorous controversial periodical. In 1811, Dr. Edward Griffin came to the Park Street Church of Boston. In the following year he and Dr. John Codman refused to exchange pulpits with the Unitarians, which caused great bitterness of feeling. In 1815 there was published “American Unitarianism,” being letters from prominent Boston clergymen to the English Unitarian, Theophilus Lindsey, which were republished in England. This made quite a sensation, as the letters marked a far wider divergence from the ancestral faith of the Congregational Churches than their writers in this country were wont to acknowledge. The final break came in 1819, when Channing preached the installation sermon of Jared Sparks at Baltimore, though the origin of the American Unitarian Church is usually dated from 1815. Channing’s sermon was replied to by the Andover professors, Leonard Woods and Moses Stuart; to them replied Henry Ware and Andrews Norton.

The right of the Unitarians to the church property, given and dedicated by men who abhorred the views which they preached, was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in the Dedham Church case, in 1820. In this case the majority of the inhabitants of the parish called Rev. Alvan Lamson, a Unitarian, to be pastor of the Church. Two-thirds of the members of the Church protested, but the court decided in favor of the parish as against the Church. This connection of the Church with the State cost the descendants of the Puritans the most grievous loss they ever sustained. Nothing like it could now be done. The first of the churches thus to be lost to the Con-

262 History of the Christian Church.

gregationalists was the Mother Church of them all, the old Pilgrim Church at Plymouth.

Rev. James Kendall, a Unitarian, was called to be pastor of the Church, and in October, 1801, one less than half of the Church members withdrew, and formed the Orthodox Congregational Church of Plymouth. Ninety-six Churches, including those earliest planted, and the pride and joy of their hearts, Harvard College, were lost to the Congregationalists. In Boston all but two Churches forsook the ancestral faith. One of those which stood fast was the Old South Church. In eighty-one churches that were divided, 3,900 Orthodox Congregationalists left $600,000 worth of church property to 1,282 Unitarians. Not only so, but the leading families in wealth and culture espoused the new doctrine. Such were the Adams, Quincy, Bigelow, Shaw, Lowell, Perkins, and Appleton families. On the other hand, though the defection was general, it was circumscribed. A circle, with a radius of thirty-five miles from Boston as a center, inclosed almost all of the Unitarian Churches. There was but one in Connecticut, and only a few in Western Massachusetts and Vermont. This schism consolidated, and made more aggressive, the Congregational Churches. The change in the State Constitution of Connecticut in 1818, and in that of Massachusetts in 1833, caused them to cease to be Established Churches. As the Congregationalists had no Churches in the South, the slavery question did not divide them; but the rather they, with the Unitarians, became the foremost of the American Churches in the furtherance of the Antislavery cause. Perhaps these did more than all others to prevent Kansas from be

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coming a slave State. The town of Lawrence, Kansas, and the University stand as unmistakable memorials of those days and of those men.

A few students of Williams College, meeting for a prayer-meeting in the shelter of a haystack, were the founders of the foreign mission work of the American Churches. They went to the Andover Theological Seminary, and were joined by some like-minded, and the whole band devoted themselves to mission work. The Williams College men were Samuel J. Mills, Jr., Gordon Hall, James Richards, Samuel Newell, and Luther Rice, and Samuel Nott, Jr., joined them. In June, 1810, the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions was organized. It was constituted on the lines of the London Missionary Society, and, in 1811, Judson was sent to London to study the workings of that organization. September 19, 1812, there sailed from Salem Mr. and Mrs. Judson and Samuel Newell and wife, the first American missionaries for foreign lands. They were followed by Luther Rice, Gordon Hall, and Samuel Nott, Jr. After Judson and Rice became Baptists, work was begun in Bombay by Hall and Nott in 1814, and extended to Ahmednuggur, Satara, Kolapur, Madura, Arcot, and Madras. They carried on a very successful work among the Cherokee Indians. In 1820 they begun the Syrian mission, and later that to the Armenians and Nestorians. In 1819 a most successfal mission was established in Hawaii under Messrs. Bingham, Thurston, and Coan, through which the islands became Christian. Work was begun in Africa in 1830, and in China in the same year.

264 History of the Christian Church.

The American Board, in the years 1811 to 1851, received from collections $4,774,834, and from legacies $440,701, or a total of more than $5,200,000. Ten years later they reported, from the beginning, 1,200 missionaries, 163 churches, and 20,621 members, of whom 14,413 were in Hawaii.

Besides the older colleges, the Congregationalists established in those years Amherst College, at Northampton, Mass., in 1821; Oberlin, at Ober-Education. ^ ^ _lg^. j_owaj 1847, ^now Grinnell,

at Grinnell, Iowa; and Beloit, at Beloit, Wis., in 1847.

The first and most influential of Congregational theological schools was Andover, founded May 10, 1808, and opened the September following. Schools⁸¹ Bangor was founded in 1816; Yale Divinity School in 1822. In opposition to the Yale Divinity, Bennett Tyler, former president of Dartmouth, founded the Bast Windsor, afterwards Hartford Theological Seminary, in 1834.

It was not schools, but teachers, that Theologians. _{made tlie New} £_ngi_an(i Congregationalists

strong in this new time.

Leonard Woods (1774-1854), more than any other man, was the founder of Andover Theological Seminary, where he was Professor of Theology Wood^ fr°^m i^ts beginning in 1808 until 1846. He graduated from Harvard in 1796; becoming converted, he became a pastor in 1798. He was a sturdy and consistent defender of New England Calvinism. He did not quarrel with the followers of Hopkins, though he accented the system differently. He was the bulwark against the Unitarian teaching. As a man and Christian, he had the love and rever^

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ence of the thousand students who graduated from his teaching.

Moses Stuart (1780-1852) was a man of broader scholarship, and the founder of Biblical learning, in its modern sense, in the United States.

__ , , , . . Moses Stuart.

He showed his intellectual taste and ability in the leading of Jonathan Edwards’s “On the Will” at twelve. He graduated from Yale in 1799, and was admitted to the bar in 1802. The same year he accepted the offer of a tutorship at Yale. Having been converted, he began the study of theology under President Dwight. In 1806 he was called to the pastorate of the First Church of New Haven. From 1810 to 1848 he was Professor of Hebrew at Andover Theological Seminary. His teaching was inspiring; but he influenced thought perhaps as much by his contributions, first to the “Biblical Repository,” and then to the “ Bibliotheca Sacra.” He and Dr. Edward G. Robinson, of New York, found their works reprinted and read on the other side of the Atlantic,

A more original thinker than either of these was Nathaniel Taylor (1786-1858). Dr. Taylor graduated from Yale in 1807, ^and was pastor of First Church, New Haven, from i8ioto 1822.

Then he was called to the Professorship of Theology in the Yale Divinity School, which place he held until his death in 1858. As a thinker, Dr. Taylor broke with Hopkins and Emmons, and sought to modify Calvinism by teaching the freedom of the will—the power men have to choose, notwithstanding the decrees—and that Adam’s sin does no.t impose personal guilt. He made the New England theology more preachable and better fitted for revival teaching,

266 History of the Christian Church.

and powerfully affected the New School Presbyterian Church. As a preacher and a man he was worthy of high praise.

In 1800 there were 810 Congregational Churches, with 600 ministers and 75,000 communicants. In 1850, there were over 1,971 churches, 1,687 statistics. _mj_nisters>
an(j 197,197 communicants. Up

to 1849, the American Home Missionary Society had received $1,107,852. In Foreign Missions, the receipts were three times more than any other American Church, and in the Home Missions more than twice the amount given by any other Church. To the same date the American Tract Society received $349,335. Of course, to these causes the Reformed and Presbyterians were in those years large contributors.

The Congregational Board of Publication to the same date had received $225,920. Adding these together, the grand total is $4,233,384, an amount for these objects nearly twice that received by any other Church in America in these years. In learning and liberality, and in revival work led by such men as Charles G. Finney, Edward N. Kirk, and Asahel Net-tleton, the Church of the Puritans had little reason to be ashamed. Seldom has so small a body of Christians accomplished so much.

The Unitarians.

The origin of the Unitarian separation has already been given, as also a sketch of their most distinguished preachers, Channing, Emerson, and Parker. Henry Ware (1794-1843) was a man of ability, and attractive in manners and character. Andrews Nor

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ton (1786-1853) was the ablest scholar and the soundest divine the Unitarians produced in these years. He belonged to the school of Channing, and answered Emerson’s “Divinity School Address” in 1839. This was replied to by George Ripley, who afterwards won fame as the literary editor of the New York Tribune.

In 1825 the American Unitarian Association was founded, and an earnest effort to propagate their faith and form State Conventions was put forth. In 1844 the Unitarian Divinity School was founded at Mead-ville, Pa., and in 1850 Antioch College, at Yellow Springs, Ohio. In 1830 there were 177 Unitarian churches in New England, and 16 outside its borders_? or 193 in all. In 1850 these had increased to 206 in New England; 40 outside of it; 246 in all; a growth of a little over two a year in twenty years.

But these figures give no idea of the influence of the Unitarian teaching in this era. In it were combined the old common-sense philosophy • and hatred of mystery and disregard of historic truth which characterized the eighteenth century, and the German criticism and philosophy led by Strauss and Baur. It had the immense advantage of Harvard College, the best institution of learning in America. Its presidents and professors were men of high character and wide learning for the time, as well as of liberal ideas. Hence it came to pass that, in the revolt against Calvinism and the acceptance of the new Unitarian teaching, not only the wealth and culture and fashion of Boston were on that side, but the public men, like the Adamses, Quincys, and Storys, and also the great crowd of literary men which began to make a name for American literature.

268 History of the Christian Church.

Such were the essayists, Edwin Whipple, Ralph W. Emerson, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes; the historians, Bancroft, Prescott, Sparks, Parkman, Palfrey; the greatest of American novelists, Nathaniel Hawthorne; the poets, Bryant, Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, and Emerson; reformers and public men, like Garrison, Sumner, Edward Everett, and Rufus Choate. This list will give some idea of the force of the Unitarian Movement, which was represented on the platform in every chief city by men like Ralph W. Emerson and Theodore Parker. If ability and talent could have given the Unitarian Church the lead in America in these years, it should have had it. That it did not, teaches an obvious lesson. Religion is, and always must be, more than intellect or culture. These are not substitutes for it, even when allied with the soundest ethics.

The Universalists.

The Universalists owe their origin in America to John Murray (1741-1815). His father, a Calvinist, and a member of the Church of England, became a follower of Wesley. When young Murray was eleven years of age, his family removed to Ireland, near Cork. There John Murray became a Wesleyan class-leader and local preacher. In 1760 he went to London and met Whitefield, when he embraced Cal-vinistic opinions. Hearing of James Relly, he undertook to refute his opinions, but was converted to his belief, which was, that since Christ died for all, all must be saved. In 1770, after a marvelous escape from shipwreck, he landed in New Jersey, and, building a church, began to preach his doctrine. He

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preached, until paralyzed in 1809, that as in Adam all are lost, in Christ all are saved. At Gloucester, Mass., he organized the first Universalist Church in 1780, and preached there until 1793. He died in 1815.

Elhanan Winchester (1757-1797) a man of remarkably keen intellect,, became a Baptist preacher, and served Baptist Churches from 1771 to 1780. Through reading of the German Mystic Segovicke’s “ Everlasting Gospel,” he became a Restorationist; that is, believing that all things will be restored in Christ. This faith he professed in 1780, in Philadelphia, and was followed by many Baptists. He was in Europe, 1787-1795, and died two years after his return.

To these men succeeded in the leadership of the Church Hosea Ballou (1771-1852). Ballou was t he son of a Baptist minister. He united with his father’s Church, but became a Universalist in 1791. Marrying in 1796, he became a Universalist pastor at Dana, Mass. In 1795 he became a Unitarian. He preached in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Salem, Mass., until 1817, when he accepted the call to the First Universalist Church of Boston, of which he remained pastor until his death. Ballou was a voluminous controversialist and editor of the Universalist periodicals.

From 1817, Ballou taught that there was no punishment after death. To all, death is the end of sin and the beginning of glory. The Winchester Profession of Faith, adopted in 1803 at Winchester, N. H., taught that Christ will finally restore all men. Undoubtedly the harshness of New England teaching, and the extra Scriptural representation of future

270 History of the Christian Church.

punishment, especially in revival meetings, gave the Universalist doctrines a hold upon many men of New England birth which the positive teaching of none of these men mentioned would have won. Perhaps it is but just to say that the Unitarian and Universalist teaching has had an influence to make the orthodox preaching more Scriptural and more ethical. In 1835 there were in New England 169 Universalist churches, and in the rest of the United States 139, or a total of 308. In 1851 there were in New England 286, and outside of it 356, or a total of 625 churches. The Clinton Liberal Institute was founded at Clinton, N. Y., in 1831.

The Baptists.

In the first half of the century the peculiar task of the Baptists, as of the Methodists, was to plant the Christian Church in the South and the West. It was also an urgent need to bring an earnest, aggressive Church into the broader life of the Church as a whole, through Sunday-schools, missions, educational institutions, a religious press, and the reform movements of the time. The Baptists, like the other Churches with a membership in the South, suffered a division on account of Slavery.

The work of Adoniram Judson was of as great value in its influence on the Baptist Churches in America as in its direct result in Bur’ mah. His conversion to Baptist principles led to the formation of the Baptist Foreign Missionary Society in 1814, this being the second American Church to engage in that work. No Church has had more successful missions than the Baptist Church

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among the Karens in Burmah, and the Telugus in Hindustan. The mission to China was founded in 1833, to Germany in 1834, to the Telugus in 1840, to Assam 1841. The Church has a splendid roll of master missionaries. The Baptist Home Missionary Society was founded in 1832, and has largely advanced the work of the Baptist Church in the newly settled regions of the United States.

Luther Rice, who, like Judson, became converted to the Baptist belief on his voyage to India, came back and aroused the Baptist Churches to their duty toward missions. He was largely ’

instrumental in the formation of the Baptist Missionary Convention in 1814. Later the work of education engaged his attention In 1822 he founded Columbian University at Washington, and labored for it as its agent until 1826, when it became heavily embarrassed by debt. Its reorganization and financial recovery came under other auspices. About this time other Baptist institutions of learning came into being. Madison (now Colgate) University was founded in 1819 at Hamilton, N. Y. Its theological school was opened in 1822. Colby University, at Waterville, Me., was founded in 1820, and the theological school at Newton, Mass., in 1826; Georgetown College, in Kentucky, in 1829.

Between 1830 and 1840, Baptist Colleges were founded; as, Wake Forest Institution in 1839; Sliurt-leff College, 111., in 1835; and Mercer University, Ga., in 1837. Between 1840 and 1850 came: Franklin College, Ind., 1844; Dennison University, Ohio, 1845; Richmond College, Virginia, 1845; and the University of Rochester, N. Y., 1850. These were to become

272 History of the Christian Church.

strong institutions, and at their head was Brown University, at Providence, R.I., under Baptist patronage and control, and with its present name since 1804. The paper which eventually became the Baptist Examiner, began its career in 1819. The Baptist Tract Society was founded in 1824, and the Bible Union for improving in a Baptist sense, Bible versions, in 1850. To this record of Baptist work should be added the work of revivals and of planting the Churches in the wilderness in which this Church was foremost.

On the other hand, when the Baptists were earnest and aggressive in organizing State Conventions from 1821 to 1837, many Baptists, especially in the South and the Southwest, who did not believe in Sunday-schools, or ministerial education, or missions, or temperance, would have nothing to do with the State Conventions. In their literal interpretation of Scripture, and their insistence on rigid Congregational polity, they kept entirely out of the advance of Christendom. They had plenty of zeal, but little knowledge. They were the sternest of Calvinists and often Antinomians. It is surprising to notice that, in 1850, they had nearly one-fourth as many churches as the Baptists of the North and South combined, and one-tenth the membership. We usually think of these as dwellers on the frontier, but the Baptist Association of Baltimore in 1836 resolved, “They could not hold fellowship with such Churches as united with these societies of a benevolent, religious, and philanthropic character.” The names of congregations co-operating in mission work, in Sunday-school work, and in the distribution of the Word of

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God through the agency of Bible Socities, etc., were erased from the Minutes of the Association.

The secession of Alexander Campbell in 1829 led to a large loss of members. In May, 1845, at Augusta, Ga., the Southern Baptist Churches withdrew their fellowship from the Northern Churches on account of slavery, and organized the Southern Missionary Convention. These Southern Baptists pushed their work both at home and abroad with great vigor.

Free-Will Baptists.

The Free-will Baptists made great progress oe-tween 1820 and 1830, and were earnest revivalists. Their paper, The Moriiing Star, was founded in 1826. A foreign mission was established in India in 1837. In 1839 the General Convention pronounced against slavery. In 1841 a General Conference was organized. In 1850, Hillsdale College was founded.

Seventh-Day Baptists.

The Seventh-day Baptists began a mission to the Jews in New York City, 1836-1842, which was unsuccessful, and one in China in 1847, with better results. Alfred University was'founded in 1836, at Alfred, New York.

The men most influential in the Baptist Church in this era laid molding hand on millions for generations to come.

Such a man was the greatly-loved and universally-esteemed Richard Furman (1755-1825).

He was born at Esopus, N. Y. When a *^ichard

. . ^r Furman.

child his father removed to South Carolina, and there carefully reared and educated him. 18

274 History of the Christian Church.

At eighteen he began to preach. During the Revolution he was an active patriot, and won the attention of Patrick Henry and other leaders. He was a member of the South Carolina State Convention which ratified the Constitution of the United States. He became pastor in Charleston in 1787. He was president of the first Baptist Missionary Convention in 1814. He was an able presiding officer, an impressive preacher, and the most influential Baptist minister of his generation.

A man of very different order and influence was Spencer Cone (1785-1855). Dr. Cone was born in Princeton, N. J., and entered college there ^SCone^{Cr at} age of twelve. A financial failure affecting his father, young Cone could not complete his course. He taught school and studied law, but in 1805 began his career as an actor. This he followed until his conversion in 1814. The following year he began to preach, and was elected chaplain to Congress, 1815-1816. Until 1823 he was pastor at Alexandria, Va. The rest of his life was spent as pastor in New York City; 1823-1841 at Oliver Street Church, and 1841-1855 at the First Baptist Church of the metropolis. From 1832-1841 he was president of the Baptist General Convention and an officer of the Baptist Home Missionary Society. Dr. Cone’s vigor of intellect and power as a preacher, made him most influential in the general work of his Church. In 1832-1855 he also was influential in founding the Baptist Bible Union. Kate Claxton, the actress, was his grand-daughter.

Asahel Clark Kendrick (1809-1895), who for fifty

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years taught at Madison and Rochester Universities, is worthy of mention in any sketch of Baptist history. He was graduated from Madison University in 1831. For the next nineteen Hendrick* years he taught Greek in his Alma Mater.

In 1850, when the University of Rochester was founded, he came to that city, which was his residence, and where he was loved and honored until his death. At first he was the virtual head of the university. Then and always, however, he made his work and his fame as an instructor of Greek. He was a sturdy exponent of Baptist views. His clear and well-trained intellect, warm sympathies, and Christian spirit made his fellowship go far beyond the bounds of his own Church. His translation of Olshausen’s “Commetary on the New Testament,” and “Life of Mrs. Emily C. Judson,” shows only what he might have done with his pen. His impress was left upon thousands of young men, and felt throughout the Church he loved and served.

In 1800 the Regular Baptists had 1,500 churches., with 1,200 ministers, and 100,000 communicants. In 1850 they had 8,406 churches, 5,142 minis-

Statistics.

ters, and 686,807 communicants. The Free-will Baptists had increased from 3,000 members to 50,223, with 1,126 churches, and 867 ministers. In 1850 the Seventh-day Baptists had 6,351 communicants, 71 churches, and 58 ministers. The Seventh-day German Baptists numbered 400, with four ministers; the Six-Principle Baptists 3,586 communicants, with 21 churches, and 25 ministers; the Anti-Mission Baptists (so-called Hardshell), 67,845 communicants,

276 History of the Christian Church.

with 2,035 churches, and 907 ministers. The total in 1850 of Baptists of all names was 11,659 churches, 7,003 ministers, with 815,212 communicants. Of these, the greater part were in the South; the Baptist Church South having 390,393 members, and the AntiMission Baptists, mainly in the South, 67,845, making a total of 458,238 to 356,974 in the North, or, deducting the Free-will Baptists, 306,752; that is, three-fifths of the Baptist membership in 1850 were in the South. These figures lack the precision of later years, but are true as to general proportion and tendencies.

The Disciples.

Alexander Campbell (1788-1866) was the founder of the Disciples Church. His father, Thomas Campbell (1763-1854), had been a Roman Catholic, but became an Episcopalian, and afterwards (1798) a minister in the Associate Scotch Church. He was settled in county Antrim, Ireland, where Alexander was born. In 1806, Thomas Campbell went to Scotland to secure the ecclesiastical independence of the Associate Church in Ireland, but failed in his effort. In 1807 he came to America. Alexander, as the oldest son, had charge of the family, and sailed to meet the father from Londonderry, October, 1808. A week later they were wrecked in the Hebrides.

Alexander Campbell was nearly a year in Scotland, spending most of his time in Glasgow in intercourse with the professors of the university, and especially with Robert and James Haldane. Finally the family again embarked, and he arrived in America in 1809. The same year the conviction borne in upon Thomas and Alexander Campbell of the non-validity

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of the usual creedal tests of the Christian profession, which had produced such an abundant crop of division in the Scotch and Scotch-Irish Church, and the necessity of some simple Scriptural confession, found expression in the “Declaration and Address,” issued from Washington, Pa., in 1809. On May 4, 1810, they, and those who thought with them, formed the Independent Church of Christ. They contended that “human creeds and confessions had destroyed Christian union, and that nothing ought to be received into the faith or worship of the Church, or be made a term of communion among Christians, that is not as old as the New Testament. Nor ought anything to be admitted as of Divine obligation in the Church constitution or management save what is enjoined by our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles upon the New Testament Church, either in express terms or by approved precedent.” In 1812 the Campbells became convinced that immersion is the mode of baptism, and the Baptist Elder Luce immersed them, June 12, 1812, In 1813 they joined the Redstone (Pa.) Baptist Church Association.

In 1816, Alexander Campbell’s sermon on “The Law,” before the Association, gave offense, and he withdrew from it. Soon after he joined the Mahoning Baptist Association, and remained in connection with it until 1827. Then it was dissolved as lacking warrant in Scripture. In 1820, Alexander Campbell began his career as a public controversialist, a role in which he delighted, and in which figure and voice, as well as his ready command of language and his intellectual qualities, gave him more than ordinary advantage. In 1820 he held a public debate at Mount

278 History of the Christian Church.

Pleasant, Ohio, with John Walker, a Presbyterian minister; in 1823, with Rev. William McCalla on Christian Baptism, at Washington, Ky.; in 1828, with Robert Owen on the Truth of Christianity, at Cincinnati; in 1836, with Archbishop Purcell on the Infallibility of the Church of Rome; and in 1843, with Dr. Rice on Baptism. The controversies were carried on in the Christian Baptist, 1823-1830, and the Millennial Harbinger, 1830-1870, both edited by Alexander Campbell.

That Campbell was able and honest, none can question; that creedal subscription and peculiarities were a prolific cause of sectarian division and strife, all acknowledge; but truth compels the statement that never did an apostle of Christian union use more bitter language, or show a more intolerant spirit* Seventeen centuries of Christian history were wholly disregarded, and there was no disposition to understand the position or accept any justification from those who differed from him.

In 1832 the followers of Barton W. Stone, who had been a Presbyterian minister, but withdrew from the Church in consequence of proceedings taken against those prominent in a great revival at Cane Ridge, Ky., in 1801, joined those who received the teachings of Alexander Campbell in 1832, and took the name of Disciples. The only creed is the affirmative answer to these two questions—“ Dost thou believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?” and “Wilt thou be immersed for the remission of sins?” The Lord’s Supper is administered every Sunday. The Church is Arminian in belief.

In 1840, Alexander Campbell founded Bethany

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College, West Virginia, and there he lived and taught in the college until his death. In 1850 there were 1,896 churches, 848 ministers, and 118,618 communicants, and the period of growth had just begun.

The Christians.

In 1802 the Republican Methodists who followed the leadership of James O’Kelly took the name of Christian. Two years before, Dr. Abner Jones, a member of the Baptist Church in Hartland, Vt., organized a Church of twenty-five members in Lyndon, Vt., on the Bible only as their creed. In a few years he received large accessions from the Baptist Churches. Barton Stone and his followers, who founded the independent Springfield Presbytery in 1803, in 1804 took the name of Christian. These came together, and in 1844 there were said to be 325,000 members, with 1,800 ministers. The Advent Movement under William Miller in 1844 cut down those numbers one-half. These Christians practiced immersion, and were Arminian and Arian in doctrine. Congregational in Church government, they most resembled the General Baptists of England. Their periodical, The Herald of Gospel Liberty, founded September 1, 1808, was the first religious newspaper published in this country.

The Presbyterians.

The Presbyterian Church in these decades made vigorous growth, but was rent with the grievous division of the Old and New School Churches, the first religious division between the North and South, in 1837. The Cumberland Presbyterian Church arose

280 History of the Christian Church.

from the new spirit in the West seeking to reach modern needs rather than to conform to old standards, in 1810. The Scotch Presbyterian divisions were imported into this country, and augmented in this period, to be lessened in the one succeeding. The Dutch and German Reformed Churches made steady progress in Church consciousness, in organization, missions, and education. They increased through emigration, but showed little of the aggressiveness and enterprise of the Methodist and Baptist Churches. As a whole, in spite of division, the Presbyterian Churches, while not gaining as fast as the more Evangelistic Churches, deepened the intellectual, moral, and spiritual life of the communities, and laid, in these years, strong foundations of enduring usefulness.

As before mentioned, the Plan of Union of 1801, while greatly increasing the Presbyterian Church, oid and brought into it a large Congregational New school element. This school sympathized with Presbyterians. _{Dr Taylor}>_s modification of Calvinism,

known as the New Haven Theology; they supported the American Board in their contributions for foreign missions, leaned toward a more Congregational polity, and were decidedly Antislavery in opinion. All these things were an offense to the conservative Presbyterians, which could not be atoned for by a marvelously rapid and progressive growth. Indeed, the growth increased the offense. In a few years more the power would forever depart from the conservative majority. In the years 1830-1836, inclusive, the New School had the majority in the General Assembly every year except in 1835. Two causes increased

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this apprehension. One was the failure to convict the New School men of heresy.

Rev. Albert Barnes, in 1829, preached a sermon denying the imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity; and in 1830 he became pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. A protest was made against his installation, and the Presbytery condemned the sermon in 1830. The General Assembly, in 1831, declared that the Presbytery should be satisfied with Mr. Barnes’s statements. In 1832, George Duffield was tried, but escaped with a warning. In 1833, Edward Beecher, J. M. Sturdevant, and William Kirby, of Illinois College, were tried by the Illinois Presbytery for New School teaching, and acquitted. In 1835 a prosecution of Lyman Beecher, of the Lane Theological Seminary, at Cincinnati, met with the same fate. In 1836, Albert Barnes was again before the Presbytery, Synod, and General Assembly on charges. The Synod of Philadelphia suspended Mr. Barnes for a year. To this suspension Mr. Barnes bowed, and occupied his family pew in his own Church each Sunday for the year; henceforth the hearts of the people of Philadelphia were his own.

The second cause of apprehension was the changed attitude of the conservatives, and of the Southern Churches in particular, in regard to slavery. It had been looked upon as a necessary evil, and one that, in the course of time, with the advance of Christian liberty and civilization, would pass away; a consummation for which all good people looked, and meanwhile endured it for a season. But slavery became profitable through the invention of the cotton-gin,

282 History of the Christian Church.

and the laws of the Slave States, instead of looking toward the emancipation of the slaves, tightened their shackles and formed about the system every possible defense. This change became evident from 1820. In

1833, Rev. James Smylie, a Presbyterian minister in Mississippi, preached a sermon in which he declared slavery was authorized by Christian Scripture, and was of permanent validity and under the highest religious sanction. The hard, mechanical theory of inspiration which raised the Old to the level of the New Testament favored this view, just as it did in the polygamy of the Mormons. This teaching soon made a revolution in the opinions and attitude toward all efforts for the abolition, gradual or otherwise, of Negro slavery in the Christian Churches in the South. This was shown in two ways: First, the system of slavery grew worse. Free people of color could not live in the South, and every obstacle was thrown in the way of emancipation, and new soil was sought for slavery in Texas, and through the results of the Mexican War, and efforts were openly avowed to take possession of Cuba or Central America and to reopen the slave trade with Africa. Secondly, there was an increased irritation, rising to rage and violence, which demanded instant suppression, as the price of ecclesiastical or political union, of any expression of opinion or political agitation which aimed at the abolition of slavery. In 1837 a proslavery mob murdered, at Alton, 111., Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, a Presbyterian minister. These things had not yet ripened for the evil and disastrous harvest; but they were growing and potent now.

In this situation the General Assembly met in

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Philadelphia in 1837. It was found to have an Old School majority. This was in part accidental, as the New School majority of the year previous had repudiated the Presbyterian Western Foreign Missionary Society in the interests of the American Board. This action was felt to be unwise, and contributed to the reversal of the majority of 1836. Another cause for that reversal was, that the Union Theological Seminary of New York was founded in January, 1836. The Faculty of Princeton, with all their immense influence, fearing a New School rival institution, having hitherto been neutral, now went over to the Old School.

The majority saw they had the power; they feared they might not have another opportunity; they did not scruple to make the utmost of it.

First, they passed a repeal of the Plan of Union. Then they resolved, by a vote of 132 to 105, that the Synods and Presbyteries formed under that Plan ceased to be a part of the Presbyterian Church. This “ exscinded,” or cut off, the Synods of the Western Reserve, Utica, Geneva, and Genesee, and the Presbyteries in five other Synods. Thus were cut off 533 Churches and 100,000 members. Whatever may be our opinions in regard to the original differences, it will be difficult for fair-minded men to approve the method of this high-handed ex post facto legislation. One can but ask, What must be the theory of the Church with which such action could be consistent? The General Assembly then resolved to establish a Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. In August, 1837, the New School Churches met in Convention at Auburn, and founded a New School General As

284 History of the Christian Church.

sembly, which met in 1838 and annually thereafter until the reunion in 1869. In 1840 the Old School had 126,583 members, and the New School 102,060. Many conservative Presbyterians who did not approve of the action at Philadelphia, yet did not sever their accustomed relations, and remained with the Old School Church. On the other hand, the powerful Presbytery of New York joined the New School Assembly.

In 1850 the Old School reported 2,595 churches,

1,926 ministers, and 207,754 communicants; the New School reported 1,568 churches, 1,473 ministers, and ¹39>796 members. The United South remained in the Old School Church, while in 1850 the New School General Assembly declared slaveholding a matter of discipline when not excused by special circumstances, quite a distance from abolition.

Reformed and Associate Presbyterians.

The Reformed Presbyterians dated back to the battle of Both well’s Bridge, in 1679, and were known as Cameronians or Covenanters. The Associate Presbyterians seceded from the Scotch Church in 1.733,^on account of the abuse of Church patronage. In 1747 the Associate Church was divided into Burgher and Anti-Burgher, because of the acceptance or rejection of the burgher oath. In June, 1782, the Burgher and the Anti-Burgher Churches in America united; in October, 1782, the Reformed and Associate Churches in New York united to form the Associate Reformed Church. But these union efforts only brought further divisions. In 1798 was formed the New Reformed Presbytery, which rejected the union with the Asso

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ciate Church, and the original Associate Presbytery, 1782, which did likewise. In Scotland, in 1795, came a further division of the Associate Church. On account of a differing interpretation of chapter xxxiii of the Westminster Confession as to the perpetual obligation of the Solemn League and Covenant, both the Burgher and Anti-Burgher Churches divided into Old Lights and New Lights.

In 1820 the Burghers and Anti-Burgher Churches united to form the United Secession Church. Professor Paxton thereupon drew off and founded the Church of the “ Original Seceders.” In 1820-1832 the American Associate Church joined these Original Seceders. The Original Seceders in Scotland joined the Free Church of Scotland in 1852. Finally in America the Associate Reformed and Associate Churches united in 1858 to form the United Presbyterian Church. The Associate Reformed Church established a mission at Damascus in 1844, transferred to Cairo in 1853.

1850 the Reformed General Synod of North America had 63 churches, 43 ministers, and 6,500 communicants. The Reformed Synod of North America had 50 churches, 33 ministers, and 6,000 communicants. The Associate Church had 214 churches, 120 ministers, and 1,800 communicants. The Associate Reformed Church had 332 churches, 219 ministers, and 26,340 communicants.

The Cumberland Presbyterians.

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church was born of the great revival of 1801. When proceedings were taken against the ministers engaged in that revival work, certain Presbyterian ministers withdrew from

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the jurisdiction of the Synod. On February 10, 1810, Finis Ewing, Samuel King, and Samuel McAdow founded the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. James McGready and William McGee, Presbyterian ministers, who had been prominent in the Great Revival, joined the new organization. In 1813 the first Synod was organized. A Confession of Faith and a Catechism were adopted in 1816. In 1825 Cumberland College was founded at Princeton, Ky. In 1842 it was removed to Lebanon, Tenn., and called Cumberland University. The first General Assembly was held at Princeton, Ky., in 1829. Great revivals were held in Pennsylvania, 1828-1831, and soon the Church spread to Texas. Waynesburg College, in Pennsylvania, was founded in 1850. The Cumberland Presbyterian was founded in 1830, and The Cumberland Presbyterian Quarterly Review in 1845. The doctrine of the Church is Arminian, and its spirit evangelistic. In 1850 it had 500 churches, 450 ministers, and 75,000 members. In 1800 there were in the United States 500 churches, 300 ministers, and 40,000 communicants of the Presbyterian Churches. Of all branches of the Presbyterians there were, in 1850,5,322 churches, 4,264 ministers and 487,691 communicants.

Among the leaders of the Presbyterian Church in this era of strife none stood higher in reputation and influence than Charles Hodge (1797-1878).

Hodgef -^-^{e was} k°^rn iⁿ Philadelphia, where his father was an eminent physician. In 1815 he graduated from Princeton; four years later he graduated from the Theological Seminary connected with the same institution. He served as a pastor from 1819 to 1823, but in May, 1820, was chosen As

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sistant Professor in Greek and Hebrew. From that date he remained connected with Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1822 he was made full Professor of Biblical and Oriental Literature. In 1822 he founded The Biblical Repertory, which, in 1829, was changed to The Princeton Review. From 1825 to

1829 he was in Europe, where he studied in Paris, Halle, and Berlin. In 1835 he published his “Commentary on Romans,” which was reissued in 1866. In 1840 appeared his “Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church.” In 1^71-72 was published his “Systematic Theology,” in three volumes. This is the standard Old School Presbyterian Theology. In 1872 he celebrated his fifty years’ jubilee as a professor. A professorship in his name in the seminary to which he had given his life, was endowed with $50,000. He himself was given $15,000 from friends and alumni.

A very different man was Albert Barnes (17981870). He graduated from Hamilton College in 1820, and from Princeton Theological Seminary

. ,«■ . Albert Barnes.

in 1824. He was pastor at Morristown,

N. J., 1824-1830, and at First Church, Philadelphia, 1830-1870, though emeritus after 1867. In 1832 he published “ Notes on the Gospels.” Afterward he published eleven volumes of the “Practical Notes” on the New Testament, and eight on the Old Testament, —Job, Isaiah, Daniel, and Psalms. Of these, more than a million volumes have been sold. Albert Barnes was a true Christian, a genuine reformer, and an undaunted gentleman.

An abler man of perhaps not less influence in the Church was Gardiner Spring (1785-1873). He was

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born at Newburyport, Mass., and was at Yale, 17991805, when he graduated. He studied law, and then went to Bermuda as a teacher. After re-spriluf.^r turning North he again went to Bermuda, and after accumulating $1,500 he returned finally, and was admitted to the bar in 1808. The same year he joined the Church. He heard Dr. John M. Mason preach a great Commencement sermon at Yale from the text, “ The poor have the gospel preached to them,” and resolved to preach that gospel. He was ordained in 1810, and the same year called to the pastorate of the Brick Church in New York, where he remained until his death sixty-three years later. Dr. Spring was devoted to Sabbath Reform and to every good work. He was a stanch Presbyterian and Calvinist, and an earnest patriot and Christian. Mention only can be made of the great Old and New School protagonists, Dr. Judkin and Dr. Beaman, of Troy.

Dr. E. G. Robinson (1794-1863) was the ablest Biblical scholar of America in the first half of the nineteenth century, and one of the ablest in RoMnson' ^an^ ^country °f that time. His father was a Congregational pastor in Stonington, Conn., where his son was born. Edward graduated at Hamilton College in 1816. After a little time spent in the study of law he returned to his Alma Mater as tutor, 1817-1821. In 1818 he married Miss Kirkland, who died the next year. In 1822 he went to Andover, where he published the first eleven books of the Iliad with notes. From 1823 to 1826 he was assistant to Professor Moses Stuart. In 1825 he published a translation of Wahl’s “ Clavis Philologica of the New

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Testament/’ He spent 1826-1830 in Europe, mainly at Gottingen, Halle, and Berlin. He heard Tholuck, Neander, and especially Ritter. At Halle, in 1828, he married the daughter of Professor Jacobi. On his return he was elected Professor of Biblical Literature at Andover, and served from 1830 to 1833. ⁱ⁸33 he published an edition of Calmet’s “Dictionary of the Bible,” and the next year a smaller edition for popular use; in 1833, also, a translation of Buttman’s “ Greek Grammar.” From 1835 ^{to i8}37 he lived in Boston, engaged in literary work. In 1834 he published an edition of Newcome’s “ Harmony of the Gospels.” In 1836 appeared two significant works, a translation of Gesenius’s “ Hebrew Lexicon of the Old Testament,” and Robinson’s “ Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament.” Three editions of the latter were published in England up to 1850, These greatly added to the resources of English-speaking clergymen. In 1837 he was called to the professorship of Biblical Literature in the Union Theological School, with the privilege of absence in Europe at his own expense. In 1837-1838 he was in Germany and Palestine. His visit to Palestine with the companionship of Dr. Eli Smith, a Presbyterian missionary and fine Arabic scholar, formed an epoch in our knowledge of that country.

The years 1839 and 1840 were spent in Berlin, preparing for publication his “ Biblical Researches in Palestine,” which appeared in English and German, and has remained ever since the standard work on that subject among all scholars. A new and enlarged edition appeared in 1856. In 1845, Dr. Robinson published his “Greek Harmony of the Gospels,” and the 19

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next year the same work in English. In 1851 he again visited Germany and Palestine, and in 1865 ^aP" peared his “ Physical Geography of Palestine.” In 1862, with impaired eyesight, hoping in vain for aid, he made his final visit to Germany, and died in New York in 1863. Dr. Robinson honored American scholarship. He made all scholars and travelers in Palestine his debtors, and added to the efficiency of all English-speaking students who read Hebrew and Greek through his “ Lexicons,” though these are now superseded, while he aided English readers with his Biblical Dictionary and “ Harmony of the Gospels.” More than any other man he laid the foundation of American Biblical scholarship, and made it respected in Europe.

Dutch Reformed.

In 1850 the Dutch Reformed Church had 286 churches, 299 ministers, and 33,780 communicants. In these years it made a splendid missionary record. John Scudder, M. D., went to India as a missionary in 1821, and labored in Madras and Madura. His seven sons grew up and entered upon missionary labor in India. There he died in 1855. Jacob D. Chamberlain labored in this mission most successfully for fifty years. Cornelius A. V. Van Dyck went to the Beyrout Mission in 1840. In company with Dr. Eli Smith he made, in the Arabic tongue, one of the best versions of the Bible ever published. The Christian Intelligencer was founded in 1829.

This Church has a high average of learning and efficiency in its ministry, but such a man as George W. Be-thune (1805-1862) would honor any Church. He was

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born in New York, and graduated at Dickinson College in 1822. Afterward he studied at Princeton Theological Seminary. He was ordained in 1825, and the same year he went to Sa- ^ethumT vannah as a seaman’s chaplain. In 1826

1830 he was pastor at Rhinebeck, N. Y.; 1830-1834 at Utica; 1834-1848 at Philadelphia; 1848-1859 at Brooklyn. Dr. Bethune was a poet, a genial gentleman, an accomplished orator, and a devout Christian. Some of his hymns are found in almost all collections. His “Orations and Discourses” attest his power. His last great speech was at the Union Square meeting, April 20, 1861, a never-to-be-forgotten occasion. He died at Florence in 1862, and left poorer the land he loved.

The German Reformed Church.

The history of the German Reformed Church in these years centers around its theological seminary. In 1825 it was opened, in connection with Dickinson College, with Lewis Meyer (1783-1849) as professor. James Ross Reilly, of Irish and German parentage, in 1825, visited Germany and Switzerland, and collected $6,669 f°^r the seminary. Jacob C. Bercher collected $10,000 in this country for the same purpose. This started the institution. In 1829 it was removed to York, Pa. I11 1835 Marshall College was founded at Mercersburg, Pa. Frederick Augustus Rauch, a pupil of Daub and graduate of Heidelberg, was its first president. Worn out with excessive study, this able and pious man died in 1841. The Theological Seminary was removed from Dickinson College to Mercersburg in 1837. In 1817 there had begun to be English preaching in the congregations of the Church;

292 History of the Christian Church.

but now, for a wonder, an American by birth and language, was called to the presidency of the college and to the charge of the Theological Seminary. John W. Nevin (1803-1888) moved the waters at Mercersburg very much as John H. Newman did at Oxford. He graduated at Union College in 1821, and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1826. He taught Dr. Hodge’s classes while he was absent in Europe in 1826-1829. In 1828 he was licensed to preach, and the same year called as Professor of Hebrew to the Allegheny Theological Seminary of the Associate Reformed Church; there he remained until 1840. In that year he came to Mercersburg.

In 1843, Dr. Nevin published “The Anxious Bench” against prevalent revival methods. In 1846 his “Mystical Presence ” and “Anti-Christ, or Spirit of Sect and Schism,” made evident his High Church teaching. He edited the Mercersburg Review in 1848-1853. Dr. Nevin resigned his professorship in 1857. His “ Heidelberg Catechism ” showed his sense of historic continuity. The movement did not lack the extravagances and loss of its Oxford contemporar3^r. The Evangelical spirit was antagonized, and not a few went over to Rome. For a while the Reformed Church suffered loss, but in the end it gained in Church consciousness and wakened Christian activity.

The great gain to American scholarship from the German Reformed Church, at this time came with its

Philipsch«ff. ^calli“g Philip Schaff (1820-1893), a graduate of Berlin, to a professorship at Mercersburg in 1844. Like Nevin, he held to the doctrine of historic development, but with a grounding of historical knowledge and a soberness of judgment to which

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the former could lay no claim. The ceaseless literary activity of Dr. Schafif made German thought, and, above all, the historic method, familiar to American readers. The University of Berlin, in 1893, called Dr. Schaff’s “Church History” “the most notable monument of universal historical learning produced by the school of Neander.” The publishing-house was founded in 1848, and Heidelberg College at Tiffin, Ohio, in 1850. In 1850 there were 600 churches, 260 ministers, and 70,000 communicants in this Church.

The Lutherans.

The factors in the growth of the Lutheran Church in this country were the increase of learning and emigration, the work of the General Synod, and the founding of the Synods of Buffalo and Missouri. The German emigration, which was 1,000 yearly in 1820, 2,000 in 1830, and 30,000 in 1840, mounted up to 83,000 in 1850. This, of course, opened a great field before the Lutheran Church in this country.

The General Synod was formed in 1821. It stood for the independent existence of the Lutheran Church in America as against absorption by the German Reformed and Episcopalians. It included nearly two-thirds of the Lutherans in America. It founded the Theological Seminary at Gettysburg in 1826, and the Pennsylvania College for English Lutherans, of which C. P. Krauth, Sr., was president, 1834-1850. Wittenberg Theological Seminary was founded at Springfield, Ohio, in 1845. The Ohio Synod founded the Theological Seminary at Columbus in 1831, and in connection with it the Capital University in 1850. The Evangelical Review was founded at Gettysburg in 1849.

294 History of the Christian Church.

In 1830 was formed the Sunday-school Union; in

1837, the Educational Society, and the same year the Home Missionary Society. The Pittsburg Orphan Home and Deaconess Institute, now at Rochester, Pa., was founded by Dr. Passavant in 1849. After 1837 the Lutherans of the General Synod contributed to foreign missions through the American Board. The first Lutheran foreign missionary from America was Charles Frederick Heyer (1799-1873). He was born in Helmstadt, Germany, and came to America in 1807. He began work at Guntur, and among the Telugus in India in 1842.

The Buffalo Synod of the Lutheran Church was founded by Johannes A. A. Grabau (1804-1879), pastor of St. Andrew’s Church at Erfurth, Ger-synod! ^many- He was imprisoned for refusing to conform to the Union Agenda of Prussia, and came to America in 1839. The Buffalo Synod was formed in 1845.

Martin Stephan, born in 1777, was pastor of St. John’s Church in Dresden, and a rigid Lutheran. He had great influence over men, and in 1839, ^Thes^nod°.^Uri
at h^ead of five hundred souls, with six ministers, he came to New Orleans. Soon after their arrival it became evident that Stephan was a bad man. Two brothers, Revs. O. H. and C. F. Walther, went up the Mississippi to St. Louis, and then to Perry County, Mo. There, in 1839, they opened a gymnasium in a log house with three teachers. In 1841, C. F. Walther removed to vSt. Louis, and in 1842 built a church for the congregation. In

1843 h^e founded Der Lutheraner, a semi-monthly. In 1847, with twenty-two pastors and two candidates,

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there was formed the most aggressive body of Lutherans the last three centuries have seen. April 26th the Synod of Missouri was founded, and the Theological Seminary removed to St. Louis in 1849. From 1843, Walther was in controversy with the Buffalo Synod.

The most prominent Lutheran of this period, and the leader of the General Synod, was Samuel S. Schmucker (1799-1873). After two years spent in the University of Pennsylvania, f^mulker. he graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1820. The next year he was ordained. He was a leader in the General Synod from 1823 to 1870. In 1822 he prepared the “Formula for the Government and Discipline of the Lutheran Church,” which was afterwards adopted by the General Synod. He was pastor (1820-1826) at Frederick, Md. From 1826 to 1864 he was professor in the Gettysburg Theological Seminary. In 1846 he attended, at London, the first session of the Evangelical Alliance. He did not believe the Augsburg Confession was infallible. He was earnestly Evangelical in spirit. More than one hundred publications came from his pen.

In 1850 there were 1,603 churches, _Statlstlc8

1,400 ministers, and 163,000 communicants in the Lutheran Church.

The Moravians.

In this era the Moravians steadily pursued their mission work. They were very successful among the Cherokee Indians in Georgia, but it was largely overthrown by the forced removal of the Indians. They also founded new settlements at Goshen, Ind., 1831;

296 History of the Christian Church.

Camden, N. Y., 1834; Hopedale, Pa., 1836. Of greater import, even, were the changes in the internal constitution. In 1844 the Council decided to abolish the peculiar institution of an exclusive religious establishment. In 1848 the American Province was made independent of Herrnhut. In 1850 there were 31 churches, 27 ministers, and 3,027 communicants among the Moravians.

The Friends. .

The Friends, or Quakers, in America experienced the same division which carried the most ancient Churches of the Puritans’ faith into the camp of the Unitarians. The main agent in this division was Elias Hicks.

Hicks was a great traveler and preacher. He had imbibed extreme Unitarian views. In his teaching, Jesus Christ was a mere man, and the Holy Scriptures were unnecessary, and even an impediment, to a religious life. He was zealous, upright, and a man of strong will. He and his followers placed great stress on morality, which was the essence of religion for them. As many were members of the Society by right of birth only, and without personal religious experience, and as the Separatists inclined to a more liberal Church polity and usage, it was not strange that Elias Hicks had a large following. The first local division took place in 1822. The separation into the Orthodox and Hicksite Churches was made in 1827-1828. The English Friends remained in fellowship with the Orthodox Church.

As both sides claimed to be the rightful representative of the original Friends in America, the courts

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were called upon to decide as to the title of the Church property. In New Jersey the property was divided according to the membership. In Pennsylvania, which was the stronghold of the Friends, the country meeting-houses were given to the Hicksites; and Westtown Boarding-school, founded in 1799, with the Frankfort Asylum for the Insane, came to the Orthodox. The Hicksites were in the majority except in Indiana and Ohio. The visits of Jonathan and Hannah Backhouse from England, 1830-1835, aroused attention to the Bible among the Orthodox. First-day schools were established. This more aggressive spirit was encouraged by the visit soon after of the celebrated English Quaker, Joseph Gurney. This was resented by Joseph Wilbur, who founded the Wilburite Yearly Meeting, which drew several thousands from the Orthodox in Ohio.

The Hicksite Friends, while personally estimable in the relations of life, and upright and often philanthropic, had, of course, no great amount of religious zeal. Hence they did not grow. In 1830 they counted 31,000 members; in 1890 but 21,000, though they established First-day Schools. The Orthodox controlled the Providence 'School, Providence, R. I., and in 1833 founded Haverford School, at Haverford, Pa., which, since 1856, has won a worthy name as Haverford College. Guilford School, at Guilford, N. C., was founded in 1837. The Friends of both divisions were earnest Abolitionists and temperance reformers. The most celebrated American Friend was the Antislavery Quaker poet, John G. Whittier (1807-1892), who was, his life long, in communion with the Orthodox Society.

298 History of the Christian Church.

In 1800 it was estimated that there were 50,000 Friends; in 1850 the Orthodox Friends were estimated at 70,000; Hicksites, 25,000.

The Protestant Episcopal Church.

In this era the Protestant Episcopal Church may be said first to cast off its intimate relation to the Church of England and to have begun an independent existence. Formally this was done in the latter years of the preceding century, but only from 1811 did it cease to be thought of as, in a sense, a foreign Church and connected with the unpopular party of the Revolution. It became a recognized force in American social and religious life from the consecration, at the same time, of John Henry Hobart as Assistant Bishop of New York, and Alexander V. Griswold as Bishop of the Eastern Diocese, which included all New England except Connecticut and Vermont. Soon after came the consecration of Richard Channing Moore as Bishop of Virginia. These men, with such men as John Stark Ravenscroft and Philander Chase, laid broad and firm the foundation of the new order of things. They, like all religious leaders of those days, were pioneers, and the smallness of their resources and the amount of their hardships should never be forgotten by those who would estimate their work and their worth.

The Protestant Episcopal Church shared in the general movement which led to the establishment of Sunday-schools, the founding of theological seminaries, and the opening of foreign missions. The General Theological Seminary at New York was founded in 1821, and in 1823 that at Alexandria, Va. In 1829

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the mission to Greece was begun; in 1835 the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society was organized. In 1835 the first missionaries were sent to China, and the next year to Africa. The first Sisterhoods were begun at New York in 1845.

In an Episcopal Church much depends upon the character, piety, and energy of the Episcopate; this is especially true in the formative stage of the growth of the Church as well as in the great crises of its existence.

In these years men of more than ordinary devotion and piety laid their molding hand on the infant Church.

This was true of the ablest of them, John Henry Hobart (1775-1830), who may well be called the first American Bishop of New York, as his predecessors were more colonial than ^"bart/* otherwise in their feeling and relations.

Bishop Hobart made his Church a living force in New York City. Under him the days of apology and defense were past; he made it confident and aggressive.

Born in 1775, Bishop Hobart graduated at Princeton in 1793, and was trained for the university by Bishop White. In 1800 he became assistant to the rector of Trinity Parish, New York City. In 1804 he published “Companion for the Altar,” and in 1807, “Apology for Apostolic Order and its Advocates,” the result of his controversy with Dr. John M. Mason. He had been, since 1797, secretary to the House of Bishops and to the Diocesan Convention. May 29, 1811, he was consecrated Assistant Bishop of New York, and upon the death of Bishop Moore in 1816

300 History of the Christian Church.

he succeeded him as Bishop of New York. He was greatly interested in the founding of the General Theological Seminary, and was Professor of Pastoral Theology from its opening until his death. There he exercised great influence, as well as in the administration of his diocese. In 1811 there were 28 clergy in the Diocese of New York; in 1830, 127. In 1823-1825 he was in Europe. He published in London two volumes of “ Discourses Preached in America.”

Bishop Hobart was the first of American High Churchmen who greatly influenced the clergy. In experience and spirit he was Evangelical, but would have nothing to do with the American Bible Society; he tried to stop the prayer-meeting at St. George’s; he would have had no sympathy with parochial missions, or revivals, or Young Men’s Christian Associations. His motto was “ Evangelical truth and apostolic order.” Bishop Hobart was not only an able man, but a man of the highest character. His opponent, Dr. John M. Mason, said, “ Were I compelled to intrust the safety of my country to any one man, that man should be John Henry Hobart.” Hobart College, at Geneva, N. Y., founded in 1825, since i860 has borne his name.

Alexander V. Griswold (1766-1843) had the singleness of purpose, the self-sacrifice and devotion, which would have made him successful ^AGri*woid.^V* *^{n any} Church. His father sided with Great Britain in the War of the Revolution, and the son was unable to complete his course at Yale. But while there he was soundly converted. In 1786 he was confirmed in the Protestant Episcopal Church. He married and began the study of law,

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but felt he must enter the ministry. Rough and hard was his pathway. He must support himself and wife, and many a night he studied, stretched on the floor that he might use the light of the chimney fire. The parishes he served were poor, and in the summer, in his earlier ministry, he used to work in the fields to help out his scanty support. His bishopric was poorer still, and for twenty-four years from his election he was sustained by his services as rector at Bristol, R. I., 1811-1830; and at Salem, Mass., 18301835. In 1795 he was ordained deacon and priest. He taught school winters, and officiated in Connecticut parishes until 1804, when he became rector of St. Michael’s, Bristol, R. I. In 1811 he was consecrated Bishop of the Eastern Diocese, in which the only strong Churches were at Boston, Providence, and Newport. From 1838 he was the senior bishop in the Church. Bishop Griswold did the work of an evangelist, and there were powerful revivals under his labors. He in large part founded his Church in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, and everywhere he deepened and intensified the spiritual life. His saintly character and abundant labors make fragrant his name.

Richard Channing Moore (1762-1841) was a revivalist and Evangelical Low Churchman of the type which would have delighted the heart of _Richard John Wesley. He was born in New York channing City of a prominent family, and had both ^Aloore-studied and practiced medicine before he entered the Christian ministry. He was rector at Rye, N. Y., 1787-1789. In 1789 he became rector of St. Andrew’s, Staten Island, where he remained for the next twenty

302 History of the Christian Church.

years, and his son succeeded him. His power as a preacher here had marvelous attestation. Having one evening preached the usual sermon, none of the hearers rose to go away. A gentleman arose and said to the rector, “None of the people are prepared to go; they wish another sermon.” The second sermon was even more impressive than the first; the spell was upon the people, and Dr. Moore was compelled to preach the third sermon, and then to dismiss the people because, if they were not exhausted physically, he was. From 1809 to 1814 he was rector of St. Stephen’s, New York, where the communicants rose from thirty in number to four hundred. May 18, 1814, at Philadelphia, he was consecrated Bishop of Virginia. At that time there were only four or five active clergy in the diocese. Bishop Moore was a fervent preacher. Though much under the influence of Bishop Hobart, he believed in prayer-meetings, and was an earnest revivalist. Bishop Moore worked with the American Bible Society, and founded the Theological Seminary at Alexandria, Va. Bishop Moore was opposed to the Oxford Movement. His monument was the reconstructed Church in the Old Dominion, with nearly 100 clergy and 170 churches at his death.

Even more strange it seems to find among Episcopalian bishops John Stark Ravenscroft (1772-1830).

He left William and Mary College in 1789;

Ravenscroft.^{tlien
went to} Scotland. He was not converted until he was thirty-eight years old. He was a local elder among the Republican Methodists. He did not become a deacon until the age of forty-five. At fifty-one he was made Bishop of North Carolina. In his preaching, as in his experience, he

The Christian Church in America. 303

was a strong Evangelical. He preached the law so that one of his hearers said to him, “0, sir, you have made me feel as I never did before; God is greatly to be feared.” He was respected for his rigor and earnestness in spite of his brusqueness, but was a thorough High Churchman. He found four churches in his diocese, and left twenty-seven.

The pioneer bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of this time was Philander Chase (1775-1851). Bishop Chase was born in Vermont and educated at Dartmouth College. While there he became an Episcopalian. In 1798 he was ordained deacon. He then went to Western New York, and founded Churches in Utica, Auburn, and Canandaigua. From 1805 to 1811 he was rector in New Orleans; from 1811 to 1817, at Hartford, Conn. In 1818 he removed to Salem, Ohio. There were then five Episcopal clergymen in the State. They elected Chase their bishop, and he was consecrated .February

11, 1819. In 1824 he went to England and raised funds for his college. With the $20,000 thus obtained he founded Kenyon College, at Gambier, Ohio. Both the college and the town bear the names of English noblemen who became patrons of his enterprise. Bishop Chase was president of the college from its birth in 1821 until 1831, when a difference with the trustees led to his resignation of his bishopric and his relations to the college. For the next few years he was a farmer and missionary in Michigan, and then removed to Illinois. In 1835 three clergymen met and elected him Bishop of Illinois. The same year he again went to England, and returned with $10,000 for his Jubilee College. In 1839 he visited the South

304 History of the Christian Church.

on the same errand and was successful in putting the institution on its feet. He was the first bishop of two great States and founded two colleges. The Episcopalians of Connecticut founded Trinity College, Hartford, in 1824. In 1800 there were in the Protestant Episcopal Church 320 congregations, 264 clergy, and

11,978 communicants. In 1850 the numbers rose to 1,350 churches, 1,595 clergy, and 89,359 communicants.

The Methodist Episcopal Church.

The best organized and disciplined, and the most thoroughly effective and aggressive, Evangelical Christian Church in America in this half century was the Methodist Episcopal Church. It was the child of the Evangelical Revival of the previous century, and was true to the traditions of its parentage. Its itinerant ministry was the most effective form of pioneer evangelism the Christian Church had yet seen. It made the best use of, and secured the largest results from, an uneducated ministry that a Church has ever known. At its head was Francis Asbury, who, as a pioneer missionary and bishop, made a record of labors, hardships, and achievement which has never been surpassed. His devoted piety, heroic endurance, and thorough discipline, and yet, withal, thorough Americanism, impressed itself upon the preachers and membership of the infant Church. Undoubtedly he was autocratic, and no man in our day should have the power in the Christian Church that Asbury possessed; but in spite of almost insurmountable obstacles he held the Church together, and laid the foundation of all further progress. No bishop of any Church in America has inspired the reverence with which men regarded Francis

The Christian Church in America. 305

Asbury. In his forty-five years of labor in America the membership had increased from 600 to 211,000. He traveled 270,000 miles, preached 16,000 sermons, and ordained 4,000 preachers.

The era of Asburian evangelism may be said to have closed in 1820. In this period the Book Concern, established in 1789, and removed to New York in 1804, flourished, and thus raised the intellectual life of both preachers and people. The Sunday-school movement, which had begun in America under Asbury in 1786, and which was recommended by the Annual Conferences in 1790, spread with the progress of the Church. Jesse Lee, Freeborn Garrettson, and William McKendree, with Joshua Soule and Nathan Bangs, were the strong men of the Church in these days. It was a period of fervid evangelism. The great revival of 1800-1805 was followed by those ot 1807-1808 and 1815-1816, which were general throughout the country. But with the Methodist itinerants, each was a revivalist, and each year was a revival year. There were degrees of success, of course; but this was the rule. In these years the great question fo** the future of the Church was the Constitution of tht Delegated General Conference. The plan was drawn up by Joshua Soule, assisted by William McKendree. It encountered, and seemed likely to be shattered by, the opposition of Jesse Lee; but by a concession he was won, and the first General Conference, the supreme legislative and judicial body of the Church, and the body which elects the bishops and to whom the whole Episcopate is responsible, began its sessions in 1812. This act marked the passage of the Methodists in America from a society, or sect, or denomination, to 20

306 History of the Christian Church.

a Church, with full powers of discipline, legislation, and expansion. The General Conference sat under Restrictive Rules which provided that it should not change the Articles of Religion nor the General Rules, nor do away with Episcopacy or the itinerancy, nor abolish the right of trial and appeal of accused preachers or members, nor appropriate the produce of the Book Concern or of the Chartered Fund except for the benefit of the preachers or their families. Each General Conference could fix the ratio of representation, which was at first one in five members in full connection of the Annual Conferences. These restrictions could be changed by the vote of the Annual Conferences, concurred in by a two-thirds vote of the General Conference. Within these very wide limits the General Conference had full legislative power and discretion in the Church. Until 1872 it was composed solely of ministerial delegates from the Annual Conferences. In 1872 lay delegates were admitted. In 1900 they were equal in numbers with the clerical delegates, and in 1901 a Constitution was adopted which still further defines and limits the action of the General Conference. The Constitution can be changed by the vote of two-thirds of the Annual and Lay Electoral Conferences and two-thirds of the General Conference. The General Conference meets in May every four years.

In these years the subject of slavery was present at each General Conference. In 1808 all matter in the Discipline against private members * holding slaves was stricken out. In 1804 preachers were forbidden to hold slaves; but North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were excepted

The Christian Church in America. 307

from the rule. In 1812 the question of slavery was left to the Annual Conferences.

Iu these years also came a division of the Church on the color-line. In 1793, Richard Allen, a colored layman, erected at his own cost the Bethel _AfrJcan African Church in Philadelphia. In June, Methodist

1799, Bishop Asbury ordained Allen a dea- ^Churches* con, the first ordination of a colored man to the Christian ministry in the United States. In 1800 the colored people of New York built the Zion Church. In 1816 the African Methodist Episcopal Church was organized, and held its first General Conference. Richard Allen was elected its first Bishop.

In New York, in 1817, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was organized.

In 1812 the General Conference refused to forbid local and other preachers to sell intoxicat-

. , , * . , Temperance.

mg liquors, and postponed the consideration of lotteries. In 1816 the General Conference forbade preachers to sell liquor.

The Church spread rapidly in these years; it was soon planted in Upper and Lower Canada in 18021804; and in Indiana in 1802, in Illinois _ExtengIon in 1807, Methodist preachers began their of the work. The pastoral term of itinerants in ^Church* 1804 was made two years, and such it continued to be until 1864. In 1816 a course of study was marked out for those desiring to enter the itinerancy. Methodism had always been a missionary organization. Missionaries were sent to the West Indies in 1786, but the American Methodists organized their Missionary Society in 1819. In 1800, Richard Whatcoat (1736-1806) was elected bishop. In 1808, William

308 History of the Christian Church.

McKendree (1757-1835) was chosen to the same office. In 1816, Enoch George (1767-1828) and Robert R. Roberts (1778-1843) were elected bishops.

In 1820 it became evident to many that the Church must have her schools. In 1818, Wilbur Fisk had said there is not an institution of ^T^n ST l^earniⁿg iⁿ American Methodism. Asbury had tried, but every attempt ended in a failure. Not only did Cokesbury College, at Abingdon, burn down, but also Asbury College, at Baltimore. Ebenezer and Bethel Schools in Virginia and in Kentucky failed of permanent success. In 1818, Wesleyan Academy was founded at New Market, N. H., but failed to win a permanent foundation; in 1826 it opened at Wilbraham, Mass., under Wilbur Fisk, and began a career of great prosperity and usefulness.

In 1822, Augusta College, Kentucky, was founded, the first of Methodist colleges to receive a charter. In

1824, Cazenovia Seminary, in New York, was founded, and Kent’s Hill, in Maine, in 1827. With these early schools came the establishment of the Methodist periodical press; Zion's Herald was founded at Boston in

1825, and The Christian Advocate in New York in

1826. The Sunday-school Union was organized in

1827.

The chief controversy of these decades arose over

the question debated in every General Conference,

_The whether presiding elders should be elected.

Election of The ablest men in the Church advocated

Presiding th_{e me}asure. In 1812 it was lost bi^ a ma-Elders. . . . ^J

jonty of five; in 1816 the majority against it was eighteen. In 1820 the vote for it was sixty-

The Christian Church in America. 309

one; that against it twenty-five. Joshua Soule declared it unconstitutional, and declined ordination to the Kpiscopacy because of this action. Bishop Mc-Kendree held the same views. On account of this opposition, this legislation was suspended. In 1824, after an active canvass, the resolution to elect presiding elders was lost by a majority of two. Whatever be our opinion as to the merits of the question, there is no doubt that the General Conference had power to make this change, and that Soule and Mc-Kendree were wrong in this ground for their opposition. In 1824, Joshua Soule and Elijah Hedding were elected bishops.

The action of the General Conference in regard to the election of presiding elders, and the position assumed on the question by Bishop Soule,

. t at o - Methodist

caused just dissatisfaction. In May, 1827, _Prote8tants. was formed the “Associate Methodist Reformers,” who became the Methodist Protestant Church, November 2, 1830. The leaders were Nicholas Snethen, Alexander McCaine, and Asa Shinn. They desired a Church in which laymen should be represented in Annual and General Conferences, and they had no desire for presiding elders or bishops. They certainly anticipated other Methodist Churches in lay representation, and the arbitrary action of Bishops Soule and Hedding in the next decade would not increase their love for the Episcopacy. But when this is granted, it must be stated that the Episcopacy has been an immense advantage to the Church, and as constant an aid to its growth as to its stability. It is difficult to see how an effective itinerancy, as distinguished from a congregational pastorate, could

3io History of the Christian Church.

exist in the Methodist Churches without the office and work of presiding elders. Both the Episcopacy and the presiding eldership are much less autocratic than in 1827.

In this decade the educational work was still further advanced. In 1831, Genesee Wesleyan Seminary was founded at Lima, N. Y. The same 1830^1840 y^ear> Wesleyan University, the real mother of the colleges of American Methodism, was opened at Middletown, Conn., under Wilbur Fisk. In 1832, Randolph-Macon College was founded in Virginia. In 1834, Dickinson College, at Carlisle, Pa., came under Methodist control, with John P. Durbin as president. In the same year Allegheny College was established at Meadville, Pa.; also Vermont Conference Seminary and the school founded at Lebanon, 111., in 1828 became McKendree College. Emory College was founded in 1837, and Indiana Asbury opened in 1838 with Matthew Simpson as president.

In 1830 the Methodist Magazine became the Methodist Quarterly Review. In 1834 the Western Christian Advocate was founded, and the Pitts-^Mpress^iSt biirg Christian Advocate the year preceding.

In 1836 the Methodist Book Concern at New York burned, causing a loss of $200,000. It soon rose from its ashes larger and more prosperous than ever.

In 1832 the first Methodist missionaries were sent to foreign lands. Melville B. Cox went to Liberia, where he soon finished his course, sending back

Missions. jo

to the Church the watch-cry, “ Let a thousand die, but let not Africa be given up.” William Nast began preaching among the Germans in 1835, and

The Christian Church in America. 311

founded Der Christlicke Apologete in 1839. In 1832, James O. Andrew (1794-1874) and John Emory (1789-ⁱ⁸35) ^were elected bishops ; in 1836, Beverly Waugh (1789-1858) and Thomas A. Morris (1794-1874) were chosen to the same office. Wilbur Fisk, who had been elected to the Episcopacy, declined ordination. In 1839 the centennial of the founding of Methodism was celebrated ; $600,000 was raised for its work by the Methodist Episcopal Church.

But the interest of this decade, as of each of those following until the Civil War, centered in the question of Negro bondage.

In 1832 the New England Antislavery Society was formed, and the American Antislavery Society the year following. The General Conference

Slavery

of 1836 censured George Storrs and Samuel '

Norris, two of its delegates, for speaking at an Antislavery meeting. In 1837 the first Methodist Antislavery Society was formed at Cazenovia, N. Y. Bishop Hedding presided at the New England Conference in

1838, and read a very long address against the Antislavery movement. La Roy Sunderland was brought to trial four times, and aquitted each time, for his work in connection with the Antislavery propaganda, Nathan Bangs being his chief prosecutor. In 1840 he was accused of libeling Bishop Soule, and tried by the Conference at which that bishop presided. Soule showed his usual overbearing disposition. He replied to Sunderland from the chair, saying no man ever spoke to him so before. “Thank God,” said Sunderland, “you have lived long enough to find one man to tell you to your face what others say behind your back.” Sunderland was found guilty, but sentenced

312 History of the Christian Church.

only to publish the finding of the Committee in his paper.

At the General Conference in 1840, Robert Newton was the delegate from the English Wesleyans, and was enthusiastically received. The resolutions on slavery were not as belligerent against the Abolitionists as in 1836, but were a meaningless compromise.

La Roy Sunderland had located in 1840. He, with Orange Scott, Luther Lee, and others, at Utica, N. Y., May 31, 1843, formed the Wesleyan Connection on an iron-clad Antislavery basis, also forbidding membership in secret societies.

Under these circumstances met the General Conference of 1844. It became known that Bishop James

General O* Andrew had, through his wife, become Conference a slaveholder. If the bishop had emanci-of 1844. p_a^_e(j ^e slaves in the North, if not in the South; if he had agreed to suspend his Episcopal functions until he had become disconnected with slavery; or if he had resigned,—the crisis would not at that time have occurred. Future generations will wonder how he could have allowed himself to be put in the position of dividing the greatest of American Churches on an issue so personal to himself and so repugnant to the moral sense of Christendom. But the Southern delegates were sensitive on the subject of slavery, and determined to resent any action which should imply that the holding of slaves was any stain on the Christian or ministerial character. On the other hand, it was known that the Northern Conferences would not tolerate the presidency of a slaveholding bishop. Realizing these antagonisms of feeling and the delicacy of the situation they caused, and with a

The Christian Church in America. 313

lack of Church consciousness which is astounding, both sides concurred in a Plan of Separation in case there should be dissatisfaction with the course of the General Conference. Dr. Charles Elliott thought the denomination already too large. The whole debate showed abundance of brotherly feeling and a desire to concede where possible, especially on the part of the North. That any body of delegates should suppose themselves authorized to divide the Church without any reference to either ministers or laity, and to plan for such division in advance of any action demanding such a change, will always seem one of the wonders of American ecclesiastical history.

Nevertheless, the report of the committee recommending the Plan of Separation was adopted by a vote of 139 to 17. A convention was immediately called to be held at Louisville, Ky., in 1845, and a General Conference called at Petersburg, Va., May 1, 1846. Thus was organized the Methodist Episcopal Church, South • ^I>5¹9 preachers and 459,569 members formed its ministry and membership. The General Conference of

1844 elected Edmund S. Janes (1807-1876) and Leonidas L. Hamline (1797-1867) bishops; the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, chose William Capers (17901855) and Robert Paine (1799-1882) to the same office among them.

When the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church met in 1848 there was a loss, as compared with 1844, of 780 ministers and 532,000 members. The Conference decided that the Plan of Separation was unconstitutional, and declined to admit Dr. Lovick Pierce as a fraternal delegate. That the separation was unconstitutional in ecclesiastical law

314 History of the Christian Church.

was doubtless true; but, on the other hand, there was good reason for the surprise and indignation of the Methodist Church, South, at the repudiation of the almost unanimous vote of the Conference of 1844.

The question of the division of the funds of the Book Concern went to the Supreme Court of the United States, and was decided in favor of the Methodist Church, South. The whole action shows how vague was the idea of a Church in the minds of leading men of all parties. Thank God, there has been some progress since that day. The Methodist Church still had Conferences and slaveholding members in the Border States. The efforts of the Antislavery element continued to change the Discipline so as to make slaveholding illegal in the Church. In i860 preachers and members were admonished to keep themselves from this great evil; but slaveholding was not prohibited until arms had decided the debate in 1864.

The second General Conference of the Church South was held in 1850. Henry B. Bascom was elected bishop, but died the same year. In 1848 the first foreign missionaries were sent out to Shanghai, China. '

In the Methodist Protestant Church there were compromise resolutions adopted on the subject of slavery in 1842 and 1846. In 1850 the question was referred to the Annual Conferences, but even this did not prevent a division which took place as late as 1858. This greatest of the ecclesiastical divisions could not fail to influence the action of the North and South in national politics. It did not escape the keen and patriotic gaze of Henry Clay, who wrote a letter

The Christian Church in America. 315

in April, 1845, deprecating the division, which ensued the next month, and its influence 011 the question of National Union.

It is easy to say the separation was unavoidable in Church and State, and the arbitrament of arms unavoidable; but it is lamentable that there was shown in the American Churches so little prevision and sagacity. Had there been more Churches and less denominations, the ties of Union would have been stronger, and stronger would have been those forces in the South which favored the political union of the American people.

In 1844 Willamette University was founded at Salem, Oregon. Jason Lee went there as a missionary in 1834; Marcus Whitman, a Congre- Methodist gationalist, in 1836. Isaac Owen went out ^P^^c_r°_c^^al in 1849, and William Taylor, afterward Education, bishop, in the same year, to California. '840-1850. Baldwin Institute, at Berea, Ohio, was founded in 1841; and Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware in 1844. New Hampshire Conference Seminary was founded in 1845, ^and Dickinson Seminary, Williamsport, Pa., in 1848.

The work was begun in 1814 among the Indians. It was carried on with much sacrifice and at times with excellent results. It has continued Mission Work until this day, and, with a better educa- _M°_t^f_h^t_o^h_d^e,_st tional system, has borne more permanent Episcopal fruit. The mission among the Germans church, in America, under the leadership of William Nast, was founded in 1838, and in these years just began to form the foundation of a large Christian Church, with scores of thousands of members. Ludwig S. Jacoby, con

316 History of the Christian Church.

verted here, began the work in Germany at Bremen in 1849. Few missions, both directly and indirectly, have yielded larger results. The mission to South America was begun by Dr. John Dempster, in 1836, at Buenos Ayres, but it was confined to Englishspeaking residents until 1864. Since then it has been actively pushed among the Spanish Americans. In 1847 missions to Asiatic lands were begun in China at Foo-Chow by Judson Dwight Collins and Moses C. White. Only the beginning was made of what is to become a great Oriental Church.

The United Brethren in Christ were organized as an Evangelical Church in 1785. In 1800 Philip Wil-_The liam Otterbein and Martin Boehm were united chosen bishops. The first General Confer-

Brethren. _{enc0 wag} ^ _lgl^ 'j'jje ki_sh₀p_s
are

elected for four years. This Church has taken a strong stand against secret societies. After the first General Conference services began to be held in English.

The Evangelical Association was formed by Jacob Albright (1759-1808), a friend of Bishop Asbury’s.

_The The first Council of three ministers and Evangelical fourteen laymen was held November 3 Association, jg^ £_rsj. Annual Conference was

convened, with twenty-eight present, in 1807. Jacob Albright was elected bishop. After his death, George Miller was the leading man in the Church. In 1814 John Driesbach had a conversation with Bishop As-bury in relation to a union with the Methodist Episcopal Church. Bishop Asbury would not consent to the services of the Methodist Episcopal Church being held in German. Thus the Evangelical Association felt they had the same call to work among the Germans

The Christian Church in America. 317

as the Methodists among English-speaking people. Their bishops also are elected for four years. One of the most remarkable itinerants of the time was Bishop John Seybert (1791-1860). He was converted in 1810, and began to preach in 1819. Joining Conference in 1821, he was presiding elder in 1825, Conference missionary in T834, and bishop in 1839. Like Asbury, he never married, and was an indefatigable traveler. He traversed one hundred and seventy-five thousand miles on horseback, and preached nine thousand eight hundred and fifty sermons.

In 1837 was established the Christlicke Botschafter, and in 1847 the Evangelical Messenger for English readers. This Church, like the United Brethren, lays special stress on the experience of perfect love.

In 1800 there were, of all Methodists, 287 ministers and 64,284 members. In 1850 the Methodist Episcopal Church had 4,129 ministers and

, ^ - * Statistics.

693,811 members; Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1,556 ministers, 514,299 members; African Methodist Episcopal Church, 127 ministers, 122,127 members; African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, 71 ministers, 4,817 members; Methodist Protestant Church, 807 ministers, 65,815 members; Wesleyan Methodist Church, 400 ministers, 21,400 members; Primitive Methodist Church, 12 ministers, 1,112 members; Reformed Methodist Church, 50 ministers, 2,050 members; Congregational Methodist Church (Colored), 200 members; or a total of 7,152 ministers, and 1,325,631 members.

The most influential bishops of this period were Joshua Soule and Elijah Hedding. Joshua Soule (1781-1867) was born at Bristol, Me., and converted

318 History of the Christian Church.

at the age of eighteen. Two years later he joined the Conference. In 1804 he was appointed presiding elder, an office he held, with the exception of

Joshua Soule. _ ,

one year, until 1816. In 1808 he was the main instrument in formulating the Plan under which the General Conference came into existence, and he always felt like a father to the Constitution. From 1816 to 1820 he was Book Agent at New York. For the next two years he was pastor at Baltimore. Having declined the Episcopate in 1820, he accepted the office in 1824, as he had caused his views in regard to the election of presiding elders to prevail. In

1845 he and Bishop Andrew went over to the Methodist Church, South. He sympathized with the South in the Civil War, and died two years after it closed. Bishop Soule was energetic and strong-willed; not an intellectual man, but a good administrator; in his earlier years an impressive preacher and a leader of men.

Elijah Hedding (1780-1852) was born at White Plains, N. Y. Converted at eighteen, he joined Conference at twenty-one. He was pastor from Hedding ^I^^OT *° ^I^°7’ ^an(^ fr°^m that date until 1824, presiding elder. In 1810 he married. His average salary for the previous ten years was forty-five dollars. He favored the election of presiding elders. In 1824 he was elected bishop. His proslavery attitude, 1836-1840, was very offensive to the Methodists of New England. After 1844 he showed the feebleness of age. He was considered strong in counsel and administration.

A man in many respects more able and influential than these bishops was Nathan Bangs (1778-1862),

The Christian Church in America. 319

He was born at Bridgeport, Conn., and at the age of thirteen removed to Delaware County, N. Y. Having pursued his education at the common school, he began to teach at eighteen. g“^^a₈ⁿ From 1799 to 1802 he was in Canada, teaching school and surveying. He was converted in

1800, and joined Conference in 1802. The next six years he preached in Canada. From 1808 to 1852 he was a delegate to every General Conference. After 1810 he lived in New York. From 1820 to 1828 he was Book Agent and editor of the Methodist Magazine. From 1828 to 1832 he was editor of the Christian Advocate. From 1832 to 1836 he edited the Quarterly Review and the books published by the Church. From 1820 to 1836 he had served as the unpaid secretary of the Missionary Society. For the next five years he gave his attention to this work as sole secretary. In the latter year he was elected President of Wesleyan University. After a year in that office he returned to the pastorate, serving until

1852. He was zealous in his proslavery views, but changed with time. He was deeply devout and greatly beloved. He is the author of a “ History of the Methodist Episcopal Church” in four volumes, 1839-1843, and of a “Life of Freeborn Garrettson.” In far-reaching influence, no man of that generation was superior to Wilbur Fisk (1792-1838). He was born at Brattleboro, Vt., and graduated

⁰ . Wilbur Fisk.

from the University of Vermont in 1815, one of the first American Methodist preachers who was a college graduate. He joined Conference in 1818, in 1823 was presiding elder, and the next year a delegate to the General Conference. In 1826 he

320 History of the Christian Church.

found his vocation as principal of Wilbraham Academy. Four years later he was called to Middletown, Conn., to organize Wesleyan University. In 18351836 he was in Europe. In the latter year he declined the Episcopacy. Two years later his course was ended. Wibur Fisk was brilliant in intellect and saintly in character. He experienced and preached entire sanctification. He, more than any other, was the founder of the work of the Methodist Church in education.

The ablest Methodist preacher of that generation was Stephen Olin (1797-1851). He was born at

Leicester, Vt. His father was judge of the

Stephen Olin. ’ , V. ,

Supreme Court of that State, and afterward member of Congress. He graduated at Middlebury College, Vermont. Then for some years he taught in South Carolina, where he was converted and joined Conference in 1824. From 1826 to 1834 he was Professor of English Literature in the University of Georgia. In 1827 he married a Georgian lady, who died in 1839. From 1834 to 1837 he was president of Randolph-Macon College. From 1837 to 1841 he traveled in Europe and the East. From 1842 to 1852 he was president of Wesleyan University, founded by Wilbur Fisk. These two men gave it its early reputation. In 1843 he married the daughter of Judge Lynch, of New York. In 1846 he was present at the first session of the Evangelical Alliance in London.

Dr. Olin had lived long in the South, and saw slavery with Southern vision. Wilbur Fisk also had no sympathy with the Abolitionists. Intellectual is not always moral vision. Dr. Olin’s mind was both penetrating and profound. In the pulpit he was

The Christian Church in America. 321

master. His sermons were like Chalmers’s, massive and convincing. While charity and humility were marked traits of his character, he was a prince of educators.

The most influential man in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in these years, was William Capers (1790-1855). His father was of Huguenot descent, and had been a Revolutionary soldier. He was born in South Carolina, and received his education in South Carolina College. He entered Conference in 1809, serving until 1815, when he located for three years. Reentering Conference, he was a delegate to the General Conference of 1820. In 1828 he was a fraternal delegate to the Wesleyan Conference in England, where he won golden opinions. In 1835 he was professor in Columbia College, but the next year became editor of the Southern Christian Advocate until 1840; for the next four years he was missionary secretary. In 1846 he was elected bishop. Although Bishop Capers was a slaveholder, and went with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, yet he was of too clear a vision not to see that civilization and Christendom were against slavery, and that it was doomed. Doubtless he felt as did Governor Wise and other intelligent Southern gentlemen, before the war, to whom the situation was intolerable, but who did not see the way out. Men with less breadth of experience, or less reflection, went more hopefully and more willingly with the tide.

A man of great native eloquence was Henry B. Bascom (1795-1850). He was born at Hancock, N. Y., and converted at sixteen years of age. Two

322 History of the Christian Church.

years later he began preaching. In 1823 he was chosen chaplain to Congress. In 1827-1829 he was president of Madison College, Pennsylvania,

an institution afterward absorbed in AlBa scorn.

legheny College, at Meadville. In 18291832 he was agent of the American Colonization Society. For the next ten years he was Professor of Moral Philosophy at Augusta College, Kentucky. In 1842 he became president of Transylvania University. From 1846 to 1850 he edited the Quarterly Review of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In 1850 he was chosen bishop. In the somewhat florid style of eloquence Bascom was an easy master, and was probably, in his later years, the most popular pulpit orator in the United States. He wrote the Bill of Rights for the General Conference of 1828, and the Protest of the Southern members of the General Conference of 1844 against the resolution requesting Bishop Andrew to desist from the exercise of Episcopal duties while the impediment of his being connected with slavery existed. He, like the men of his time, knew hardships. One year in his early ministry he preached four hundred times, traveled five thousand miles, and received $12.10 as his salary.

The Roman Catholic Church.

The Roman Catholic Church in the United States grew slowly until the great tide of emigration set in, in 1840. The Irish famine, 1845-1847, may be said to have made a new epoch in the history of that Church in the New World. Certain it is, it clearly divides the years before from those that followed. Other nationalities have sent large contingents to the Ro

The Christian Church in America. 323

man Catholic Church in the United States, and have found representation in her Episcopate; but the Irish prelates have ruled, as they have founded the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. A glance at the names of the collective Episcopate during the nineteenth century makes this evident. If they can not rule their own land from Dublin Green, they can and do rule a larger population than Ireland ever contained for the Pope of Rome. Few achievements of the sons of Ireland are more memorable, more far-reaching, or more worthy of record than this. And while this is true, there is scarcely an Evangelical Church in the United States which does not reckon sons of Erin among the most eminent of her ministers ; men who did not come from the ancestral Protestants of Ulster, but men like Thomas Walsh of Wesley’s day, and Nicholas Murray, the invincible antagonist of Archbishop Hughes, who were born and reared in the Roman Catholic faith. Irishmen have stood high in the military annals of England, France, Spain, and the United States; they have made no small fame as municipal politicians; but it is doubtful if the Irish gifts of imagination, warmth of heart, and spontaneous eloquence have found anywhere wider scope or nobler exercise than in the ministry of the Christian Church.

Bishop John Carroll died in 1815. A Frenchman, Ambrose Marechal, succeeded him in the See of Baltimore, 1817-1828. The most noted of the early bishops of the Roman Catholic _Engiand. Church in the United States was John England. For some time a papal junta had selected the bishops for the United States from Irishmen, but

324 History of the Christian Church.

with little regard to either present or prospective fitness. Bishop England was an exception, and the beginning of a better order. He was a parish priest at Bandon, Ireland. When chosen Bishop of Charleston, S. C., in 1820, he refused to take oath to the government of Great Britain, as he intended to be a citizen of the country of his adoption. His diocese included North and South Carolina and Georgia; there were in it but a few scattered churches. In 1833 he went to Hayti, and the year following to Rome. He founded the United States Catholic Miscellany, the first Roman Catholic periodical in the United States. He was a pioneer, and ardent controversialist, a good administrator, and an eloquent preacher. He was the first Roman Catholic to preach before the Houses of the United States Congress. Returning from Europe, he was taken sick on the voyage, and died in April, 1842.

The Roman Catholic Church was troubled by a schism caused by the trustees of the Church in Phila-. delphia, which lasted from 1820 to 1831.

Schisms. .

One less serious, but very troublesome, occurred in Buffalo, where the trustees of St. Louis Church stood out against Bishop Timon from 1850 to 1854. It is still the most independent, as well as the wealthiest, congregation of that Church in the city.

The Anti-Roman Catholic riots broke out in Charlestown, Mass., where the Ursuline Convent was burned by the mob, August 9, 1834. It Cathotic°Riot8 ^{was state}d that the damages of that night were never repaid. Two years later, Maria Monk began her career of fraud and imposture. In

The Christian Church in America. 325

1844, riots broke out against the Roman Catholics in Philadelphia. The firmness of the mayor prevented like disorders in New York. On the other hand, it is surprising to read in a Roman Catholic history, written by a clergyman and a man of culture, a statement like this. Speaking of the success of the mayor’s efforts to avert a riot, the author says: “New York escaped a terrible danger; for a large Irish Society, with divisions throughout the city, had resolved that 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.” Nothing can be more hateful or more cowardly than mob violence, whether it be directed against Roman Catholic,-Jew, or Negro, and it is peculiarly detestable when directed by religious hate; but where can any Christian man, not to say clergyman, find any ethical principle that would justify conduct like that outlined above? Certainly the perpetrators of such fiendish acts against the innocent should have had swift passage out of the world, and Irish hands would not fail to have aided in the process.

The Archbishopric of Oregon was erected in July, 1846, in ignorance of the fact that Oregon was American territory. The next year that of St. _New Louis was created; this was followed by Archiepiscopai New York in 1851, and San Francisco in

1853. Cincinnati was made an Episcopal See in 1821; in 1833 John Purcell was consecrated to it, and served until 1883. He was an able man, but became involved in financial operations which made him a bankrupt for a deficit of millions.

326 History of the Christian Church.

The Provincial Councils of the Archdiocese of Baltimore were held in 1829, 1833, 1837,1840, 1843, 1846,

. 1849. These gave way to the first Plenary Councils. Q_ouncji _Qf Baltimore, held in 1852. This

is the highest Roman Catholic ecclesiastical body in the United States.

John Hughes (1798-1864) was the most noted and aggressive ecclesiastic of these years, though his activity reached far beyond them. Born in Ire-john Hughes. j_an(^ Archbishop Hughes emigrated to

America in 1817. He studied for the priesthood at St. Mary’s Seminary, Emmettsburg, Md., and was ordained in 1825. He served a parish in Philadelphia until he was chosen coadjutor to the Bishop of New York in 1837. The full adminisiration of affairs came into his hands the next year; but he was not made bishop in title until 1842. In 1851 he was made Archbishop of New York. In 1841 a theological seminary was added to St. John’s College at Fordham. In 1858 the corner-stone of St. Patrick’s Cathedral was laid.

Bishop Hughes was an ardent controversialist, and debated with John Breckinridge, 1830-1834, “ Whether the Protestant religion is the religion of Christ.” In 1847-1848 he wrote, in controversy with “Kirwan,” Nicholas Murray, on “The Claims of Rome.” These controversies gave Bishop Hughes great fame among his fellow-believers; but in the last he is not thought to have been victorious, as he declined to renew it. In 1842 he broke up the Public-school Society of New York City, with the result that the schools of New York City came under the uniform law of the State. The bishop opposed the reading of the Bible in the schools, and demanded State

The Christian Church in America. 327

support for seven Roman Catholic schools in the metropolis. This, of course, he did not obtain. Archbishop Hughes was a patriotic American, and in 1862, like Henry Ward Beecher, he was sent on a semiofficial mission to Europe to influence public opinion and action in favor of the North.

In 1800 it is estimated there were in statistics, the United States 100,000 Roman Catholics; in 1850, 1,614,000.

It may seem as if there was too much detail in outlining the careers of the leaders of the American Churches in this period. But it must be _{Workof the} remembered that their work was not ex- Men of this ceeded in difficulty or value by that of any ‘

land. These men, and the devoted men and women who followed them, made possible and realized a Free Church in a Free State. They laid the sure foundations of the most vigorous, intelligent, and aggressive Christian Churches the Christian ages have seen. These men, many of them poor and humble, but all of them devoted and sincere, opened the way for the future development of the Christian Church. Whatever may be the differing opinions about Established Churches becoming disestablished, no thoughtful man in any communion would favor founding an Established Church. The men who founded the Churches of the new nation, 1800-1850, proved that Christianity can thrive and become increasingly potent and influential without the aid of the State. The new nations of Canada, Australia, and South Africa, and the Spanish nations of Central and South America, have profited by their example. It was no small task to work out so complete and irrefutable a demonstration, and to

328 History of the Christian Church.

set such splendid and universally prevalent an example. Their works followed them, and might adorn the pages of any historic record.

The men of these years in the United States lived in a new country, under a new government, amid conditions which allowed the trying of almost ^TthisEra.°^f
an^ conceivable financial, political, social, or religious experiment. All were extremely buoyant and hopeful. Everything seemed possible. Not only everything was to be better than all that preceded it, but there was so much good that there was a general expectation of the best. The old was recalled only to be ignored or despised. All was to become new, and a new revelation, or the immediate beginning of the millennial reign of Christ, seemed but the fulfillment of natural and legitimate expectations.

From 1833 for ten years William Miller, of Southampton, N. Y., taught that the Second Advent of the

Lord Jesus Christ, or, as popularly exAdventists. *; , r , ^

pressed, the end of the world, would take place November 23, 1843. He was powerfully aided by a former minister of the Disciples of Christ, Joshua V. Himes, who published a journal called the Sign of the Times. Tens of thousands of members of the Churches joined the new sect. Many had their ascension robes prepared for the expected day. Great was the disappointment and falling away when the calculations proved fallacious. Nevertheless, a residue remained, and these formed the Advent Christian Church, which lays stress on the expected coming of the Lord, soon and sudden, though without fixing a date. Some of them, imitating the Seventh-day Baptists, became

The Christian Church in America. 329

Seventh-day Adventists. In 1850 the number of Adventists in the United States was estimated at forty thousand.

In 1834, John H. Noyes, a graduate of Yale, came to the conclusion that the Second Coming of Christ had taken place in the time of the first generation of Christian believers, and that what community, we had now to do was to realize in our lives that perfect state. In 1848 he founded on the shores of Oneida Lake, New York, the Oneida Community. This was a society of the strictest communism, both in property and in the relation of the sexes. Its controlling power was the character and personality of the founder, and the principle of “ mutual criticism.” However abhorrent to good morals, the Community proved a financial success.

It was from this eager, hopeful condition of the public mind, and from a training to think in the terms of the letter, rather than the spirit, of

, , ,, The Mormons.

the Old and New Testament that Mor-monism arose. The leader, Joseph Smith, stands unique among religious founders. It can not be denied that in his life he was illiterate, drunken, and licentious. Yet he became the founder of a new religion in the nineteenth century! The revelation he gave out in 1843, which was especially to command his wife, Emma Hall Smith, to overlook his adulteries and not to make them a pattern for her own conduct, became, for two generations at least, the corner-stone of the new faith. The Church of Jesus Christ, Latter-day Saints, if for wise reasons it does not continue former practices, at least does not repudiate them.

But the above recital, though the facts are beyond

330 History of the Christian Church.

dispute, does not explain the existence of the Mormon Church nor the phenomenon of its origin. Joseph Smith had some extraordinary qualities that gave him a hearing, and afterward ascendency, in the peculiar circumstances of that time.

Joseph Smith, Jr., was born at Sharon, Vt., December 23, 1805. He was descended from New England “ ne’er-do-weels,” whose predominant traits were “shiftlessness” and shiftiness, a combination by no means uncommon. His maternal grandfather had been a soldier, at one time drunken and epileptic. His mother had dreams and visions. His father seems to have been a man of little account. In 1815 the family moved to Palmyra, N. Y., and some years afterward to Manchester, a few miles west. Here he had visions in 1823 and 1826. It seems difficult not to believe that the visions were real to Joseph Smith. He soon began crystal-gazing. It seems, if he did not have incipient epileptic seizure, that he did induce a hypnotic state and the trance medium condition. Smith claimed to have had a vision of an angel with gold plates. The writing which he transcribed from them appears to be the tracing of one in the hypnotic condition. Smith, being able to write with difficulty, employed a schoolmaster, Oliver Cowdery, to write down what he interpreted when behind a curtain in the same room as he gazed in his crystals. This began in 1827. In May, 1829, Cowdery, Martin Harris, and David Whitmer were persuaded by a vision of the reality of the revelation made to Joseph Smith. Though in 1839 these men were cut off from the Mormon Church by Joseph Smith, yet they believed in the reality of the vision until their death. A month

The Christian Church in America. 331

later eight others, four from the Whitmer family and three from the Smith family, and one Hiram Poge, testified to a similar vision as attesting the revelations of Joseph Smith; that is, the existence of the gold plates. Smith had been employed to use his gifts as a crystal-gazer to discover buried treasure, but without success. This seems to have suggested the gold-plate revelation.

The principal use of the vision seems to have been to make Martin Harris furnish the money for printing the “ Book of Mormon,” which appeared in July, 1829. Soon after appeared the “Visions of Moses” and the “Writings of Moses.” The “Book of Abraham,” translated from “ Reformed Egyptian,” Smith must have known, was an imposture. Take out of these writings what is borrowed from the Christian Scriptures, and the remainder is an insult to the intelligence of the most ordinarily-instructed reader. The power of the movement did not reside in these writings, though they constituted a new revelation, but in the personality of Joseph Smith, and in the teachings of a present and continuous revelation, and the exercise of all the special gifts of prophecy, exorcism, and healing, known to the early Church. Joseph Smith was a large man, six feet in height, and weighing nearly two hundred pounds. He had light complexion and hair, and blue eyes set far back in his head. He spoke in a loud voice, and his language and manners were coarse. But Smith had a strong will, a mastery of the wills of others, a faith in himself, and boundless self-conceit, with all the shrewdness and cunning credited to his Yankee ancestry and environment. The birth of the Mormon Church into a larger life

332 History of the Christian Church.

was accelerated by the accession of Sidney Rigdon, a former minister of the Disciples of Christ. The Church had been organized at Fayette, N. Y., April 6, 1830. It consisted of about thirty members when Rigdon visited it in December of the same year. He persuaded Smith and his followers to emigrate to Kirtland, Ohio, in February, 1831. Through a great revival, marked by fanatical excesses, the Church soon grew; by June it numbered two thousand.

In the autumn of that year a new society was formed at Independence, Mo. Soon they numbered twelve hundred adherents. Smith published “The Doctrine and Covenants,” which contained the revelations to him from 1828 to 1831. In 1833 the Latter-day Saints' Messenger and Advocate was founded. In

1834, Smith received a new revelation, commanding that all surplus property should be in common and ordaining a perpetual tithe. In 1834 the first High Council of the Church of Christ was chosen, with Smith, Rigdon, and Williams in the First Presidency. In 1835 were chosen the “Twelve Apostles,” among whom was Brigham Young. The next year “The Seventy” were appointed. In 1837, Heber Kimball and Orson Hyde were sent as missionaries to England. By this time Smith’s banking scheme came to grief, and the Safety Society Bank of Kirtland, Ohio, failed for $100,000. Smith and Rigdon had been tarred and feathered at Kirtland in March, 1832, and the failure of his financial scheme had not increased his popularity. There was a large withdrawal from the Church in 1836.

The Mormons in 1833 had been driven from Independence, Mo., with cruelty which disgraced the

The Christian Church in America. 333

community, and then settled at Liberty, Mo. Smith set out to join them with one hundred and fifty men, which increased on the route to two hundred; but he was unable to effect his purpose, and returned to Kirtland, Ohio. When, in 1838, he reached Liberty, it was to organize the Danites to carry out his will without scruple, and to make absurd claims of authority. This, with the ill-will of the neighbors, caused friction little short of war. The militia were called out, and the Mormons, now fifteen thousand in number, in the dead of winter, were driven across the Mississippi into Illinois. Several were massacred. Smith, his brother, and other leaders, were arrested and imprisoned. They escaped in April, 1839. This era of persecution in Missouri, 1833-1839, was without palliation or excuse, and violated every principle of Christian toleration and charity. The exiled Mormons settled at Nauvoo, forty miles above Quincy, on the Mississippi River. The first dwelling was erected in

1839, and within two years there were two thousand houses. The next year Nauvoo City, University, and Legion were chartered. Of course, Smith commanded the latter, and rejoiced in the title of lieutenant-general. Smith was now the autocratic ruler of twenty thousand people, with ten thousand adherents in Great Britain. But his conceit and habits brought about his fate. In 1843 he wrote: “I know more than all the world put together. ... I solve mathematical problems of universities, with truth, diamond truth, and God is my right-hand man.” In

1844 he announced himself as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. Smith had been in evil repute for his relations with women since 1833.

334 History of the Christian Church.

In 1843 he published his revelation sanctioning and commanding polygamy on pain of damnation. Many revolted. They started an opposition paper called The Expositor. In the first number they published the affidavits of sixteen women, who swore that Smith, Rigdon, Young, and others, had “ invited them to enter into a secret and illicit connection under the title of spiritual marriage.” Smith ordered his followers “to abate the nuisance,” and they demolished the building in which The Expositor was published. The proprietors fled, and then sued out a process against Joseph and Hyrum Smith for riot. The warrant was resisted. The governor called out the militia, and the prophet and his brother were placed in jail. It being rumored that the governor wished them to escape, a mob, two hundred in number, broke into the jail, June 27, 1844, and shot them to death. The governor owed the protection of the State to Joseph Smith. Seldom has murder by lynch law brought a more baneful harvest. For the Mormons nothing more propitious could have happened. Their leader, half mad with conceit, and spotted in character, at once became a holy martyr and a chosen prophet of God, with the last and most authentic revelation.

The State of Illinois revoked the charter of Nau-voo in 1845, and the settlement had to be broken up. They resolved, in January, 1846, to go beyond the Rocky Mountains, and before the winter was ended sixteen hundred persons started for Salt Lake. Brigham Young, who had succeeded to the authority of Smith, arrived at Salt Lake, July 24, 1847. The main body of the Mormons came in the fall of 1848. In March, 1849, a Convention was held at Salt Lake, and

Thh Christian Church in America. 335

a State organized under the name of Deseret. Congress refused to recognize it, and organized the Territory of Utah. President Fillmore appointed Brigham Young governor in 1850. Thus out of ignorance and persecution had grown a compact body of people, with a close hierarchical organization, and a united industry, and a founded capital which made the desert blossom as the rose, and brought tens of thousands of ablebodied emigrants from beyond the sea, to found the new Church State in the untrodden wilderness. Centralization, and a strict and merciless discipline, made material prosperity as certain and universal as that of the Jesuit State of Paraguay, but with the same limitation of intellect, though not of individual initiative.

But the contribution of the State of New York in the first half of the nineteenth century to the religious aberrations of Christendom did not cease with the Adventists, the Oneida Com- ^{Spiritua,isn1,} munity, and the Mormons. In 1848, within twenty miles of the old home of Joseph Smith, began the “spirit Tappings” of the Fox sisters. At the home of Mr. J. D. Fox, Hydesville, N. Y., in January, 1848, his daughters—Margaret, twelve years of age, and Kate, nine—began those manifestations which answered to the perennial desire of man to see beyond death, and the eager expectation of a new, and therefore higher, religious revelation.

The girls soon after went to live with their married sister, Mrs. Fish, in Rochester, N. Y., where the manifestations continued and attracted attention. In November, 1849, they appeared in that city in a public hall. In May, 1850, they came to New York, and their peculiar manipulations and physical manifesta

336 History of the Christian Church.

tions soon made them known throughout the world. At Mr. Granger’s, in Rochester, and Dr. Phelps’s, in Stratford, Conn., like manifestations appeared, and soon it was discovered that other persons besides the Fox sisters could become mediums for the new means of communication with the spirit world. In a word, at the close of this period, modern Spiritualism was fairly launched. Its further progress and significance belongs to the last half of the nineteenth century.

Thus has passed before us the work of the Christian Church in America for fifty years. We have traced its glory and its shame. The tale of its heroic sacrifices, its strenuous endeavors, and its marvelous triumphs, will never cease to stir the blood and inspire to nobler and more unselfish toil for Him who is Lord of all ages and all worlds.

Churches in Canada.

By the Quebec Act, after the British conquest of Canada, the Roman Catholic became the established Church in Lower Canada. It has the power cathoHc. ky law to levy tithes and ecclesiastical dues from its adherents, and education is in the hands of the clergy. It has retained its immense wealth, while the ecclesiastical endowments of the Roman Catholic Church in Spanish America have been swept into the coffers of the State. The French population, which then numbered sixty-five thousand, has increased to nearly a million. Of course, religious toleration to the Evangelical Churches has been granted, and a school system free from clerical super

The Christian Church in America. 337

vision has been introduced, though against the persistent opposition of the Roman Catholic Church. Roman Catholics in Canada are permitted to pay their school-tax to the support of their own schools.

The Evangelical Churches made strenuous endeavors to found colleges^ and a university. The Church of England at first sought control as a quasi _The Established Church, but this ceased before Evangelical the end of the period. In other respects ^Churches* the religious development was like that of the United States, except that immigration much more powerfully increased the membership of the Episcopalian and Presbyterian Churches. In 1851 the population of 2,312,919 was then divided among the larger Churches: Roman Catholic, 983,680; Presbyterians, 310,542; Episcopalians, 303,907; Methodists, 208,057; Baptists, 101,169; Lutherans, 16,196; Congregation-alists, 14,313.

Spanish America.

These years witnessed a great transformation in Spanish America, and it affected materially the condition of the Roman Catholic Church.

The imprisonment of the Spanish royal family, the invasion of Spain by Napoleon in 1808, and the consequent civil war, made the Spanish

^ r , • • Independence

colonies necessarily, for a long time, practi- ©fSpanish cally independent of the mother country. American The strife began simultaneously in 1810 in Buenos Ayres and in Mexico. In the latter country a Republic was formed in 1813, and independence proclaimed in 1816. The next year the Spanish suf-22

338 History of the Christian Church.

fered crushing defeats, and the war was at an end in 1824.

In Mexico the royal power was stronger and the resistance much harder to overcome. In 1810 a noble priest, Don Miguel Hidalgo, raised the standard of re-_# volt. He was captured and executed in 1811.

’ Another priest, Morelos, seized the fallen banner. Independence from Spain was proclaimed in 1813; in 1815, Morelos was taken and put to death. But the cause could not die. In 1821, Iturbide took the City of Mexico, and the Spanish left the country. In 1823, Spain acknowledged the independence of Mexico. Central America became independent at the same time.

The struggle with Spain in South America centered in Venezuela, where General Bolivar showed himself unshaken by misfortunes and able

* to command success. Venezuela declared her independence, July 5, 1811. Bolivar entered Caracas in triumph, August 4, 1813. In the forepart of the next year all Venezuela was in his power, and in December he took Bogota, the capital of New Granada. But now disasters followed in quick succession ; all of Venezuela was lost to the Royalists in the latter part of 1814, and Bolivar could not hold his own in New Granada. He left the country in 1815, and went to Kingston, Jamaica. From thence he went to Hayti, and from there sailed with an expedition for his native land in December, 1816. The Royalists were defeated, February 16, 1817. Bolivar now became supreme in Venezuela, and was made commander-in-chief. In July, 1819, he again took Bogota,

The Christian Church in America. 339

and in June, 1820, the Spanish were defeated, and their power finally broken in the battle of Carabolo, in 1821. The war was then carried south.

The chief seat of the Spanish power was in Peru, where Upper Peru, now Bolivia, had mines which were the treasure-house of Spain. Here it must

, , , _ _ , Chili and Peru.

be attacked and overthrown. In July,

1810, the Chilians deposed the Spanish President, and in September placed the government in the hands of a Committee of Seven. In December, 1811, it was vested in a triumvirate under the lead of Juan Jose Carrera. In 1813 he was at first successful against the Spaniards, but was at length overcome. In 1817, having obtained re-enforcements from Buenos Ayres, the Spaniards were thoroughly defeated at Chacabuco in 1817. General San Martin was chosen President. He advanced against the Spaniards in Peru. Greatly aided by the navy under Lord Cochrane, San Martin entered Lima, the center of Spanish power, July 9,

1821. An expedition followed to Upper Peru, but was defeated. The patriots who had been engaged in a bitter contest since 1810, and at the beginning were victorious through aid from Buenos Ayres, now came to a final triumph through the complete victory of Ayacucho, December 9, 1824, won by General Sucre, which sealed the fate of the Spanish dominion in South America.

This result came through General Bolivar sending General Sucre to aid the people of Ecuador, who had risen against Spain in 1820. General Sucre, ^ ^

. ~ _i ~ Ecuador.

combining with the Peruvian General Santa

Cruz defeated the Royalists on the side of Mt. Pichin-

340 History of the Christian Church.

cha, May 22, 1822. This secured the independence of Ecuador, which united with Venezuela and New Granada to form the Republic of Colombia under General Bolivar.

In August, 1825, Bolivia declared her-^Buruguay.^{d se}^ independent of Peru. Uruguay was declared independent of both Brazil and Buenos Ayres in 1826.

In 1829, Venezuela declared itself independent of the Union, styling itself Colombia; in 1830 Ecuador did the same. The central State then took,

Columbia. . _ __

in 1831, the name of New Granada. In 1861 the name was changed to the United States of Colombia.

In 1811, Paraguay declared itself independent. In 1814, Dr. Francia became dictator, and ruled to

1840, and was succeeded by his nephew,

Paraguay. •

Lopez, 1840-1862, and he by his son, Francisco Solano Lopez, whose death in 1870 ended a war with Brazil, Buenos Ayres, and Uruguay, which secured free navigation of the Rio de la Plata, but left Paraguay prostrate, with a large indemnity to pay to the allies.

In 1833, Chili adopted a Constitution, and since that date has been the most free and prosperous of the South American Republics. Rosas Argentine. ^was dictator of Buenos Ayres from 1829 to

1852, and was a cruel tyrant. On his fall the name of the country was changed to that of the Argentine Confederation. Since 1874 it has increased rapidly in population and resources, and promises to be second to no State in South America in freedom, culture, and power.

The Christian Church in America. 341

When the French army reached Lisbon, the prince regent, with the queen, sailed to Brazil, November 2_? 1807, arriving at Bahia, January 21, 1808. _b^_h In March they were at Rio Janeiro. At once Brazil was declared open to free trade, and in January, 1815, was declared a kingdom. The queen died, and the prince regent was declared king as Dom Pedro I, March, 1816. February 26, 1821, Brazil was granted representative government; September 7,

1822, Brazil was declared independent of Portugal, and the following October the king was proclaimed Emperor of Brazil. Before the end of 1823 all Portuguese troops and authority were gone. In March, 1831, Dom Pedro I left Brazil forever. The crown descended to his son, Dom Pedro II, then five years old, who proved one of the best rulers South America has had in this century. He began his independent rule, July 23, 1840. Thus all the Spanish and Portuguese Colonies in America became independent, except Cuba and Porto Rico; the Guianas English, French, and Dutch remained also in colonial dependence. These changes led to others.

First, slavery was abolished in all these countries. In the most of these States, as in Buenos Ayres, this came during the War of Independence. In Mexico it was decreed September, 1829; in Colombia in 1852; in Venezuela in 1854; ^an(i *ⁿ Brazil in 1871.

Second, the Roman Catholic Church, which had been supreme in education and religion, now lost its great wealth. In Mexico, where the Church owned one-third of the soil and $375,000,000 of property, the process begun in 1817 was completed in 1861. In all the States convents and monasteries have been

342 History of the Christian Church.

suppressed, and their number for the future limited. The State generally assumes the payment of the clergy, and the Roman Catholic religion is the religion of the State.

In all these States, except Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru, education has been largely taken from the hands of the clergy. This was especially the case in Mexico, Argentine, and Chili. Another consequence was the gradual granting of the freedom of religious worship to Evangelical Christians, at first in private, and then in public assemblies. In this period, only the former toleration was granted. The latter came first in Argentine and Chili, and last in Bolivia and Ecuador ; in the latter country only recently.

With their freedom came the beginning of Evangelical mission work in Spanish America—in this period, only Buenos Ayres and Chili, and then mainly limited to foreign residents. When the work of Evangelical Churches in Spanish America is as aggressive and prosperous as that of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada and the United States, it will be a great gain for the Spanish-speaking peoples and for Christendom, both Evangelical and Roman Catholic.

The Roman Catholic Episcopate in Spanish America in 1850 was composed of twelve Archiepiscopal The Roman Sees, with twenty-nine suffragan bishops.

Catholic They were arranged as follows in Mexico: Episcopate ⁰ .

in Spanish there were the three Archbishoprics of

America. Mexico, Guadalajara, and Michoacan, the last erected in that year, with six suffragan bishops; in Central America there was the Archbishopric of Guatemala, with two suffragan bishops; in the West

The Christian Church in America. 343

Indies, the two Archbishoprics of Santiago de Cuba, with the Bishop of Havana as a suffragan; and that of San Domingo, with the Bishop of Porto Rico as suffragan.

In South America the Archbishop of Caracas had jurisdiction over Bolivia and the Argentine Republic, as Buenos Ayres was not made an Archiepiscopal See until 1865. The Archiepiscopal Diocese then contained two bishoprics in Bolivia and two in the Argentine Republic. In Chili there was the Archbishop of Santiago and two bishops; in Peru, the Archbishop of Lima and five bishops. Ecuador had its primate in the Archbishop of Quito and two bishops. Colombia’s metropolitan city was Santa Fe de Bogota, with seven bishops, and Venezuela had its Archbishop of Caracas and three bishops. In Brazil there was the Archbishop of Bahia, with eight Episcopal Sees. These are given, that the progress of the Roman Catholic Church in Spanish America and Brazil can be noted at the close of the next fifty years.

Chapter IX.

THE ORIENTAL OR GREEK CATHOLIC CHURCH.

Thk notable events in the history of the Oriental Church of this era were the better position secured for all Christians under Turkish rule, the quickening influence of Evangelical missions in Turkey, the independence of the Kingdom of Greece and the relation of the Russian Church to the circulation of the Scriptures in the language of the people.

The position of the Ecumenical Patriarch, the titular head of the Oriental Church at the court of the sultan, has always been inglorious and often shameful. This has not prevented it from being a place of great influence, as he is the head and the representative before the Sublime Porte of ten millions of Greek Christians. He is removable at pleasure by the Porte, and for cause at the representation of the Holy Synod of Constantinople. The position is thus seen to be very insecure, and it must be said that residence at court is not favorable to the development of high character among Oriental prelates. Too often, alas! the character of the occupant added to the insecurity of the office.

The Patriarchs, nevertheless, have been the means of keeping together the scattered Greeks under Turkish rule, of sustaining their consciousness of racial and religious unity, and of preparing them for political independence. April 22, 1821, the Patriarch

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Oriental or Greek Catholic Church. 345

Gregory was hanged at his palace door for sympathizing with the Greek revolutionists. The same fate overtook his predecessor at Adrianople the following month. On the other hand, the Patriarch Agath-anglos, 1827-1834, was received with extraordinary honors by the sultan, and became a pliant instrument of his policy.

These changes were so rapid that, between 1820 and 1835, there were seventeen Ecumenical Patriarchs at Constantinople, of whom eight were living at the latter date. Nine of the seventeen were deposed by the Holy Synod for open scandals, most of them being cases of financial extortion. Notwithstanding the often unworthy character of the incumbent, the Oriental Christians of the Greek faith have great respect for the office and high regard and esteem for the Church, which, through ages of oppression and persecution, for over four hundred years, had been all and more to its adherents than the Roman Catholic Church has been to those of its faith in Ireland and Poland. No wonder that the Greeks look upon it with love and veneration, especially when we recall that its history reaches back to the days of the apostles, and that its Churches were strong and vigorous when the Church of Rome was but an infant, using the Greek language and ruled by men of Greek descent.

The greatest change that came to the Greek subjects of the sultan was that inaugurated by the Hatti Sheref of Gulhane, in 1839. This instrument, which has been called the Magna Charta of Turkey, “ provided for the security of all subjects, without distinction of creeds, in life, honor, and property; for the equitable distribution and collection of taxes ; and for

346 History of the Christian Church.

the systematic recruiting of the army. It confirmed Mahmoud’s ordinance, by which no one could be executed without trial and sentence, and established the principle of public trial for all accused parties; it asserted the right of all persons, criminals included, to hold and devise property without let or hindrance; and appointed a council to elaborate the details of administrative reform.” This, like the English Magna Charta, required strong support to make it effective, and that support the edict of Gulhane has not had, but it has made secure the position of all Christians before the law in the Turkish Empire.

This provision protected in their religious rights, for the first time, Evangelical Christians in the East;

and it was time. Before this, “ no member Missions.^{31 a} Church or Synagogue, who migrated to another religious body, could hope to effect his purpose with impunity.” This gave the Evangelical Christians a recognized position as such, “ and the right of converts to be protected by the civil authorities from vexation on the part of their relinquished Churches.” This, of course, did not allow protection to those who should forsake the Mohammedan religion ; for them the punishment was death. No influence for the regeneration of the oppressed Christians under Turkish rule has been more potent or far-reaching than that of the Evangelical missions established by the American Board of Foreign Missions at Beyrout, and afterward among the Nestorians and Armenians, and at Constantinople. It is not too much to say that, in education, in the practice of medicine, in the position of women, and in the standards of comfort and well-being among the Christian

Oriental or Greek Catholic Church. 347

population, it has changed the face of affairs among Christians of the East. And it is this supremacy in the home and in education which will at length give the long-oppressed Christians the supremacy over their decadent Turkish masters.

The missionaries at Beyrout and at Constantinople translated the Bible admirably into Arabic, Turkish, and Bulgarian. They established schools, and made known American inventions. Their schools for the instruction of women, and their training in medicine and in the care of the sick, were untold blessings. Their mission press made a constant appeal to the intellectual and spiritual nature of their pupils and adherents. They laid well the foundation for the new Christendom of the East.

The withdrawal of the Greeks of the new kingdom from the jurisdiction of the Patriarchs of Constantinople was necessary, and an unmixed benefit. The independence of Greece was _lndepe^_nce. an inspiration to men of the Greek race everywhere. The tyranny for more than thirty years of Ali Pacha, of Jannina, led to the Greek Revolution, 1821-1827, which was brought to a triumphant issue by what the Duke of Wellington styled “that unfortunate event, the battle of Navarino.” In 1833, Greece became an independent kingdom, and July 2d of that year the Greek Church in Greece was declared independent of all foreign authority. At the same time the monasteries were reduced from four hundred to eighty-two, and the convents to three. The property thus seized was devoted to the support of churches and schools.

The government of the new Church was vested in

348 History of the Christian Church.

a permanent Synod of five members, two of which were lay officials. This Synod was chosen by the king, and was to be renewed annually. The independence of this Church was not recognized by the Patriarch of Constantinople until 1850. In 1836 the Archbishop of Athens excommunicated all parents who allowed their children to attend Evangelical mission schools, especially those maintained by the American and the English, as the Ecumenical Patriarch in 1827 had all who possessed Bibles or the books of the English missionaries. The attitude toward the circulation of the Scriptures changed in 1836. In 1837 the University of Athens was established, an important step for the nation and for the Church. Thus the new Church, in whose dominion are the celebrated monasteries of Mount Athos, came into strong and influential life.

The Emperor Alexander I became a member of a Bible Society, and, from 1813 until his death in 1825, favored the circulation of the Scriptures in ^T|n^eRussi^ra.^h
the language of the people. Nicholas I, in 1826, forbade any version except in Old Slavonic, which was absolete, fearing that the reading of the Bible might aid revolutionary opinions. This prohibition held good until 1869. The government of the F.ussian Church was, and is, in the hands of the Holy Synod. This was a body of ecclesiastics and laymen. The prelates can leave their Sees but six months in the year, while the laymen are always in attendance. The Synod, however, is in the control very largely of the General Procurator, who is a high officer nominated by the emperor and representing his views in the Synod. He proposes all measures, and has the power of absolute veto. No decree of the

Oriental or Greek Catholic Church. 349

Synod is valid without his signature, and he attends to the execution of all ecclesiastical legislation. The jurisdiction of the Synod is all-embracing and very minute, including a censorship of books. The progress of the Church in these years was the progress of the Russian State. It had some enlightened prelates, like Archbishop Platon, who died in 1812; Philarete, Metropolitan of Moscow, who was both learned and evangelical, and died in 1836. Bishops Macarim and Platanow won renown as authors, the latter especially as a Church historian.

Other Oriental Christians, as the Armenian, Nes-torian, and Syrian Churches, found their position materially improved as far as the reforms at Constantinople were concerned. Their re- ^hri^ans!*¹ lations with the Kurds were unchanged, and the Armenians and Nestorians were systematically raided by their warlike and Mohammedan neighbors. The improved methods of education and conditions of living, and deeper religious life of the missionaries, American and English, elevated the plane of their living, the prospects of the new generation, and their hopes of the future. Yet all these were but in the beginning at the end of this period.

This ends our survey of the worldwide work for Christ of fifty years which, in Christian missions, in new lands in America, in Australia, and Africa, was but the laying of the foundations on which other generations were to build. This was the era of Revolution,—the great democratic era, of which Victor Hugo is the literary exponent. The work for Christ and the advance of Christendom which followed, the second part of this volume is to record.

I’art Sramri.

NATIONAL UNION—SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT—THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF CHURCH LIFE AND ITS EXPANSION.

Chapter I.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PERIOD.

Few successive periods in Christian history present more clearly-defined contrasts than those included in the nineteenth century. Yet the one was the outgrowth of the other.

In the political development, to Revolution and Reaction, succeeded national consolidation on a scale never before approached in history. The _The last fifty years made more changes in the Political map of the world, and those not only of a ^Deve,°P^ment* revolutionary but of a permanent character, than all others since the era of American discovery.

The greatest change has been in the progressive decay or fall of the Mohammedan powers. At the opening of this period at Delhi, on the _The throne of Akbar and Aurungzebe, there Mohammedan was a Mohammedan Emperor of India. ^a
es' Then Turkey was supposed to have made advance in that career of political and social development which was to make her stand on the foundations of national life and prosperity common to the Christian States. This view led to the Crimean War, and its result was supposed to uphold it. At that time Persia, the Caucasus, Turkestan or Independent Tartary, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan were States independent of the power of Christian nations.

354 History of the Christian Church.

In Africa, while the French were struggling to establish themselves in Algeria, Morocco, Tunis, Tripoli, and Egypt were independent, owing only a nominal allegiance to Turkey, and Egypt showing greater power than any other Mohammedan States. Arabia successfully maintained its ancient isolation and independence. In addition to this array of power, there was a vigorous and successful propaganda carried on in the upper Nile regions and across Central Africa south of the Sahara through the Soudan to Senegam-bia and the Atlantic Ocean. Besides, in China there was organized the great Taiping Rebellion under Mohammedan inspiration and leadership, which, but for General Gordon, would have closed the days of the Manchu dynasty and rule in China. Mohammedan advance was also marked in Malaysia.

At the close of the century how different the scene! The Mohammedan rule of India is forever past. The Caucasus and all of Turkestan have been absorbed by Russia. Tunis is as much French as Algeria, and Tripoli is awaiting French or Italian occupancy. Egypt, Nubia, and the Nile country to Khartoum are as much in England’s keeping as Malta or Cyprus. Persia, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan are buffer States under the control of either England or Russia. In Arabia, even Muscat and Aden are not only in England’s control, but so in control that she secures the predominance of her interests in the Arabian peninsula.

Mohammedan power has ceased to be a factor in Chinese politics, has been checked in Malaysia, and has met an overthrow from which there is no recovery in Central Africa.

Characteristics of the Period. 355

Turkey, the sole independent Mohammedan power, in spite of the vigor and ruthless massacres of Abdul Hamid II, never showed such evidence of fatal decay. No one talks of the possibility of a reformed Turkey. All pronounce the case a hopeless one. In this period Turkey lost Servia, Roumania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, Thessaly, a part of Epirus, with Cyprus and Crete. She also lost her navy and her credit in the money markets of Europe. She had, at the close of these years, but a precarious hold upon Macedonia, which, with Constantinople, was the only part left of her European possessions which once controlled both sides of the Danube for the lower half of its course.

At the end of the century the Mohammedan power had sunk lower in might and influence than since Calif Omar took Jerusalem; that is, in eleven hundred and fifty years. But for the lack of union among Christian States there would not be a shred of independence left to a Mohammedan State. Whatever be the power of the Mohammedan faith among the people professing it, its political power in the form of organized State life seems near its end. Its contempt for women, its utter lack of popular education or industry, as well as of military supplies, or navy, and of skill in finance or government, make this inevitable. The power of the Mohammedan State system was in the sword. To wield it longer it has neither brain nor nerve.

The change in the heathen world is scarcely less marked. The only independent heathen powers remaining are China and Japan, ^Ths_t”tes^he° Siam as a buffer State, and some tribes in Central Africa and in Malaysia; the power of the

356 History of the Christian Church.

heathen red men has disappeared. Africa has come largely into the control of the Christian nations. This is true almost altogether of the races in Oceania. The fate of China is in the balance. Japan only seems to have joined the ranks of progressive nations, and to look forward to a stable and increasing power. The reason for this is well known. She has received to herself the fruits of Christian civilization, and is more accessible to Christian influence than any other non-Christian people.

In American history this era has been quite as decisive as that which included 1776. Gettysburg and Appomattox assured that the great power on the American continent should be free and republican. It also decided that this free Federal Republic should be English in speech and predominantly Evangelical in religion. It made sure the foundations of the wealthiest and most powerful Christian State of the succeeding century.

In Spanish America the results were scarcely less decisive. European domination came practically to an end. Louis Napoleon’s Mexican Empire vanished like a dream. Spain’s last American colonies severed their relations with the mother country. Only in Guiana, a slice of Honduras, and some of the smaller West India Islands, is there any European control among the Spanish or Portuguese-speaking people in America. This of itself is an immense change. Yet more is true; in these fifty years, in spite of great obstacles, Mexico, Chili, and the Argentine Republic have made large advance in national prosperity, and that advance promises to be permanent and increasing.

Characteristics of the Period. 357

Since the United States purchased Alaska in 1867, the great European colony left in America is Canada. In this period, from a group of separated colonies she became a consolidated Dominion, with a largely independent existence. Her increase in population has scarcely been equal to the advantages offered by her resources. Undoubtedly a prosperous future lies before the most northern of American peoples.

The changes in the map of Europe were not less startling than those which mark the decay of the Mohammedan power. Three of the greatest ^ _Eurcpe> of these were almost coincident. By one, the States of the Church, which had endured for more than a thousand years, passed forever from the map of Europe and of the world. Thus disappeared the last vestige of the politico-religious system of the Middle Ages. Whatever purpose the position of the pope as a temporal ruler once served, it had been an anachronism ever since the French Revolution.

The two great political creations of the nineteenth century fell in this period—the Empire of Germany and the Kingdom of Italy. By the first, the rule of Central Europe came into the hands of a dynasty and a people of Evangelical faith. By the second, the papacy saw itself permanently excluded from its most precious possession, the temporal power.

The decadence in the last fifty years of the former great Roman Catholic powers, Spain, Austria, and France, has been as marked as the marvelous growth of Russia, Great Britain, and the United States. The century closed with the transfer of Porto Rico and the Philippines from the kingdom of Philip II to the control of the American Union.

358 History of the Christian Church.

The spirit which wrought the great reforms of the century was the spirit of liberty and humanity, the spirit which regarded manhood as the most "progress!¹ P^reci°^us creation of God, and which recognized that manhood amid all divergencies of race, development, or environment. It was the spirit that found the expression in Burns’s “A man’s a man for a’ that.” It regarded the freeing of manhood from its servitude and debasements—the bestowal of liberty, education, and self-government, of Christianity, and the conditions of Christian civilization—as the chiefest task of the nineteenth century. That the men of this era had this great faith, and strove so arduously and, amid many defeats and failures, with such splendid success for its realization, is their title to imperishable renown.

The literature of these years was illustrious through the work of Tennyson and Browning, of . Longfellow and Lowell and Victor Hugo,

Literature. . °

m poetry. In fiction, Thackeray and Dickens, Hawthorne and George Eliot, Hugo, Balzac, Turgeneff, and Tolstoi, did work which the world will cherish. The great names were carried over from the preceding era. The rise of the scientific movement and the prevalence of the scientific spirit, while helping criticism and history, have not been favorable to poetry and philosophy. The highest gifts of reason and imagination have not found place in the literature of the later years of the century.

Great conquests were made, great achievements wrought; but the constructive work of civilization— the mastering of material in science, in archaeology, in philology and history—has been so long a task

Characteristics of the Period. 359

that there has been but little opportunity for the vision of the poet and the seer. Yet it is this vision that gives enduring worth to all the rest. Homer’s world has long been dead; but it lives in Homer’s verse. Dante’s world is perhaps even less understood; but its passion and its power, its sin, its pathos, and its aspiration, live for us through his matchless lines. ,

In a word, it may be said that the intellectual life of the age has been so filled with material things, their relations, uses, and values, that there has been small increase in the great ideal treasures of the race. The realm of the apparent, taken for the real, is made to include all that is. The might of the world unseen seldom finds voice for the tones which inspire and subdue, which thrill and melt the universal heart of man. There has been a high average and large production, but absent are the greatest gifts. We have had analysis, and synthesis, and conscious effort in great variety; but the joy of creation, the illuminating word, the fiat lux (“Let there be light ”) for heart and mind, have been unspoken.

To compensate, no age has so reveled in the affluence of nature’s treasures for the first time unsealed to men. After the movement for national union, the scientific movement and its ^Sc,enti*¹⁰

¹ Movement.

consequences are the most striking phenomena of this period. One result was the searching criticisms of religious conceptions, religious history, the Sacred Scriptures, and Christian institutions. These great factors in the life of this time affected the influence and course of Christian thought, Christian activity, and, the resultant of these, Christian history.

Chapter II.

NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.

The first decade of the second, half of the century-had scarcely opened before the outbreak of the Crimean War. It was a war that ought never ^Thewai”^ean
to ^^ave b^{een wa}g^ed- It is to be hoped that it is the last w^rar for the preservation of that rule long ripe for overthrow—the rule of the Turks, whether in Europe or Asia. The Russians invaded the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, June 22, 1853. England and France declared war against Russia, March 27, 1854. Nicholas I, Emperor of Russia, died March 2, 1855, and Sebastopol surrendered September 9th of the same year. March 30, 1856, the Treaty of Paris brought final peace. What brief lines are these, and yet how much they include of cruel suffering and untimely death!

Two results followed: Russia never again could make her policy of mediaeval absolutism prevail in Western Europe. Europe would never become Cossack. The other was that Eouis Napoleon and the French Empire came to the front as the arbiter of Europe for the next fifteen years, or to the advent of Bismarck. A further—an unlooked-for and unwelcome consequence of this war—was the union of Moldavia and Wallachia in the principality of Rou-mania in 1859. This union was acknowledged by the powers in 1862, and four years later these coun-

360

Na tional De vel opment. 361

tries of the Lower Danube became a kingdom under a prince of the house of Hohenzollern. Amid these results we look in vain for a hero. Indeed, it may be well said that the only hero of the Crimean War was a woman—Florence Nightingale.

One great element in the Italian problem was the fact that Louis Napoleon, dreamer as he was and Dutch as he looked, had lived in Italy, and as a young man had been a member of the ^The|^Jy°ⁿ °^f revolutionary society of the Carbonari.

Of this pity and sympathy for Italy Count Cavour knew how to take advantage. This Italian statesman was to Victor Emmanuel II all that Hercules Consalvi had been to Pius VII as an adviser in affairs of State, and he, more than any other man, is the author of Italian unity. A Sardinian contingent had served in the Crimean War. Cavour, to the intense disgust both of Austria and of the advisers of the pope, took part in the negotiations of the Treaty of Paris.

The first direct step toward the union of Italy was taken when Cavour met Louis Napoleon at Plom-bieres in July, 1858. Here it was arranged that France should assist -Victor Emmanuel II, King of Sardinia,, in a war against Austria. In the event of success, the king was to receive Lombardy and Venetia from Austria, Parma and Modena from their ducal rulers, and Romagna and the Marches from the States of the Church, thus forming a kingdom of Northern Italy. Tuscany and Umbria were to form a kingdom in Central Italy, while the King of Naples would remain in possession of the south of the peninsula. The pope should retain Rome under the pro

362 History of the Christian Church.

tection of a French garrison, while Savoy and Nice should be ceded to France. It was on this basis that war was declared against Austria, April 29, 1859. The battle of Magenta was won June 4th, and three days later the French Emperor entered Milan. June 24th was fought the even more decisive battle of Sol-ferino. Then, to the consternation and dismay of every friend of Italy, Louis Napoleon, after an interview with Francis Joseph, signed the armistice of Villafranca. It was a shameless breach of faith, as the emperor’s ally, Victor Emmanuel, was not consulted. The secret of it was the thinly-veiled menace of Prussia, who feared that the impulse the French army was receiving beyond the Alps would carry it across the Rhine. Francis Joseph showed himself the stronger character and the abler negotiator at Villafranca. According to the terms there agreed upon, Victor Emmanuel should receive Lombardy and Parma; Austria would retain Venetia and the great fortresses known as the Quadrilateral; Tuscany and Modena were to be returned to their dukes; Romagna and the Marches were to be given back to the pope, so that his dominions remained unimpaired. No wonder that the Italians burned with indignation, and that, after a stormy interview with his king, Cavour, in an agony of disgust and defeat, threw up his office.

But it was one thing for the emperors to lay down the terms of agreement at Villafranca, and another to enforce them. The inhabitants who had driven out their rulers in Tuscany, Modena, and the northern part of the Papal States, had no intention of allowing their return, or of being cheated out of the dearest desires of their hearts.

Na tjona l De vel opment.

363

For a time Napoleon cherished the design of a kingdom in Central Italy for his cousin, Prince Napoleon, who had married Princess Clotilde of Savoy; but events moved with a rapidity that soon showed that this was impossible. January 16, i860, Cavour returned to office, now confident that the plans which he thought had fatally miscarried at Villafranca could be realized. March 24th, by a treaty to be ratified by a vote of the inhabitants, Savoy and Nice were ceded to France. Subject to the same ratification, March 31, i860, Romagna and Bologna in the States of the Church, and Tuscany and Modena, were proclaimed parts of the Kingdom of Italy.

The first Parliament of the new kingdom opened at Turin, April 2, i860. The first great dream of the Italian patriots and statesmen had been realized. Italy was no longer a geographical expression. An insurrection broke out near Messina two days after the assembling of the Italian Parliament. May 11, i860, Garibaldi landed at Marsala in Sicily with his famous “ Thousand.” Palermo, with its large garrison, surrendered June 20th, and by the last of July all the garrisons of the King of the Two Sicilies on the island were in the power of the invaders, or had left the country. Garibaldi, having crossed the Straits, September 7, i860, entered Naples in triumph.

The same month Italian troops from the north began to enter the central and southern parts of the States of the Church. Ancona surrendered September 9, i860. Lamoriciere, a French general of noble birth, of valor, and piety, who commanded the papal troops, was completely defeated by the Italian army

364 History of the Christian Church.

at Castelfidardo nine days later. This was a crushing blow to the clerical party in France. Finally, October 26, i860, Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi met at Teano, and the 9th of the following month together in triumph they entered Naples. The Bourbon king prolonged his resistance at Gaeta, but in vain. Soon there was a united Italy, except Venetia and Rome, including the old patrimony of St. Peter; that is, the country within a radius of about twenty miles from the city. In 1865 the Italian capital was removed to Florence. Cavour did not live to see that day, as he died June 6, 1861. Henceforth the fortunes of the new kingdom were united with Prussia and the new German Empire.

In April, 1866, a treaty was signed between Prussia and Italy, which, on September 3d of that year, gave Venetia to Italy and cleared the peninsula from the Austrians. This sealed forever the fate of the policy of Metternich at the Congress of Vienna.

In 1864, Pope Pius IX issued his famous Syllabus against modern society and civilization. He used every means to secure the residue of his temporal power, while for the Italians there could be no capital but Rome. Their undaunted leader, Garibaldi, attacked the French troops at Mentana in 1867, but was driven back. What valor and patriotism could not do the folly of the French in declaring war against Prussia, July 14, 1870, accomplished. General Cardona, September 20, 1870, battered down the gate of Porta Pia, and took possession of Rome. Henceforth there was a united Italy, with Rome as its capital.

In spite of many fearful vaticinations, of threats

National Development.

365

and curses not a few; in spite of the most formidable opposition encountered by any modern State; in spite of many failures and miscarriages; in spite of poverty, mismanagement, and not a little rascality, the Kingdom of Italy has grown stronger each decade, and at the close of the nineteenth century was more potent and influential than in any previous year of its history.

Cavour, Garibaldi, and Victor Emmanuel II, wrought together in this great work of increasing value to their country and the world. No wonder that their names are borne by the most important streets in the hundred cities of Italy.

The second great war for national union, and the costliest and bloodiest of the century, was that in the United States, 1861-1865. Iⁿ its results it _The civil war practically put an end to African slavery; in the it secured the dominance of the democratic ^{Un,ted state8}‘ principle, that is, of popular government; it created possibly, or even probably, the strongest Christian nation the world has ever seen. The price in blood and sacrifice, in treasure and in tears, was the costliest ever paid in the same space of time; but God did not forget the reward. The history of the Church, as of the world, has hope and power in it, has influence and help that could not have been but for those weary, painful years, and that offering beyond all estimate. The immigration into the United States of from three hundred thousand to five hundred thousand each year for the most of these fifty years is unprecedented in the records of the race. The growth of the United States in resources and might has been the most marvelous in history. The advance in morals and in re

366 History of the Christian Church.

ligious life and influence has not been less astounding. The century closes with this New World power in the van of Christendom.

In 1862, Alexander II of Russia freed forty million serfs from bondage. In the two years following, the last endeavor of the expiring Polish 1 nsifrrectkm. ^nati°ⁿ went out in terror, flame, and blood.

The struggle endured from the beginning of March, 1863, until the end of the same month into the next year. High and noble souls, richly dowered with great gifts, have illuminated the history of the Polish nation. But the vices of an incapable aristocracy brought on the inevitable ruin. Their care for the peasants was never strong enough to unite the lower classes in support of the national cause.

The sad record of German division and weakness, which marked the national history from the fall of the The n«w Hohenstaufens, for six hundred years, came German to an end in this period. William I ruled Empire. _{ag re}g_enj. f_rom jg^g to January 2, 1861, and from the death of Frederick William IV, his brother, on that date, as King of Prussia, until the proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles, January 18, 1871, and from that date as emperor until his death at the age of ninety-one years, March 9, 1888. Without being a great man, he probably accomplished a greater work than any other sovereign of the century. With nothing of Napoleon’s genius he founded an empire which had the quality which Napoleon’s lacked—endurance. William I was honest, truthful, reliable, firm, and God-fearing. He had that invaluable faculty in a ruler, of knowing how to find and use the fit man. Such a man was Otto Von Bismarck (1815-1899).

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367

Bismarck was from Pomerania, and in thought and tradition more allied to Eastern than to Western Europe; that is, to absolutism than to popular government ; but this man of autocratic temper and rule founded the German Empire upon universal suffrage. This shows both the strength of the democratic current and the sagacity of the statesman who so well read and followed the signs of the times when they were other than those he would have chosen.

The Convention of Olmiitz in 1850, the year of the promulgation of the new Constitution, marked the deepest humiliation of Prussia. The turn _Progre5s came when, in September, 1862, Bismarck of the took office. In will, ability, and knowledge ^Cause* of men and affairs, no statesman of the Continent was his equal. When the Polish insurrection threatened to break out in February, 1863, Bismarck negotiated an alliance with Russia which neutralized any benevolent intentions of Louis Napoleon’s, and, as did Prussian neutrality in the Crimean war, secured the friendship of Russia in Prussia’s hour of need.

He next took a hand in the complicated and interminable Schleswig-Holstein affair, by which these duchies were, by the Danish power, ceded to Austria and Prussia, at Vienna, October 30, 1864. In August, 1865, the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria met at Gastein, and an arrangement was made whereby Schleswig was to be administered by Prussia and Holstein by Austria. The rivalry of Austria and Prussia, which had been the chief characteristic of German history since the accession of Frederick the Great, came now to its culmination.

Prussia, having allied herself with Italy, declared

368 History of the Christian Church.

war against Austria, June 12, 1866; the second of the next month was fought the decisive battle of Sadowa, which settled Austrian claims forever. The way was open to Vienna, but Bismarck had no desire to humiliate Austria; his sole object was to make Prussia the unquestioned head of the German people.

July 22d, preliminaries to a peace were signed at Nikolsburg, and a definitive treaty at Prague, August 23, 1866. By this treaty, Austria withdrew from all German affairs; the Germanic Bund, or Confederation, ceased to be; Austria lost no territory but Venetia, and was a few years later compensated with the cession to her of Herzegovina and Bosnia. On the other hand, Prussia received both Schleswig and Holstein, the Kingdom of Hanover, Electoral Hesse, a part of Hesse Darmstadt, and the ancient Free City of Frankfort. Prussia became united in territory and the head of the North German Confederation, while the German States south of the river Main formed the South German Confederation. Austria was further strengthened by the acceptance of the Ausgleich, or Compromise, by which the affairs of Austria and Hungary were arranged in the spring of 1867. In June of that year, Francis Joseph was crowned King of Hungary at Pesth.

Thus, while outside of the circle of German States, Austria became stronger than before her defeat. Prussia, whose Zollverein, or customs treaties, had paved the way for her supremacy among the smaller German States, now, in 1866, concluded military treaties with Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, and Baden, whereby their military forces were reorganized on the Prussian model, and could be made a part of the Prussian army. So

NA TIONA L De VEL OPME NT.

369

ended the first great stage in the advance of the House of Hohenzollern to the throne of the German Empire.

Meanwhile affairs in another country led to the breaking out of the war with France, which was to consummate what was so well begun. The misgov-ernment and follies of Isabella II, Queen of Spain, the most sinned against, if not a little sinning, of the sovereigns of her time, led up to the outbreak of a revolt against her authority, led by General Prim on the 7th of September, 1868. On the last day of the month the queen left Spain. In order to establish a settled order of things the crown of Spain was offered to Prince Leopold, a prince of the house of Hohenzollern, July 4, 1870. On the 12th day of July, 1870, to satisfy the susceptibilities of the French, Leopold publicly renounced any candidacy for the crown. That went to the son of Victor Emmanuel II, of Italy, 1870-1873, and, upon his resignation, to Alphonso XII, son of Queen Isabella, 1874-1885. On the same day of Leopold’s renunciation the Due De Gramont instructed the French ambassador, Benedetti, to demand of King William at Ems that he would on no future occasion authorize the renew^ral of the candidacy of Prince Leopold. The king considered the proposal impudent, to say the least, pointedly refused, and telegraphed the fact to Bismarck, with permission to publish it.

Bismarck, Von Moltke, and Von Roon were eager for a war for which they knew themselves fully furnished, and the French, while boasting great things, utterly unprepared. The king desired peace; at least he did not wish to break it; yet his telegram was the signal for war. Bismarck took it, and while he

370 History of the Christian Church.

did not change a word, he struck out words which entirely changed its tone, and sent it to the press. The telegram reached Paris July 14th, and that night, with a heedlessness equal to her folly, France declared war against Prussia. The 16th began the mobilization of the Prussian army, and two days later the Vatican Council adjourned, never to reassemble. The first engagement was fought at Saarbriicken, August 2, 1870. August 15th and 16th, was fought the terrible battle of Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte. September 1st, the Germans gained the great victory of Sedan, resulting in the capture of Louis Napoleon.

The last French Empire fell September 4, 1870. Then began the siege of Paris, September 4,1870—January 28, 1871, which proved how easy it is to starve a great capital. The last ray of hope for Paris died when Bazine treacherously surrendered Metz with one hundred and seventy thousand men, October 27, 1870. Two days later Russia declared she would be no longer bound by the provisions of the Treaty of Paris, which barred her war vessels from the Black Sea.

On the 18th day of January, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, William I was declared Emperor of Germany, and the strongest military State of the century was founded. The unity longed for during ages of oppression and suffering had come at last. A preliminary treaty of peace was signed at Paris, February 26, 1871 ; but the terms were permanently settled and signed at Frankfort, May 10, 1871.

The Communist insurrection raged for six weeks in the presence of the German army, but was finally put down by the government of M. Thiers. By the treaty the German Empire acquired from France

National Development.

37i

Alsace and Eastern Lorraine, with Metz and Stras-burg. France also paid the enormous war indemnity of a billion of dollars. France had shown singular heroism in her desperate struggle against overwhelming odds. She now astonished the world with the rapidity with which she paid her immense fine, and cleared her soil thus from the invaders. The government of M. Thiers, a man whose services to France in that crisis were inestimable, endured from 1871 to May 24, 1873, when he was replaced by Marshal MacMahon, 18731879. The hopeless division of the monarchical party and the stupidity of the Comte de Chamford made Thiers, though a monarchist, believe that the Republic was the sole hope of France. The Republic was proclaimed February 25, 1875. With all its faults, probably, the Republic was the most popular and the best government at the end of the century France had seen in that changeful one hundred years.

In 1872, Bismarck carried through the Dreibund, or Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Russia. This endured until 1890, though the Treaty of Berlin was its death-blow.

The misgovernment of the Turks was incurable. In July, 1875, Herzegovina and Bosnia were in insurrection against intolerable oppression. In May, 1876, occurred the Bulgarian massacres. Not receiving any redress, Russia declared war against Turkey, April 24, 1877. The main action was the siege of Plevna, July 16—December 11, 1877. In this siege the Grand Duke Nicholas experienced a bloody repulse, September nth. The siege was then converted into a blockade. The Russians were successful, and pushed on to Adrianople,

372 History of the Christian Church.

January 20, 1878. The Treaty of San Stefano was signed March 3, 1878. This erected a great Bulgarian State, including its present boundaries and most of Macedonia.

The Congress of Berlin to consider Russo-Turkish affairs assembled June 13, 1878, and closed just one month latter. The provisions of the treaty provided that Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro should be independent and sovereign; Austria received Herzegovina and Bosnia; Montenegro, two ports; Greece, Thessaly and a part of Epirus; Roumania, the Do-brudscha; England, Cyprus; and France, Tunis; while Russia, which had borne the entire cost in blood and treasure, received Bessarabia at the mouth of the Danube, Batoum and Kars, and a yet unpaid indemnity. But this small gain was hoped to be supplemented by the gratitude of Bulgaria. Unfortunately the public men of Bulgaria had been most of them educated at Robert College, an American missionary institution of high grade, located on the banks of the Bosphorus, and these men, like the men of New Japan, had been taught the value of representative government and of free public opinion. The representatives of Russia behaved as they had been accustomed to do at home; and their insolence and oppression soon weaned the Bulgarians from Russia. The breach came in September, 1883. Alexander of Battenberg proved an able ruler for Bulgaria. In September, 1885, he added Eastern Roumania to the new State, nearly doubling its area and resources. He then defeated completely the Servians, who had wantonly attacked him. But he had been too successful to be pardoned by his patron and relative, the Czar of

National Development.

373

Russia. Few more manly or pathetic letters have been written from one ruler to another than that of Alexander of Bulgaria to Alexander III of Russia. But all was in vain, and the Bulgarian ruler resigned his authority September 7, 1886.

The designs of Russia, however, were not attained. The Prime Minister of Bulgaria, 1886-1895, was Stambouloff, the ablest Balkan statesman of this period. He secured the choice of Prince Ferdinand of Coburg to succeed Alexander, 1887-1901. The policy of the new prince, if less aggressive, was not more favorable to Russia, and Bulgaria was becoming yearly more independent and stronger. Russia never ceased her plots, and finally her agents killed Stambouloff in 1895. Prince Ferdinand then humbled himself at the cost of separating himself from his wife, who was a devout Roman Catholic, and a descendant of Louis Philippe; he had his son baptized in the Greek faith, and, with the consent of Russia, was recognized as an independent sovereign.

All this did not secure Russian domination, the murderers of Stambouloff have recently been executed, and Russia is now endeavoring to make Servia, in opposition to Bulgaria, the instrument of her policy in the Balkans. Indeed Roumania and Bulgaria, though small States, are, with Greece, the chief opponents of Russian supremacy in the late dominions of the Turk. Bulgaria and Servia are the only Sclav States where there is representative government. The progress of political freedom and enlightenment in Russia may perhaps be advanced as much, or more, by these States and Japan as by the influence of all the rest of Europe.

374 History of the Christian Church.

By the treaty of Berlin, England became the guarantor of reforms in Armenia. These reforms never came; but Abdul Hamid II sought to exterminate the elements of possible resistance in Armenia by a series of the most horrible and cruel massacres. England stood helplessly by when a fleet at Smyrna or in the Dardanelles would have put an end to the whole ghastly business. The shame of this betrayal, like that of the death of Gordon at Khartoum, and the opium war with China, stains the luster of British policy and arms in this century.

One result of these massacres has been thoroughly to alienate the English people from the Turks in any shape. In 1897 war broke out between Turkey and Greece; but though Turkey was successful, the chief result was that the Turks lost Crete, which has practically become a part of the Kingdom of Greece.

Russia, thus repelled from the Balkans, pushed her conquests in Asia. In 1881 she conquered Turkestan ; in 1884 she annexed Merv, and the Advance. }^7ear following Penjdeh. A further advance was made in the Pamirs in 18911892, and the century closed with the assured completion of the Siberian Railway, with Port Arthur in possession for its terminus, and with Manchuria in her control if not in her possession.

Meanwhile England, while consolidating her rule in India, extended it by annexing Burmah and the England and valley of the Indus. In November, 1875, France in Lord Beaconsfield bought the shares of the the East. g_uez Canal held by the Khedive of Egypt. The debts of the latter potentate brought in a dual control of England and France in 1878.

National Development.

375

In 1881 the rebellion of Arabi Bey broke out, and England bombarded Alexandria and, after a siege of 317 days, took possession of Egypt. In 1883 a rebellion broke out in the Soudan. General Gordon, one of the noblest of the sons which Britain possessed in the nineteenth century, was sent to stay its progress. Delay and neglect caused Gordon’s death, January 26, 1885. The century closed with greater prosperity and happiness among her populations under English rule than Egypt had known for twelve hundred years.

In those years, 1862-1884, France took possession of Cambodia, and later of a slice of Southern China. She took the island of Madagascar in 1890, and on the mainland France increased her dominion in Sene-gambia, south of the Sahara and north of the Congo, but failed in the Nile Valley and at Uganda.

In 1879 a defensive alliance was formed between Austria and Germany, and in 1883 this was extended by including Italy. This produced strained relations with France toward Italy. France ¹ Ani^ce!¹¹*¹ retaliated with a customs regulation much to the economic detriment of her neighbor. Better relations were established at the close of the period. In 1890 a defensive alliance was formed between France and Russia. Bismarck’s policy of isolating France because she was a Republic was broken up by the most autocratic of European rulers. Meanwhile the personages ruling in European politics changed. William I died, March, 1888, and his son Frederick III followed him in June. A young man of twenty nine, William II, then came to the throne of the new empire. In March, 1890, Bismarck was asked to resign.

376 History of the Christian Church.

Bismarck had rendered great services to Germany, but in retirement he showed very few of the qualities of a great man.

In Russia, Alexander II had freed the serfs in 1862, and on March 13, 1881, when the ukase proclaiming representative government in the old autocracy was just ready to be signed, he was assassinated by the Nihilists. His son, Alexander III (1881-1894), ruled with vigor. His successor, Nicholas II, has had able advisers, and, with the aid of French loans, has carried out the great railway systems of Asiatic Russia. At the end of the century he made memorable his reign by calling together the Peace Congress at The Hague.

Great Britain’s part in this drama during the great Victorian reign will find place in the next chapter.

Chapter III.

THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS OF GREAT BRITAIN.

In all this century of revolution and of war, Great Britain was the only great power whose inhabitants never saw a hostile army on their soil. The capitals of Europe came successively into the power of the invader. Frenchmen ruled, as conquerors, Rome, Vienna, Berlin, Lisbon, Madrid, and Moscow, to say nothing of Brussels, Berne, and The Hague. The British burned Washington. Three times proud Paris bowed her neck to a foreign conqueror, the last time after a most memorable but vain resistance. Amid all these changes no hostile foot pressed British soil, and no invading army even saw her capital. She grew rich in peace, expanded in colonies, extended her power over Asiatic millions and African potentates and wildernesses. Through her power at sea and her mineral resources, she sprang far to the front as a commercial and manufacturing nation. In these respects her supremacy was without a rival until the

last years of the century. ^

Not only was Great Britain kept free from invasion, but she was equally secured from revolution and civil war. The revolutions of 1789, ^I83°> ^aG(^ which shook every other great power, involving even Russia in Polish insurrections and Napoleonic wars,

377

378 History of the Christian Church.

left her untouched. While civil war raged in France, as in La Vendee, and in Spain again, again, and again, in the Carlist insurrections, and in a less measure in Italy and Germany, and in America took on the most frightful proportions of any war of the century, in Great Britain there was never a rising which called for the arms even of the regular garrisons. Grape-shot never cleared the streets of London and Edinburgh, and charging cavalry never rode down and trod under foot the masses of her working populations.

There were many reasons for this beneficent exemption from invasion, revolution, and civil carnage, but none it seems so important or so significant as that the statesmen and leaders of public opinion in the British Empire in the nineteenth century led the nation in the path of political and social reform, and so averted revolutions and maintained an unquestioned industrial supremacy.

The abuses of the British political system were great and manifold. Dissenters from the Established Church could hold no office, civil or mili-Reforms. tary, except on sufferance. The Roman Catholics had no rights as citizens; no Jew could hold office. The Parliamentary representation was a mockery. Rotten boroughs, like old Sarum with two electors, could return two members of Parliament, while great commercial and manufacturing centers, like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds, were practically unrepresented.

From the accession of Pitt, in 1785-1830, with brief and ineffectual intervals, the Tory party had been in power. In the latter part of this period, especially under Sir George Canning, the shackles

Progress of Great Britain. 379

came to be a little loosened. Under this party supremacy, Napoleon had been overthrown and the slave-trade abolished; then, in 1828, the disabilities preventing the holding of office by Nonconformists were removed. In 1829 came the emancipation of Roman Catholics, so that they took their place as citizens with equal rights. In 1858 Jews were admitted to Parliament, and in 1873 all religious tests were removed; so British statesmen relieved the disabilities of the subjects of the realm. With this went a more far-reaching reform in the change of the basis of representation in the House of Commons, so that the seat of power in the government of the empire passed from the landed aristocracy to the upper middle classes. And by the successive acts of 18661867, and later, the suffrage was extended until the secret ballot is now granted to the electorate.

With this widespread political reform, which transferred the power of a great empire from the landed aristocracy, who, on the whole, had ruled

. . ... , Social Reform.

Britain more wisely than any other country in Europe, to the upper middle class, and from them to the working classes, or, as we may say, to the industrial population,'the progress in social reform was equally remarkable. While England was the apostle of free trade, and repealed her Corn Laws in its interest, nevertheless she first began and led the world in industrial legislation; that is, legislation to protect the working classes from abuse and oppression. To this legislation more than to anything else she owed her immunity from revolution in 1848.

The need was very great. It has never been more clearly depicted than by the biographer of Lord

380 History of the Christian Church.

Shaftesbury, who, more than any other man, changed the reproach and shame of his country to a title to lasting prosperity and renown. Every Chris-

TheCondi- ^r ^ ^J

tionsof the tian needs to read this record in order to industrial remember two things,— that self-interest

Classes. 11111

and human greed need to be checked by the strong arm of the State or the whole people, if our civilization is to be Christian or to be saved from self-destruction; and to see over how much the Christian spirit has triumphed, how great have been its gains; and so to thank God and take courage for further, and even more strenuous, conflicts which may be before us.

The crying need, the enormous obstacles, and the glorious success will be briefly sketched.

The first of the abuses in the factories that came to the public notice was the treatment of pauper apprentices. “ Under the apprentice system, bar-Apprentices. £^ai^ns were made with the Church wardens and overseers of the parishes and the owners of factories, and the pauper children—some as young as five years old—were bound to serve until they were twenty-one. When the gates of the apprentice house closed upon them, they were checked off, according to invoice, and consigned to the sleeping berths allotted to them, reeking with the foul oil with which the bedding of the older hands was saturated. Their first labors generally consisted in picking up loose cotton from the floor. This was done amidst the burning heat of machinery, in an average heat of 70 to 90 degrees, and in the fumes of the oil with which the axels of twenty thousand wheels and spindles were bathed. Sick, with aching backs and inflamed ankles

Progress of Great Britain. 381

from the constant stooping, with fingers lacerated from scraping the floors; parched and suffocated by the dust and the heat, the little slaves toiled from morning till night. If they paused, the brutal overlooker, who was responsible for a certain amount of work being performed by each child under him, urged them on by kicks and blows. When the dinner-time came, after six hours’ labor, it was only to rest for forty minutes, and to partake of black bread and porridge, or, occasionally, some coarse Irish bacon. Lost time had to be made up by overwork. They were required every other day to stop at the mill during dinner hour to clean the frames, and there was scarcely a moment of relaxation for them until Sunday came, when their one thought was rest. Stage by stage, they sank into the profoundest depths of wretchedness. In weariness they often fell upon the machinery, and almost every factory child was more or less injured; through hunger, neglect, and over-fatigue and poisonous air, they died in terrible numbers, swept off by contagious fevers. There was no redress of any kind; the isolation of the mills aided the cruelties practiced in them. When the time came that their indentures expired, after years of toil, averaging fourteen hours a day,—with their bodies scarred with the wounds inflicted by the overlookers; with their minds dwarfed and vacant; with their constitutions, in many instances, hopelessly injured; in profound ignorance that there was even the semblance of law for their protection,—these unfortunate apprentices, arrived at manhood, found that they had never been taught the trade they should have learned, and that they had no resource whatever but to enter again upon the hateful

382 History of the Christian Church.

life from which they were legally freed. Should it happen that they had been crippled or diseased during their apprenticeships, their wages were fixed at the lowest possible sum, and their future was a long, lingering death.”

To check this oppression, the first Sir Robert Peel, himself a manufacturer, secured the passage of an Act of Parliament in 1802, which provided that Legislation apprentices should have proper clothing, food, and instruction, and the hours of labor were limited to twelve, exclusive of meals. Night-work was abolished, and visitors were appointed to inspect factories. This was the first factory legislation, and it is gratifying to state that it was a success ; its effect was gradually to abolish the system of pauper apprenticeship.

In 1829, Sir Robert Peel effected the passage of a second Act of Parliament, which provided that no child under nine years of age should be allowed to work in a cotton factory, and no young person under sixteen to work more than twelve hours a day, exclusive of meals.

These Acts applied only to cotton factories, and left untouched all other manufacturing establishments. In 1825, the Act of Sir John Hobhouse made it unlawful to employ any child under eighteen years of age more than sixty-nine hours a week, and forbade night-work in certain specified departments. This also applied only to cotton factories. In 1831, Sir John Hobhouse and Lord Morpeth sought in their bill to limit the hours of work to eleven and a half a day, and eight and a half on Saturdays. Also to prohibit all children under nine years of age from being em

Progress of Great Britain. 383

ployed, and to exempt young persons under twenty-one from all night-work. The main advance in this bill was that it applied to all cotton, woolen, worsted, and silk factories, and to the operation of power-looms. The factory owners bitterly opposed it, and although it passed in 1831, it was so much mutilated as to be ineffective.

In the same year Michael Thomas Sadler introduced his famous Ten-hour Bill. He moved its second reading, March, 1832. The factory owners made the most strenuous opposition, and to delay, if not defeat, the bill, secured the appointment of a Parliamentary Commission to investigate the conditions of labor in the factories and to report to the House of Commons. The Committee was composed of men of high character, who were supposed to be naturally favorable to the owners rather than to the operatives. This report, which was presented July 13, 1833, and which marks an era in industrial legislation, was brief and to the point; it stated three conclusions, as follows:

“ 1. That the children employed in all the principal branches of manufacture throughout the kingdom, work during the same number of „

1 1 , Report of

hours as the adults. ' Commission

“2. That the effects of labor during ^on_I^^®^ry such hours are, in a great number of July 13, cases, permanent deterioration of the phys- ^,833‘ ical constitution, the production of diseases wholly irremediable, and the partial or entire seclusion (by reason of excessive fatigue) from the means of obtaining adequate education, and acquiring useful habits, or of profiting by those means when afforded.

“3. That at the age when children suffer those in-

384 History of the Christian Church.

juries from the labor they undergo, they are not free agents, but are let out on hire, the wages they earn being secured and appropriated by the parents and guardians.

“ Therefore a case is made out for the interference of the legislature.”

This report made factory legislation inevitable. The leader in the conflict long and arduous was at hand. Mr. Sadler had been defeated for Parliament, and the charge of the great task must come to other hands.

In February, 1833, Lord Ashley, afterward Earl of Shaftesbury, took up the trailing banner, and bore it for more than fifty years to triumphant success.

In this hundred years there was no knightlier soul than Anthony Ashley Cooper, seventh Earl of Shaftesbury (1801-1886). Lord Houghton, Shaftesbury ^{a man} widest acquaintance and of keen and impartial judgment, said, “ Shaftesbury’s life was the greatest lived in England in the nineteenth century.” Lord Ashley, as he was called, as the heir to the earldom of Shaftesbury, was the son of the sixth earl and of the daughter of the Duke of Marlborough. They knew little of him, and he less of them. The development of his religious nature came through his mother’s maid, Maria Millis, who died when he was but eight years of age. She left him her watch, which he wore his life long, always saying, if he mentioned it, that it was given him by the best friend he ever had. From his eighth year until his thirteenth he suffered as much misery as often comes into a schoolboy’s life. He had no home, even on vacations, and such affection as he had

Progress of Great Britain. 385

for his father and mother came to him when he had children of his own. The sadness of these years permanently shadowed his spirit, but also gave him a keenness of sympathy with suffering, and especially with suffering childhood and youth, such as few men have ever possessed. In 1813 he went to Harrow, and life brightened for him. From 1819 to 1822 he was at Christ Church, Oxford, and graduated with high honor, first class in classics. In 1826 he entered the House of Commons, where he sat until he succeeded to his father’s title in 1851. In 1830 he mar ried Emily, daughter of Earl Cowper, whose mother’s second husband was Henry John Temple, Lord Palmerston, and who greatly aided Shaftesbury in his life work. Shaftesbury’s married life was a most happy one, though the death of children greatly loved came to them as to others. Lord Ashley, as he was then, entered public life as a strong Tory, and held a cabinet office in the administration of the Duke of Wellington.

In July, 1828, a law was passed for the regulation of the care of lunatics. Fifteen metropolitan commissioners were given general oversight of these cases in England and'Wales. In 1829, Lord Ashley was made chairman of this Commission, a position he held until his death, fifty-seven years later, nor did his interest in the care and cure of the insane lessen in these years. The marvelous change for the better in their housing, treatment, and all that could alleviate their conditions or accelerate their cure, owed as much to him as to any Englishman.

In 1833, Shaftesbury took up, as the work of his life, the cause of the working classes. To this he

386 History of the Christian Church.

added religious and philanthropic work as no other man of his time, so that at his death he was a member of no less than one hundred and fifty such societies, whose representatives followed him to the grave. For the cause that he thus made his own he gave up all hopes of office, and all the rewards of literary fame, though he had gifts, acquirements, and opportunities that would have brought to him either in no common measure. He cast his lot with the oppressed, and chose for himself the blessings of the poor. Henceforth, for a half a century, the history of social progress in Great Britain is the record of his life. An earnest, reverent, and devout Christian, he wrought for God and man, and changed human conditions for the better as no other in the reign of Victoria. He made possible the work of Florence Nightingale in the Crimea, and the change of hundreds of the worst thieves that infested London to honest and reputable settlers beyond the seas.

And there was need for his coming, for his strong heart, and brain, and commanding voice. Forty years after he told of the sight that met at Bradford* gaze ^at Bradford in 1838 in the center of the manufacturing district:

“At Bradford, 1838, I asked for a collection of cripples and deformities. In a short time more than eighty were gathered in a large court, and they were mere samples of the entire mass. I assert without exaggeration that no power of language could describe the varieties, and I may say the cruelties, in all these degradations of the human form; they stood or squatted before me in all the shapes of the letters of the alphabet. This was the effect of prolonged

Progress of Great Britain. 387

toil on the tender frames of children at early ages. When I visited Bradford under the limitations of hours, some years afterward, I called for a similar exhibition of cripples; but, God be praised, there was not one to be found in that vast city. Yet the work of these poor sufferers had been light if measured by minutes, but terrific when measured by hours.” The Ten-hour Bill was rejected in 1833. The opposition was strong. In 1838 the London Times came out in its favor. In 1840 came his first victory in an Act in favor of chimney-sweepers. It punished with a fine all who should compel, or knowingly allow, any one under the age of twenty-one to be employed in this work. Fifteen hundred young persons of fourteen years of age and upwards worked in sweeping chimneys, to the permanent dwarfing and crippling of body and mind, and yet this abuse was not completely done away with until 1875. In 1840 also a second Commission on Factory Labor was appointed, and made its report in 1842. In the same year appeared also Lord Ashley’s article in the Quarterly Review, entitled “ Infant Labor.”

The report of the Commission in 1842 made public the conditions of labor in the ^L^⁽J[_ie^,"_l#^t₈^hb coal-mines, which would have been regarded as beyond belief but for such attestations.

“ The first employment of a very young child was that of a * trapper.’ An occupation more barbarous it is difficult to conceive. The ventilation

. . ~ . Child Labor

of a mine was a very complicated affair, and women and can not be easily described in a few *" ^th*

^J Collieries.

words. Suffice it to say that were a door

or trap left open after the passage of a coal carriage

388 History of the Christian Church.

through it, the consequences would be very serious, causing great heat and closeness when the miners were at work, and perchance an explosion. Behind each door, therefore, a little child, or trapper, was seated, whose duty it was, on hearing the approach of a whirley, or coal carriage, to pull open the door, and shut it again immediately after the whirley had passed. From the time the first coal was brought forward in the morning, until the last whirley had passed at night—that is to say, for twelve to fourteen hours a day—the trapper was at his monotonous, deadening work. He had to sit alone in the pitchy darkness and the horrible silence, exposed to damp and unable to stir for more than a dozen paces with safety lest he should be found neglecting his duty, and suffer accordingly. He dared not go to sleep; the punishment was the strap, applied with brutal severity. Many of the mines were infested with rats, mice, beetles, and other vermin, and stories are told of rats so bold that they would eat the horses’ food in the presence of miners, and have been known to run off with the lighted candles in their mouths and explode the gas. All the circumstances of a little trapper’s life were full of horror, and upon nervous, sensitive children the effect was terrible, producing a state of imbecility approaching almost to idiocy. Except on Sundays, they never saw the sun ; they had no hours of relaxation; their meals were mostly eaten in the dark, and their ‘homes’ were with parents who devoted them to this kind of life.

“As they grew older, the trappers passed on to other employments, ‘ hurrying,’ ‘ filling,’ ‘ riddling,’

Progress of Great Britain. 389

* tipping,’ and occasionally ‘ getting/ and in these labors no distinction was made between boys and girls,—in their mode of work, in the weight they carried, in the distance they walked, in the wages they received, or in their dress, which consisted of no other garment than a ragged shirt or shift, or a pair of tattered trousers. ‘ Hurrying ’—that is, loading small wagons, called corves, with coals, and pushing them along a passage—was an utterly barbarous labor, performed by women as well as by children. They had to crawl on their hands and knees and draw enormous weights along shafts as narrow and as wet as common sewers. When the passages were very narrow, not more than eighteen or twenty-four inches in height, boys and girls performed the work by ‘girdle and chain;’ that is to say, a girdle was put round the naked waist, to which a chain from the carriage was hooked and passed between the legs, and, crawling on hands and knees, they drew the carriages after them.

“‘Coal bearing’—carrying on their backs, on unrailed roads, burdens varying from half a hundred weight to one hundred and fifty pounds—was almost always performed by girls and women, and it was a common occurrence for little children of the age of six or seven years to carry burdens of coal of fifty pounds weight up steps that, in the aggregate, equaled an ascent, fourteen times a day, to the summit of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The coal was carried in a creel, or basket, formed to the back, the tugs or straps of which were placed over the forehead, and the body had to be bent almost double to prevent the coals, which were piled high on to the neck, from falling off. Sometimes

390 History of the Christian Church.

tugs would break in ascending the ladder, when the consequences would always be serious, and sometimes fatal, to those who were immediately following.

“Another form of severe labor to which the children of eight years and upwards were frequently put, was that of pumping water in the under bottom of the pits. The little workers stood, as a rule, ankle-deep in water, performing their unceasing tasks during hours as long as those in the other departments of labor. It sometimes happened that the children employed in the mines were required to work ‘ double shifts’—that is to say, thirty-six hours continuously— and the work thus cruelly protracted consisted, not in tending self-acting machinery, but in the heaviest kind of bodily fatigue; such as pushing loaded wagons, lifting heavy weights, or driving and constantly righting trains of loaded corves.

“ In addition to the actual labor, the children, especially the apprentices, suffered terribly from the cruelty of the overlookers, who bargained for them and used them as they pleased. The revelation of the brutal punishments inflicted for the most trifling offenses, is too sickening to dwell upon, nor will we advert to the fact that the food of the children was almost invariably insufficient, was of the coarsest kind, and was eaten irregularly.

“Education was totally neglected, and the morals of the people in the lowest possible state. As a rule, the wages paid to laborers in the mines, and especially to the women and children, were unreasonably low, and in some districts the iniquitous ‘truck system’ prevailed; that is to say, the people were not paid in money, but by advances of goods from a shop in the

Progress of Great Britain.

39i

neighborhood where the necessaries of life were dearer by twenty-five per cent than in shops farther off.”

The result of these regulations was the passage of the Collieries Act of 1843. A second report of the same Commission on Child Labor was made in 1843. Lord Shaftesbury told of the 01*843’ labor in the brickfields :

“ I saw little children three parts naked, tottering under the weight of wet clay, some of it on their heads and some of it on their shoulders, and little girls with large masses of wet, cold, and dripping clay pressing on their abdomens. Moreover, the unhappy children were exposed to the most sudden transitions of heat and cold; for after carrying their burdens of wet clay, they had to endure the heat of the kilns, and to enter places where the heat was so fierce that I was not myself able to remain more than two or three minutes. Can it be denied that in these brickfields, men, women, and children, especially poor female children, are brought down to a point of degradation and suffering lower than the beasts of the field ? ”

As a result of these reports came the Factory Acts of 1844. These provided that no woman of whatever age should be employed in any mill or factory more than twelve hours a day; that no children should work over six hours; and gave protection against accident, mutilation, or death from unguarded machinery. It was found that, in the calico-print works, children were employed from seven to nine years of age, and sometimes when but three or four. Girls and adults worked sixteen and eighteen hours a day, and of course, the wages were “ extremely low.” These abuses were remedied by the Print Works Act of 1845.

392 History of the Christian Church.

Lord Ashley, in 1844, had carried a Ten-hour Bill through the House of Commons, but Sir Robert Peel made the victory useless by the threat of resignation; but the victory came May 18, 1847, when the Factory Act was passed, which limited the labor of all young persons, until May n, 1848, to sixty-three hours, and after that to fifty-eight hours per week. This limited the hours of three-quarters of the operatives in textile industries. The courts rendered this act largely ineffective through admitting a system of relays which rendered it impossible to detect infractions of the law. But by the Factory Act of July, 1850, the mills could run only from 6 A. M. to 6 P. M., with an intermission of one and a half hours for meals. This was the working-day for all young persons and women, and on Saturdays they could not work after two o’clock in the afternoon.

Three years later, children between eight and thirteen years of age were given the same protection; that is, they could work only between 6 A. M. and 6 P. M. This has ever since been the normal day in English factories, making ten and a half hours the length of the working day. This was an immense victory. No other in the same cause will meet equal opposition, or cost equal endeavor, or meet equal need.

Few harder fights have ever been won against greater odds. Against Lord Shaftesbury were the capitalists and the statesmen, as well as the factory owners. With them were the political economists and free traders. The clergy sided with the strong against the weak. It seems strange to find names everywhere mentioned as the leaders of English political thought against a remedy for this

Progress of Great Britain. 393

peculiarly base form 01 oppression. Sir Robert Peel, Lord Russell, Richard Cobden, John Bright, and William E. Gladstone, with Brougham and Harriet Mar-tineau, led the opposition to this most needed and beneficent legislation. Bright was Shaftesbury’s bitterest opponent. Gladstone never voted for a single measure of relief. Cobden and Lord John Russell changed in time to help somewhat, but Macaulay was the only man of large influence who spoke for the bill,—a fact Lord Shaftesbury never forgot. The time came when all men praised him. Sir James Graham, who led the hosts against him, regretted his course; but that was long after the fighting was done. Slavery in the British Colonies was abolished in 1833. After the work of Wilberforce and Buxton stands the remedial industrial legislation of Lord Shaftesbury.

This work did not cease with the Acts of 1850 and

1853, above mentioned, nor with the life of Lord Shaftesbury. In i860, the bleach and dye works, and the year following the lace works, were brought under the Factory Acts. As yet none of this legislation had affected the conditions of the poorest-paid workmen, those tilling the ground. The conditions of agricultural child-labor called urgently for legislation.

This was a system of revolting cruelty, under which the maximum of labor was obtained for the minimum of remuneration, by extortionate gang-mas-ters, who monopolized all the children in a ^Ar^g“_m^nl district in order that they might not be independently employed.

“The gangs are collected in the morning, marshaled by the gangsmen, and driven off into the fields to clear it of weeds, to spread manure, to thin the car-

394 History of the Christian Church.

rots and mangel-wurzel, to pick off stones from the land, or to gather in root-crops. At a rapid pace they were driven long distances to the scene of their labors; the footsore and weary children, not more than six or seven years of age, being dragged by their elders and goaded on by the brutal gangsmen. Year in, year_> out, in summer heat and winter cold, in sickness and in health; with backs warped and aching from constant stooping; with hands cracked and swollen at the back by the wind, and cold, and wet; with palms blistered from pulling turnips, and fingers lacerated from weeding among stones,—these English slaves, with education neglected, with morals corrupted, depraved and brutalized, labored from early morning till late at night, and, by the loss of all things, gained the miserable pittance that barely kept them from starvation.”

The Agricultural Bill of August, 1861, abolished these gangs, and another Factory Act brought every branch of juvenile labor under the supervision of the government. The Mines Act of 1872, required every mine to be under the constant supervision of a manager holding a government certificate, obtained only upon examination. The legislation since has been to secure against damage or injury by accident, to guard the specially dangerous occupations, like the white-lead industry, and associations to protect employees who testify of infractions of the law by employers— until all were consolidated in the Factory and Workshop Acts of 1901.

Lord Shaftesbury lived past his eighty-sixth birthday. He had been interested in the Bible Society and Christian work of every kind as became an “ Evangelical of the Evangelicals,” and in the ragged schools,

Progress of Great Britain. 395

and in training ships for boys, as much as in sanitary and factory legislation, with which his name will ever be connected. Well he wrought; for his name and work mark an era, not only in the social and industrial progress of Great Britain, but in the history of the world and of Christian civilization. From his day the conditions of the world’s workers, and of the children of the poor—yes, of the slums—concerns us all.

The social question, the condition of the toiling masses of the population of the world, is every man’s question. No society, no Church, no nation, no man, can shirk it. It is with us, and it will be helped with the advance of the cross of Him who toiled at the bench of the carpenter.

Chapter IV.

THE SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT.

Thk century was marked as no other has been by scientific discoveries and resultant theories and inventions. As these affected the thinking and the life of men, they could not but affect the work and history of the Christian Church. If the scientific teaching, that man’s body is an evolution in a progressive development running through the geologic ages, is established, then it must affect our thinking upon the great facts concerning God and man and their relations to each other, which we call theology. If men talk with the lightning, and human speech takes almost equal wing with human thought, and one may traverse the circle of the globe in sixty days, it has immediate practical bearing on the work of Christian missions. The revolving press, the stereotype and photographic reproductions through the half-tone process, bring in a new era in the history and distribution of Christian literature, as well as in the advance to a universal dissemination of the Holy Scriptures and an ability to read them. These things have changed the face of the Christian world and the activities of its life. No true history of the Christian Church can be written that does not give them place therein.

The discoveries in astronomy revealed something 396

The Scientific Movement. 397

of the magnitude and constitution of the solar and sidereal systems. Little as we know, or can realize, the ultimate facts of the worlds in sidereal

. . . , . Astronomy.

space, their origin, or their destiny, we

know immeasurably more of, and about, them than

ever men before have known.

In the eighteenth century, Herschel discovered Uranus, thus adding a planet to the solar system. Leverrier, having finished his calculations at Paris, told Galle at Berlin to point his telescope to a certain spot in the heavens, and September 23, 1846, the planet Neptune stood revealed to his vision, and to the knowledge of all mankind. In 1848, L,asell discovered the moons, and in 1850, Professor Bond, of Harvard, the inner ring of Saturn. In 1877, Professor Hall, of Washington, discovered the moons of Mars. In 1801, Piazzi discovered Ceres, the first asteroid. Since then some four hundred in number have been added. Dr. Olbers, in 1819, declared that the comet’s tail, which used to cause so much terror, was but a filmy vapor; and this was proved, notably in 1861. The Herschels, father and son, turned their attention to the stars; they discovered the double stars, and their elliptical orbits were proved. They seem to be the center of systems of worlds, as stars have been proven to have planet satellites like our sun. The Herschels found thousands of double stars. Struve and his successor found ten thousand more; Dr. Burnham, of Chicago, added thousands to these; so the great work of mapping the heavens has gone on, largely aided by the processes of celestial photography. In 1838, Bessel found the parallax of a star, and calculated that the nearest star is 200,000 times the distance of the sun

398 History of the Christian Church.

from us, or 18,600,000,000,000 of miles from the earth.

We might think that we could have no relation with a universe so far from us, but the velocity of light was directly ascertained as 182,000 miles a second. A train traveling at that rate will reach Arcturus in twenty days. But this universe was brought infinitely nearer to us through the discovery, by Kirchoff and Bunsen in 1859, by means of the spectroscope, that the chemical elements in the sun are the same as those we find in our globe. The same has proved true of the stars, so that we can speak certainly of a sameness of constitution and a unity of nature throughout the physical universe. The theories known as the nebular hypothesis, those regarding the results of the dissipation of energy, and those of tidal friction on the rotation of the earth, are but guesses. They are the best guesses we have, but they are to be carefully discriminated from verified facts. Astronomy has no room for polytheism; there is no God but one.

In 1781, Dr. Hutton set forth the theory of the formation of the crust of the earth, or its surface and underlying rocks, as caused by stratifications in lake and ocean beds, the metamorphosis of these by heat, and then their erosion by rain, heat, wind, and frost. In the latter years of the same century an English surveyor, William Smith, claimed that the fossil shells to be seen in the strata represented successive populations of living creatures. In the early years of the nineteenth century Cuvier, of Paris, proved this to be the case with a large succession of animal life of different types. In 1809, Lamarck set forth the theory that there had been a

The Scientific Movement. 399

progression of life on the globe and the transmission of species through the pressure of the environment upon the organism; but this Cuvier would not admit. In the meantime the strata of the earth’s crust were carefully studied and classified in relation to their succession and the succession of life upon the globe, by Murchison and Sedgwick, of England. Thus we have the Laurentian before records of life appear in the rocks; the Silurian, with invertebrate remains; the Devonian, or age of fishes; the Carboniferous, or era of the coal measures; these three form the Paleozoic ages. Then we have the Mesozoic, or age of reptiles; the Tertiary, or age of mammals; and the Quaternary, or the age of man.

In 1823 the fossil remains of huge reptiles were found. In 1845 a mastodon was found at Newburg, N. Y., and many since. In 1870—1876 Professor Marsh, of Yale, made the greatest of these discoveries in the Black Hills of Wyoming. He found three hundred new Tertiary species, two hundred birds with teeth, six hundred flying dragons or pterodactyls, and fifteen hundred sea-serpents or mosasaurus. In 1830, Sir Charles Lyell claimed that the phenomena of the earth’s crust could be accounted for by the action of forces now effective in fashioning it. This displaced the theory of cataclysms, but itself suffered some modifications, notably by the glacial theory of Professor Agassiz, who proved, in 1858, that Northern Europe to the Alps, and North America to about the latitude of New York City, had at one time been covered by a great ice-sheet.

In 1859, Charles Darwin published his theory of the origin and transmutation of species of organic

400 History of the Christian Church.

beings, which had been independently worked out by Alfred Russell Wallace. Darwin had given over twenty years to this work. His “Origin of Species” is a model of thorough scientific investigation and of careful and impartial statement. The argument was not carried to the origin of the human body until 1871 in the “Descent of Man.” The excitement caused by these publications was immense. The claims of many of the advocates of the theory were as exaggerated as the fears of its opponents. The discoveries of Professor Marsh showed conclusively that there had been a development of species through the geologic eras. The discoveries of Von Baer and his successors in embryology showed that the human body before birth went through, and recapitulated, the history of animal development on the earth through fish, reptile, and other divisions up to man. This seemed to make sure that the human body is the product of evolution.

Sir Charles Lyell then claimed that man had been from an indefinite antiquity an inhabitant of the earth. In 1865 there was discovered in a cave in Dordogne, in France, a mammoth’s tusk with a rude drawing of a mammoth upon it. This was thought to prove that man was a contemporary of the mammoth, and was here before the glacial period. Indeed, such was the furore and assurance of scientific men that Professor Tyndall, in his Belfast Address in 1874, did not hesitate to say that he saw “in matter the promise and potency of every form of life.”

The tide has receded, and we find that the origin of man’s body does not account for his intellectual and moral being or for his spiritual nature; that the

The Scientific Movement.

whole question of evolution is a question of tendency and final purpose as well as of origin; and that to so ardent an evolutionist as John Fiske, the author of “Cosmic Philosophy,” evolution offers the strongest evidence for the existence of God, the spiritual nature of man, and the immortality of the soul.

Thomas Young (1773-1829), a Quaker by birth and a physician by profession, was one of the remarkable men of the century. At four years of

. . Physics.

age he had read the Bible twice through, and at fourteen he could write in fourteen different languages. He was learned as an Egyptologist. He came to London in 1801. In November of that year he read his “Theory of Light and Colors.” He developed the undulatory theory of Huyghens and Euler, and added to it in showing the length of light waves, and the interference of the undulations of different colors. In 1807 he showed that electric and galvanic effects were the same. In 1818 he developed his theory of luminiferous ether as a continuous, incompressible body, possessing rigidity and elasticity, and gave the name “energy” to the mode of motion.

In 1815, Fresnel proved the different wave-lengths in different colors, and also the polarization of light before shown by Malus and Arago. In 1806, Davy proved chemical and electrical attraction to be alike; in the former acting on particles, in the latter on masses. In 1818 the Dane, Oersted, showed that a current of electricity deflected the magnetic needle. This is the basal discovery in the development of the electric telegraph. In 1827, Ohm stated his law of electrical resistance. In 1831, Michael Faraday, called “the greatest experimental philosopher the world has

402 History of the Christian Church.

ever seen,” and a devout Christian, proved galvanism and all forms of electricity to be identical, and that electricity and chemical action are convertible. “He linked together light, chemical affinity, magnetism, and electricity, and in 1840 was on the verge of the discovery of the conservation of force.” In 1843, James P. Joule demonstrated the absolute equivalence between mechanical work and heat. He showed that a pound weight falling through seven hundred and seventy-two feet at the level of the sea will always raise one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit in temperature. This showed that heat, light, electricity, and magnetism are mutually convertible, and that force, like matter, is never used up and lost, but merely takes another form. This is the epoch-making discovery in physics. In 1863, Professor Clerk Maxwell proved that the wave-lengths of light and electro-magnetism are the same, and that heat, light, and electricity travel at the same velocity. These results were reached independently by Helmholtz. In 1859, Professor Clark Maxwell developed the kinetic theory of gases, showing that all the phenomena of gases are due to the motion of the widely-separated molecules of which they are composed. Thus the density of matter from solids to fluids, gases, and ultra gaseous matter, depends upon the number of molecules in a given volume of the substance. Upon this basis we have liquefied gases and air through lowering the temperature. Thus the names of Young, Faraday, Joule, and Maxwell, with Oersted and Helmholtz, mark the great stages in the advance of this branch of science.

In 1803, John Dalton (1776-1844), also a Quaker,

The Scientific Movement.

a teacher and careful student, read his paper on the atomic weights of chemical elements. In 1809, Gay Lussac showed the volumes of combining elements. In 1811, Avogadro gave the law ^Chemistry* that there was an equal number of molecules in equal volumes of gases. In the same year Berzelius gave us our chemical nomenclature. In 1819, Dulong and Petit proved that the specific heats of solids vary inversely as their atomic weights. Wohler, in 1828, made the first organic compound, urea. Frankland, in 1852, showed the valency or number of chemical affinities each element may have at one time, on which the new chemistry is built. Newlands, in 1864, showed the law of recurring serial proportions in atomic weights. All through the century the discovery of new chemical elements went on. Priestley and Cavendish had given us oxygen and hydrogen; Davy gave us barium, strontium, calcium, potassium, and sodium ; boron, cerium, selenium, silicon, zirconium, and thorium were added by Berzelius. Courtois discovered iodine; Gay Lussac, cyanogen; and Ballard, bromine—quite a chemical outfit for the first twenty-five years of the century. But it was added to in each decade, and never more surprisingly that in the closing one, illustrated by the arrival of argon and krjrpton, radium, and a half-dozen other-new chemical elements. The advance in organic chemistry had been equally marvelous. The X-ray of Professor Rontgen, in 1895, fitly crowned an era of great discoveries.

The next department of scientific investigation and achievement is of interest to us all, as it relates to the increased knowledge of the human body. Before the opening of the century Kaspar Wolff had

404 History of the Christian Church.

shown that the cell was the basis of organic life. In 1790, Goethe had taught the metamorphosis of the parts, as in plants all parts are developed ^Th® ”_d“^raan from the leaf. Bichat had also pointed out the fundamental tissues of the human body. Spallanzi, of Pavia, had shown that digestion and respiration involved a chemical process; and Jenner, in 1796, had introduced vaccination.

The invention of the compound microscope in 1830 made possible further knowledge of the fundamental life of the cell. The year previous, Von Baer made known his great researches in embryology. In 1839, Schwann published his conclusions as to the likeness of cell life in plants and animals. In i860, Virchow showed that all cells were produced from cells, and the nucleus in them from other nuclei. In the same year protoplasm was declared to be the common basis of life in the plant and animal cells. In 1825, the case of Alexis St. Martin, whose wound allowed the inspection of his stomach during digestion, led to much better knowledge of the process. In 1836 came the discovery of the functions of the pancreas, and about i860 came the discovery, by Bernard, of those of the liver. In 1865, Kuhn discovered the functions of haemoglobin in the blood. In 1811, Sir Charles Bell distinguished between the motor and sensory impulses of the brain. In 1832, Marshall Hall showed the cause of the reflex action of the muscles in the different nervous centers, or ganglia, outside of the brain. In 1851, Claude Bernard pointed out that the chief function of the sympathetic fibrils of ganglia, etc., is to cause the contraction of the walls of the arteries of

The Scientific Movement.

the system, thus regulating the flow of blood. In 1858, he showed the inhibitions by nerve action. In 1851, Helmholtz proved that the speed of nerve impulse was less than one hundred feet a second. The next year appeared Lotze’s “Medical Psychology,” and eight years later Fechner’s “Psychophysics.” Fechner was the author of the term, “ physiological psychology.” Wundt showed elaborately the action and response to nerve stimuli and the time of nerve action. Baird, in 1841, had shown the phenomena of hypnotism, which was anew examined in these psychological laboratories. All this study of the nervous system led to a closer examination of the brain. In 1861, by an autopsy of a speechless patient, Paul Broca showed a particular tract of the brain was destroyed, since called Broca’s convolution. In 1870 and 1873, Fritsch and Hitzig and Dr. David Ferrier made clear that the stimulations of the brain cortex of animals by a galvanic current produced contractions of definite sets of nerves on the opposite sides of the body. In 1889, Dr. Cajal showed that each central nerve brain cell has fibrilar offshoots and is an independent entity.

If any are inclined to think that the knowledge of the brain and nervous system tends to show that man has and needs nothing besides his physical organism to explain his being and its capacity, it may reassure them to find that Professor William James, of Harvard, than whom no American psychologist stands higher in Europe, most pointedly and emphatically defends the spiritual nature of man and his spiritual relationships. The Rontgen rays have made clear the

406 History of the Christian Church.

bony skeleton of the living body, and we await a like revelation of the condition of the tissues and organs ot the viscera.

The inventions of the age made possible a wonderful advance in surgery and therapeutics. Indeed, we

have now solid foundations for scientific

Medicine. . .

medicine. In 1846, Dr. Morton made evident the value of ether as an anaesthetic, a boon to suffering humanity and to the brute creatures never surpassed. The next year followed the use of chloroform, and some thirty years later that of cocaine for minor operations. These made possible a multitude of operations never before dreamed of. The electric-light illumination, without heat, was a great aid, and in cases of injury, the X-rays, like Laennec’s auscula-tion and stethoscope in 1819, wrought a revolution in diagnosis. Perhaps of even greater value, so far as restoration to health is concerned, was Dr. Lister’s antiseptic surgery made public in 1877. This banished surgical fever from the hospitals and nearly doubled the chances of recovery. The work of the surgeon was helped out by the invention of improved artificial legs in 1846, and human health and beauty preserved by the advance in dentistry; notably the use of rubber plates from 1864, and bridge-work from 1871.

New therapeutic agents were discovered from quinine in 1820, to antipyrine in 1884; but the great change came with the discovery of the germ theory of disease. This began with the discovery, by the medical faculty, of what had long been known by the common people, that the itch was caused by an animal parasite. In 1833, trichina had been distinguished, but not discovered in pork until 1847. In 1839, the

The Scientific Movement. 407

parasite nature of a scalp disease, favus, was made evident. Here matters rested until the advent of the master of bacteriology, Louis Pasteur, who well may be called the founder of modern scientific medicine, and who, his life long, was a devout Christian. In 1854 he began his investigation of the process of fermentation, and in 1865 came his epoch-making work in bacteriology. In 1877 he had not only proved the nature of the contagious diseases of cattle and sheep, known as anthrax, but had worked out an antidote.

In 1881 he gave as convincing a demonstration of the value of his antitoxine treatment as is known in the annals of medicine. Many others carried on the work begun by him. In 1882 came the discovery of the bacilli of tuberculosis, by Koch, and of hydrophobia by Pasteur. Two years later came the discovery of those of cholera, diphtheria, and lockjaw, and a little later that of yellow fever.

The culture and preparation of antidotes, or antitoxine, has gone on apace. That of diphtheria, used from 1894, has been the most successful, and has reduced the death rate from malignant diphtheria from 30 to 60 per cent. Others in use before the end of the century were those for lockjaw, cholera, typhus fever, pneumonia, and tuberculosis. Looking over this record, we can only exclaim, “ What power and blessing have come to all men from the larger knowledge of the works of God!”

From this discovery of scientific principles resulted the application of them by inventors in ways that transformed the ordinary methods of

. . - ~ . Invention.

business, social, and political life. Such a process is clearly seen in the electric telegraph and in

408 History of the Christian Church.

electric lighting. In other cases the need and the ingenuity of man came together, without the development of any new principles, and yet made the farm and the home and their industries something different from what had ever before been known by men, as in the case of the mower and reaper and steam-thresher, and the sewing and knitting machines. The amount of change and the atmosphere of change in which the men of the last fifty years of the century lived, can scarcely be appreciated except by a slight retrospect.

First, imagine how much has been done to make light this world when the sun goes down. In 1804 the first gas company was organized, and in ^Light‘ 1812 London was the first city in the world to be lighted with gas. In 1827 friction matches were invented. The light for the common man, or coal-oil, was discovered in 1859. Some ten years later natural gas came to be used for fuel and illuminating purposes. In 1885 the Welsbach burner was invented, which increased the light and diminished the cost; while in 1893 acetylene gas came to the front as an illuminant, but has yet to make good its claims. Meanwhile electricity stepped in to take the place of the sun. It was first placed in a lighthouse in 1858, and used to light dwellings the year following; but it made slow progress until the invention of Edison’s incandescent lamps in 1878. Since then our lights for streets, and incandescent lamps for stores and houses, have turned night into day.

Besides this, light has been made to paint and draw for us in a way which makes the common possession of the people the beauty and the grandeur of nature and the best work of the old masters. The

The Scientific Movement. 409

man who spent his day at the plow may, in the evening, in his home, see looking down on him the Sistine Madonna, Angelo’s “Sybils,” or Titian’s

Photography.

“Virgin ” in the clouds. The toiler m the shops, after his evening meal, may almost feel the air of the Alps, or hear the thunder of Niagara, or see Yosemite or the Yellowstone. The scenes of great events, the great architectural achievements of the race, and the faces of public men, are the common property of the children of the people, while our dead are as once they were when the sun kissed them into enduring life. The stars also are brought nigh to us.

In 1802, Wedgwood and Davy made the first experiments which developed into photography. In 1829 a Frenchman gave his name to the new pictures called the Daguerreotype. A year later, Fox Talbot made the first photographic prints from a negative. The next year the new art brought human faces and the stars to houses of men. In 1850 it was improved by the collodion process, as in 1878 by the gelatine-bromide process. In 1854 came the roll-film, and the next year the dry plate. Meanwhile, in 1838, Wheatstone had invented the stereoscope, and in 1859 came photo-lithography. These latter inventions have changed the functions and appearance of the periodical press. The kodak came in 1888, and since 1890 photographs in color have been upon the market.

Thus the eyes of men who staid at home saw more than those of most travelers; but that was not enough. Man, and the products to supply his table, his trade, or his daily increasing wants, must have an active circulation that would astound Aladdin with his wonder-working lamp.

410 History of the Christian Church.

Fulton sent the first steamboat, the Clermont, up the Hudson in 1807. The first steamboat to cross the ocean was American built, called the Savannah, and accomplished what was called her impossible feat in

1819. Screw propellers, and, in 1891, rotary steam-turbines, have changed the means of propulsion, and increased the speed or greatly enlarged the carrying capacity of ocean steamships.

In 1825 the first railway was built. It ran from Stockport to Darlington, in England. The next year one was constructed in Quincy, Mass. In 1827, Stephenson’s engine, The Rocket, was built, and the first engine was imported into the United States in 1829. In 1832 the first Baldwin locomotive was made. The sleeping-car came in 1856; the Westinghouse brake in 1872; and the year following Janney’s automatic car coupler; later still the steam-heating and gas-lighting of passenger cars. The horses were superseded for street-cars, first by the cable-car system, in 1876. Siemens built an electric railway in Berlin in 1879. The first in America ran from Baltimore to Hampden in 1885. Electricity will be the motive power, for passenger railways at least, in the future.

In 1861 the Otis passenger elevator was patented, which made tall mercantile and office buildings possible. In the midst of these improved means of communication came those for the domestic use in the last two decades of the century—the bicycle and the automobile. The nations of the earth have been made next-door neighbors; let us hope also friends, for the natural barriers have given way.

In 1869 the Suez Canal united the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, while the Pacific Railway

The Scientific Movement.

411

made New York and San Francisco unite the shores ot the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. So the jetties of Captain Eads, in 1879, made more valuable the trade route by the greatest of North American rivers. The obstructions in New York harbor at Hellgate were blown up in 1885. To these must be added tunnels like the Thames in 1843, Mt. Cenis in 1876, Hoosac Tunnel, opened in 1880, and St. Gothard Tunnel in 1882; and the great bridges, like that of Niagara, in 1855, St. Louis in 1874, Brooklyn in 1883, and that of the Forth in 1890.

This brief glimpse will show how much more movable a creature man was at the end than at the beginning of the century, and how much more also he could make move.

Of course such an extensive multiplication of the means of transportation required an immense industrial development to make it profitable.

This came, not only because of unsur- i^nt^ns. passed natural resources, but because of inventions which made them available.

The vast prairies of the West were transformed into fields waving with abundant harvests, because of the inventions of the mower and reaper, and the corn-cutting machine developed from them. In 1833, Hussey patented his reaper, and McCormick followed in 1834. The self-raking reaper came in 1851, and the twine-binder in 1874. 0^ course their general use was from five to ten years later. The steam thresher from about 1870, and roller-mills Irom 1875, made the grain in the fields ready lor the markets of the world, and America the granary for the race. The barbed-wire fence, 1861-

412 History of the Christian Church.

1874, and the organization of great packing-houses, with, since 1872, the production of oleomargarine, have revolutionized the live-stock industry as much as the inventions before mentioned have the raising of grain.

In 1841, artesian wells were first used, and their use will be an increasing one. Twenty years later came the drive-well, a boon for shallow wells in a loose soil.

Mining received great help from the new explosives, like nitro-glycerin in 1847, and dynamite since Mining ^anc^ f^rom the invention of drills, like

’ the diamond drill in 1854, and the compressed-air drill of 1866, and engineering from the pneumatic caisson of 1841.

The year 1801 saw the first mortising machine, and the next year the first planer. The year 1819 marked a notable era with Blanchard’s turning Woridng. l^athe, and 1828 saw an improved wood-planer. Gimlet-pointed screws and machine-made, and, later, wire nails aided the work of the carpenter, while iron beams since 1857 have added to the solidity and durability of building. The great forests of the Northwest brought into requisition the circular and gang saws, and after 1876 steam feed for the carriages.

In 1804, malleable iron castings were first made. In 1817-1824, machines for making pins came into use. In 1834, Burden’s horseshoe machine Manufactures, revolutionized an important industry.

Three years later galvanized iron was produced, and in 1839 Babbitt metal. The steam hammer of Nasmyth in 1842, and the Bessemer process

The Scientific Mo vement. 413

of making steel since 1855, revolutionized the iron industry. In 1871, phosphorus bronze was produced; in 1885, aluminum by the Cowles process; and in

1889, nickel steel.

No less startling were the chief inventions in the process of the textile industries and the making of wearing apparel. The Jacquard pattern-loom opened an imposing procession in _Man^^e_f^*_re< 1801. The next year the steam loom wrought an entire revolution in the mills. In 1872 came the Lyall positive-motion loom; since 1856 came the great change caused by the introduction of aniline dyes. In 1806 there came a kind of knitting-machine ; a circular ring improved it ten years later, but it waited for development until the latch needle came in J849. Elias Howe patented his sewing-machine in 1846; Wilson’s motion feed was added in 1854. In 1861, McKay fitted it for the manufacture of shoes; and in 1881 came the much-needed button-hole machine. Now, from the fleece or cotton-bale to suit, finished for our wearing, machines may do all of it.

With all this marvelous development of power over material things, man’s thought found means for more complete expression and wider distri-

1 . , , - , ^ The Press.

bution than was ever before known. Ini 800 a paper web was manufactured, and in 1814 the London Times was printed on a steam rotary-press. In 1838 electrotype printing-plates came into use. In 1845 came the Hoe revolving type machine, improved in 1871 to the Hoe’s web-perfecting press for the New York Tribune. The years 1853, 1858, and 1867 marked steps in the process of making paper from wood pulp. In 1884-1890 came the Mergenthaler linotype machine.

414 History of the Christian Church.

These stages of advance, with the resources of half-tone engraving and photo-lithographs, mark the mechanical evolutions of the modern newspaper. This is also aided by the typewriter; Sholer, 1868, Remington, 1878, which has transformed the work of the office, the courts, and the home. To it are indebted the school, the pulpit, and the bar, as well as the man of business.

A few other inventions, hard to classify, mark this century; the Babbage calculating machine of 1822, and the Goodyear process of vulcanizing India-rubber in 1839, and, of not less public importance, the ballot machine. In this list must also go the American-made watch since 1850, and the Yankee ice-machine since i860.

But the crown of all the achievements of the century in the application of the new knowledge of nature to the use and service of man is in the Progress! electrical discovery. In 1828,

Professor Henry invented the spool electric magnet, an essential to the use of the telegraph. In 1832, Professor Morse conceived the idea of the electric telegraph; he obtained his French patent in 1840, and sent the first message from Washington to Baltimore in 1844. This was preceded by Daniels’s constant battery in 1836, and the use of the earth for return current since 1837. In 1850, the first submarine cable was laid from Dover to Calais; in 1858 one was laid across the Atlantic. It was not made a success until 1866, through the untiring efforts of Cyrus W. Field. In 1852 was installed the first fire-alarm telegraph. The year following came duplex telegraphy, and in 1874 Edison’s quadruplex telegraph. In

The Scientific Movement. 415

1896, Marconi used his wireless telegraph across the English Channel, and six years later across the Atlantic Ocean. Electroplating developed in 1805-1834. Professor Henry built .an electric motor in 1831, and Davidson an electric locomotive in 1842; but the development of these machines came forty years later. This came through dynamo-electric machines, like Siemen’s, 1867, and Gramnier’s, 1870. Faurer’s stor. age battery came in 1880, and electric welding six years later.

Reis made a crude telephone in i860, Professor Bell patented his speaking telephone in 1876, and Birliner’s transmitters came ten years following, and in 1893 the kinetoscope. In _Xel^hone. 1887, Tesla showed the use of polyphase currents. The electrical evolution, which began in 1800 with Volta’s chemical battery producing electricity, closed in the nineteenth century with the Rontgen rays and wireless telegraphy. Morse, Field and Bell, and Marconi, well typify the working of the nations together for the advancement of the world’s civilization.

The treasures thus secured were guarded against floods of savagery and barbarism by the progress of inventions in military science. The overthrow of the Roman Empire and its civili- _{o"^vJefen"e. zation will not soon be repeated. In 1836,

Colt’s revolver revolutionized the use of small arms. In 1851, Maynard’s breech-loading rifle was produced, and three years later Smith and Wesson’s magazine fire-arm, the foundation of the Winchester rifle. So the development went on through the needle-gun, which brought victory to the Prussian army in 1866^

4i6 History of the Christian Church.

and revolutionized the arming of the infantry of the world, and the chassepots, the Martini-Henry, the Mausers, and the Kraag-Jorgensen, adopted by the United States army in 1890. In 1880 came Greener’s hammer less gun. In 1885 the explosive vulcanite_> and in 1889 cordite, or smokeless powder, wrought as great a change as that in the design of the gun.

In naval affairs, in 1862, came the armored turret construction, first seen in Ericsson’s famous Monitor. Four years later the Whitehead torpedo was invented. Then came, in 1888, the Harvey annealing process of making armor-plate, with that of Krupp in 1895. This increased protection to ships, was matched by explosives of increased power of penetration; and greater safety for defense through the disappearing gun-carriage, 1868-1896.

It is well that the treasures of civilization should be safely guarded, but the obligation to protect the weak, and not oppress or rob them, remains all the more binding; these great armaments should be devised mainly for mutual defense of Christendom. One gain has been that war is now so costly and destructive that no nation and no people will enter upon it with a light heart. Armed peace is better than ceaseless war, but every Christian will pray that greater influence, scope, and power will come to the international arbitration represented by The Hague Tribunal.

Not only inventions, but Antichristian theories and denials, accompanied this development in science. How great was the force of this movement, and how strong the thrust and the pressure it brought

The Scientific Movement.

417

against the Christian faith, can scarcely be realized by those who were not in active life from 1870 to

1890. Of course this was aided by igno- _The rant denials, antiquated claims, and foolish scientific defenses made by some Christian men, ^Mov_i^ei"^ent

^J ’ and the

notably those who could not adapt them- Christian selves to the new mode of thought and ^Fa,th* the revelations of the larger and more marvelous universe.

But when all deductions are made, there has scarcely been a more vehement or, for the time, more effective attack upon the Christian faith since the days of Julian the Apostate than that of those years, or a more marked trend than at one time toward Atheistic materialism. John Stuart Mill was the great Liberal philosopher; he was the chief authority in political economy, and he succeeded to Newman’s lead at Oxford. John Morley shared with Mill and Frederic Harrison Positivist beliefs, and spelled God with a little g. Matthew Arnold had none of his father’s Christian faith, and George Eliot lived in its rejection. Charles Darwin had no more use for the Christian faith than he had for music or poetry, and in this denial simply followed in the steps of his father. Thomas Huxley delighted in controversy, and invented the term “agnosticism.” Tyndall came out for materialism; Kingdon Clifford knew no God. The little crowd of neo-pagans, from Symonds, historian of the Renaissance, and Walter Pater, found its tail and its shame in Oscar Wilde.

In France the aspect was no better. Renan was the great literary and religious oracle. Zola, the pop-

4i8 History of the Christian Church.

ular novelist, and Daudet, for the classes repelled by Zola’s filth, not because Daudet was free from it, but because he was more refined. Guy Maupassant and Paul Verlaine inclined still farther the balance. The literary worship of lewdness could hardly go farther than in the France of these years.

In Germany, Haeckel led Darwinism to sheer materialism as its necessary result. Carl Vogt and Buchner became the teachers of the socialistic masses, which rejected Christianity because of the militarism and industrial conditions of the new empire. In the same way Schopenhauer and Hartmann became the prophets of the educated classes, who turned from Christ’s gospel to that of pessimism.

The whole anarchistic revolt in Russia was based upon materialistic Atheism.

In America converged all these influences. For years one could hardly take up a high-class magazine or a review without coming upon an open or an indirect attack upon the Christian faith. Agnosticism and pessimism had many adherents among professional men and college students, while Robert G. In-gersoll, with unsurpassed wit and eloquence and a vigor not inferior to Thomas Paine, held up, on lecture platforms throughout the country, the teachings of the Christian religion to ridicule and blasphemy before crowded audiences. It is difficult to measure the confidence and the arrogance of the attack. It was all the more effective because the men making it were men of high character, of great ability, and wrote most vigorous and effective English. They scouted the idea that a clergyman could have any conception of scientific truth worthy of respect, though it fell to an English

The Scientific Movement.

Wesleyan preacher, Mr. Drysdale, to demonstrate beyond question the falsity of the teaching of spontaneous generation, while they did not scruple to pronounce the most sweeping ex-cathedra judgments upon the most difficult problems of theology and of human origin and destiny.

There are few more instructive passages in Church history than the repulse of this attack. For a time Lange’s “ History of Materialism ” was the great authority in human thought, and Lucretius’s poem, “ De Rerum Natura,” the great source of inspiration. Huxley gave a lecture on “Are Animals Automata?” which struck at moral responsibility, and he even inquired, “What diseased viscera was responsible for the priest in absolution?” for which he was fittingly rebuked by Frederic Harrison, who told him it was materialism, and not very nice of its kind.

Soon after Tyndall’s Belfast Address, James Mar-tineau published a review of the whole position, which showed conclusively that evolution, as a process beginning with the atom and ending with man, was not self-explanatory. In his language, no process of evolution could get out of the atoms what was not in them at the beginning. In other words, a process is no substitute for a cause. The mystery of origin and destiny, instead of becoming so plain that no man can mistake it, by evolution only becomes more wonderful; we may even say, more divine. There was, and there has been, no answer to this reasoning. In the words of Professor Fairbairn, “ It was largely owing to him that our age was not swept off its feet by the rising tide of materialistic and pseudo-scien

420 History of the Christian Church.

tific speculations; his words were equal to whole victories.”

This is no place to record the names of others who wrought splendidly to the same result. It is enough that materialism has been abandoned by thinking men. that over agnosticism is written “ No thoroughfare,” and that at the end of the century the battle for Christian Theism was won. It was not won by men who went into a panic or a rage, but by men who worked hard to see and understand the facts; by men who never scolded and never imputed evil motives; by men who insisted upon considering the whole problem and every factor of it. The years have set their seal that man has a religious nature, and that there is no solution of the problem of his origin and destiny which does not take into the account the religious element in his nature and his history.

Chapter V.

THE PAPACY.

The papacy in the last half of the nineteenth century includes but two pontificates,—those of Pius IX and Leo XIII. No two successive popes have reigned so many years. They were both good men, but in temper and in policy they were opposites.

Pius was unlearned, but undertook to stem the current of affairs, to rebuke the spirit of the age, and to reject whatever was counseled by public opinion. He lived in, and sought to give effect to, the ideas of the Middle Ages. For bane or blessing, he left the Roman Catholic Church a very different institution from what the Council of Trent had made it. His pontificate will always mark an era as distinct as that of Clement VII in the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

On the other hand, Leo XIII was a man of learning and of literary tastes. A diplomatist and a man of the world, he sought to reconcile the Roman Catholic Church with the modern State, with society, and with modern thought. His policy and the success it has gained has introduced principles of criticism and of interpretation which most profoundly modify the teachings and the life of the Roman Catholic Church. The study of these contrasted policies and of their effect can not fail to be of interest and of profit.

421

422 History of the Christian Church.

The papacy is quite as much a political as a religious institution. This resulted from the relations of the Christian States to the pope during the Middle Ages, from his relation to the State Church system of modern Europe, and from his position as an independent sovereign ruling over some of the fairest lands of the Italian peninsula and the ancient capital of the world.

In politics Pius IX led the forces of the Reaction, and succeeded to the place formerly held by Nicholas I. But the times had changed; the policy of Pius lost forever to the Church of Rome the temporal power, and alienated from him almost every court in Europe. At his death he was in bitter strife with the new German Empire, at war with the Kingdom of Italy as far as the weapons of his spiritual arsenal would carry him, and had broken off diplomatic relations with Russia, while those with Austria were by no means cordial. The loss in temporal dominion and political influence of the pontificates of Pius was the greatest of any pontiff since the Council of Trent. Nevertheless, this pontiff, so unsuccessful in political affairs and so ignorant in regard to either philosophy or theology, attempted and carried out the greatest change in the discipline and doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church known in three hundred years, and in many respects more far-reaching than the decrees of the Council of Trent. When he died it was a new Roman Catholic Church which faced the modern world, and which denounced what it regarded as its most precious gains and what it held most dear.

The secret of this political revolution and this change is seen in the activity and influence of the re

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423

restored Society of Jesus, which dictated the policy of Pius IX after his return to his capital. Doubtless the experience of the pontiff of revolution and exile made an ineffaceable impression j_eg„it_s upon him, and made him sincere in his adherence to the counsels of the leaders in this age of the sons of Loyola.

The first general of the order chosen after its restoration was Lugui Fortis (1820-1829), elected in his seventy-third year. He was succeeded by a man of penetration, and determination, the Hollander, Johann Roothan (1829-1853), elected when he was forty-four years old. During the rule of the former general the Jesuits came back to Rome after an absence of almost half a century, and in 1824 again took possession of the Collegium Romanum.

The Jesuits had been banished from Russia in

1820. Everywhere they stood for the dominance ot the most extreme absolutist political principles. In France they supported the policy of Charles X; in Spain, of the pretender Don Carlos; and in Portugal, of the pretender Don Miguel. The consequence was that they were banished from France in 1830, though the decree was not made effective until 1845, and from Spain in 1834, and from Portugal in 1835. They were driven out of Rome in 1848. The triumph of the Reaction after that year of revolution was their triumph.

Peter Beckx, a Belgian, styled in Rome the Black Pope, succeeded Roothan as general (1853-1887). He ruled the order and guided the pope.

The teaching that the Virgin Mary had been immaculate from her conception and birth, and hence free from any taint of original sin, was favored by

424 History of the Christian Church.

the Franciscans and opposed by the more learned order of the Dominicans through the Middle Ages. The Doctrine The Jesuits espoused the Franciscan view.

of the Pius IX was noted for his devotion to the '^nceptioii Virgin Mary. Hence came, December 8, of the 1854, the proclamation of the Immaculate virgin. Conception of the Virgin Mary, as a doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Pius IX erected a Corinthian column, taken from a heathen temple, in front of the College of the Propaganda in the Piazza di Spagna in Rome, in commemoration of the event. A more lasting effect was in the increase in the devotion to the Virgin Mary among the Roman Catholic populations.

A similar movement of popular devotion most antagonistic to Evangelical ideas is the devotion to the . Sacred Heart of Jesus. A French nun and

The Cultus . * 1 • ^

of the mystic, Maria Margarita Alacoque, m the Sacred Heart Burgundian monastory of Le Pray Monial, ’ June 16, 1675, had an ecstatic vision in which she saw our Lord take out his heart and show it to her pierced and surrounded with flames. In the vision our Lord commanded the adoration of this heart, and that the Friday after Corpus Christi day in June should be a festival in honor of the new devotion. Maria Alacoque died in 1690, and her Jesuit confessor, La Combiere, began the cult by a publication of her life and visions in 1691. In 1693 the first Brotherhood of the Sacred Heart was formed; in 1727 there were four hundred of them.

The new devotion was not favorably received at Rome. Its claims were rejected there in 1704-1707, and decisively in 1727 by Lambertini, afterward Pope

The Papacy.

425

Benedict XIV. But the new cult spread. In 1726, the Jesuit Gallifet wrote a volume “ De Cultu Sacro-sancti Cordis Dei,” in its defense. An Arch Brotherhood was founded at Rome in 1732; in 1765, there were more than a thousand brotherhoods. There was also opposition. Bishop Scipio Ricci, in 1781, opposed the new cult, and drew down upon him the wrath of the Jesuits. After their suppression, writings in favor of this devotion were prohibited in Genoa^ Naples, and Vienna. The Jesuits looked upon this cult as a refuge for them. In 1794, they organized the “ Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”

The “ Dames du Sacre Coeur” is a woman’s society, founded by Magdalena Sophia Barat in Paris in 1800. They devoted themselves to the education of the youth, and especially to that of the daughters of persons of rank and station. They were often fanatical in their desire for the restoration of the temporal power of the pope. In 1880 they had 105 convents, with 47,000 members.

In France, in 1844, was founded the “ Apostolate of Prayer in Union with the Sacred Heart of Jesus.” In 1895 this Prayer Union had 20,000,000 of members, and its periodical was printed in fourteen languages. In 1864 was founded the “Arch Brotherhood of the Virgin of the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” devoted to the relations of the Virgin to the Sacred Heart. However repellent and semi-pagan these rites and associations seem to the Evangelical Christian, they form an integral part of the Church life of most devout Roman Catholics.

In 1856, Pius IX appointed the Friday after Corpus Christi day as a festival for the new form of devo

426 History of the Christian Church.

tion. To Evangelical Christians it seems little different from worship.

In 1864, Maria Alacoque was canonized, and in 1889 Pope Leo XIII commended the new devotion.

The Jesuit policy not only favored the new devotion, but recognized no Christian faith or religion outside of the Roman Catholic Church worthy intolerance. ^ toleration in a Roman Catholic State.

In the meanwhile the Papal Government earned an evil renown for oppression, abuses, and maladministration throughout Christendom. Every The Papal _si_ncere Roman Catholic, zealous for the

Government. . .

honor of his Church and for the Christian faith, should rejoice that this crying scandal has been removed. In illiteracy and illegitimacy the Papal States sustained an evil pre-eminence. The cry for relief from oppression reached not only Victor Emmanuel, but Louis Napoleon. The French Emperor had given the Roman Catholic Church free rein in France, and his garrison made possible the rule of the Pope in Rome itself. But his alliance with Victor Emmanuel and the successes of Garibaldi brought on the total overthrow of the temporal power which had stood for more than a thousand years. This revolution brought about the banishment of the Jesuits from Northern Italy in 1859, and from Southern Italy the year following. When the temporal power finally fell, the Jesuit rule in Rome ended, and their Collegium Romanum came into the hands of the Italian Government.

Pius IX and his Jesuit advisers did not propose to let the temporal power fall if any effort of theirs could prevent it. They recruited a PapalArmy. The

The Papacy.

427

king of united Italy was solemnly cursed and excommunicated, though not by name. It seemed necessary to call to the defense of the endangered papacy every means in the power of _Papa™ my the head of the Roman Catholic Church to stem the tide of invasion, or, if that failed, to make sure that the future would repair the losses of the present. Hence the Syllabus and the Vatican Council.

The Syllabus was the first step toward the convocation of the Vatican Council, and that Council ratified what was the chief teaching of the Syllabus and what was regarded as the _SyJ|_abus sure and most impregnable support of the temporal power.

The Papal Syllabus of Errors was promulgated December 8, 1864. It names eighty errors which it condemns. Its position is stated entirely in the negative, and yet is not, therefore, less clear or unmistakable than if its principles were put in the form of positive assertions. It condemns much that all Christians unite in condemning, but it also lays the ax at the root of the modern State, of modern government, education, and society. It is in ten chapters, treating respectively of Rationalism, Moderate Rationalism, Socialism, Communism, Secret Societies; Errors concerning Society, considered both in itself and in relation to the Church; Errors concerning Natural and Christian Ethics; Errors concerning Christian Marriage ; Errors regarding the Civil Power of the Sovereign Pontiff; and Errors having reference to Modern Liberalism. The sting is in the tail, and the last two are the chief reasons for the others; but before these there are a number that well deserve our attention.

428 History of the Christian Church.

The Syllabus condemns Error 18: “The holding that Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which it is possible to be equally pleasing to God as in the Catholic Church.”

Chapter IV. Secret Societies, Bible Societies, etc. “ Pests of this description are frequently rebuked in the severest terms;” then follow references to papal utterances from 1846 to 1863.

Errors concerning the Church. 21. “The Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion.”

The control of the Roman Catholic Church, and that is the control the Papal Curia would exercise over intellectual liberty, is stated in Error 22, which condemns holding that “The obligation which binds Catholic teachers and authors applies only to those things which are proposed for universal belief, as dogmas of the faith, by the infallible judgment of the Church.” With this should be taken the condemnation of Errors 12 and 13.

12. “The decrees of the Apostolic See and of the Roman congregations fetter the free progress of science.”

13. “The methods and principles by which the old scholastic doctors cultivated theology are no longer suitable to the demands of the age and the progress of science.”

In Error 23 the infallibility of Roman pontiffs and Ecumenical Councils is asserted. 23. “The Roman pontiffs and Ecumenical Councils have exceeded the limits of their power, have usurped the rights of

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429

princes, and have even committed errors in defining matters of faith and morals.”

In condemning Error 24, the right of the Church to coerce is asserted. 24. “The Church has not the power of availing herself of force, or any direct or indirect temporal power.”

26. “ The Church has not the innate and legitimate right of acquisition and possession.”

27. “The ministers of the Church and the Roman pontiff ought to be absolutely excluded from all charge and dominion over temporal affairs.”

Time has taken this last assertion out of the range of practical politics. Clerical immunities, that question of ages of bitter strife, is sought to be sheltered by the condemnation of Errors 31 and 32.

31. “Ecclesiastical courts for temporal causes, of the clergy, whether civil or criminal, ought by all means to be abolished, either without the concurrence or against the concurrence of the Holy See.”

32. “ The personal immunity exonerating the clergy from military service may be abolished without violation either of natural right or of equity. Its abolition is called for by civil progress, especially in a community constituted upon principles of liberal government.”

The condemnation of Errors 36 and 37 is directed against National Councils and National Churches.

Error 38 condemns, curiously enough, the belief that “ The Roman pontiffs have, by their too arbitrary conduct, contributed to the division of the Church into Eastern and Western.” This is enough to provoke to laughter the Greeks.

We now come to the chapter on Civil Society.

430 History of the Christian Church.

The teaching that political sovereignty is from the people gets a slant in the condemnation of Error 39. “ The commonwealth is the origin and source of all rights, and possesses rights which are not circumscribed by any limits.” Those adhering to the last statement are rare indeed.

The revocation of the Concordats, a right exercised by almost every Roman Catholic State, was bitterly resented.

43. “ The civil power has a right to break, and to declare and render null, the Conventions (commonly called Concordats) concluded with the Apostolic See, relative to the use of rights appertaining to ecclesiastical immunity, without the consent of the Holy See, and even contrary to its protest.”

The common-school system is denounced in the condemnation of Errors 45 and 48.

45. “The entire direction of public schools, in which the youth of Christian States are educated, except (to a certain extent) in the care of episcopal seminaries, may and must appertain to the civil power, and belong to it so far that no other authority whatsoever shall be recognized as having any right to interfere in the discipline of the schools, the arrangement of studies, the taking of degrees, or the choice and approval of teachers.”

48. “ This system of instructing youth, which consists in separating it from the Catholic faith and from the power of the Church, and in teaching exclusively, or at least primarily, the knowledge of natural things and the earthly ends of social life alone, may be approved by Catholics.”

The right of the State in any way to interfere in

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43i

the regulation of the monastic life is condemned in the statement of Errors 52 and 53.

52. “ The government has of itself the right to alter the age prescribed by the Church for the religious profession, both of men and women; and it may enjoin upon all religious establishments to admit no person to take solemn vows without its permission.”

53. “ The laws for the protection of religious establishments, and securing their rights and duties, ought to be abolished; nay, more, the civil government may lend its assistance to all who desire to quit the religious life they have undertaken and break their vows. The government may also suppress the religious orders, collegiate Churches, and simple benefices, even those belonging to private patronage, and submit their goods and revenues to the administration and the disposal of the civil power.” And yet there has not been a Roman Catholic State in Europe or America in that century but felt compelled to brave such a condemnation when facing problems such as are presented by the friars in the Philippines.

Concerning Christian marriage the following Errors are condemned:

65. “ It can not be by any means tolerated to maintain that Christ has raised marriage to the divinity of a sacrament.”

66. “ The sacrament of marriage is only an adjunct of the contract, and separable from it; the sacrament itself consists in the nuptial benediction alone.”

67. “ By the law of nature the marriage tie is not indissoluble, and in many cases divorce, properly so called, may be pronounced by the civil authorities.” Yet divorce has been legalized in France, and will be

432 History of the Christian Church.

in Italy as well as in Evangelical countries. Both countries have long tried the papal view; they do not believe it promotes morality.

68. “The Church has not the power of laying down what are direct impediments to marriage. The civil authority does possess such a power, and can do away with existing impediments to marriage.” Every modern vState has its civil law regulating these.

71. “Matrimonial causes and espousals belong by their very nature to civil jurisdiction.” The system of the Roman Catholic Church had an age-long trial. As tested by the facts it did not prove a success. Of course it has a perfect right to lay down the conditions of marriage for its own members, but that is altogether outside of the jurisdiction of the civil law and does not affect the validity of that law.

Two Errors are condemned in the chapter on the temporal power of the pope:

75. “The children of the Christian and Catholic Church are not agreed upon the compatibility of the temporal with the spiritual power.” Indeed, they were not then, nor have they ever been since.

76. “ The abolition of the temporal power, of which the Apostolic See is possessed, would contribute in the greatest degree to the liberty and prosperity of the Church.”

“ N. B.—Besides these Errors, explicitly noted, many others are impliedly rebuked by the proposed and asserted doctrine, which all Catholics are bound most firmly to hold, touching the temporal sovereignty of the Roman pontiff. These doctrines are

clearly stated in -”. There follows a list of

papal utterances from 1849 to 1862. This is the only

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433

doctrine affirmatively stated, though in an appended note. All else was designed as a bulwark of this.

The last chapter treats of modern Liberalism ; the essence of the policy of Reaction in Church and State is here. Notice the papal condemnation of the doctrine of religious toleration, which is the mark of a modern State, and without which the Roman Catholic Church never would have made its gains in Great Britain, her Colonies, and the United States.

Condemning Errors:

77. “ In the present day, it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion shall be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other modes of worship.”

78. “Whence it has been wisely provided by law, in some countries called Catholic, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own worship.”

79. “ Morever, it is false that the civil liberty of every mode of worship, and the full power given to all of overtly and publicly manifesting their opinions and their ideas, of all kinds whatsoever, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to the propagation of the pest of indifferentism.”

Here belongs 55, which makes the American rub his eyes. The papal condemnation falls upon the statement: 55. “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.”

Clear-thinking men of every creed, with Leo XIII at their head, join in the statement of what is designated as “Error 80,” rather than with the condemnation of Pius IX, which was to crown the whole. The Syllabus says, condemning Error 80: “The Roman

434 History of the Christian Church.

pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself to, and agree with, progress, liberalism, and civilization as lately introduced.”

Many of the Errors here condemned have been so accepted as to be beyond the reach of practicable debate, but the utterances against divorce and the common schools have present importance. The latter is potent in the United States. What effect it will have upon the Roman Catholic Church and upon the nation it will take more than one generation to disclose. That it was a part of the program of war against the modern State and society is clear. That the final issue may be for good is the prayer of all Christians.

The preparations now went on to reduce the condemnation of the Syllabus to articles of faith by the enactment of the dogma of papal infalli-^ThCounc!i.^an
bility ky an Ecumenical Council. There was no general demand for the assemblage of such a body or the definition of such a doctrine. The strongest intellectual forces, and the Roman Catholic governments, deprecated it. The German Episcopate declared against it. But the Jesuits were powerful and persistent. All plans were carefully laid. There was to be no chance of failure so far as the Council was concerned. It met for its first session, December 8, 1869. There were present at that session 719 members, and a week later 764. Of the whole Episcopate, nearly three-quarters were present. There were 13 present from Australia, 14 from Africa, 83 from Asia, 113 from America, aud 540 from Europe. Of these last, 276 were Italians, 84 French, 48 Aus-trians, 41 from Spain, 35 from Great Britain, and 19 from Germany. There were in the membership of

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435

the Council 50 cardinals, 10 patriarchs, 130 archbishops, 522 bishops, and 30 generals of orders.

On November 27th, the pope, in a Brief, promulgated the order of business. It so arranged the matter that if there had been a strong and effective opposition it would have been powerless. But the opposition was neither strong nor united. The only fear of the Curia was the interference of some of the Powers. Many of the members were missionary bishops or bishops without Sees. Most of them had been appointed during the pontificate of Pius IX. Three hundred of them were entertained by him at his expense at the Vatican, and 425 were dependent upon him. The fear of the Roman Catholic Powers was a very genuine one. Lord Odo Russell, a British ambassador to the pope, though an English Churchman, rendered great service to the majority by keeping them informed of the intentions of the Powers. All Christians ought to rejoice that there was no interference by the civil power.

April 24,1870, the first decrees were passed. They are in four chapters, and concerned “ God the Creator, Revelation, Faith, and Reason.” To these were appended eighteen canons. The most of these doctrinal definitions express the common belief of Christians, but the third canon of the fourth chapter asserts: “If any one shall assert it to be possible that sometimes, according to the progress of science, a sense is to be given to doctrines propounded by the Church different from that which the Church has understood and understands, let him be anathema.” In the light of this teaching Roman Catholic theology can scarcely be called a progressive science. But the

436 History of the Christian Church.

history of the decrees of the Council itself were to furnish the strangest comment on this statement.

July 13, 1870, the further dogmatic definitions of the infallibility of the pope were voted upon; of 671 present, 451 voted for the decree, 88 against it, 62 for it somewhat modified, and 70 refrained from voting. Before the public session of July 18, 1870, the minority, all but two, left Rome; then a bishop from Corsica and one from the United States voted against it.

We will now consider the contents and significance of the decrees then made obligatory upon the Roman Catholic world. It is entitled, Decree" “The First Dogmatic Constitution of the Church of Christ.” It consists of four chapters. Attention is usually concentrated upon the last chapter, but the practical importance in the government of the Roman Catholic Church of the first three chapters much exceeds the famous close of this Constitution.

The first chapter affirms that “ The primacy of jurisdiction over the universal Church of God was immediately and directly promised and given to blessed Peter the Apostle, by Christ the Lord.” “ If any one, therefore, shall say that blessed Peter the Apostle was not appointed the prince of all the apostles and visible head of the whole Church militant; or that the same directly and immediately received from our Lord Jesus Christ a primacy of honor only, and not of true and proper jurisdiction: let him be anathema.”

Chapter II treats of the perpetuity of this primacy of Peter. “ For none can doubt, and it is known to all ages, that the holy and blessed Peter, the prince

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and chief of the apostles, the pillar of the faith, and the foundation of the Catholic Church, received the keys of the kingdom from our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of mankind, and lives, presides, and judges, to this day and always, in his successors the bishops of the Holy See of Rome, which was founded by him, and consecrated by his blood. Whence, whosoever succeeds to Peter in this See does, by the institution of Christ himself, obtain the primacy of Peter over the whole Church.” “ If, then, any should deny that it is by the institution of Christ the Lord, or by divine right, that blessed Peter should have a perpetual line of successors in the primacy over the universal Church, or that the Roman pontiff is the successor of the blessed Peter in this primacy: let him be anathema.”

The third chapter develops the nature of this primacy. In Rome it was said that the bishops came to the Council shepherds, and departed from it unfleeced sheep. It is in the third chapter that the shearing process is evident. Thus we read: “ Hence we teach and declare that, by the appointment of our Lord, the Roman Church possesses a superiority of ordinary power over all other Churches, and that this power of jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff, which is truly episcopal, is immediate; to which all, of whatever rite and dignity, both pastors and faithful, both individually and collectively, are bound, by their duty and hierarchical subordination and true obedience, to submit, not only in matters which belong to faith and morals, but also in those which appertain to the discipline and government of the Church throughout the world, so that the Church of Christ may be one

438 History of the Christian Church.

flock under one supreme pastor through preservation of unity, both of communion and of profession of the same faith with the Roman pontiff.”

This is the teaching of Catholic truth, “ from which no one can deviate without loss of faith and of salvation.”

“ If, then, any shall say that the Roman pontiff has the office merely of inspection or direction, and not full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the universal Church spread throughout the world; or assert that he possesses merely the principal part, and not all the fullness of the supreme power; or that this power which he enjoys is not ordinary and immediate, both over each and all the Churches and over each and all the pastors and the faithful: let him be anathema.”

It is here, and not in the succeeding chapter, that the real grip of Roman discipline passed into papal hands and made a new Roman Catholic Church.

The fourth chapter speaks of the infallible teaching of the Roman pontiff. All that is important is in the last paragraph: “ Therefore, faithfully adhering to the traditions received from the beginning of the Christian faith, for the glory of God our Savior, the exaltation of the Catholic religion, and the salvation of Christian people, the sacred Council approving, we teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed: that the Roman pontiff, when he speaks ex-cathedra— that is, when in the discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all the Christians, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the divine assistance promised to him in

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blessed Peter—is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals; and that, therefore, such definitions of the Roman pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from consent of the Church.”

“ But if any one, which may God avert, . . . presume to contradict this, our definition: let him be anathema.”

Before the reading in the public session ended, a terrible thunderstorm broke over Rome, and the cupola of St. Peter’s was struck by lightning. A storm more terrible broke over Europe, and the armies of France and Prussia were hurled against each other. The French Empire went down in blood, and the new German Empire came to dominate Continental Europe. The fathers of the Council never again assembled after the adjourning of the day. October 20, 1870, it was indefinitely postponed.

The Jesuits saw the consummation of their policy for fifty years; but the object of so much solicitude, the dear possession which, when all other means failed, the Council was to preserve, the temporal power of the pope, was gone forever. September 20, 1870, the Italian troops entered Rome, and Victor Emmanuel took possession of the Quirinal palace. There was a new Rome as well as a new Roman Catholic Church. The finest street in the new capital bears the name of Via Nazionale, the Street of the Nation; while that before the Quirinal palace is called Via Venti Settem-bre, the Street of the Twentieth of September.

Such were the immediate events, if not results, succeeding the Vatican Council. Those closely fol

440 History of the Christian Church.

lowing were the rejection of the Vatican decrees by the most learned Church historian in Europe, Professor Ignaz Dollinger, of Munich, the formation of the Old Catholic Church, and the Kulturkampf in Germany.

John Joseph Ignaz Dollinger (1799-1890) was born at Bamberg, February 28, 1799. His father and

.. his grandfather were professors in the Med-

Dollinger. . ° ^r .

ical Faculty. When quite young, his father removed from Bamberg to Wurzburg, where he was Professor of Anatomy. Before Ignaz was ten years old he had read, in French, Racine, and Moliere, and at sixteen he had read more French than German books. Before entering the university at seventeen, he had an easy mastery of French, Italian, and Eng-glish, and during his university course he acquired Spanish. He studied at the Wurzburg University, 1816-1820, giving especial attention to botany, mineralogy, and entomology, as well as to the classics and philosophy. While there he read Baronius, Petavius, and Paolo Sarpi. He chose the priesthood, his father yielding his consent upon physiological grounds. Dollinger himself chose this calling as a means to his great end, which was the study and mastery of theology, or of science grounded on theology.

He spent three years, 1820-1822, at the episcopal seminary at Bamberg, and was ordained priest in March, 1822. He began his work as a teacher as Professor of Church History and Law at Aschaffen-burg, 1823-1826. In the latter year he published “ The Eucharist in the First Three Centuries,” which gained him a name as well as a Doctor’s degree, from the qualities which marked all his works, learning, and judgment. In the same year he was called to

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Munich as Professor of Church History and Church Law, 1826-1890. Between 1830 and 1840 he published a “Handbook,” and also a “Textbook,” of Church History. In 1836 he traveled in England, and three years later in Holland, Belgium, and France. In 1845 he was chosen to represent the University of Munich in the Bavarian Landtag. He sat in the Frankfort Parliament, May, 1848, to May, 1849. There he agreed with General Radowitz that there was no use for the Jesuits in Germany. In 1846-1848 appeared, in three volumes, his “Die Reformation,” and in 1851 his article on “ Luther.” At this time he had read only some single works of Luther. His “Reformation” is learned and able, and demands the attention of any student of the subject; but it is a series of sketches instead of a history, and leaves out of the account some of the weightiest factors.

Up to this time he had the reputation of a most learned, able, and devout Roman Catholic historian. He was considered devoted to the Roman See, and defended the order requiring Evangelical Christians in military service to kneel at the elevation of the host,— an order which the government had to withdraw. Late in the forties, as a result of his studies, he took his position as opposing the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, and of Papal Infallibility, and in favor of a German National Roman Catholic Church. In 1853 appeared his learned work “ Hippolytus and Callistus,” and, in 1857, “Heathenism and Judaism,” or, as translated, “ The Jew and Gentile in the Court of the Temple of Christ,” a work without equal as giving a collective view of the religious life and teachings with which Christianity came

442 History of the Christian Church.

in contact. In some points further research has brought new facts to light; but this is a work which, in many respects, will never be out of date.

In 1857, Dollinger took a journey through Northern and Central Italy, and lived some time in Rome. He used his eyes and ears, and returned “ extraordinarily sobered.” He had not been in accord with the policy of Pius IX since his return from Gaeta in 1850, but Dollinger’s reputation as the most learned and the ablest of Roman Catholic Church historians gave him at Rome a most honorable reception.

In i860 he published “ Christianity and the Church in the Time of its Founding,” and the next year, “ Churches and the Church: The Papacy and States of the Church.” In 1863 he gave his famous address at a Roman Catholic assembly of leading theologians and representative men on “ The Past and Present of Catholic Theology,” in which he showed the lack of foundation of much of the Jesuit teaching. In the same year appeared his “ Pope-fables of the Middle Ages.” From 1866 on, he opposed unceasingly the dogma of Papal Infallibility. In this he had the German Episcopate with him, as was proved by the Declaration of Fulda in 1869.

Correspondence published in the Civita Catholica in February, 1869, showed that the Jesuit program for the Vatican Council was the definition of the dogma of Papal Infallibility, and of the bodily ascent of the Virgin Mary into heaven ; also the change of the negative statements of the Syllabus into positive affirmation as articles of belief. All this Dollinger opposed in his “Janus, or Pope and Council,” 1869. It appeared without his name, and made an immense im

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pression. During the progress of its session, his “ Letters from the Council ” were almost the only arguments that affected public opinion. They had also great*effect in the Council itself. When the vote was taken, eleven out of fifteen German bishops and twenty-six out of thirty-five Austrian prelates went with the minority against the dogmatic constitution of the Council defining Papal Infallibility.

Then came the stress of what was to Dollinger a question of conscience. The Franco-German war rendered impossible a coalition of the Roman Catholic Powers against the Vatican Decrees. Every sort of pressure was brought to bear upon the German Episcopate to cause submission to the new dogma. The ablest of them, Hefele, submitted at last, in April, 1871. On the 18th of that month the Archbishop of Munich from the pulpit declared Dollinger to be excommunicated.

On Whitsunday, 1871, a great assembly of German Roman Catholics published a declaration against the Decrees. Dollinger and his friends held that an unjust excommunication was invalid. Dollinger wished those who did not accept the new teaching to remain a part of the Roman Catholic Church, and in all their old relations to it; he did not wish a new organization, nor did he ever join the Old Catholics, however much he sympathized with them. In 1872 he put forth his “Union of the Churches;” in the same year, as the head of the University of Munich, he presided at the four hundredth jubilee celebration.

Dollinger’s position was not at all comparable with Cardinal Newman’s. Newman opposed the definition of the dogma as inopportune, but did not deny that it

444 History of the Christian Church.

might be true; if so declared, he was ready to submit to it, and did. This was the attitude taken by many of the former opponents of the new teaching, especially those occupjnng Episcopal Sees. With Dollin-ger, it was different. This dogma included in its infallibility all the popes who had ever taught or reigned. For Dollinger it was a question of fact, of historic truth. When a lady wrote to him and requested him, in the Jesuit phrase, to “immolate his intellect,” and accept the decree, he replied that he could just as easily deny the existence of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Dollinger’s great reputation and influence at Munich was second to that of no man of learning in the century. His work also went on; with his co-operation, in 1887, appeared “The Autobiography of Bel-larmine.” In 1889 he published, in two volumes, his “ History of Moral Controversies in the Roman Catholic Church since the Sixteenth Century with Respect to the History and Characteristics of the Jesuit Order.” In 1890 came his last great work, one of long-continued and fundamental research, on the “ History of the Sects of the Middle Ages.” Three volumes of his academic lectures of great value were published, the last after his death.

Ranke, Dollinger, and George Bancroft lived to be over ninety years of age, and the two former did most excellent work until the last. As an historian Dollinger occupied a unique position; his profound erudition, his breadth of view, his solidity of judgment and grasp of the historical situation, tendencies, and results,- make his work valuable for all time. After 1870 he read carefully Luther’s works, and came to a

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different estimate of him. He came to see how Luther and his work wrought out God’s providential ends.

Nippold says that “The history of the nineteenth century knows the name of no other theologian whose world historical position can compare with Dollinger’s. He was no party leader, but, in character and influence, no German theologian since Luther has equal enduring fame. No one who has studied at the University of Munich, where Dollinger’s remarkable library is a part of that of the university, and where his name is always mentioned with the greatest respect, or who has seen the students of the Collegium Germanicum at Rome eagerly bidding at the sale of his works, but realizes that he is, like Luther, a real and potent force in the life of the religious world, and not least in that of the Roman Catholic Church. This came from his adherence to his convictions of intellect and conscience at all costs. He acknowledged his change of view; in his last year he wrote: “The compulsory unity of the Papal Church assures many advantages, but these are far outweighed by the many evil consequences. The advancing formation of .new Church organizations in the Protestant world is no sign of weakness, but of living motive force.”

Of course, many efforts were made to have him become reconciled to the Papal Church. To such an effort he replied in 1886 to the Archbishop of Munich, “ Shall I, with the burden of a double perjury upon my conscience, appear before the Eternal Judge?” To the papal nuncio the last year of his life he wrote, “What I have written will sufficiently express my opinions in order to make plain to you

446 History of the Christian Church.

that one with such convictions can be in a condition of inner peace and spiritual rest on the threshold of eternity.”

January 10, 1890, a great scholar, a humble Christian, a man whose character and love of truth outweighs all his works, great as their influence will ever be, went from the strife of tongues and warring party cries to God’s eternal peace.

The Whitsunday Declaration was followed by the assembling of the first Old Catholic Congress at Hei-

_The delberg, August 5, 1871; a second suc-oid Catholic ceeded at Munich in September; the third Movement. _{wag at} Cologne in September, 1872;

at the same place in June, 1873, fourth gathered. On June 4th, Joseph Hubert Reinkens was chosen bishop by twenty-two clergy and fifty-five lay delegates. Bishop Reinkens was consecrated, August 11, ^I^73, by the Jansenist bishop of Deventer, in Holland. Bishop Reinkens was acknowledged by the King of Prussia, the Grand Duke of Baden, and the Grand Duke of Hesse. He was the first Roman Catholic bishop without papal confirmation, to be so acknowledged, on German soil for six hundred years.

In May, 1874, a regular Synodical Constitution for the new Church was adopted. The Synods met annually at Bonn, the seat of the bishops, until 1879; since then, biennially. Since 1878 the proceedings are taken down by stenographers, and then printed. In 1878 compulsory celibacy was abolished, and though many were at first offended, after twenty years trial the results are said to justify the change. The mass in German was allowed in 1879, and is now in use in most places. An Episcopal seminary was founded at Bonn

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in 1894. Union Church Congresses were held at Bonn in 1874 ^and ⁱ⁸75, attended by Greek, English, and American prelates. Also at Cologne in 1890; Luzerne, 1892; and Rotterdam in 1894. Bishop Rein-kens died in January of the latter year.

In March, 1896, Professor Theodore Webber was chosen bishop in his place. In 1895 there were reported 120 congregations, with 49 clergy. The work has been carried on amid the greatest difficulties. The chief of these has been to raise up a clergy, learned and devout and influential. This has been in a degree overcome. The movement in Austria of cutting loose from Rome has recently helped the Old Catholic movement. This Church has thrown off compulsory auricular confession, invocation of saints, adoration of relics, and pilgrimages. The movement has not taken on large proportions, but it is neither dead nor dying. The worship at Munich had scarcely anything offensive to an Evangelical believer. The congregation was evidently well-to-do, and it was a family Church. These people knew why they were there, and they were there to stay. Probably there is a much larger future before the Old Catholic Church than before the Jansenist Church in Holland. Doubtless, with wider influence, it has equal endurance, and upon any critical occasion may become an important factor in the religious world, especially if a pope should reign who should revert to anything like the policy of Pius IX.

The attitude of Pius IX toward the modern society, as shown in the Syllabus and the dogma of Papal Infallibility, which was expected to KujtuJScampf. make the opposition of the Syllabus effective against them, caused excitement at the Roman

448 History of the Christian Church.

Catholic courts. Austria rejected her Concordat with the pope; the policy of Bavaria and Baden was decidedly hostile; it increased the rancor of the French Republicans, who, against all probabilities, were soon to control the destinies of France. Above all, Bismarck as Chancellor of the new German Empire, the object of the undisguised hatred of the Curialists, felt the time had come to strike a heavy counter-blow to the Jesuit policy which triumphed at the Vatican Council. That Bismarck struck a blow destructive of the independence of the Church, and which would make her an organ only of the State and of its policy, can not be denied. That, in doing this, he coerced the conscience is true, and that the passive resistance of the Roman Catholics of Prussia was successful, must be counted a gain. The series of measures by which this was sought to be accomplished, and to raise up a Roman Cathelic clergy as dependent upon the State as formerly upon the pope, was known as the Falk laws, from the Minister of Worship who introduced them. Decisive measures were taken before their introduction to limit the power of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and banish from German soil those who were supposed to be working for the destruction of the new nation.

July 8, 1871, the Roman Catholic division of the Ministry of Worship was abolished. In December of the same year clergymen were held responsible for their pulpit utterances if they tended to disturb the peace, and might be imprisoned for two years for a breach of this law, which left a wide latitude to interpretation. Soon after, a law passed which placed all parish schools under State inspection. July 4, 1872,

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all Jesuits were expelled from Germany; the year following their affiliated orders, the Redemptorists, Lazarists, Priests of the Holy Ghost, and Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, met the same fate. May 31, 1875, all religious orders in the empire, except those devoted to the care of sick, etc., were dissolved.

In May, 1873, these laws were proposed and passed. That of May 1 ith, provided that only a German could exercise a spiritual or clerical office, and one who had taken his course of study in a ^TJ^*^lk State university and then passed a State examination. It was allowed, in the place of the university course, to take a course in a theological seminary, provided such institution was recognized by the State.

The law of May 12th provided that cases of Church discipline should be decided in a State Court by State officials. That of May 13th defined the use and limits of ecclesiastical punishment and sought to prevent the ecclesiastical punishment, from inflicting any civil or social penalty. The law of May 14th provided, that by making a declaration of his purpose before any local judge, a person may sever his relations with any Church. The law of May 4, 1874, decreed banishment to the refractory clergy after a fixed limit of time. That of July 6, 1875, called the Law of Civil Relations, affected unfavorably, not only the Roman Catholics, but the Evangelical Church. The law of May 20, 1874, declared the property of a vacant bishopric should be taken in charge by a State administrator. The year following, the laws were increased in severity by that of April 22, 1875; institution, exercises of office, and salary were allowed to the clergy, only

450 History of the Christian Church.

where the bishop or the Episcopal administrator pledged unconditional obedience to the law.

The law of May, 1875, by which the religious orders, except those given to charity, were dissolved, was a violation of the Prussian Constitution of 1850; therefore, by the law of May 18, 1875, Articles 15, 16, and 17 of that Constitution were declared void. This made the Church wholly subject to the State. June 20, 1875, a law was passed for the State administration of the property of vacant Roman Catholic Churches. July 4, 1875, a law was passed designed to aid the Old Catholics, but which only brought them into odium as expecting profit from the persecuting policy of the State. Of course, these measures awakened the greatest hostility at Rome; but Bismarck reasoned that this could hardly be increased.

Pius IX in a letter to the Emperor William I, August 7, 1873, claimed authority over the German Emperor because he had received Christian baptism. This claim the emperor at once and decisively rejected. He said: “The Evangelical faith to which I, as my ancestors and the majority of my subjects, belong, does not allow us to accept in relation to God any other mediator than the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The Papal Encyclical of February 5, 1875, declared the Falk laws invalid; and Pius IX later styled Bismarck a new Attila. No resistance from Rome, but the passive resistance of the Roman Catholic population and clergy led to the failure of the Falk laws.

Ledochowski, Archbishop of Posen, one of the four German bishops who favored the new dogma, was banished for resistance to the law in 1874, ^an(i his fellow archbishop, Melchers, of Cologne, in 1876;

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while Martin, bishop of Paderborn, Brinkman of Munster, and Blum of Limburg, experienced the same fate in 1875, 1876, and 1877. In 1880, of twelve Prussian bishoprics, but three, Ermeland, Kulm, and Hildes-heim, were occupied. There were fourteen hundred parishes without pastors. This was the state of things at the death of Pius IX. If he had lived ten years longer, there is no reason to think there would have been any change, though the difficulties of the situation increased each year.

On assuming his pontificate, Leo XIII wrote to the German Emperor announcing his accession, and expressed a hope for better relations between _{Leo X1}„ them. In the same year Bismarck met and the the papal nuncio at Munich, and began ^KuIturkan,P^f* negotiations for the realization of this wish.

After a seven years’ rule, Dr. Falk resigned his place as Minister of Worship in 1879. In 1880, Roman Catholic pastors were allowed to return from banishment. The law banishing them was repealed in 1890. Then the vacant bishoprics were gradually filled: Treves and Fulda in 1880, Paderborn and Osnabruck in 1881, Breslau in 1^82, Munster and Limburg in 1883. In 1882, the Prussian embassy to the Vatican was restored; in May of the same year the State examination of the Roman Catholic clergy was abolished. Four years later the Roman Catholic Episcopal seminaries were allowed to open. Eighteen millions of marks, or $4,500,000 of Roman Catholic money, was paid back, and Roman Catholic theological students were released from military duty. But the Jesuits were most effectively banished for the thirty years succeeding 1872.

452 History of the Christian Church.

The Falk laws failed; and, let us say it, they deserved to fail. One cause of the failure, doubtless, was the feeling that the party chiefly gratified K^ituVkamplf them was the Anti-religionists and the Jews. This evident result has been heralded as an immense gain to the papacy and a sure proof that Bismarck, after all, went to Canossa. There are some deductions to be made from this view. The one object of Bismarck was to preserve the new German Empire from the fate of having its Roman Catholic subjects, one-third of the population, made permanently disaffected and a menace to German unity by the hostility of the pope and the machinations of the Jesuits. Bismarck was not alone in dreading this result. Perhaps he was mistaken. Be that as it may, the process by which these laws were repealed and the Kulturkampf ended—that of compromise with the Center, or Roman Catholic party, in the Reichstag— has made them the most pronounced of all parties in the support of German unity, of the house of Hohen-zollern, and of loyalty to the new and larger Fatherland. Such a result, from a statesman’s point of view, is worth many risks and large costs. Few observers of political events at the time would have predicted that one result of the Kulturkampf would be the general acknowledgment throughout Europe that there is no more loyal section of the population of the new German Empire than Roman Catholics. No Italian cardinal is sanguine enough to reckon on a severance of these relations.

Again, the heads of the Roman Catholic Church’ in Germany, Archbishops Melchers and Ledochowski, died in banishment, the one after an exile of twenty,

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and the other of twenty-five years. No German prelates are anxious for a renewal of the Kulturkampf. Its effects upon religious life at the time were unquestionably bad; but its issue in the acknowledgment of the right of the Church to its independent existence and the exercise of its functions, has had a healthful effect upon the Evangelical Churches. Some evil effects remain ; but we must admit that the new German Empire, recognizing its legitimate limitations, as well as the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, is immensely stronger than at the beginning of the famous strife. Its issue was the right one for all Churches. Its lessons are obvious and none clearer than that the observance of just limitations is the strength both of the Church and the State, and that there is no power stronger than passive resistance for conscience’ sake.

In the midst of this turmoil, after the longest pontificate in history, Pius IX died, February, 1878. One who marks the long line of costly andosten-

, . - j Death of

tatious monuments to his papal predecessors, _{piU8 IX} and then goes to his tomb at San Lorenzo, outside the walls of Rome, and reads that he directed that it should cost but $200, will have a respect for his modesty and piety, however ill he may think ot his policy as directed by the Jesuits and Cardinal Antonelli. He had little estimate of any Christianity besides that found in the Roman Catholic Church. In December, 1847, he declared it false that “he believed that one could be saved outside of the Roman Catholic Church.” “This [statement] is such a serious injury to him, that he can not find words in which to express his abhorrence of it.”

454 History of the Christian Church.

Pius was ignorant and superstitious, weak and obstinate in administration, and without consistent policy except in the realization of Jesuit aims. Yet he was so sincerely devout, and was so frank in his speech, and so grave and gentle in his manner, that this man who left the Church of Rome at swords’ points with almost all the world, and had caused her greater loss than any pope since Clement VII, has passed into tradition as a saint.

Vincenzo Gioachino Pecci, son of Count Ludovico and Anna Pecci, was born at Carpineto, in the Papal States, March 2, 1810. Early developing a 1810-1903. ^taste f°^r study, he was first sent to the Jesuit college at Viterbo. Leaving there at the age of fourteen, he spent the next seven years under Jesuit teachers in the Collegium Romanum, the great school of the order, graduating from thence in 1831. After having exercised legatine functions in some of the smaller sections of the Papal States, he became Domestic Prelate, and in 1837, Referendary to the Signatura. On December 23, 1837, he was ordained priest. In 1843 he was sent as nuncio to Belgium, where he remained three years, and visited Paris and London. He came to the Episcopate as Bishop of Perugia, January 19, 1846, and was created cardinal December 9, 1853. As cardinal, he did not favor the belligerent course pursued by Pius IX. On Pius’s death he was chosen pope, February 18, 1878, and took the title of Leo XIII.

In spite of the exaggerations of his admirers, Leo XIII is neither in appearance nor disposition a saint. He is a good man; but in his rule of the Church he is a thorough prince of the world. This very fact,

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his knowledge of the world and desire to live in peace with Christian nations and governments, has made his pontificate successful and his rule of great value to the Christian world. No Leo^xin! pope in two hundred years, except Pius VII, at his election faced graver problems than Leo XIII. His first care was to end the Kulturkampf in Germany. Instead of regarding Bismarck as a second Attila, he came to have for him a sincere respect, especially after he had referred to Leo the dispute between Germany and Spain in regard to the Caroline Islands in 1886. His great disillusion came with the dismissal of Bismarck, and the realization that William II was as unbending in his religious convictions, as firm in will, as himself, and not his inferior in diplomacy.

At this time Cardinal Lavigiere (1825-1892), who had been a strong monarchist, became convinced that the divisions of the monarchical parties in France were incurable, and that the Republic must be the permanent government of that ancient ally and support of the papacy. The cardinal, who had made a great name by his efforts to end the slave-trade in Mohammedan Africa,' and by his administration of Church affairs in Algiers, persuaded Leo XIII that the true interest of the papacy lay in the support of France and the Republic. From this time there was a turn in the policy of Leo XIII. For twelve years he had been a steadfast friend of Germany, and had used his influence to build up the Center party. He had been in cordial relations with Austria and Russia, the other parties to the Dreibund; his best endeavors had been put forth, in vain, to enter into some ecclesi

456 History of the Christian Church.

astical relations with the Russian and Greek Churches. The Papal Sovereignty and Infallibility were insurmountable obstacles. Now Leo became a friend of the French Republic, and no hostile legislation or executive action has been able to cause him to swerve from this friendship.

Having ended the Kulturkampf in Germany, Leo XIII set himself to reconcile the papacy and the Roman The Catholic Church with modern society and Encyclical, the modern State. With this end in view, ^l88s* he published his Encyclical, “ Immortali Deo,” November i, 1885. In this he endeavors, with true diplomatic astuteness, so to interpret the Syllabus of 1864, that the papacy can have a modus vivendi, a way of living, in the modern world. A few extracts will show better than many words how this is sought to be accomplished.

One concession, when we remember the relation of the papacy to European politics and to the political reaction for the first seventy-five years of Government. ^e century, and the persistent cry of the alliance between the throne and the altar, is most significant and illuminating as the recognition of accomplished facts. That Leo XIII has known how to do this has been the strong feature of his policy. Henceforth neither the papacy nor the Church can be quoted against republics or democracies. Leo says, “ But the right of ruling is not conjoined with any special form of commonwealth, but may rightly assume this or that form, provided that it really promotes utility and the common good.” Such words from this source had not been heard before since the days of Louis XIV. It is difficult to conceive a more com

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plete political change than between this and the papal policy from 1825 to 1875. But for Gettysburg and Appomattox these words might not have been written.

Concerning religious toleration, the pope gives the rule, and then the interpretation. A comparison of these will show the key to the policy of Leo as a ruler of the Church. ration.

As to the rule he says: “It is a crime for private individuals, and a crime for the State, to make no account of the duties of religion, or to treat different kinds of religion in the same way; that the uncontrolled power of thinking and proclaiming one’s thoughts has no place among the rights of citizens, and can not in any way be reckoned among those things which are worthy of favor and defense.”

Now as to the interpretation: “ In truth, though the Church judges that it is not lawful that the various kinds of divine worship should have the same right as the true religion, still it does not, therefore, condemn those governors of States who, for the sake of acquiring some great good, or preventing some great ill, patiently bear with the manners and customs, so that each kind of religion has its place in the State.”

This is a toleration of toleration for the time being, through necessity, but, like the attitude toward republics, is a recognition of accomplished facts.

The pope then endeavors to adjust the teachings of the Syllabus to the advance of science. The concession is small, but significant. He says: “Whatever may happen to extend the ^search, range of knowledge the Church will always willingly and gladly accept; and she will, as is her

458 History of the Christian Church.

wont in the case of other studies, steadily encourage and promote these also which are concerned with the investigation of nature. If the mind finds anything new in them, the Church offers no opposition; she fights not against the search after more things for the grace and convenience of life.” Compare this with Syllabus, pages 428, 429, Errors 22, 12, 13.

In touching upon the political action of Roman Catholics, the pope gives the rule and the exception.

He says: “And further, to speak generally,

Politics¹ • needful and honorable for the atten-

Action.

tion of Catholic men to pass beyond this narrower field, and to embrace every branch of public administration. Generally, we say, because thus our precepts reach unto all nations. But it may happen in some particular place, for the most urgent and just reasons, that it is by no means expedient to engage in public affairs, or to take an active part in political functions.”

The exception is to justify the papal policy toward the Kingdom of Italy, where the command is that good Roman Catholics are neither to vote nor to be voted for at the elections. This is sometimes violated when it is thought it will bring the Italian government into contempt, as once in the election of a groom to be a deputy in the Italian Parliament from the city of Rome.

In a succeeding Encyclical entitled “Libertas,” in 1886, Leo XIII returns to the same subject. He misstates the position of modern Liberalism, and then proceeds to denounce it. Thus he condemns liberty of worship, of speech, and of the press, of teaching, and of the conscience, “because they tacitly assume

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the absence of truth as the law of our reason, and of authority as the law of our will.”

In this Encyclical he incidentally calls the separation of Church and State “a pernicious maxim.”

Let us all be thankful that the practice of Leo XIII has been better than his preaching. So far his reign has been stained by no act of religious intolerance. It may be that the loss of temporal power has something to do with this fact, but a careful study of Leo’s pontificate will convince us that it is in accord with his wish and desire. He acceeded to the wish of Mr. Terence V. Powderly, and did not condemn the action of Roman Catholics who joined the Knights of Labor. This, of course, applies to other labor organizations.

Leo gave a good deal of study to questions of labor and social conditions, and issued encyclicals concerning them. If he did not throw new light upon the subject, he showed that, like any true pastor, it lay near his heart and was worthy of the best thought of his brain.

In 1879, Leo XIII made John H. Newman a cardinal. He has been said to be the greatest convert the Church of Rome has ever had. This distinction was favorably received by men of all parties in England, except by Cardinal Manning and his following, who had been violent partisans of the policy of Pius IX. The same can hardly be said of the papal commission under Monsignor Persico, sent to Ireland to investigate the operations of the Land League. The papal condemnation in 1887 is not claimed by any to have been an act of wisdom.

The turn of the papal policy was taken advantage

460 History of the Christian Church.

of by the Ultramontane party. The alliance of France and Russia was thought to weaken Italy. The agents of this party sought to enlist the higher classes in France, especially the officers of the army, in an attempt to overthrow the Italian government and to restore the temporal power of the pope. To this end were used the institutions for training the youth of the families of rank and wealth; the multitude through the Assumptionist Fathers and their organ La Croix; the military party, and the fiscal regulations which seriously affected the trade and credit of Italy. The pope invested his treasure in Spanish bonds, and all the combined clerical interests in France, Spain, and Italy were to take advantage of Italy’s weakness to restore the pope. When the fatal reverse of Adowah came, they thought their time was at hand; the Dreyfus agitation in France was made to serve the same end. But affairs took a different turn. The heir to the throne of Italy found a bride in spite of the prohibition placed by the pope upon any Roman Catholic princess contracting a marriage with him. Luz-zato came into the ministry of finance, an able and an honest man. Favorable commercial treaties w^ere negotiated with France. The Republic took a turn decidedly hostile to the Clerical party; the Assumptionist order was dissolved. The Dreyfus persecution proved the hugest of mistakes; and, worst of all, the Spanish-American war left the most devoted Roman Catholic power impotent for good or ill. In the effort to overthrow Italian unity, no scruples prevented the Clerical enemies of the State from joining with Anarchists and Socialists in riot against it, as was proved in Florence and Milan just before the end of the

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century. No policy could be more foolish; for if the Italian government were overthrown, the Vatican would not be safe from Anarchist bombs for a fortnight. There could be no second French occupation.

Nevertheless, the restoration of the temporal power of the pope has been exalted almost to the obligation of an article of faith, not only with the prelates of the papal household and of Italy, but with the whole hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, as foreign chiefs of the Church find as they make their obligatory visits to the threshold of St. Peter.

Two curious instances of this are illustrative. In 1886, Cardinal Manning, who opposed the restoration of the temporal power of the pope, told Dr. Purcell that the editor of an influential organ of the Jesuits wrote him, “ I am directed henceforth not to mention the name of Cardinal Manning with praise.” In December, 1900, the Duke of Norfolk, the premier duke of the English nobility, presented an address to the pope. In it was a passage in reference to the temporal power grossly offensive to the Italian government, which caused it to make representations at London. It now appears, on unquestioned Roman Catholic authority, that the offensive passage was not in the original address, but that the duke was told by prelates of the papal household that the address would not be received by the pope unless this passage, which they had drawn up, was inserted.

In America the conflict between the parties led by Archbishop Ireland and Archbishop Corrigan, and the course of Dr. McGlynn, led to the sending of Monsig-nor Satolli as Ablegate from the Papal See. He composed the strife, and ever since there has been

462 History of the Christian Church.

kept in residence a papal representative at Washington. No effort has been spared to enter into political relations with the United States. It is doubtful whether the American Episcopate would favor such action; but Italian prelates, trained in the policy of the Concordats, can think of no other way to manage the affairs of their Church, or to bring effective pressure upon the American prelates.

In 1898 the pope issued an Encyclical on Americanism. The use of the term was most offensive, and the whole letter was even more inopportune than the manifesto against the Irish Land League.

In 1896 the pope decided against the validity of the ordinations of the clergy of the Church of England.

As a whole, Leo, without changing an iota the most repellent claims or practices of the Church of Rome, has known how, in manner and spirit, to accommodate his rule to the demands of the age, to avoid friction and gain sympathy, beyond any predecessor in the papal succession in modern times.

There is, therefore, every desire to give to Leo XIII all praise for a policy which was his own, and Failures of which, on the whole, has greatly benefited

Papal the Roman Catholic Church and Christen-Dipiomacy. ^_onL Q_n tfie other hand, such extravagant claims are made for the skill and success of Vatican diplomacy that there is a demand for the other side. Let it be sufficient to say that if any secular State had made the capital blunders which have been made by the popes of Rome since 1815, its political rule would have been as dead as that of the House of Hanover in Germany. Calling attention only to the failures of the last half of the century, we find the papal policy

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favored Austria against France in 1859, and against Prussia in 1866, and France against Germany in 1870. In 1877 it was on the side of Turkey against Russia. In no great European conflict did it side with the victors except in the futile Crimean war, which, by bringing forward Sardinia and Cavour, led to the downfall of the temporal power. In America, Pius IX sympathized with the Confederate States, and gave his blessing to Maximilian and Carlotta in their endeavor to set up a Latin Empire in Mexico. When the Spanish war broke out, it was no secret in Rome on which side were the sympathies of Leo XIII.

The temporal rule of the Papal States was bad enough; little better was that of the Church. The biographer of Cardinal Manning tells us that Pope Pius IX made many attempts to reform the monastic orders in Italy, but they were always frustrated by the obstinate resistance of the great religious houses, especially the Dominicans. At the time of the suppression of the religious orders by the revolutionary government of Italy, Pius IX is said to have declared that, though he was bound publicly to condemn the suppression of the monasteries, in his heart he could not but rejoice, as it was a blessing in disguise. On inquiring, in 1887, of Cardinal Manning whether this reported declaration of Pius IX was true, His Eminence replied that, “ whether such an expression of opinion had been delivered or not, it truly represented the views of the pope.” The cardinal added that “ the success of the revolution in Italy was in no small degree due to laxity of morals in the clergy, seculars and regulars, and to defective education and religious

464 History of the Christian Church.

training in the schools.” What a rule for a “ lord and teacher of nations!”

The two powers most feared and dreaded by the papacy are the enduring creations of the nineteenth century,—the United Italy and Germany. For years the papal policy was hostile to the French Republic, while clerical hostility has brought upon the Roman Catholic Church of France the most drastic educational legislation the last fifty years has known. No greater blunder was ever made, with eyes wide open, than for the Church of Rome to side with the persecution of Dreyfus. The coronation of Edward VII was that of the first English monarch since the days of William the Conqueror who did not think it necessary to notify the Pope of Rome of his accession. No jubilee year since the Reformation has brought so little influence or cash to the Vatican as that of 1900.

These failures ar£ not enumerated to reproach any Church or party, but simply to point out that the superior political wisdom of the Vatican is a journalistic myth.

From the definition of the dogma of Papal Infallibility there has been one good result to the Evangelical faith; when seeking to make converts

The Results . ,

of the from that faith Roman Catholic teachers

Vatican _WOuld declare that the infallibility of the

Council. 111, .

pope was not, and would not be, an article of faith, but was a mere opinion. This wrought very effectively with many. The bishops of the Irish Church made the same declaration in 1829, and those of Germany repeated it in 1869. This net for unwary Evangelical statesmen and believers has been destroyed. But the effect upon the Roman Catholic

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Church has been profound and far-reaching. It has, in a word, made it more sectarian and less Catholic.

At the Council of Trent the Roman Catholic Church ceased to be the Catholic Church of Western Christendom, and became the Church of the Latin lands and race. It cut off forever the hope of its being the Church of the Teutonic peoples. It is true that the Roman Catholic Church has made large gains in Germany, England, and the United States in the last century; but these gains have been from immigration and the increase of foreign populations. The gain of the Roman Catholic Church by conversion in these countries has not been as great as the loss to the Evangelical Churches. The prospect of a Roman Catholic Germany, Scandinavia, Holland, Switzerland, England, Scotland, or the United States was never more remote than to-day. The Council of the Vatican made the Roman Catholic Church of the Latin lands the Papal Church. In it there is now no place for those who do not believe in the infallibility of the man chosen by the College of Cardinals at Rome. Those born and trained in the Roman Catholic Church may be able to do this. Those who are not, will be won with increasing difficulty. How great the difficulty can only be realized by those who have lived at the seat of papal power in Rome.

The Vatican Council has limited the Roman Catholic propaganda in Evangelical lands more than any efforts of the Evangelical Churches could do. Intelligent men, who respect their convictions, their knowledge, and their faith, can not bow to the Vatican Decrees. The stream of conversions in England, even, has dried. The Decree has strengthened the

466 History of the Christian Church.

Roman Catholic Church by making it more sectarian. It has closed its ranks, stifled dissent, and, with less intellectual life, it presents an external union and an unbroken front. It is less Catholic in that it is less inclusive of Christian elements and populations, and that it has less sympathy with what is Christian and Christlike in other Christian communions. It is more rigorous in its demands and is farther from any approximation to the Greek and English Churches than before in a century. The liberal element is silent, the Jesuits are supreme, and Christians who are not Roman Catholics do not care to be ruled by the Society of Jesus.

The policy of centralized administration and absolute authority at Rome accomplished through the Concordats and the Vatican Council has effects which call for our notice. First, it has immensely increased the moral responsibility and accountability of the Roman Catholic Church. If there is a scandal in South America or China, in Mexico or France, the press and public opinion at once place the responsibility for dealing with it upon the pope and the whole Roman Catholic Church. It is to his credit that Leo XIII has recognized this fact. But in this situation there are great perils. Suppose the Mortara case repeated,—a Jewish boy secretly baptized, kidnaped, held, and trained in the Roman Catholic Church. The shame of it would be felt to the ends of the earth, and affect every Roman Catholic community. Whatever may be the theory of the powers of the pope and the cardinals, the success of the Roman Catholic Church depends, more than all else, upon the character and ability, the learning, piety, and efficiency

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of her Episcopate; it molds and governs the clergy. If they lack, we see the results, as in the West Indies, the Philippines, and Mexico. Whether the centralized authority at Rome can most promote or hinder the high character of the Episcopate, time has yet to show.

There has, however, been a curious psychological effect of the Vatican Decrees. It was supposed to have great practical consequence as a weapon in the hands of the papacy. The Decree declared that the pope was infallible in his declarations upon all questions of faith and morals when he spoke ex-cathedra. It did not define when he so spoke, nor did it give any marks to distinguish when he spoke ex-cathedra from times when he did not. No papal advocate would claim that all times the pope speaks ex*cathedra; the consequences of papal contradiction would be most disastrous. This vagueness was in part due to the difficulty of the subject, and in part intentional, so that the popes themselves could make the meaning elastic or not as fitted their use. But there is a saving sanity in human nature. When the law strings the bow too taut, the interpretation of it relieves the strain. So in this case.

The pope has never said that, in this particular instance, he is speaking ex-cathedra. It is safe to say that the times when he will so declare will be few or none. So a Roman Catholic author says that “ it has been discovered that but one man in the Roman Catholic Church is infallible, and he but rarely.” Now the tendency is, especially in intelligent circles, to say that the pope is only infallible when he specially declares himself so. He has not so declared himself and

468 History of the Christian Church.

probably will not, and so the dogma is of no practical bearing. This tendency is most strenuously objected to by the Papal Curia. To combat it is one of the chief aims of the famous document in which Leo XIII condemns “ Americanism.”

Thus it has happened that, contrary to the will of the contrivers, the dogma of the infallibility of the pope was valid and effective before it was defined, but since it was defined it is neither. In intelligent Roman Catholic circles there is now greater freedom of opinion and less effective clerical restraint than before 1870. But by what a tenure is this freedom of opinion held and enjoyed! For it we congratulate our Roman Catholic brethren, but it can never satisfy an Evangelical Christian.

It seems possible, therefore, so to interpret the dogma of Papal Infallibility as to evacuate it of all Results force and meaning. Indeed, the great of this practical result of the Vatican Constitu-

InterpretatEon _r 1 ^ m

of the tion of the Roman Catholic Church has Dogma. been to make the pope the universal bishop and the Episcopate but his deputies. That this has resulted in immensely strengthening and unifying the Church of Rome in this generation there is no question. But there are perils in too much unity. It is yet to be decided whether the pope, guided by Italian cardinals, will be as well able to meet the increasing tide of national sentiment and interest as a national Episcopate. Certain it is that no Council of American bishops would have advised the Encyclical on Americanism, nor would a Council of Irish bishops have sanctioned the papal pronunciamento on the Land League. The Papal Church must increasingly adjust

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itself to the sentiment of race and nationality. That is true of all Churches, and more true of the Church of Rome than of any other. Whether the third chapter of the Vatican Constitution will help or hinder in the most difficult task that the papacy has yet met, the new century will show.

A further, and unforseen, result of the Vatican Council is, that the process of interpretation applied to the latest dogma of the Church of Rome may be applied to all her dogmatic teaching. If the dogma of Papal Infallibility may be interpreted away, so may any other dogma. This, indeed, opens the way for a reconciliation between the mediaeval doctrines and discipline of the Church of Rome and modern knowledge and the spirit of popular liberty, education, and government, on which is based modern civilization. So Leo XIII has appointed a commission to pronounce on what is allowable in Biblical criticism.

Abbe Loisy would apply the same principle to the Church, her doctrines, her worship, and her institutions. This would be to reconcile the Church of Rome with our historical knowledge. Every lover of truth and every Evangelical believer would welcome such a reconciliation. ' But, then, where is that unique authority of the teaching and practice of the Church of Rome which has been her peculiar boast ? Where, then, would be that authority which Pusey regarded as the sole defense against rationalistic attacks, and in which alone John H. Newman could find rest for his soul? Gone, forever gone. Well might the Evangelical Christian rejoice in such a result; but what would be the necessary sentence ol condemnation 011 the Romau Catholic theology of the last three hundred years?

470 History of the Christian Church.

The Roman Catholic population at the end of the century, according to the census returns and giving The Roman liberal estimates where no census is taken, Catholic is two hundred and sixty millions. This is a^theEnd ^{a n IOO}-6 per cent. This is certainly of the the greatest absolute gain which any cen-century. _{can g}j_10w> This j_s accompanied by an

advance in intelligence, wealth, and material wellbeing among the masses of her adherents of considerably more than tenfold. This is due to the general increase of material comfort and wealth during the century. To this advance the Church of Rome has contributed the brake rather than the impulse, but she has shared most richly in the benefits. Her churches, her schools, her charitable institutions have increased even more rapidly in Evangelical lands.

To this must be added the fact that the Church of Rome presents a united front on all public questions through the complete subordination of national aspirations, and an Episcopate representing the centralized administration of the Vatican. The result is like the imperial administration of ancient Rome. The papal nuncios are at Roman Catholic. courts. The apostolic delegates and ablegates run to the ends of the earth. The bishops, like the proconsuls and procurators, represent the City on the Seven Hills by the Tiber, and are expected to repair thither once in five years to give a personal account of their administration. The impression undeniably is one of unity and power. This is increased when we note the success of the policy of Leo XIII in undoing the work of Pius IX in identifying the Church of Rome with the cause of political and intellectual reaction, and

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the results of the Oxford Movement in England, and the marvelous growth of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.

Nothing is risked in saying that, in numbers, in the average of wealth, well-being, and intelligence among her people, in unity of purpose and administration, and in certain kinds of influence, the Church of Rome never appeared more imposing than at the close of a century of revolution, and nearly four hundred years after the Reformation. Though no longer a greater part of Christendom, she is to remain a potent factor in its history.

But to this situation there is another side. If the Roman Catholic Church has grown, so also have the other Christian Churches. If there were more than two Roman Catholics at the end _th_e°^Schurch of the century where there was but one at of Rome, its beginning, it is also true that-where (Oinareia-there was but one Evangelical Christian in ^t,v_t^ej₀^^SI’ the populations in 1800, there are now more than five, an increase of 383 per cent.

In the Greek Church the increase has been 266 per cent, or an average gain of 325 per cent among the Christians that do hot yield obedience to the pope of Rome, compared with an increase of 100.6 per cent among those of the Roman Catholic Church. It may make the situation clearer to state that, in Europe, the united Evangelical and Greek population outnumbers by tens of millions the Roman Catholic population. In America, North, South, Central, Mexico, and the West Indies, in 1890, the Evangelical and Roman Catholic populations were nearly equal in numbers. The scale ten years later inclined to the Evangelical

472 History of the Christian Church.

side. The Roman Catholic preponderance in Asia, Africa, and Oceania, including, in the latter, Australia and the Philippines, is not large, and is steadily decreasing. Thus of the entire Christendom, the Roman Catholic portion is a lesser and relatively decreasing factor.

At the opening of the century she had a population of one hundred and twenty-five millions to thirty-five millions of Evangelical Christians. At its close, she had two hundred and sixty millions, to one hundred and sixty-seven millions of Evangelical Christians. The increase of the Roman Catholics was one hundred and thirty-five millions; that of the Evangelicals was one hundred and thirty-two millions; that of the Greek Church, eighty millions—a joint gain of two hundred and twelve millions compared with one hundred and thirty-five millions of the Roman Catholic Church.

At the beginning of the century in Europe, excluding Russia, nearly four out of five of the population were Roman Catholic; at its end one and one-half out of two and one-half. Including Russia, the proportion at the end of the century was sixteen Roman Catholics to nineteen other Christians.' In all America in 1800, lour out of five were Roman Catholics; in 1900, not quite one out of two.

This relative decrease is made more evident by the fact that the Teutonic and Slavic peoples are in-

(2) Relative ^creasiⁿ& ^^ar more than the Latin races; Loss by Race also that their increase in intelligence and increase. _wea]th, in commerce, in power and influence, is greater than their increase in population. Of the great powers of the globe, no Roman Catholic

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country can compare in resources and influence with either Great Britain, the United States, Germany, or Russia. Their collective weight is simply overwhelming. The future of wealth and power in Christendom will be with the Teutonic and Slavic peoples. The most ardent Roman Catholic will not claim that they are, or are likely to become, subject to the Church of Rome. A Roman Catholic writer in the chief Jesuit organ puts the situation at the end of the century very strongly. He says:

“ Wealth and power no longer belong to the Roman Catholic nations; they have become the appanage of nations who have separated from the Roman Catholic Church. Spain, Italy, France, and a large part of Austria, if compared with Germany, England, and the United States, are feebler in the military department, more troubled in their politics, more menaced in their social affairs, and more embarrassed in finance. The papacy has had nothing to do with the conquest of one-half of the globe, of Asia and Africa; that has fallen to the arms of the heirs of Photius, of Luther, of Henry VIII. All the vast colonial possessions of Spain are passing into the hands of the Republic of Washington; France yields the sovereignty of the Nile to Great Britain; Italy, conquered in Abyssinia, maintains with difficulty her maritime influence by following in the wake of England. Here have we, in fact, all the [Roman] Catholic countries reduced to submit to heretic purses, and to follow in their track like so many satellites. The latter speak and act, the former are silent or murmur impotently. This is how affairs stand at the end of the nineteenth century, and it is impossible to deny the evidence of

474 History of the Christian Church.

it. Politically speaking, [Roman] Catholicism is in decadence.”

It may be fairly claimed that the Church of Rome has held the allegiance generally of the mass of the lower classes of her people. The same can not be said of the thinking and intelligent portion of the populations in France, Italy, Spain, and Spanish America. In these countries there is more aggressive and pronounced infidelity and Atheism than elsewhere in Christendom. Within the last thirty years of the century the men of world-wide influence as scholars, authors, inventors, and statesmen, have been a decreasing number in the Roman Catholic Church as compared with the thirty years before 1850. The reverse has been the case in the Evangelical Churches. On the other hand, the revolt from the Roman and Greek Catholic Churches of the lower classes, when they leave them, has often been of a peculiarly virulent kind. Anarchist assassins, whose crimes stained the latter decades of the century, were without exception of Roman or Greek Catholic birth and training. Intellectual repression and recoil, perhaps, accounts in large measure for this fact.

In this century the Roman Catholic Church lost her immense endowments in all Roman Catholic

(3) Loss in countries. Her supreme pontiff, from be-Prestigeand ing an independent sovereign, descended to ^Wea,th* a private station in relation to the civil rule of Italy and the world. Her prelates and clergy, once the most wealthy and independent the world has known, have passed into the pay of the State. Instead of owning, as she did in Roman Catholic countries at the outbreak of the French Revolution, from two-

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fifths to two-thirds of the real estate, in some of these countries at the close of the century, the churches even belong to the State, and in all no endowments support the clergy. The losses in wealth and rank and dominion in this century were much greater than in the century of the Reformation.

It is doubtless true that the Roman Catholic Church is much stronger and more influential in her poverty than in her riches. It must also be added she is much more dependent. When her clergy are paid by the State, on the State they must depend. The lower classes of the clergy, except in some great crisis, will side with the State, as in France. No pope can afford to intermeddle with the internal government of the State as it affects the Church, with the clergy against him. The policy of reconciliation of Leo XIII is the only policy possible where the clergy are paid by the State, unless the pope and people are ready for disestablishment. Only where the much reviled maxim of separation of the Church from the State prevails, is the Church really free.

In Germany, the great battle-ground of the Evangelical and Roman Catholic Churches in this period, the Roman Catholic Church is not _(4)Part,_CU|_ar holding her own in spite of the political in^- Losses; fluence she exerts through the Center party ^Germany* in the Reichstag. This clearly appears in the census returns. The Roman Catholic population in relation to the population of the empire is a decreasing factor, and more markedly so during the last decade. The Roman Catholic Church can be said to gain only in Westphalia and Polish Prussia. It loses in Baden and Berlin in particular. In 1890 her people were more

476 History of the Christian Church.

than one-third of the population of the German Empire; in 1900 the percentage is the same, but the predominant gain is Evangelical. The government returns show all changes from the Evangelical to the Roman Catholic faith and the contrary. In the dec ade 1880-1889 there were seventeen thousand nine hundred and ninety-two more inhabitants of the German Empire who changed from the Roman Catholic faith and Church to the Evangelical, than Evangelicals who became Roman Catholics. In the decade 1890-1899 the number increased to thirty-four thousand three hundred and forty-seven. The trend comes out strongly in comparing the first two and last two of these twenty years.

In 1880-1881 the number more was two thousand five hundred and ninety-eight; 1898-1899 it increased to nine thousand three hundred and sixty-six.

Of course, figures like these are valuable only as showing the trend, and in the German Empire it is not to the Roman Catholic Church; the same trend is seen in Austria, where the same class of statistics is preserved. Naturally one would suppose there would be in that country more changes to the Roman Catholic faith than the reverse. This, however, is not the case. In 1880-1889 there were four thousand three hundred and eighteen more Roman Catholics who became Evangelicals than Evangelicals who exchanged their faith for the Roman Catholic. In 18901899 the number increased to ten thousand four hundred and twenty-five, and the “ Eos vom Rom” movement had just begun.

In France, according to Roman Catholic authority, the greater part of the population is lost to that Church. This is certainly true of the men. The Sec

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ond Empire gave the Clerical party full sway. They were pronounced enemies of all Liberal opinion, and especially of all that savored of a Republic.

Yet the National Assembly of 1871, which ^France* contained the best men of France, was predominantly Roman Catholic as well as Royalist. The change came in 1877, when France, because the Royalists could not agree, became a Republic without republicans. The Clerical party and the Church, in spite of the efforts of Leo XIII since 1892, during the whole of this peoiod was bitterly anti-republican. It was mixed up in every royalist conspiracy, and fairly went mad over the Dreyfus affair. The result has been a political discredit which bids fair to last for a generation, and the compulsory closing of the monastic houses, and of the Church schools. The peasants seem to have deserted the Church, and the Legislature upholds the most drastic measures of the administration. The section of the French clergy organized for the promotion of the study of the Bible in the native tongue may make a different and a better Roman Catholic Church in France.

In Italy the Roman Catholic Church is against the State and against every patriotic instinct of the Italian people. A generation has grown up which believes in the necessity of United *

Italy, powerful and free. Her most potent foe is the papal Church. Italians know how to compromise and live amid conflicting relations. They must have a nation, and they will see some time that they must have a religion. Meantime most of the men strive to live without any religion.

In Spain and Portugal, largely the same state of

478 History of the Christian Church.

affairs prevails in circles where there are people of education. This is true also in Spanish America, were some twelve million Indians are numbered Spain. _among Roman Catholic population,

one-half of whom are still little better than heathen. The great gains of the Roman Catholic Church in this century were from emigration, where the peasantry of her faith, in a new environment and amid better conditions, greatly increased in numbers and wealth. This gain came chiefly in Great Britain, her colonies, and most of all in the United States.

It is a pleasant duty to turn from this survey to those gains of the Roman Catholic Church which are a common gain to Christendom.

The average morality of the Roman Catholic clergy and people has been higher in the last than in any Moral preceding century since the Reformation. Gains. There has been a great and continuous gain through the closing decades of the century.

There has been a great change in the practice of the Roman Catholic Church, if not in the creed, in regard to freedom of conscience and religious

Toleration. . . ⁰

toleration. The popes of the century before Leo XIII, with the possible exception of Pius VII, condemned in the strongest terms religious toleration. Leo XIII having taken occasion to eulogize America for her record in respect to religious toleration, the Methodist ministers of Chicago sent to the Vatican a very courteous communication, quoting the words of the pope, and requesting him to extend the application of this principle to Ecuador and any other countries where there was not toleration granted to the worship of Evangelical Christians. Cardinal Rampolla

The Papacy.

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felt constrained to answer this letter. He disclaimed the power to influence Roman Catholic governments, but made it difficult henceforth to quote the See of Rome on the side of religious intolerance.

A more unexpected gain has been in the declara tion of Leo XIII promising indulgences to those in Rome who will, for thirty days, read a portion of the Holy Scriptures in the mother tongue. This has only to be extended to the whole Church for all time, and amended by dropping the indulgences, to make it the greatest benefit the pope could confer on the Roman Catholic Church and upon Christendom.

The Roman Catholic Church has been active in works of mercy during the century. Those who know her hospitals and the work of her Sisters _SoclaI of Charity, speak of them only with praise. Amelioration This Church also is awaking to the fact ^{and Reform}* that preventive measures and social reforms are equally a part of the work of the Christian Church. It is only in this century that there has been a Father Mathew, a Cardinal Manning, or a Roman Catholic Temperance Mutual Benefit Association. Many of her prelates are awaking to the necessity of combating intemperance. May they soon resolve to fight the liquor-traffic as well! These are no small gains.

A word, in conclusion, as to the relations which should exist between the Roman Catholic and the Evangelical Churches:

They should be kindly. Any good in _ReIation8 either Church should receive prompt recog- between the nition by the other. Anything Christlike ^Churches* in prelate, clergy, or laity, in either Church, should

480 History of the Christian Church.

be accorded warm praise and welcome. In movements for moral and social reforms they ought to be near enough in the Spirit of Christ to work together for the common good.

They should be truthful. We should respect each other by acknowledging our differences, and yet believing in each other’s Christian character. No Evangelical Christian can pretend to believe in tran-substantiation or papal infallibility; he does not like auricular confession or clerical celibacy; the adoration of the Virgin Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the invocation of the saints, as well as indulgences for the living and the dead, are an offense unto him; but he can acknowledge the spirit and works of Christ in those to whom they are dear. The observations of the great festivals of the Christian year, and the extension of the order of deaconesses, show that the Churches have more in common than in the earlier part of the century.

To be truthful, means that they should be free and quick to condemn anything in each other unworthy of the Christian name, no matter what the occasion or source. We should provoke each other to put away causes of scandal or offense. More particularly, the Evangelical Christians should use discrimination when speaking of the Roman Catholic Church. That Church includes great populations of every grade of intelligence and morality. It has more semi-heathenism within its pale than any other Church, and not a little in Rome itself. It has its saints as well. All acknowledge that there are good and bad Roman Catholics; so there are good and bad Roman Catholic priests and prelates. Recent disclosures in France

The Papacy.

481

show that this term can be applied to conventual Institutions as well. .

It is because of the repression of these semiheathen elements in popular teaching, worship, and discipline in the Roman Catholic Church, that her standard of thought and practice is so much higher in Evangelical countries than in those where she alone represents the Christian faith. In Evangelical lands these elements are repressed or unknown. For this reason, no greater good could come to the Roman Catholic Church than the conversion and training of a strong Evangelical population in Roman Catholic countries. Indiscriminate praise or blame of a body so large and so various as the Roman Catholic Church is an offense against the truth.

Finally, Evangelical Christians, and all good citizens, should be on their guard against unfounded claims and encroachments of the Roman See. This has been necessary for every Roman Catholic government in Europe, and most especially in Spanish America, in this century. Equal vigilance well becomes Evangelical Christians and States. All such claims, and efforts after special favors or political power, must be met with a resistance, stern and united, from the beginning, to a final triumph of all that has made great Evangelical Christendom.

In short, then, the Roman Catholic Church is a Christian Church. It is one of the Christian Churches ; nothing less, and nothing more. It has tendencies toward mediaeval obscurantism, which should be steadily resisted. It has made a commendable progress toward better things; it can make more, and should be encouraged in all that makes a better Christendom.

Chapter VI.

THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH IN GERMANY.

The Evangelical Church in Germany has partaken of the influences which have made evident a common advance in Christendom in the last fifty years. There has been an increase of Evangelical effort in the line of the Inner Mission and in foreign mission work. So, also, in deaconess work and the founding and support of charitable institutions. In church-building, and in the work of the Gustavus Adolphus Ver-ein, there has been such activity shown as Germany has not before seen since the century of Luther.

In sixty-six years, ending with 1898, the Gustavus Adolphus Verein collected over $8,000,000, and aided 4,518 churches; 2,729 of which were in Germany, 1,203 ^m Austria, and 586 in other lands for German residents. It had also built 882 schoolhouses, 768 parsonages, and 568 orphan homes. It has been especially active in Austria, Hungary, and the Rhine provinces. Besides this work of purely German origin, the Church life of Evangelical Germany has been largely affected by the Evangelistic efforts of the Baptist and the Methodist Churches, founded by men converted in the United States, and who returned to the Fatherland. The Baptists report, in 1900, 155 churches, and 28,898 members; the Methodists, the

482

Evangelical Church in Germany. 483

same year, in Germany and German Switzerland, 179 churches and 27,099 members.

These numbers would have been much larger, though the collective influence much less, but for the efforts of Professor Theodore Christlieb, of Bonn, who had lived and preached for some years in London. He advised the State Churches to assimilate, so far as possible, the Evangelical methods and warmth of the Baptists and the Methodists. This advice has been quite largely followed. But any one who has attended one of these Baptist or Methodist services, characterized by singing Moody and Sankey hymns and by fervent prayer and earnest exhortations, and compared them with the services of the State Church, can not fail to see why these attract the people. From America, also, have come the Young Men’s Christian Association, the Christian Endeavor Societies, and Epworth Leagues; and, most important of all, the Sunday-school.

But the especial work of the Evangelical Church, in Germany, in these years, has been that of teaching the teachers of Christian truth in all lands. It has produced the great theologians of the age, in men like Dorner, Luthardt, Frank, Lipsius, and Albrecht Ritschl. Its exegetes, like Lange, Meyer, Hoffman, Weiss, Weisacker, Wendt, Jiilicher, in the new Testament, and Ewald, Hupfeld, Deiltzsch, Dillman, Strack, and many others, in the Old Testament, have largely influenced the interpretation of the Scriptures throughout Christendom. This is true of the work of scholars in the field of Biblical theology, like Weiss, Beyschlag, Holtzman, Haupt, and Baldensperger. Its Church historians, like Nitsch, Niedner, A. Ritschl,

484 History of the Christian Church.

and especially Harnack, I,oofs, Hauck, and a crowd of others, have led in this department of research.

But the great contribution of German scholarship, in the last half of the century, has been in the work done in the science of Biblical criticism. In the criticism of the text of the New Testament, the discovery of the Sinaitic MSS. of the New Testament and the Septuagint, in 1859, by Tischendorf, his researches in the libraries and monasteries, and his critical labors, would make memorable any era. He has been worthily followed by the editor of his unfinished Prolog-omena, and author of the most thorough work on New Testament text criticism, Professor Caspar Remi Gregory, Leipsic, by birth and training an American.

The most striking work, however, of this period, in Germany, has been the work done by her scholars in Higher Criticism. That is, the study of Criticism. ^t^^ie ^^{acts re}g^arding the origin, form, and value of the books of the Christian Scriptures, based upon their internal characteristics and contents, while taking into account whatever external evidence may exist. .

Devout students of the records of a revelation they believe to be divine, and Christian believers, whose faith and life, whose love and hope, are based upon and nourished by the teachings of these records, may well feel averse to the dissection and analysis of the Higher Criticism. Men are sensitive to the autopsy of the mother that bore them or the wife they loved. Yet we must remember that all writings that survive through the centuries, necessarily undergo this examination. It is a necessity of their human composition

Evangelical Church in Germany. 485

and transmission. The more important and influential the writing, the more searching the scrutiny. This is true of Homer, of Dante, and of Shakespeare.

In considering the former period, we were obliged to take into account the mythical theory ot Strauss as applied to the life of Christ, and the tendency criticism of Baur in regard to the origin of the books of the New Testament. This criticism of unbelief received a new impulse from Renan’s “Life of Jesus,” 1863, and the “ Life of Jesus, for German People,” of Strauss, 1874; but the new attack was more easily repulsed, and reached its reductio ad absurdum in Strauss’s “Old and New Faith,” 1872, in which he denied, not only revelation, but God and immortality. Two years later, Strauss died an unbeliever’s death, without hope. Rejected as his teachings are by all competent to judge, his command of audacious statement, in striking and beautiful expression, has given his work popularity among the masses who reject the Christian faith. Renan’s work was more superficial, and, below the surface, cynical. While having a great run for the time, it left no serious impressions on the thought of the age.

Yet here, if anywhere, in the treatment of the life, the death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the devout believer might feel that criticism lays its profaning hand upon the holy of holies of his faith. But sixty-five years from the publication of Strauss’s “ Life of Jesus ” have shown us, not only what destructive theories may be advanced, but also what solid contributions Higher Criticism has made to the defenses of the Christian faith. The works of Farrar, Edersheim, Bernard Weiss, and Schiirer have made more ciear the

486 History of the Christian Church.

times of our Lord, the surrounding of his career, and the events of his life and their order and significance. To this work of New Testament criticism have been given the labors of some of the ablest scholars of the time; such have been Ebrard, Schiirer, Lechler, Haus-rath, Keim, Weisacker, Weiss, Holtzman, Jiilicher, with Beyschlag and Zahn, and, notably, Ritschl and Harnack.

At the end of the century we may sum up briefly the conclusions of New Testament criticism in which the majority of men competent to speak

* agree. The Gospel of Mark is the earliest Gospel, and in its present form it dates from 65 to 80 A. D., and was derived from the Apostle Peter. The Logia, or Sayings of Jesus, is a common document used by Matthew and Luke; these are not later than

A. D. 70, and probably much earlier. Probably Luke used also a special source not common to the others. In spite of Harnack, Wendt, Jiilicher, and Schiirer, the weight of evidence seems to be in favor of St. John’s authorship of the Gospel that bears his name. The latter part of the Acts is from Luke. English and American critics believe the whole book to be, but many Germans dissent as to the first twelve chapters. The Gospels and Acts are before A. D. 90, except John’s Gospel, which is placed from 90 to no

A. D.

St. Paul is the author of the Epistles which bear his name. Some claim First Timothy to have been edited by a later writer. Of Hebrews, no man knows the author. The author of John’s Gospel wrote his first Epistle, and probably the others. The Book of Revelation is from the first century. The only book of

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the Canon definitely rejected, and attributed also to the second century, is the Second Epistle of Peter. How different is this from the program of Baur and the Tubingen critics of the middle of the century!

The battle, however, has been fiercest in the realm of Old Testament criticism. Only a brief resume can be here given. That after so fierce an at- _{The
CrlticJgin} tack and so successful a defense of the New of the oid Testament Scriptures there should have ^Testament-been so much excitement on both sides, seems surprising.

The modern era in the criticism of the Old Testament began in 1753, when Jean Astruc published his “ Documentary Hypothesis of the Composition of Genesis.” Jean Astruc (1684-1766) was a Roman Catholic physician, whose father had been a Reformed pastor, but who went over to Rome at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Astruc claimed that the Book of Genesis was composed of several documents; the two larger ones were distinguished by the use of the Divine names. In one of these, God is called Elohim, and in the .other, Jehovah; these are two independent narratives.

Eichorn (1752-1827) was the ablest representative of this view, which has won general acceptance. He applied this theory to Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, as well as to Genesis. He thought Moses was the author of Deuteronomy, which was the book of the law for the people, while he called the prescriptions of the earlier books the priests’ code. The Pentateuch he believed to have been mainly written by Moses, but by a fusion of previously-written documents.

In 1807, De Wette (1780-1849) emphasized the

488 History of the Christian Church.

unity of the Pentateuch as we now have it, and held that Deuteronomy was written in the reign of Josiah. supple- ^T^²4» Bleek extended the criticism of

mentary the Penteteuch so as to include the Book Hypothesis. _Q£ j_osh_ua. _ai_so formulated the Supplementary Hypothesis. This hypothesis holds that the Elohist Document was prior to the others; that the Jehovist document and two others were supplementary to the Elohist narrative. In 1831, Ewald showed that the two earlier documents ran through the first six books of the Bible. Hupfeld, in 1853, claimed that Genesis was composed of an Elohist, a second Elohist, and a Jehovist document, and that these were put together by a redactor. Bohmer published an edition of Genesis, showing, by type of different sizes, the work of the four authors. These results have been the basis of all subsequent analysis. They were accepted by such conservative scholars as Kurtz, Franz Delitzsch, and Schrader, as well as by Englishmen like Samuel Davidson, Dr. Perowne, and Dean Stanley.

The Higher Criticism shows the origin, approximate date, and character of a literary work by—(1) Its literary characteristics; that is, its language and its style; (2) By its historical statements, and references ; (3) By its theological statements, if a religious book; that is, opinions concerning God or religion.

These different lines of investigation were held by the authors of the development hypothesis, to show a

_The change in the order of the documents used Development in the composition of the Hexateuch. The Hypothesis. theory _assumes that the credible recorded history of Israel dates from Samuel. The first document, called J, is the Jehovist, a Judean prophetic his

Evangelical Church in Germany. 489

torian who wrote about 800 B. C. The second K, the Elohist, a prophetic historian from Ephraim, about 750

B. C.; J. E., a redactor about 700 B. C. The third D, or Deuteronomy, written a little before 621; J. E. D., a second redactor. The fourth, or P, a priest code, beginning with Ezekiel, and codified by Ezra 444 B. C.; J. E. D. P., the last redactor from 444 to 280 B. C.

In 1833, Edward Reuss first took the position that the Priests’ Code was written after Deuteronomy. The theory as we now know it was first thoroughly grounded in scholarly research by Heinrich Graf in 1866.

The man, however, who called the attention to these problems in a way that centered upon them the interest of the theological world was Abra- _Kuenen ham Kuenen (1828-1891). He was a critic of the first rank, and perhaps the most learned Hebrew scholar and the most famous Old Testament theologian of the century in which he lived. However much we may dislike his standpoint and disagree with his results, we can not but admire his method and the thoroughness, learning, and impartial judgment with which he applies it. To the author, from his method he seems a much more important man than Baur. The life of Kuenen was of the simplest. He was born the son of an apothecary, at Haarlem; he studied at Leyden, and lectured as professor there from 1846 to 1891. He married in 1855, and his wife, long an invalid, died in 1882. He took an active part in Church affairs, and was a member 01 the Synod of the State Church of Holland, 1885-1891, and worked zealously for the interests of the Rationalistic party. In 1882 he went to England, and delivered the Hibbert Lee-

490 History of the Christian Church.

tures on “ National and World Religions.” This seems to have been the extent of his travels.

In 1861-1864 appeared his three-volume “Introduction to the Old Testament.” His work, “ The Religion of Israel,” was published 1869-1870.

This man, who served for forty-five years as a Professor of Theology, and the later years of his life was active in the councils of the Reformed Church of Holland, did not believe in anything like an occurrence beyond the range of natural law; hence, neither in the miracles, the resurrection, nor ascension of our Lord. Kuenen held that the religion of Israel was purely natural; that from the grossest idolatry and polytheism it developed through various stages to the monotheistic theology and spiritual religion of the prophets. He believed the Hexateuch to be non-historic, and composed of ancient and non-reliable legends and myths. The earliest legislation was from the period of the Kings; Deuteronomy was of the time of Josiah, the Priests’ Code from Ezra, and Moses wrote only a fragment of the Ten Commandments. All the patriarchs and earlier characters of Israel’s history he held to be tribal names, or myths. The method of Kuenen was to begin with that part of Israel’s history for which we have external and authentic evidence, and work backward. He did not get back farther than Amos.

Kuenen was a keen literary analyst and critic, but he had little perception for that sense of necessary historic presupposition which is the second nature for the historic student. Few men have more appreciated the prophets of Israel; but their appearance and work are impossible without an historic develop

Evangelical Church in Germany.

ment, to which Kuenen seems blind. He had little faith in the records of Israel’s greatness, but believed in the early fetichism and long-continued idolatry extending nearly, or quite, to the times of the prophets. He held that, because they were ignorant of writing, the Israelites could not have transmitted a written law from Moses’ time. The discovery of the clay tablets at Tel-el-Amarna, showing an active correspondence in Canaan with both Egypt and Babylonia from Abraham’s time, shows the untenableness of such an objection. The negative criticism, which declared the polytheistic ignorance of the Israelites, with Kuenen, now swings to the opposite extreme to claim, with Frederick Delitzsch, that their great and unique doctrine of God was brought from Babylon by Abraham to Caanan. So soon are famous theories of men of great learning disproved and forgotten.

The most celebrated follower of Kuenen was Julius Wellshausen, born in 1844, and a student of Ewald at Gottingen, 1862-1865. After teaching at Griefswald, Halle, and Marburg, he has been for the last ten years at Gottingen. He published his analysis of the Hex-ateuch in 1876-1877, and his “Prologomena to the History of Israel” in 1878. Some years before this he had said that he no longer stood on the ground of the Evangelical Church or of Protestantism. He denies the supernatural element and the historical character of the Hexateuch.

A turn in the whole subject came with the discovery by George Smith, in 1872, of the Chaldean accounts of the Creation and the Flood.

The traditional view that the Pentateuch was written by Moses, though it never expressly says so, was

492 History of the Christian Church.

strenuously defended by Hengstenberg, and more ably by Havernick; later by Kiel, and recently by _The Adolph Zahn, O. Nauman, and Hodemaker. Traditional In Britain, Stanley Leathes and James ^View* Robertson; in America, William H. Green, Howard Osgood, Henry M. Harman, E. Cone Bissell, and many others, maintained the same view.

There was no more thorough student in Germany than Christian Frederick Dillman (1823-1894). He The New ^stu(iied at Tubingen, 1840-1845, and after-Evangeiicai ward at Paris, London, and Oxford. He school. _was easily the first Ethiopic scholar in Europe. After teaching in Tubingen, Kiel, and Giessen, he was called to Berlin, where he remained until his death. He published the “Book of Enoch” in Ethiopic in 1851-1853; “Ethiopic Grammar” in 1857; “Ethiopic Lexicon,” 1865; “Bookof Jubilees,” 1859; the “Ascension of Isaiah,” 1877. His commentaries are well known—Job, 1869; Genesis, 1875; Exodus and Leviticus, 1880; Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua, 1886. He resisted the teachings of Graf and Kuenen. He and his school, to which belong Baudissin and Delitzsch,with Strack and Kettel, Ryssel and Riehm, hold, in opposition to the development theory, that the Elohist is the oldest document, followed by J, and both older than Deuteronomy. They think that the main part of the legislation of P is before the Exile, and much of it very ancient. Baudissin holds that P was written before Deuteronomy. Canon Driver represents this school in England in his “Introduction to the Old Testament.”

The latest results of Old Testament criticism at the end of the century mainly agree in calling Exodus

Evangelical Church in Germany. 493

_XX, 1-17, and Exodus xxxiv, 11-27, the earliest Pen-tateuchal legislation. This is followed by Exodus xx, and xxiii-xxxiii, forming the Book of the Covenant. Then in order comes Deuteronomy, found

B. C. 621, and the Priests’ Code, including the latter part of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, dating from the Exile, and edited by Ezra. Ezekiel knew the Priests’ Code, as Jeremiah knew Deuteronomy. Isaiah xl-lxv, Job, Ecclesiastes, and Daniel, as well as a large part of the Psalms, are from the Exile.

In the Old Testament criticism are three schools— the Left and Right Wings, and the Center. The left wing forms the school of critics who do not believe in a supernatural revelation of God to Israel. At that head stands Wellshausen, and with him Stade, Smend, Keyser, Siegfried, and Friedrich Delitzsch. This school has no representative among British and American scholars. The right wing would be led by Dillman, Baudissin, and Strack, with Hommel, Kettel, Orelli, Konig, and Otelli. With these would be found archaeologists like Sayce, Hilprecht, and Rogers.

In the center between these schools would be ranged Kautsch, Budde, Cornill, Gunkel, and George Adam Smith, with Driver, Briggs, Mitchell and Francis Brown, of New York; Ives Curtiss, of Chicago, and Willis J. Beecher, of Auburn. Toward the left-center are Thomas K. Cheyne, C. G. Montefiore, George F. Moore, and Charles H. Toy.

German Theology.

At the opening of this period, and through its first decade, the school of Baur had the controlling influence. The young men and progressive thinkers who

494 History of the Christian Church.

were not content with the meditative theology of the school of Schleiermacher made their way to Tubingen.

Against this tendency stood Tholuck, Theology, _Neanderj R₀the, and especially Heng-

stenberg and the Confessional Lutherans. The century closed with the complete eclipse of the theories and influence of Baur and his school. That of Ritschl has very largely taken its place as the theology of the leaders of German theological thinking. The change is great, and marks a noteworthy advance in the ruling tendency in the theological world.

To this change and what preceded it a few pages must be given.

The chief of the successors of Schleiermacher in these years was Isaac August Dorner (1809-1884).

Dorner’s father was an Evangelical pastor,

° ^ne * and Dorner studied at Tubingen. Completing his university studies, he visited England. After teaching for twenty-eight years at Tubingen, Kiel, Konigsberg, Bonn, and Gottingen, he was called to Berlin, where he taught until his death. In 1873 he visited the United States.

He acquired enduring fame through his early work, “The History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ,” in three volumes, 1834-1839. In 1867 appeared his “ History of Protestant Theology” in two volumes. In 1885 his “System of Christian Doctrine.” These works have all appeared in English, and have exerted no slight influence in Englishspeaking lands. In 1885 appeared his “System of Morals.”

Dorner was more learned than original; in a most

Evangelical Church in Germany. 495

circumlocutory style he often set forth great thoughts. He had both comprehensiveness and depth in his thinking. Great in learning as a theologian, he was yet greater as a Christian man, and the warmth of a Christian believer’s heart is in his works.

The orthodox reaction against the school of Baur found a center in the strictly Lutheran university of Erlangen. They sought to “teach old truths by new methods.”

The systematic theologian of this school was Franz Hermann Reinhold Frank (1827-1894). Frank studied at Leipzig, 1845-1850, where he was _prank won to strict Lutheranism by Harless.

After teaching at Altenburg and Ratzeburg, he was called to Erlangen in 1857, and taught there until his death in 1894. Frank, though strict in his orthodoxy, was a child of his century and a modern man. His “Theology of the Formula of Concord,” 1858-1864, gave him reputation among the Confessional Lutherans. His chief work was his “ System of Christian Certainty,” two volumes, 1870-1873; second edition, 1:881—1882. The work is divided into three parts. The first treats of the nature of certainty, of specific Christian certainty, and its principal opposition. The second part treats of the relations of Christian certainty to the object of faith, to the immanent, the transcendent, and the trans-euent, thus treating of rationalism, pantheism, and criticism. In the third part he treats of the relations of Christian certainty to objects of the natural life, the establishment of certainty, and the opposition to materialism. In this work, Frank has performed a lasting service to Christianity. English readers can discern its nature

496 History of the Christian Church.

from the work of the late Professor Stearns, entitled “The Evidence of Christian Experience,” which is avowedly founded upon it. It has also been translated. Frank also published his “ System of Christian Truth,” in two volumes, 1878-1880; the third volume 1893-1894; and in 1884-1887, his “ System of Christian Morality.”

Of the same school and a prolific and effective writer, many of whose publications have appeared in English, is Christoph Ernest Luthardt,

Luthardt. .

born in 1823. Luthardt studied m Erlangen and Berlin, 1841-1845. After teaching in Munich, Erlangen, and Marburg, he was called to Leipzig in 1856.

At Leipzig he has taught New Testament exegesis and theology. He is renowned as a pulpit orator, and since 1868 he has edited the Kirchen Zeitung, the organ of Confessional Lutheranism. In 1865 he was chosen Consistorial Councilor to the Church in Saxony. His “Gospel of John” appeared in 18521853; “The Fundamental Truths of Christianity,” 1864; “The Dogmatic Truths of Christianity,” 1866; “The Saving Truths of Christianity,” 1867; “The Moral Truths of Christianity,” 1872; “ Luther’s Ethics,” 1867; and “The Origin of the Fourth Gospel,” 1874. Luthardt is a master of clear expression, and most of the above have appeared in an English dress.

A man of an altogether different quality and tendency was Richard Adelbert Lipsius (1830-1892). His work was largely influenced by his early

Lipsius. 11,

and thorough study of Fichte, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Rothe, and Kant. The latter became his master, and Lipsius was the leader of the New

Evangelical Church in Germany. 497

Kantian school of theology. He also felt the influence of the Moravians, where his mother had been trained. Through the influence of Baur he went over from the meditating to the critical school of theology. After teaching in Vienna, 1861-1865, then at Kiel and Jena, he came to Leipzig, and there remained until his death. At first he was very radical, but in later years, and through practical participation in Church affairs, he became more conservative. Like Ritschl, he left the school of Baur, but his fundamental theological conception was different. Ritschl would shut out all scientific knowledge in his conception of Christian truth. Lipsius believed that scientific and religious knowledge working together could form a common conception which should be without contradiction.

Lipsius published in 1883-1890 the “Apocryphal Acts and Legends of the Apostles,” in three volumes; in 1869, “ The Chronology of the Bishops of Rome;” 1876-1893, his “Dogmatics” in three volumes, his most important work. In 1885 appeared his “Philosophy and Religion.”

Lipsius was an able man, and his work remains of value to scholars. *

A man different from all these, and more original than any of them, though not more learned, was Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889), the founder

^{v 7} ’ Ritschl.

of the Ritschlian school of theology, now predominant in professors’ chairs, at least in Germany. Ritschl’s father was a son of a gymnasial teacher in Erfurth, and he became first a pastor, and in 1827 a bishop, in the Evangelical Church. His diocese was Pommerania, and his residence was Stet-

498 History of the Christian Church.

tin. Ritschl’s mother was a woman from Berlin, of unusual musical gifts. This talent for music, both vocal and as a pianist, her son inherited.

Albrecht was born in Berlin, March 25, 1822. He studied at Bonn and Halle, 1839-1843; and then he took three years of further preparation at Berlin and Heidelberg, where he met Rothe; and Tubingen, where he came fully under the influence of Baur. In 1846 he published a book entitled “The Gospel of Marcion and the Canonical Gospel of Luke: A Critical Investigation.” This work claimed that Luke was the first writer of our Gospels, and was later than Mar-cion’s Gospel; hence all the Canonical Gospels were from the last of the second century. This, of course, won the praise of Baur, but certainly did not further his promotion in his academic career. In 1851, as the result of further critical investigations, he fully gave up this view, and came to the conclusion that Mark’s Gospel was the first written. Later he held that John was the author of the Gospel that bears his name, and that all the Gospels were written in the first century. Already, in 1850, he had published “The Origin of the Old Catholic Church;” in which he largely followed the lines of Baur’s teaching, though showing marked talent for historical investigation. In 1857 appeared a new edition, which took altogether different ground as the result of his researches. A year later came a complete breach with Baur, and the man who was to do the most to destroy the influence of the Tubingen school had entered upon his independent career.

Ritschl taught at Bonn without salary, with only the fees of private docent, 1846-1852, reading lectures to from six to ten hearers. In December, 1852, he be

Evangelical Church in Germany. 499

came professor extraordinary at Bonn on a salary of $300 per year. On this he taught until August 5, 1859, when he became ordinary professor at Bonn with a salary of $600 per year; in 1863 this was raised to $750, and in 1864 he removed to Gottingen at a salary of $1,000, where he remained during his life. This was, of course, increased from fees; but these must have been small, as in the first twelve years of his teaching he rarely lectured to a dozen hearers. At Gottingen, from the first, he had thirty or more in attendance on his lectures. In these circumstances, Ritschl wrote a good deal for the press, mostly review articles, and taught the Introduction and a detailed exposition of the books of the New Testament, as well as lecturing upon the “Apostolic Fathers,” the “History of Dogma,” and “Theological Ethics.”

In prospect of the rise in his salary to $600, he married in April, 1859, at the age of thirty-seven. His wife was thirty-one, and every way worthy of him. The succeeding ten years were the happiest of Ritschl’s life. His wife bore him three children, and died in January, 1869. Henceforth the greatly-reserved and deeply-grieved man found solace chiefly in work, to which he had never been a stranger.

Thus simply went on his life. His holiday vacations had, in younger days, brought him to Stettin, his father’s home, and later he would see Marburg and Erlangen, Tubingen and Heidelberg, and, leaving Frankfort, would sometimes stop at Halle or even Jena. For Berlin, the city of his birth, he had no love; it was too large for him even in the days before the Empire. Never once did he go beyond the bounds of the Fatherland, though he did make a daring trip to

500 History of the Christian Church.

Tengersee in 1881, where he had a most interesting conversation with Dollinger.

Thus the chief events of his life were the issue of his books. The work upon which rests his fame, “The Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation,” was issued in three volumes: Vol. I, 1870: 2d edition, 1882; 3d edition, 1889. Vol. II, 1874: 2d edition, 1882; 3d edition, 1889. Vol. Ill, 1874: 2d edition, 1883; 3d edition, 1888; 4th edition, 1895. The first volume contained the history of the doctrine; the second, the foundation of the doctrine in Biblical theology ; the third, the development of the doctrine.

Ritschl also published a work in three volumes entitled “History of Pietism,” 1880-1886. The first volume treated of Pietism in the Reformed Church; the two following, of Pietism in the Lutheran Church, from 1600 to 1800. As a criticism of Pietism it has value; a history it is not. For the latter task Ritschl lacked the first essential; he could not appreciate his subject. In 1874 he published a lecture on “Christian Perfection,” which went to a second edition. In 1875 appeared a small work on “ Instruction in the Christian Religion,” which reached a fifth edition.

Ritschl was a peculiarly self-centered man. Only one friend seems to have been at all intimate, his colleague, Diestel. After he became known as the founder of a school, he gladly received the visits of his adherents. He was not only independent, but self-confident as well, and though not a gentle critic himself, he resented it when his own work came under the knife.

Tholuck and Luthardt were noted as preachers; not so Ritschl. Perhaps he preached a dozen times*

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but that was in his earlier career. Though his father was a bishop, he had neither tact nor talent for preaching or practical Church affairs. In real Church life in Germany and in the world at large he seems to have had little knowledge or interest. Self-centered as he was, his horizon was small, and comprehended but few intellectual interests, and these almost exclusively academical and theological.

On the other hand, Albrecht Ritschl was a thinker and a critic. As such, his and succeeding generations will do him honor. As a thinker, he was analytic in his method, and original in, after having distinguished differences, seeking always the comprehensive whole in which the elements of his analysis should reach their true union. His thinking was not speculative, but practical. Hence he was naturally a critic, and his criticism never failed in learning or thoroughness, while it was clear and definite in method and results.

Ritschl was no genius like Origen or Schleiermacher, nor is the comparison with Athanasius in place. But his service to the educated world of his time was like that of Schleiermacher, though his method was just the opposite. Schleiermacher accentuated the comprehensiveness of the principles of the Gospel and of Christian life as including all great truths, and harmonizing them and all acquisitions of the human spirit. Ritschl, on the other hand, excluding all extraneous influences, developed from itself the unique power and scope of Christian truth.

The thinking of few men has so met the needs of their age as this most retired and self-contained rea-soner and critic. The notes of Ritschl’s theology which were in accord with his time, were reality,

502 History of the Christian Church.

aversion to speculation, so limitation to the known, and the accentuation of the value of the Christian Church. This sense of reality dominated his method and the contents of his thought.

The New Testament Scriptures were realities; these he sought to have reveal their real significance. Biblical theology was the foundation and material of all his thinking. The experience of forgiveness of sin through faith in Jesus Christ is a reality, a unique fact, distinctive of Christian teaching and fundamental to Christian life. This fact became the center of his theological system. The Christian Church is a reality, and the history of its origin always had a great attraction for him. These three facts dominated and gave reality to his thinking. Then the age revolted from the philosophical speculation which had ruled Germany for fifty years, and which controlled in the domain of both history and theology.

Ritschl cut loose from all connection with the Greek philosophy and the speculations of his countrymen. The Church, in Lutheran theology, had been but little more than a department of the State, practically ; and, theoretically, a means of education, training, and common worship. Ritschl emphasized the Church almost in the language of Augustine. In addition to this, he placed stress upon the ethical bearings of Christianity and the reality of Christian faith as shown by its fruits in Christian life.

We can here only give a brief outline of the distinc-Ritschi’s ^tive teachings of Ritschl’s theology. In Distinctive his teaching concerning God, Ritschl reTeachings. j_ecte(j _t^_{e c0nce}pti₀n of his Being as

absolute, and then possessing certain attributes. His

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pyschological principle was, that everything is complete in itself, and is known by its activities. This he applied to God. He taught that God is in his attributes, not surrounded by them; that, in the highest sense, God is personality, and, hence, that God is love. The chief relation in which he stands to man is as Father; he is, first, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; then, the Creator of the world. The analogy of our relations to him is not to the State, but the family. Not so much stress is laid upon God as cause of all that is, as that his purpose is working to assured fulfillment in the realization of the kingdom of God. He differs also, in his definition of the righteousness of God, which he held to be the perpetual and effective faithfulness of God toward the people of his covenant and toward the Christian Church. It is not in opposition with the grace of God, but is only a modification of it_} and in full accord with his love. Hence, he rejected every juristic significance in the relations between God and man.

Sin is guilt and contradiction against God. Sin is the opposite of the Christian ideal. That ideal is not Adam, but Christ; and its social realization is the kingdom of God. Sin has two sides— a defect of reverence and trust in God, and a direction of the will against God. The latter results in a kingdom of sin over against the kingdom of God, in which men are active, and their transgressions have their individual differences.

Guilt is the especial punishment of sin. It is an expression of separation and mistrust. It is a living contradiction of God and of his appointed destiny for

504 History of the Christian Church.

men. Hence, from the definition of sin, that which falls under the first aspect is forgivable, as the wills of his children are directed toward the Punishment. _reaii_zatj_on
cf fa_e ki_ngd_om of God. These

sins he classes as sins of ignorance, and that God is pleased with men notwithstanding the commissions of such sins, if they are in his Church. All the punishments of God toward his children are exclusively punishments for education, whose aim is their betterment. On the other hand, those who permanently harden themselves against the Christian salvation offered to them, are guilty of sin against the Holy Ghost. They belong to the kingdom of sin; they are no more capable of salvation, and their punishment is a definite destruction or annihilation.

Forgiveness is to restore the fore-appointed communion of men with God. It is equivalent to pardon among men, and restores to communion

* with God. In this forgiveness, justification takes away conscious guilt, and reconciliation takes away active contradiction against God. Both remove the contradictions of the will; and this justification and reconciliation is a creative act of God. Forgiveness is to the whole of sinful men; hence, a synthetic, not an individual, act; and is appropriate as trust in God and sense of the Divine childhood. This appropriation gives a new direction of the will toward God.

Faith is the direct correlate of justification; in this, the full dependence of man upon God is relig-

Faith i°^usly recognized and actually attained. In this connection, comes in what Ritschl calls the master question of theology, and whose solution

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determined his whole theological method. That question is, “ How the dependence upon God is reconcilable with human freedom, in which it is even as necessary to think of this action as the same is witnessed through our immediate self-consciousness.”

Mere logical theory can not overcome this contradiction between freedom and dependence. The solution must come from empirical psychological observation. This is shown, because, in the domain of Christianity, every one who endeavors to do the good willed of God has the actual experience that he possesses real freedom only in an especial kind of dependence upon God. Freedom, in the full sense, is the power of self-command over selfish impulses. This freedom is only ours when the will is directed to the final aim ot the most universal good; i. e., the kingdom of God. In this kingdom each one knows he is dependent upon God, in the same degree that he is conscious of moral freedom.

Freedom and dependence form an identical experience. This experience is a religious judgment. The ethical judgment is, that men are free and responsible; hence, religious judgments have an ethical reverse side. In the religious functions, as faith in providence, humility, patience, prayer, man is active and independent, for the soul is never passive. In moments of religious exaltation, as members of the whole, we have the consciousness of dependence upon God. On the other hand, the regular forms of human selfjudgment are thoughts of freedom, with the consciousness of independence and responsibility.

The Divine acts—such as justification, regeneration, the impartation of the Holy Spirit, the bestowal

506 History of the Christian Church.

of salvation—must be so taught that the corresponding self-activities in which these acts are appropriated by men will be evident, and may be analyzed.

Faith is a comprehensive whole, and is trust and confidence in God. This must rest on the personal convictions that God, Christ, his work, the Holy Ghost, the Trinity, the Church, and all other great objects of the Christian faith, exist, and are active for us for the purpose of our salvation. In the degree in which our confidence is placed upon these religious objects we appropriate to ourselves their efficacious grace. The revelation of Christ is the source of the right and complete knowledge of God. Revelation and faith are necessarily reciprocal conceptions.

Ritschl’s teaching concerning Christ culminated in the clear assertion of his Divinity; but that Divinity

Christ *^S
nc* ^assert^ed ^{as a} f^act» but as a judgment of value. In the section upon faith, moral freedom was spoken of as impossible to establish by logical process, but by experience it had impregnable validity as a religious judgment. This limitation of logical reason and extension of the evidence of experience as producing convictions, Ritschl now greatly enlarged in scope. From the study of Kant he now extended the range of these value judgments to all expressions concerning God, including even his existence. Such, then, is the Divinity of Christ, his pre-existence, and, with some, even his resurrection.

It is such a judgment when a man recognizes Christ as the revealer of the love of God, and thus of the especial being of God. In these value judgments there is the highest subjective interests, the most certain convictions of the true reality of their content,

Evangelical Church in Germany. 507

and, at the same time, the personal interests of the believer in their reality. Thus value judgments are subjective and personal. We are expressly told that they are not opposed to judgments of fact or actual existence, but only to the theoretic judgments of science. But at the same time these judgments are only personal, and never affirm actual existence. The elasticity of the meaning of these value judgments has been one secret of the great success of the Ritschlian theology, as it is given a place of prominence it never had in the earlier working out of his system by Ritschl.

The doctrine of value judgments is made especially applicable to miracles. In Ritschl’s first edition he only alluded to them, and did not make them a part of his teaching until 1883. They are its greatest

weakness as well.

Ritschl, in his conception of the work of Christ, rejected the distinction of active and passive obedience. The whole work of Christ belonged ^ to his kingly office. As Royal Prophet,

Christ.

Christ has power over the whole world.

This is shown in his independence of the world and his perfect patience in suffering. He overcame the world and broke its power. In the same person he identified God and man. This is a paradox for the reason, hut truth for the religious judgment.

As Royal Priest, according to the Divine covenant, the grace of the sacrifice of Christ has for its purpose to bring men into communion with God. This was wrought by his obedience in life and death. The mission of Christ is to realize the kingdom of God; he is the revelation of God as love.

508 History of the Christian Church.

The founding (making possible) the forgiveness of sins is the same identical act as the founding of the Christian Church. As Royal Priest, Christ The Church. _rui_e(j over the Church. The Church

of Christ is that greatness in which and through which the kingdom of God shall come to reality; it is the chosen object of the love of God. The Church and the preaching of the work of God are the necessary presupposition and mediation for all subjective Christianity. In this sense, the acquisition of Christian salvation is possible only in and through the Church. In the difference of age, sex, temperament, types of Christian confession, there is an inexhaustible range of kinds of religious estimates of Christ.

Ritschl was thorougly opposed to all evangelistic or revival efforts for Christian conversions. He rejected the possibility of a conscious conver-^The_I^‘®^in
of sion in childhood or before mature age.

Faith he defined as the perfect and clear expression for the subjective conviction of the truth of Christ’s religion. When he said this could only be expected in mature age, he went against all that we know of the normal psychology of religious experience.

Ritschl defines the Holy Spirit as the knowledge which God has of himself, and at the same time it is imparted to the Christian Church through ^T--^y the perfected revelation of God. For the Church has the same knowledge of God and his counsels toward men in the world which accords with the self-knowledge of God. He farther says that the Holy Spirit is the power of God which makes the Church capable of appropriating his reve

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lation as Father through his Son. This is true, but a most inadequate representation of the work of the Holy Spirit.

Ritschl repudiated all witness of the Holy Spirit to the believer’s acceptance in Christ, as he did all sense of the personal presence of God, and all that is called mysticism in communion with God; for Ritschl’s religion was of the intellect.

Assurance, he taught, comes as the confidence of a child in a loving father. Farther, he said, in words which make assurance the effect of works

Assurance

wrought after grace is given: “ There is no other way to convince one’s self of reconciliation with God through Christ but that which one experiences in active trust and confidence in God’s providence, in patient surrender to the sufferings God ordains as the means of testing and cleansing, in the humble awaiting of the unfolding of his direction of our fate, in the courage of independence of human judgments, especially so far as they rule religion; finall}', in daily prayer for the forgiveness of sins under the conditions that man, through the use of reconciliation, preserves his place in the Church of God.” ‘

In regard to eschatology, Ritschl taught only that eternal life is experienced here, and that there is no fear of death to those reconciled to God.

There is much that is suggestive and of enduring value, even in this brief survey. The assertions of the personality of God, the making of Christ,

^ , r • Summary.

as revealing God, the center of religious

and theological thinking; the assertions of the great

Christian truth as the Divinity of Christ, even under

5io History of the Christian Church.

the guise of value judgments, as indispensable to the Christian faith; the affirmation of the freedom of the will, and of the reality of reconciliation with God; the necessary value ascribed to the Church, as well as his own trust in God,—these are of unquestioned worth, and lead to a better Christendom than quantities of religious speculation without discernible basis, especially in Germany.

On the other hand, Ritschl’s limitation of his thought to the world, as against speculation and mys-Defects went to the length of leaving the

mass of mankind, those beyond the bounds of Christendom, entirely out of consideration, and without any opinion or judgment as to their fate. His position in regard to the beginning of Christian life and the conversion of children, has been alluded to. In his rejection of mysticism he repudiated an element of power which belongs to Christ’s Gospel and to all Christian leadership. Granted that there is much extravagance and much to criticise in manifestations of mysticism, especially in Germany, nevertheless it was an essential element in the experience and leadership of Bernard of Clairvaux, of Francis of Assisi, of Martin Luther, and of John Wesley. St. John’s doctrine of assurance is certainly far different from that of Albrecht Ritschl. Ritschl’s conception of sin and repentance is also defective.

Ritschl’s theology, with its elastic value judgments, is well adapted to an age of transition, and has met a real need; but it is far from the ultimate theology, or even that which must prevail in the twentieth century. This theology is that of criticism, and serves well that end; but the theology of the Church

Evangelical Church in Germany. 511

which is to conquer the semi-heathenism of Christendom, and the entire heathenism outside of it, must have truths and convictions to proclaim that have more than subjective validity.

The school of Ritschl, at the end of the century, counted Kaftan and Hermann as its theologians, and with them gather Harnack, Loofs, Schiirer, and a crowd of scholars of which any land might be proud. The accomplishment of these men in research has been of great value. But in Germany the great enemy to Christianity is materialistic socialism. The Socialists form a great political party, and their journals are edited and their party managed with acknowledged ability. Often editorial expressions in their periodicals upon current events are more in harmony with the teachings of Christ than those of their opponents. Yet the great mass of the party utterly reject the Christian faith, and are adherents of the materialistic doctrines of Carl Vogt and Buchner, which occupy a standpoint overcome by the educated classes. Who shall call these artisan populations to Christ? We fear, not the men of the school of Albrecht Ritschl. Who shall train the Churches of Germany to take their' part in the evangelization of the world?

Denmark and the Lutheran Church furnished three men of remarkable power and influ- _Denmark ence, whose careers ended in this period.

Soren Kirkegraad (1813-1855) was the most profound philosophical writer that Scandinavia has produced, and wrote in a style whose charm _Kirkegraad< was equal to the power of his thought.

He was never strong in body, but was rich, and re

512 History of the Christian Church.

mained unmarried. His greatest work, “ Either—Or,” appeared in 1843. He published thirty volumes, and left unpublished as many more. He taught that Christianity is a life; he was a thorough individualist. He left a lasting impress on the thought and literature of his native land.

Nicholas Frederick Severin Grundtvig (1785-1872) was a poet, a scholar, and renowned as an orator and

leader in the Christian Church. In his

Qrundtvig. . . _ _ _ , ,

university years, 1805-1808, he studied Shakespeare, Schiller, and Fichte, as well became the nephew of Steffens. He was greatly attracted while a tutor, after his graduation, by the old Norse Sagas. In 1808 he published his “Songs of the Edda” and “Northern Mythology;” the year following, “The Decline of Heroic Life in the North.” He served as his father’s vicar, 1811-1813; the next year he had a controversy with the Danish scientist, Oersted. In 1813-1815 he preached in Copenhagen, and then accepted the pastorate of the Church of the Redeemer at Christianshaven. There he translated Beowulf, Saxo Grammaticus, and Sturlesson’s “Saga.” In 1825 he left the State Church. The king sent him to England to study.

Grundtvig had some peculiar personal opinions. He held that the Apostles’ Creed was orally, word for word, delivered by Christ to his disciples; this, and the baptismal formula, made men Christians. Indeed, he struck the Ten Commandments from his Catechism, and declared that the preaching of repentance is not necessary for the children of light. He was an ardent nationalist. As an orator he was unexcelled, and un

Evangelical Church in Denmark. 513

til extreme age preserved his impressive bearing and the fiery glance of his eye.

He, after having been so long without its pale, was bishop in the Danish Church from 1863 until his death.

Hans Lars Martensen (1808-1884) ^has been called by many Germans the greatest Evangelical theologian of the century. His “ Christian Dogmatics,” published in 1849, was translated ^Marten8en‘ into most European languages, even into Greek. It is said to have had as wide an influence on Evangelical thought as any volume of the century. Though dependent upon Confessional Lutheranism and the Hegelian philosophy, for profundity of thought, comprehensiveness of grasp, lucidity, beauty, and conciseness of expression, it has not been approached in the theological writings of the century. It is the one work of genius in theology after Schleiermacher.

Martensen studied in the University of Copenhagen. In 1832 he visited Berlin, Munich, Vienna, and Paris. He studied especially the philosophy of the Middle Ages. In 1837 he taught Moral Philosophy in his Alma Mater. In 1840 he lectured on Speculative Dogmatics. In 1845 he was appointed court preacher, and in 1854 primate of Denmark, the See which he retained until his death. In 1871 he published “Christian Ethics;” in 1879, “Jacob Boehme;” and in 1883, his “Autobiography.” He was a warm friend of Dorner. The friendship of these men stands in strong contrast with the isolation of Ritschl. As a prelate he resisted Grundtvig, and was a High Tory in literature, politics, and philosophy.

514 History of the Christian Church.

The Reformed Church on the Continent had little with which to match his magnificent display of scholarship and literary productions.

Johannes Heinrich August Ebrard (i818-1888), however, in literary activity was no equal match for any of them. He was born at Erlangen, Ebrard. _wk_ere took his degree. He began teaching there in 1841, and was at Zurich, 1844-1847, when he returned to Erlangen. There he taught until he was made Consistorial Councilor at Speyer, 1853-1861. Resigning there, he returned to Erlangen. After 1875 he was pastor of the French Church there. In 1842 he published his “Scientific Criticism of the Gospel History;” 1845-1846, the “ Dogma and History of the Lord’s Supper;” 1851, “ Christian Dogmatics;” “ History of the Christian Church and Dogma,” four volumes, 1865-1866. Many of his works appeared in English, as his edition of Ohlshausen’s “Commentary.” He visited twice the United States. Though belonging to the Reformed Church, he rejected from his heart the doctrine of predestination.

Frederick Louis Godet (1812-1900) won a large reading public in English-speaking countries. Born at Neufchatel, Switzerland, he studied at Bonn and Berlin. From 1838 to 1844 he was preceptor to the Crown Prince of Prussia. From 1845 to 1851 he supplied different churches in his native Canton. In 1866 he became pastor in Neufchatel. There he also served as Professor of Exeget-ical and Critical Theology, 1850-1887, when his son took his place.

His Commentaries on St. John, 1863-1865; St.

Evangelical Church in France. 515

Luke, 1871; Romans, 1879-1880; Corinthians, 1886; and his Old and New Testament Studies, 1873-1874, two volumes, have had a wide circulation, and have deserved it for their learning, acuteness and good sense.

Edmund Dehault de Pressense (1824-1891) attained reputation as a preacher, a writer, and a statesman. After studying in Paris, he was two years in Lausanne with Vinet, and then ^{e ressen8e}' two more in Berlin. He was pastor of the Free Evangelical Congregation, 1846-1870, which was independent of the State. In 1871-1876 he served as deputy in the National Assembly; in 1883 he was elected senator for life. He wrote largely in an easy style, and most of his works were translated into English. The chief of them are “The Redeemer,” 1854, a volume of sermons; “Jesus Christ: His Life and Work,” 1866; “ The First Three Centuries of the Christian Church,” 1858-1878; these were in reply to M. Renan. “The Church and the French Revolution,” a valuable work, appeared in 1864, and a “ Study of Origins,” in 1882.

In speaking of Kuenen, something was said of the condition of the Re- ^The_HoJ]“„d^h
,n formed Church in Holland.

In these years there were two able leaders of the Evangelical cause. The eldest of these was John Jacob Van Oosterzee (1817-1888). He was educated at Utrecht, and pastor at Eemnes, _0osy*_rⁿ_zee> 1841-1843; Alkmaar, 1843-1844; and Rotterdam, 1844-1862. He was then called to a professorship in the University of Utrecht, 1862-1882. He

516 History of the Christian Church.

was learned, eloquent, and pious. Most of his publications have appeared in English; among them are “Christian Dogmatics,” 1872; “ Practical Theology,” 1878. In Lange’s Commentary he wrote on Luke, the Pastoral Epistles, and Philemon. In 1872 appeared in English his “ Theology of the New Testament.” There were published ten volumes of his sermons.

Abraham Kuyper, born in 1837, is the other Evangelical leader in Holland. He was educated at Leyden -under Scholten and Kuenen. He knew from personal experience the lack of vitality and spiritual power in their teachings, and he represents the strongest reaction against them. This came from his finding, studying, and winning a prize for an edition of the works of John a Lasco, the Polish Reformer of the sixteenth century. From that time he has been a sturdy Calvinist. As pastor at Beest and Utrecht he stood by the side of Groen as leader of the Old Reform party in the State Church from 1869. On Groen’s death in 1876, he succeeded to the leadership of the party. He became editor of the Standard in 1870, and later founded the Herald. Since 1874 he has been Deputy in the National Legislature. In 1878 he founded a Union to support free Christian schools. It has an income of $50,000 a year. In 1880 he founded a free university, independent of the State. Preachers who followed him were excluded from the National Synod; but in 1885 one hundred and fifty Churches followed the example of Amsterdam in welcoming these preachers as their pastors. They have their independent organization,

Evangelical Church in Holland. 517

but there is no formal breach with the State Church. These Churches, under the lead of Kuyper, have entered into an alliance with the Roman Catholics. Their point of contact is religious instruction in the schools of the land. The opening of the new century saw this leader of the Calvinistic reaction against the naturalism and Free Religion of Scholten and Kuenen the Prime Minister of Holland.

Chapter VII.

THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

The last half of the nineteenth century saw the growing power and influence of Great Britain as it witnessed the increasing social amelioration of her artisans and lower classes. The last twenty years, it is true, saw the rise of new and successful trade rivals in the United States and Germany, so that she could no longer hold undisputed her unique position of command in manufacture and commerce; but the years under review beheld the consolidation and immense increase of her power in India, Burmah, and Afghanistan. At the same time came into her possession the keys of Africa and the East in the occupation of the Nile Valley from Alexandria to Khartoum, and her control of the Suez Canal. Besides these, she had founded and saw grow, in prosperity and power, three great empires in Australia and New Zealand, in Canada, and South Africa. The turn of the centuries saw her overcome her chief foe in South Africa, and remove the bitterest grievance of her rule in the solution of the land question in Ireland. In repairing two capital mistakes of her policy, she has been hardly less successful. The Crimean war was a blunder; but Britain has had the good fortune to see Germany take her place in supporting the Turkish Empire as a

518

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 519

buffer State against Russia. Her support of the South in the Civil War in the United States was a great blunder; but it was repaired by the Treaty of Washington in 1871, and by friendly conduct during the Spanish-American War.

In the United States, Great Britain has a trade rival whose resources and use of them she must respect and heed; but she also has the friendly support of one of the greatest of the world powers, one having the same language, literature, political traditions, and ideas. These two in alliance would fear no other combination of the nations. The rise of Germany as a check against plans of French aggression, which made uneasy the first seventy years of the century, and as a defense against Russian preponderance, has greatly strengthened the position of Great Britain.

In all that gives rule to nations; in prestige, in power, no other century ever saw Great Britain in the position of advantage which she occupied at the sun-rising of the twentieth after Christ. It may be truly said that this position is not undeserved. Serious are the blots of Turkish support, the Chinese Opium War, the fall of Khartoum, and the desertion of Armenia. But English statesmen have had the ability to learn. The improved condition of England’s population. the content of her self-governing colonies, and her government of her dependencies, in spite of the Indian Mutiny and the Boer War, are to her immense credit. After all deductions are made, she has given India and Egypt the best rule they have had in a thousand years. Her administrative rule among dependent races has been the ablest and most just the nineteenth century knew.

520 History of the Christian Church.

Of the statesmen under whom this prosperity came, Palmerston, Disraeli, and Lord Derby were professed Christians and members of the Church of England, but thorough men of the world; Gladstone, Lord John Russell, and Lord Salisbury, like Lord Shaftesbury, were not only members of the National Church, but personally religious and earnest in their Christian faith. The latter may be said of Cobden and Bright, who were typical English Liberals, hating slavery and absolutism, and believing in popular government, popular education, and free trade.

In literature, the last fifty years of the reign of Victoria did not fail of splendid examples. They saw the culmination of the renown of Tennyson and Browning as they took their place among the bards of all time. This was true of the princes among English essayists, Macaulay and Carlyle, and their successors, Ruskin and Matthew Arnold. Two clergymen were little beneath them in command of the grace and beauty of the mother tongue, John H. Newman and James Martineau. Goldwin Smith and Frederick Harrison wrote English of singular purity and power.

It was the great age of the English novel, and Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot were its masters. At a distance followed Charles Kingsley, Charles Reade, Anthony Trollope, and Sir Walter Besant. In history, Freeman, Froude, Green, and Gardiner kept up the goodly succession; while science had able exponents in Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall. In philosophic thought the men of distinction were John

S. Mill, Sir William Hamilton, Thomas H. Green, Adam Sedgwick, and Edward Caird.

In education this was England’s progressive era.

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In 1850 an Educational Commission was appointed to revise the statutes and work of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge; Arthur, later Dean,

_T. j • English

Stanley was its secretary. It reported m _Educatj_on. 1858; the mediaeval statutes were abolished, the professorships were increased, the Fellowships were almost all thrown open to merit, and the income of the scholarships was augmented, while their number was increased. Religious tests were greatly lessened and modified, but were not abolished until 1871. In 1877 further reforms followed, which brought in better teaching in natural science, larger incomes for the universities as distinguished from the colleges, and a more effective use of Fellowships and work from the professors. Clerical restrictions and advantages were greatly modified where not utterly abolished. University education became less Churchly, and for a time certainly much less religious, and John S. Mill and Professor Jowett, whose sobriquet was “the old heathen,” took Newman’s place of influence at Oxford. At Cambridge ruled a different spirit, though neither Green nor Sedgwick made for an aggressive Christianity; that came with the visit of Moody and Sankey in 1882.

Universities were founded for those who, on account of the religious tests, and, later, on account of the expense, could not avail themselves of the advantages of Oxford and Cambridge. Such were London University, founded in 1827; Durham University, established in 1837; and Victoria University, with its seat at Manchester, dating from 1851.

In 1870, Foster’s Educational Act gave the children of the English people a right to the rudiments

522 History of the Christian Church.

of an education. In this they were much behind Scotland, Germany, and the United States; but the law has been well enforced, and the English lower classes now can read and write.

It was in such an era of change and vast progress that Evangelical Christianity did its work in Great Britain and Ireland.

The Church of England.

The first great event in the constitutional history of the Church of England was the reassembling of the Progress of Convocation of Canterbury in 1852, after an the Oxford intermission since 1717. The Convoca-Movement. ^_{ons Q}f Canterbury and York now hold their regular sessions.

In the first twenty years of this period, the Oxford Movement kept on its way with increasing power. After Newman’s secession, and especially after the reforms of the Universities Commission, it lost its hold at Oxford. But in the Church at large, and especially in sending clergymen and men of rank to Rome, this was the height of its influence. Robert I. Wilberforce and his brother, and a crowd of others, went over to Rome, while Newman prophesied of the second summer of the Roman Catholic Church in England. Newman wrought for seven years without success at a Roman Catholic university in Dublin, and then again at Birmingham. Manning’s influence was sufficient to prevent his opening a school at Oxford.

So far as active work is concerned, Newman’s life, after his adhesion to the Roman Catholic Church, was a failure. There are few more pathetic letters from a great man conscious of his powers than that which he

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 523

wrote to liis friend, Father Whitty, of the Society of Jesus, October 19, 1865. It is as follows:

“ My Dear Father Whitty,—I thank you very much for your most kind letter; and thank you heartily for your prayers, which I value very much. It is very kind in you to be anxious about me, but, thank God, you have no need. Of course it is a constant source of sadness to me that I have done so little for Him during a long twenty years; but then I think, and with comfort, that I have ever tried to act as others told me, and if I have not done more, it is because I have not been put to do more, or have been stopped when I attempted to do more.

“ The cardinal [Wiseman] brought me from Little-more to Oscott; he sent me to Rome; he stationed and left me in Birmingham. When the Holy Father wished me to begin the Dublin Catholic University, I did so at once. When the Synod of Oscott gave me to do the new translation of the Scriptures, I began it without a word. When the cardinal asked me to interfere in the matter of the ‘ Rambler,’ I took on myself, to my sore disgust, a great trouble and trial. Lastly, when my bishop, proprio motu [on his own motion], asked me to undertake the mission at Oxford, I at once committed myself to a very expensive purchase of land, and began, as he wished me, to collect money for a church.

“ In all these matters, I think, in spite of many incidental mistakes, I should, on the whole, have done a work, had I been allowed, or aided to go on with them; but it has been God’s blessed will that I should have been stopped. If I could get out of my mind

524 History of the Christian Church.

the notion that I could do something and am not doing it, nothing could be happier, more peaceful, or more to my taste, than the life I lead.

“Though I have left notice of the catechism to the end of the letter, be sure I value it in itself and as coming from you. The pope will be very glad to hear the author of it.

“ Ever yours, affectionately,

“John H. Newman.”

This letter, showing the failure of the Church of Rome to use or wisely direct the ablest English convert she ever had, or honor him until he was almost eighty years old, will repel thoughtful men from her communion more than Newman’s “ Grammar of Assent ” will win. But what was loss to Newman and to the Roman Catholic Church was gain to Christianity and to English Literature. His “Apologia Pro Vita Sua,” in 1864, will ever be the lasting memorial of his greatness. Its sincerity, its evident conscientiousness, and its grace of style, rank it with the great records of noble souls. Some poems written later have the exquisite flavor of his genius. In 1865, at Keble’s parsonage, he met, for the last time, Pusey and the author of the “Christian Year.” In 1879 the new pope made Newman a cardinal of the Roman Church; eight years after his life-long friend, Pusey, he left the ranks of the Church militant for that land “ where severed ties are knitted up,” August 11, 1890. The great leader of the Oxford Movement had long survived his illusions.

A very different fate was that of his fellow-convert to Rome, Dean Manning, of Chichester. He was in

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school at Rome, 1851-1854. In 1857 he became provost of the Chapter of Westminster and Archbishop of Westminster in 1865. He enjoyed the fullest confidence of Pius IX, and was more papal than the pope. With Newman and his friends he had neither sympathy nor patience, as they were “ minimizers of doctrine.”

In the Vatican Council he was a leading spirit, and took a prominent part with the supporters of infallibility. He lived long enough after the Vatican Council himself very largely and trenchantly to minimize the decree he had so ardently sought to secure. For twenty-five years he was the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England. Yet he also survived his illusions. With L,eo XIII he had none of the influence he wielded with Pius IX. The cares of his office with “the Irish occupation of England,” to use his own phrase, did not meet the ideals of his most English soul. In his later years, with all the energy of his nature, he threw himself into reform movements, especially the temperance reform, to the great benefit of his people. In 1875 he was made cardinal; but, as his Roman Catholic biographer says, “ his heart was with Lavington,” the -Lavington of his pre-Roman days. In January, 1892, he followed his more lofty-natured and greater countryman, Cardinal Newman, beyond the shadows of earth’s fleeting day.

Dr. Pusey most vigorously nourished his illusions in the first twenty years of this period. In 1853 he preached his sermon on the Holy Eucharist, taking extreme sacramental ground. His persuading young girls to go to confession against the wish of their parents, led to a breach between him and his bishop,

526 History of the Christian Church.

Samuel Wilberforce, of Oxford. His three labored and futile Eirenicons showed the measure of that hope of corporate reunion with Rome which was shattered by the Vatican Council. The great aim of his life was further off than ever. No Englishman again will work so hard to realize it. Henceforth he devoted his energies to the defense of all that he conceived menaced by the oncoming tide of Liberalism, and to the spiritual direction and advice of the numerous crowd of clergy and laity who waited upon him. This first endeavor brought him into an unseemly opposition to the increase of the income of Professor Jowett, then to a violent attack upon the “ Essays and Reviews,” and a bitter opposition to the consecration of Frederic Temple, afterward Archbishop of Canterbury, as Bishop of Exeter. For Pusey’s character as a man of holy life, and with a sincere desire to promote holiness in others, neither his narrow-mindedness nor his astuteness as a party leader could prevent the reverence of men of all parties. He died September, 1882.

Their companion in the Oxford Movement, John Keble, died in 1866, and Keble College, Oxford, was founded in his name in 1868, to be a nursery and school of the sacramental principles and traditional views of the Oxford Movement.

Henry P. Liddon, the ablest preacher among the High Churchmen of his time, and, in many respects, of his generation, became principal in 1854, of Cudde-son Hall, a school for the training of the clergy, under the care of the Bishop of Oxford. In 1866 he delivered the Bampton Lecture on “The Divinity of Christ,” perhaps the ablest apologetic work of the period, one which, in many respects, will never be out

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 527

of date. In 1870 he was made Canon of St. Paul’s, a position which his character, his learning, and his eloquence fitted him to fill with honor until his death; for it he declined more than one bishopric. He died in September, 1890.

Richard W. Church, more broadminded and versatile than these men, became Dean of St. Paul’s in 1871, succeeding the poet and scholar, Henry H. Milman, author of “ The History of Latin Christianity.” Church did honor to the place, and, deeply loved, died in December, 1890.

The history of the Church of England came to be largely influenced by its primates in the nineteenth century, from the election of Archibald Campbell Tait as Archbishop of Canterbury. The ^ArCja,^lt_>^hop new Archbishop was a Scotchman, born in 1811; his mother died three years later. He had his preparatory training in Edinburgh Academy, where he led the school. In 1827 he entered Glasgow University. It was here, he says, that “ Evangelical Gospel truth first came home to me, from the preaching of two men, Dr. Welch and Mr. George Smith.” In 1829 he won an exhibition at Balliol College, Oxford. The next year he went to Oxford, and was confirmed in the Church of England, and won a scholarship. In 1833 he graduated first class, and, after a trip on the Continent, won a Fellowship in Balliol, in 1834. The next year he became tutor in the same college. The year following he was ordained. In 1839 he was a student at Bonn. In 1842 he became head master at Rugby, succeeding Dr. Arnold. Here he made his reputation. The next year he married, and two years later visited Italy. In 1849 he became Dean of Car

528 History of the Christian Church.

lisle. In the succeeding six years he showed his administrative ablities in the restoration of the Cathedral; and here he suffered the severest blow of his life in the loss of five young daughters, through scarlet fever, in March and April, 1856. None who have read the profoundly touching account of their illness and death in the “ Life ” of their mother will ever forget it. In 1856, Dr. Tait was consecrated Bishop of London, and in 1868 he succeeded to the See of Canterbury, dying in 1882.

As Bishop of London, Dr. Tait gave his attention to evangelistic work and to diocesan missions. In the “ Essays and Reviews ” controversy, he sided with his friend, Arthur Stanley, against the prosecution. In

1863, Stanley was made Dean of Westminster, which position he held until his death in 1881. He became the great dean, and of the Cathedral, in those years, he was “ the charm, the glory, and the soul.” In 1867, there met the first Lambeth, or Pan-Anglican, Council. Seventy-six bishops were present. In 1869 came the election of Dr. Temple as Bishop of Exeter. The violence of his opponents, on account of his connection with the “ Essays and Reviews,” can be gauged from Dr. Pusey’s charging him with having “participated in the ruin of countless .souls.” A clergyman described Dr. Temple’s consecration “as, perhaps, the greatest sin, with respect to fidelity to revealed truth, in which the Church of England has been involved since the Reformation.” In 1870 the Bishopric of Dover was constituted as a suffragan to the See of Canterbury, to care for the peculiarly diocesan business and duties of the Archiepiscopal See. In 1870 the Canterbury revision of the King

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 529

James Version of the English Bible was begun. The New Testament was finished and published in 1881; the Old Testament in 1885.

In 1871 the Purchas judgment condemned the vestments, the eastward position of the celebrant, the wafer-bread, and the mixed chalice in the administration of the holy communion, as illegal. This was modified by the Risdall judgment, 1877, which declared the vestments and wafer-bread illegal, but authorized the eastward position, provided the manual acts were not concealed from the congregation.

In 1871 there arose a great agitation concerning the compulsory use of the so-called Athanasian Creed in divine service. Lord Shaftesbury’s name _The led those of seven thousand laymen pro- Athanasian testing against such use. Dr. Pusey op- ^Creed* posed any change as a betrayal of the faith. A clergyman wrote the archbishop, asking him how, in his dying hour, he could have any hope of mercy for this attempt to “ depreciate, or set aside, one great portion of the Catholic faith.” On the advocacy of the archbishop, in 1873, the following rubric on that Creed was adopted:

“ For the removal of' doubts, and to prevent disquieting in the use of the Creed commonly called the Creed of St. Athanasius, this Synod [the convocation of Canterbury] doth solemnly declare:

“1. That the Confession of our Christian Faith, commonly called the Creed of St. Athanasius, doth not make any addition to the faith as contained in the Holy Scripture, but warneth against errors which, from time to time, have arisen in the Church of Christ. “ 2. That, as Holy Scripture in divers places doth

530 History of the Christian Church.

promise life to them that believe and declare the condemnation of them that believe not, so doth the Church in this Confession declare the necessity, for all who would be in a state of salvation, of holding fast the Catholic faith, and the great peril of rejecting the same. Wherefore the warnings in the Confession of Faith are to be understood no otherwise than the like warnings in Holy Scripture; for we must receive God’s threatenings, even as his promises, in such wise as they are generally set forth in Holy Writ. Moreover, the Church doth not herein pronounce judgment on any particular person, or persons, God alone being judge of all.”

In 1874 a Public Worship Regulation Act was adopted, which was a rock of offense to the ritualist party. Some of their members, as Messrs. Tooth and Green, lay a long time in prison on account of infractions of this law, and would not accept pardon. The Lincoln judgment rendered it largely nugatory. In 1875 and 1882, Mr. Moody and Mr. Sankey visited England, and accomplished great good at Oxford, Cambridge, and London. Lord Shaftesbury said that “ Moody would do more in an hour than Canon Liddon in a century.” Nevertheless, the archbishop would not give his aid or countenance to the movement. But in 1876 he held a conference at Lambeth; six English bishops meeting twenty-two Nonconformist ministers and two clergymen of the Church of Scotland.

In 1877 ^an immense excitement was produced by the publication of “The Priest in Absolution,” a translation of Gaume’s “ Manual for the Use of Roman Catholic Priests in the Confessional.” The book

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 531

was bitterly denounced in the House of Lords, and was withdrawn from sale. The Second Lambeth Conference was held in 1878, one hundred bishops being present. They adopted a Declaration on Confession, which affirmed: “This special provision [for occasional confession of those in trouble or sick], however, does not authorize the ministers of the Church to require, from any who may resort to them to open their grief, a particular or detailed enumeration of all their sins, or to require private confession previous to receiving ‘Holy Communion/ or to enjoin or even encourage any practice of habitual confession to a priest, or to teach that such practice of habitual confession, or the being subject to what has been termed the direction of a priest, is a condition of attaining to the highest spiritual life.” The archbishop wrote his own view in answer to an inquiry: “You ask if it is necessary to go to confession before receiving Holy Communion? To this I answer, Certainly not. The Church of England does not recognize what is commonly called sacramental confession, still less is such confession inculcated by our Church as necessary.”

In 1880, sixteen thousand clergymen, led by Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln, protested against the Burials Act allowing Nonconformists to bury in English churchyards with their own burial service. The bill, nevertheless, passed in September; but only at rare intervals have any cared to avail themselves of its provisions.

The year 1878 was an eventful one for Archbishop Tait. His daughter Edith married his secretary and chaplain, the present Primate of England; his son, recently ordained and just returned from America,

532 History of the Christian Church.

died; and in December the devoted wife and mother followed him. Archbishop Tait was interested in the centennial of the Sunday-school movement in 1880, and in the appearance of the Revised Version of the English Bible. The death of Dean Stanley and President Garfield deeply touched him. On Advent Sunday, 1882, he ceased from earthly toil, and entered into rest.

Archbishop Tait was more of a statesman than a Churchman. The foreign news was always read to him first, and he cared comparatively little for Church periodicals and news; these came last. He was a Broad Churchman, and had no sympathy with ritualism or auricular confession. Though the Bennett judgment in 1872 decided that “ the objective, real, actual, and spiritual presence” could be legally taught in the Church of England, Dr. Tait would not have cared to teach it. He was a man with many-sided intellectual tastes, and read largely in secular literature until his death.

He had admirable qualities for his great position. While of sound scholarship, he was not an eloquent preacher, but was the most persuasive orator in the House of Lords that has occupied the See of Canterbury in more than a hundred years. Lord Granville said: “Of all our great speakers, none had more the gift of persuasiveness. This arose from a sense of his strength, earnestness, gentleness, and charity. He united, to a remarkable degree, dignity and simplicity.” In his letters, “he said exactly what he meant, but he said it with a courtesy which does not always accompany straightforwardness and simplicity of style.”

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 533

His manner of doing business reveals a first-class administrator, with the instincts of a gentleman and a Christian. “ First,” says his secretary and son-in-law, now Archbishop Davidson, “his invariable anxiety was to regard the matter rather than the manner of every letter he received. ‘Angry? Of course he is. Never mind that; what is it he asks me to do?’ The letter might be prosy or longwinded, or curt even to rudeness. It might be overflowing with personal grievances, or sternly reticent or reserved. It was all the same. ‘What is his point? What do you gather are the facts?’ If the story was a long one, especially in colonial matters, where our geography or history was at fault, he would have written out for us in black and white a brief, cold statement of the unvarnished facts, and then, if necessary, he would go into the whole matter with that strange penetration which seemed to carry him straight to the point of a controversy, whether in great things or small. I have never known any one else who could, with the same quick clearness, disentangle the threads of an intricate correspondence on some entirely novel subject. He would always dictate an answer or decision the moment he had listened to the letter, and would then leave it, if necessary, to ‘ simmer ’ for a day, and to be criticised from end to end before it was sent off. And, generally, if the matter was a complicated one, he would at the last moment, before signing the letter, restate the case aloud in a few clear sentences, as he walked about the room. ‘ The man asks me to do so and so. I have answered that I won’t, and for two reasons: first, that it isn’t my business; and secondly, that I think he is in the wrong. Will that do?’ ”

534 History of the Christian Church.

Archbishop Tait was a man of sincere piety. In

1864, Bishop Whipple asked him, “Why do you permit the ritualism of those clergy in Bast London?” With deep feeling and with tears in his eyes he answered : “ Bishop, these men realize that those poor lost souls can be saved, and that our blessed Lord is their Savior as he is ours. Who am I, to meddle with such work as they are doing, in the way they think best, for those who are going down to death?”

Few words of greater practical wisdom for men liable to worry or overstrain, or to spiritual forgetfulness under the pressure of administrative detail, have been spoken than these of Archbishop Tait: “Two things are essential to a man’s due discharge of each day’s round of monotonous and often tiresome duties. The first, to keep the spirit fresh by constant prayer; the second, to quicken and enlarge the intelligence by the constant reading, under whatever difficulties or drawbacks, of books upon other subjects than those belonging to working hours.”

The successor of Dr. Tait in the See of Canterbury was Edward White Benson (1829-1896). Dr.

Benson was educated with Bishops Light-^ABenson!^{P anc}^ Westcott at King Edward’s School,

Birmingham, and the three were at Trinity College, Cambridge, and until their deaths the most devoted friends. This friendship had important effects upon the after career of each of them, and especially upon that of Benson, the youngest of them. Benson’s father, a chemist and manufacturer, died while his son was young. In 1848 he entered Cambridge. Two years later his sister was ill with typhoid fever. He sat in his room at college writing a letter to his

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 535

mother, expressing his sympathy and anxiety, and hoping she was better, when the message came that she was dead. He took the train for home, and arrived only to learn that his mother, overwearied with the care of her daughter, had died the night after his sister’s decease. He found also that she had so invested her property in an annuity upon her own life that there was but $500 left for the whole family. For young Benson there seemed as the sole duty and prospect to leave the university and seek to support those depending upon him. He went back to Cambridge to prepare for this future. As he entered the quadrangle, Mr. Martin, the treasurer of the college, met him; he was well-to-do and unmarried. That night he called upon Benson in his room, and arranged that he should go on unhindered in his college course. This unlooked-for and providential kindness was the turning-point in the career of the future Archbishop of Canterbury. Well did the young student justify the confidence placed in him. In 1852 he graduated and took the highest honor, the chancellor’s medal. No other triumph of his life gave him greater joy. His eldest son bore his benefactor’s name. -

The same year he went to Rugby as one of the masters of the school. Two years later he traveled on the Continent, visiting Rome, and was ordained deacon. After seven years at Rugby he was chosen headmaster at Wellington College, a new institution founded for the training of the sons of officers of the British army. There he remained, and made a fine record as a schoolmaster, until 1873. In these fourteen years the man was formed. His intellectual de

536 History of the Christian Church.

velopment was most influenced by Dr. Arnold, the famous master of Rugby. In religion he was earnest and devout. In ecclesiastical relations he was a High Churchman. He loved pomp and ceremony and ritual. As his son says, “ He had a liturgical mind.” Without largeness of view or profundity of thought, he had a firm and comprehensive grasp of detail. Without the precision of a statesman so as to forecast the ultimate issues of a policy, he had that command of the details of a situation which mark a man of business and of administrative capacity. He was without special powers of persuasion, and was subject to attacks of profound depression to the end of his life. More than preacher or great prelate, his were the qualities of a great master of a school; for one can not but think that the service he most enjoyed was his weekly exposition of the Greek New Testament to a large class of ladies of culture and rank, quite in the Rugby and Wellington manner.

But Edward White Benson was a man of character, and his scholarship, if not so profound or accurate as that of some others, was both vivid and vital, qualities by no means to be despised. He longed for more direct service in the Church. In 1869 he had been made chaplain to Bishop Wordsworth, of Lincoln, by whom he was greatly attracted, and to whom and his family he was tenderly attached. At Wellington his salary was ten thousand dollars per year, and he was married the year his work began there. Financial independence to a man tried as Benson had been was not a thing to be despised by the head of a growing family; yet in December, 1872, he made the decision

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 537

and left Wellington to become chancellor of the Bishop of Lincoln, at an income just one-half of what he had before received. Three years later he was called as the first bishop to the newly-created See of Truro, for Cornwall. Here, in six years, he achieved a great success in establishing the Church of England in Cornwall, the most Methodist county in England, and in founding Truro Cathedral, the corner-stone of which was laid in 1880. The building is to cost some $600,

000 to complete, and a quarter of that sum was raised during Dr. Benson’s occupancy of the See. His skill and success, and his sympathies as a High Churchman made him the successor of Archbishop Tait, and he was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in March,

1883.

The chief events of his fourteen years’ administration of the Primacy of the English Church were the addition of a House of Laymen, 1886, The Third to the sessions of Convocation, the Third ^Lambe*^h c<m-Lambeth Conference, the Lincoln judg- Lambeth * ment, the Clergy Discipline Bill, the Pat- Declaration, ronage Bill, and the effort to secure the papal approbation for the orders of the Church of England. The Third Lambeth Conference found one hundred and forty-five.bishops present; two hundred and nine had been invited. Its most noteworthy action was the formulation of the essentials of communion with other branches of the Christian Church. These, known as the Lambeth Declaration, are as follows:

A. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as containing all things necessary to salvation ; and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.

538 History of the Christian Church.

B. The Apostle’s Creed as the baptismal symbol; and the Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.

C. The two sacraments ordained by Christ himself—Baptism and the Supper of the Lord—ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of Institution and of the elements ordained by him.

D. The Historic Episcopate, “ locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of his Church.” They also “ gladly and thankfully recognize the real religious work which is carried 011 by Christian bodies not of our communion.” This declaration has not drawn a single organized body of Christians into communion with the Church of England, but it has had great influence in realizing a much larger and stronger bond of Christian fraternity, and more in the Church of England than outside of it.

The Lincoln judgment was pending for two years, 1888—November 21, 1890. It was occasioned by a

_The suit brought against Dr. King, Bishop of

Lincoln Lincoln, for illegal acts performed during judgment. ^j_vj_ne service. In the case, Archbishop Benson showed a thorough mastery of all the details connected with it, and the judgment he rendered has been generally admired for its learning, its reasoning, and its impartiality, though the effect was greatly to strengthen the hands of the High Church party. Its restrictions on extravagant ritual were little heeded, and this has made necessary .further legislation. The conclusions of this judgment are as follows:

1. The Mixed Chalice (water with the wine). The

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 539

mixed chalice is not condemned, but the action must not be performed during the service.

2. The Eastward Position. The eastward position is allowed, but “ any special significance which at once makes the position itself important and condemns it” was entirely and strongly set aside. The position was not essential. “The imputed sacrificial aspect of the eastward position is new and forced.” Hence liberty is granted.

3. Manual acts must be in sight of the congregation. This is contrary to the practice of the Church of Rome.

4. Singing of the “Agnus Dei ” after the prayer of consecration is allowed.

5. The ceremony of ablution after the dismission of the service is allowed.

6. Lights are allowed, but must not be lighted during service.

7. Signing the cross in absolution and benediction is forbidden.

The Clergy Discipline Bill, which, after strenuous

effort, the archbishop succeeded in getting enacted in

1892, simplified the procedure so that it 1 -1 , , , ^{The Cler}*y

became possible to remove clergymen from Discipline and

their livings who were of notoriously evil ^Pa^^r®_i"^age

or of scandalous lives. That this was not

done in Wesley’s time shows the tremendous inertia

of the English Parliament in dealing with Church

matters.

An even more difficult subject engaged the efforts of the archbishop in 1886, 1887, and 1893,—that of Church patronage. The provisions of the bills he favored, only became law in 1898. To Americans

540 History of the Christian Church.

they seemed like very slight modifications of abuses whose reform can not be long delayed. These modifications required the sales of advowson, or right of patronage, to be registered, forbade the sale of next presentation or sale by auction of any right of patronage (except as part of an estate), and invalidated agreement to exercise the right of patronage in favor of a particular person. A stringent declaration was required of the candidate against simony.

A bishop also may refuse to institute the candidate because three years have not elapsed since he was ordained deacon, on account of physical or mental infirmity, evil life, grave pecuniary embarrassments, misconduct, or neglect of duty in ecclesiastical office.

A bishop also can not admit to a benefice until one month after intention to do so has been notified to the Church wardens. Benefices formerly donative (that is, given without regard to the bishop) after 1898 became presentative; that is, required the bishop’s institution. It is sad to think that, one thousand nine hundred years after Christ, the right to appoint a pastor of Christ’s flock is still in Evangelical England a property right, and is bought and sold in most of the parishes of the Church of England.

In 1894, through the eager efforts of Lord Halifax, began the second movement after the failure of Dr.

Leo xni’s Pusey’s “ Eirenicons,” to reach some nearer Denial of the approximation to a recognition by the onJer^of the^{6 Roman} Catholic Church of the Church of church of England as preparatory to an ecclesiastical England, intercourse and communion between them. As in the case of Dr. Pusey before the Vatican Council, some French ecclesiastics were interested in the

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 541

affair and a “ Revue Anglo-Romaine ” was started. By a zealous propaganda, Mr. Gladstone’s support for the movement was secured. Then the archbishop was besieged. How far he yielded is not quite clear; but at least the appearance was gained that he sanctioned a movement which he owed to his office most vigorously to repel. Thus, with his implied sanction, the orders, and hence ordinations, of the English Church, his fellow-prelates and his own included, were submitted to the scrutiny of a papal congregation. In September, 1896, appeared the Papal Bull “Apostolicae Curae,” in which the archbishop and the High Church party found that Leo XIII, to their intense chagrin, pronounced the orders of the Church of England null and void. They were so pronounced on account of defects in form up to 1662, and from that year defective in intention on the part of the framers of the Prayer Book of that date.

This is altogether the severest blow that the Oxford Movement as originally designed, and the ritualistic party of the English Church, had sustained since the Vatican Council. It ends all hope of corporate reunion except on the basis of complete surrender; as Archbishop Benson wrote to Lord Halifax, “ It is impossible that any step could be taken [toward a communion with Rome] whilst the validity of our English orders remained unacknowledged.” It ought to be said, also, that the course of Leo XIII was the only one consistent with truth and honesty. The ritualistic fatuity in regard to historic facts never received clearer illustration or brought greater humiliation upon themselves or the Church to which they belonged.

542 History of the Christian Church.

The High Church party has the supremacy in the Church of England; but the power and influence of the ritualistic movement has passed its zenith. In 1889, Archbishop Benson visited Oxford, and he wrote: “ But in spite of all [Paget, Gore, etc.], a gradual alienation of intellect is in progress from the ritualistic school. I see in this school what Newman speaks of as ‘ higher tints of summer past,’ a grand autumnal coloring, which has nothing but winter to follow it. It will not leave such laymen as both Arnold and Newman left behind them, who have no successor.

I believe the hard work of the ritualists to be such as is brought out by any and every party enthusiasm for a time, and do not believe that the Churches are filled by their ritual, but only as a consequence of that very good work.” Of another and evil side a year later, while dwelling upon the lack of doctrinal knowledge and the skepticisms in high circles in Church and society, he writes, “ And all of our time and most of our thoughts are taken up with those dreadful lights and ablutions.”

His perception of the harm and self-will of the extreme ritualists deepened with his increased experience of the duties of his office. In 1893 he speaks of a conversation with the Bishop of Rochester, in which they discussed “ the absolute necessity of dropping Goulden’s College from the list of Theological Colleges; no reality in it; the men obliged to teach in the Sunday-school ‘The Mass’ and the presence of flesh, blood, soul, Divinity, upon the altar, and other equally un-Anglican tenets. It is monstrous, and we can not be accomplices in it by silence.” In the same year he wrote of the chapel of All Saints Sisterhood: “ It

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 543

is a noble place; but I am not sure but the spirit of faction is as strong there as in the world.” Two years later of another Sisterhood he wrote : “ The fact is, the Kilburn Sisterhood is a dissenting community, owning no bishop or authority of any kind. And there are no worse mines under the Church than such bodies.”

In respect to fasting communion, to the Reformation, and to Church Union, Archbishop Benson had no fellowship with the extreme High Church party, whether of 1842 or since. He says, quoting King Bishop of Lincoln, “ Fasting communion is good for those for whom it is good, and to be recommended if people can bear it.” But he greatly deprecates the language and practice used and enforced about it by a certain party. He says that Canon Carter, Liddon, Bishop Webb most strongly, and others on that side, have all held the same. There is nothing “ deadly ” in taking food before it. “ At ordinations he himself always beforehand takes tea and dry toast.” Of the Reformation he said, in strange contrast with the leaders of the Oxford School: “ To my mind the English Reformation—and I am as certain of the fact as I can be of anything—is' the greatest event in Church history since the days of the apostles. It does bring back the Church of God to the primitive model.” On Church union he said, the year before his death, what all friends of Christian union would do well to lay to heart: “How narrow the purview of reunion with Rome is, especially when one realizes that it means excluding the chief part of Christendom.”

Two or three brief extracts will even more bring the man before us. In his sermon before the Lambeth

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Conference in 1888 he said: “Unworldliness is not emptiness of garners, but the right and noble use of garners filled by God. An unworldly clergy is not a clergy without a world, but one which knows the world, uses and teaches man how to use the world for God, until at last it brings the whole world home to God.” A year later he writes: “ What a strange, short thing this life of ours is—strange that so much should tumble into it! The Incarnation is the only thing which seems to draw music out of its fretting wires.” Years before he wrote what so often strikes dissonantly upon us all, “ Why do great good men so utterly mistake and ignore each other, when we know that they will walk with clasped hands in Paradise.”

In October, 1896, Archbishop Benson and wife were on a visit to Mr. Gladstone. October 1 ith, in Hawarden Church, during the service he sank in his seat and was not, for toil had ceased and reward begun.

The Archbishop of Canterbury with the strongest intellect of any occupant of that See in the nineteenth century was Frederick Temple (1821-1902).

^AXempie?^P ^^at^^{er
was an} officer of the British army, and he was born at Santa Maura, in the Ionian Islands. His father died when he was quite young, and he was left to the care of a widowed mother and, as he gratefully records, of a Methodist aunt. In those days of poverty he could not prepare for the university in any of England’s great public schools like Rugby and Harrow, but at a private school, an excellent one though, at Tiverton. He graduated double first-class at Oxford in 1842. After some experience in tutoring, in 1848 he became principal of Kneller Hall, Twickenham, where he re

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 545

mained for ten years. For the next eleven years he was head master at Rugby, where he made a reputation for the school and for himself. In i860 he wrote an essay on “The Education of the World” for the “ Essays and Reviews.” The storm this evoked has been mentioned. His friend Dr. Benson, afterward Archbishop of Canterbury, though a High Churchman, came out in his defense in the London Times. Temple was Bishop of Exeter, 1869-1885 ; Bishop of London, 1885-1896; Archbishop of Canterbury, 18961902. He was a Radical in politics, a Broad Churchman in Church affairs, a total abstainer from intoxicants, and a rigid disciplinarian. Somewhat brusque in manner, he was noted for his perfect justice and common sense. The schoolboy who wrote to his father that “ Temple is a beast, but a just beast,” touched his chief characteristic. He sought thorough comprehension in the Church. He married at the age of fifty-five and was seventy-five when made archbishop.

He published Bampton Lectures on “ Relation of Religion and Science,” 1884, and three volumes of “Sermons,” preached at Rugby.

The Fourth Lambeth Conference, 1898, had two hundred bishops present, out of the two hundred and fifty who were eligible and who received invitations.

The most noteworthy event in the administration of the See of Canterbury by Archbishop Temple was the decision pronounced jointly by the The Decision Archbishops of Canterbury and York after _Arc^_g^h_h^e_ops a full hearing of the parties by counsel j_n Regard to upon the points involved in the ritualistic ^RituaI* controversy. The ritualists in the Church of England

546 History of the Christian Church.

and in the Protestant Episcopal Church in America claim six points in ritual observance as essential for “ Catholic ” worship. These are the use of Eucha-ristic vestments, altar lights, the mixed chalice, unleavened bread, the eastward position, and the use of incense. Dr. Pusey thought, as we have seen, the concession of the use of the vestments and of the eastward position would content the ritualistic party, but now nothing less than the whole program would satisfy them. Therefore the two archbishops entered into an exhaustive investigation of the question as to what, if any, limitations of ritual were most obligatory by the law of the English Church. They pronounced, in their decision of August, 1899, that the use of incense in any act of worship, the use of processional lights, and, later, the reservation of the elements, were forbidden by the law of the English Church. This decision rested upon the Act of Uniformity of 1559, which was adopted by the Convocations in the revision of the English Prayer-book in 1662. This decision was the act of the Archbishops of the English Church interpreting the law of the English Church, and upon any principles of Church Discipline or of Canonical obedience was especially binding upon the ritualistic clergy.

Archbishop Temple, in his Pastoral, went farther than in the decision which was confined to the points Archbishop brought before them. In his Pastoral he Temple’s affirmed that, in the Church of England, Pastoral. _{<<nQ com}p_Ui_sory confession, direct or indirect, is ever allowed,” and that “ no external mark of adoration of Christ, in the Eucharist, is allowed.” He further said, “ No invocations of Holy Angels or of

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 547

the Blessed Virgin, or of departed saints, and no definite prayers for the dead, can be allowed to find a place in any service to be used within the walls of a consecrated church” belonging to the Church of England.

This shows the line of demarkation between the worship of the Roman Catholic Church and that allowed by the Church of England.

In these years, for the first time in a century, England came to make herself felt in Biblical scholarship. This influence came chiefly from _The Cambridge University. It had reference Cambridge mainly to studies in the New Testament ^Scho,ars* and in the history of the early Church. These men knew the best work done in Germany, but were not imitators, but independent investigators, and two ot them were great prelates.

The scholar of the widest knowledge and the clearest insight into historic relationships was Joseph Barber Lightfoot (1828-1889). Lightfoot, _L|ghtfoo4 later Bishop of Durham, was a sickly child, and was educated at home until he was thirteen years of age. Two years later his father died. In 1844 he entered King Edward’s School at Birmingham, ancf, three years later, Trinity College, Cambridge. There he took private lessons of Brooke F. Westcott, who had left the Birmingham school three years earlier, and who became his lifelong friend. Graduating from Trinity in 1851, the next year he was elected Fellow of that college, and taught private pupils for the three years succeeding. In 1857 he was made tutor in Trinity, with classes in New Testament Greek. The year following he was ordained. In 1S61

548 History of the Christian Church.

he was made Hulsean Professor of Divinity, and only Trinity Hall could contain the crowd of students who thronged to hear him. In 1862 he became royal chaplain, and in 1875 deputy clerk of the closet, an important, confidential position; in the former year Archbishop Tait appointed him examining chaplain. His fame as a preacher caused him to be appointed Whitehall preacher, 1866-1867, and University preacher at Oxford, 1874-1875. In 1871 he was made Canon of St. Paul’s, and in 1877 served on the Universities Commission. In 1875 he was chosen Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. In 1867 he had declined the Bishopric of Litchfield; but, on the advice of his friends, in 1879 he accepted the great See of Durham.

Bishop Lightfoot was unequaled in his mastery of the New Testament Greek and the surroundings of the early Church and its patristic literature. He was the best Ethiopic scholar in England, and gave careful attention to the different early versions of the New Testament. To the learned world he will ever be known by his Biblical essays, published in connection with his Commentaries, and by his great work on the Epistles of Ignatius. His commentaries are of great value, though his is not the most penetrating exegesis. To the English-speaking world he has left his monument and legacy in the Revised New Testament of 1881, which is his work more than that of any other man. To all Christians everywhere, his essay on ‘‘ The Christian Ministry ” contains the wisest words on that subject written in the century in which he lived, and which, when he became a great prelate, he refused to modify.

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 549

Bishop Lightfoot was a small, dark-complexioned man, with a squint in his vision; but his weight of learning, impartiality of judgment, and noble character, made him one of the great men of the century. He showed his administrative gifts in the University Senate and in the great Diocese of Durham. He was rich, and never married. In his ten years at Durham, over a million of dollars was raised for Church purposes, and two hundred thousand for a church-building fund. To all these purposes he contributed liberally; but no gift showed more the direction of his thought than that of twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars, in 1870, to found scholarships at Cambridge in “ Church history in its connection with general history.”

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901), the lifelong friend of Lightfoot, was his successor in the See of Durham, and, like him, his learning lent

, ’ ’ , ’......^& , Westcott.

luster to English scholarship, while it made the New Testament have a deeper significance and a clearer meaning to English readers. He was born near Birmingham, and from King Edward’s School he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated, and took a Fellowship in 1849. In 1852 he became assistant master at Harrow, where he remained for the next seventeen years. In 1857 he was ordained. In 1869 he became Canon of Peterborough, and the year after he was made rector of Somersham. These two positions he held together until 1882. He became Queen’s Chaplain, 1875-1879, and select preacher at Oxford, 1877-1880. In 1883 he was made Canon of Westminster. From 1870 to 1890 he was Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. In 1890 he sue-

550 History of the Christian Church.

ceeded to the See of Durham, which he held until his death. Bishop Westcott will be longest remembered by his work on the “ Text of the New Testament,” which resulted in the Westcott and Hort’s Edition of the Greek New Testament, 1881, and which superseded all other editions.

In 1855 he published the best account in English of the “ History of the New Testament Canon,” and in i860 an excellent manual for that date, “ Introduction to the Study of the Gospels.” His commentary on the Gospel of St. John in the Speaker’s Commentary is the best on that Gospel, while his Commentaries on the Greek text of the Epistle of St. John and on the Epistle to the Hebrews can never lose their value. His “ Gospel of the Resurrection ” and “ Revelation of Our Risen Lord” appeal to all thoughtful readers. He is also the author of the most appreciative sketch of Origen and his work, in English, in his “ Religious Thought in the West.” Bishop Westcott was deeply interested in all social topics, and published much that bore upon their solution. A thorough scholar, a voluminous writer, he made the Bible clearer and the world better by his work.

With Bishop Westcott was closely associated John Fenton Hort (1828-1892). He was born in Dublin, but came to England at the age of nine. He prepared for the university at Rugby, and entered Cambridge in 1846. In 1852 he became Fellow. Hort was a many-sided man. For some years he made a specialty of botany; then he took a prize in moral philosophy. He seemed equally at home in classics, mathematics, philosophy, and theology. In 1854, with Mayor and Lightfoot, he

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founded the Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology , and the same year he was ordained. In 1857 he married, and was given a living near Cambridge. In 1853, with Westcott, he began his labors 011 the new edition of the Greek New Testament, only ended with its appearance in two volumes in 1881. With Lightfoot and Westcott, he labored on the revision of the English New Testament, which appeared the same year. He gave his labor also to that most valuable work, Smith’s “ Dictionary of Christian Antiquities,” 1868-1877. From 1880 to 1892 he worked on a new edition of the Apocrypha. In 1871 he was appointed Hulsean Lecturer. The next year came a Fellowship and Lectureship on Theology at Cambridge, and a professorship in 1878. In 1887 he succeeded Light-foot as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, which he held at his death. There were published after his death, “ The Way, the Truth, the Life,” 1893; “Lectures on Judaistic Christianity,” 1894; “Six Popular Lectures on the Ante-Nicene Fathers,” 1895; “ The Christian Ecclesia,” 1897.

Hort was a most lovable man, and ready to render any possible assistance to scholars. He undertook too much, and died early from overwork. His friend, Professor Gregory, says: “He was a great man, a whole man. He sought the things and persons God had made, and forgot only himself.”

A man quite as original as these scholars, and who has done more than any Englishman to revise our conceptions of the life of the early Church,

¹ rlatch.

was Edwin Hatch (1835-1889), whose days of toil and appreciation were all too brief. Like Benson, Lightfoot, and Westcott, he graduated from King

552 History of the Christian Church.

Edward’s School, Birmingham; but instead of going to Cambridge, he chose Oxford, studying at Pembroke College, 1853-1857. For scholarship like his, Oxford had little use; so Hatch came to Canada, teaching at Toronto and Montreal, 1859-1866. In 1867-1885 he was called to Oxford as vice-principal of St. Mary’s Hall. In 1883 he was given the rectorship of Pur-leigh in addition, a place Hawkins, of Oriel, had held for fifty-four years. The same year he was made Lecturer on Church History. In 1880 he delivered the Bampton Lectures on “ The Organization of the Early Christian Churches.” The thorough scholarship shown in the use of inscriptions, the original conceptions in regard to the early Church, gave this book more influence with foreign scholars than any other contribution to Church history from England in this period. Before this he had made his mark in articles in Smith’s “ Dictionary of Christian Antiquities,” 1873-1876, in which the way is cleared for the positions taken in the Bampton Lectures. In 1887 appeared his “ Growth of Christian Institutions,” a most illuminating book for the study of Christianity in Western Europe. In 1888 he gave the Hibbert Lectures on “The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church,” a book which was hailed with delight by the followers of Ritschl in Germany. He published sermons, essays, and poems, and worked to the last on a concordance to the Septuagint.

Hatch was a Broad Churchman, but he had a deep personal conception of Christianity. No more suggestive works have come from an English historical student.

Oxford in these years possessed another scholar of

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 553

European reputation, though late in coming to his honors at home. William Stubbs (1825-1901) was educated at Oxford and was Fellow of Trinity, 1848-1850. That year he was ap- '

pointed Vicar of Navestock, Essex, where he remained for the next sixteen years. He was made Librarian of Lambeth Palace, 1862-1868, and in 1866 was called from Navestock to become Professor of Modern History at Oxford, 1866-1884. Iⁿ *879 he was made Canon of St. Paul’s. From 1884 to 1889 he was Bishop of Chester, and 1889 to 1901 Bishop of Oxford. His “ Constitutional History of England,” 1874-1878,15 based upon such a thorough use of the sources that it can never be superseded. His “Lectures on the Study of Mediaeval and Modern History ” are more popular, but show his method. He was recognized as the greatest scholar of the mediaeval history in England, if not in Europe.

Mandell Creighton (1843-1901) was much more of a success socially than these men, but not their equal in original research. Educated at Oxford, he was Bishop of Peterborough, 1891-1896, and in 1896-1901 Bishop of London. His work on the “ Papacy During the Reformation,” 1882-1894, *^s distinctly inferior to the work of Dr. Ludwig Pastor on the same period.

But a change came over the intellectual atmosphere of Oxford with the appearance in 1890 of “ Lux Mundi.” This showed that the heirs of

... , , Lux Mundi.

Newman and Pusey reigning m Keble College and Pusey House, Oxford, were no longer content to rest the case against modern criticism 011 authority alone. They came out in the open field,

554 History of the Christian Church.

and took into their own hands the hated weapons of criticism. The book was not remarkable. The essays of Gore and Illingworth gave it value, but it was said that its appearance caused the death of Canon Liddon. The Oxford Movement could not secure the union of the Church of England with Rome; equally futile were its efforts toward securing the second darling object of its desire—a defense by authority and traditions alone against all assaults of criticism. Since then High Churchmen in England have entered into the progressive intellectual life of Christendom.

These years were marked by an increase of English dioceses, and a liberality in the support of the Church of England unknown before in her history. In 1836 the Diocese of Bristol was suppressed, but that of Ripon was founded, and that of Manchester followed in 1847. These were the only new bishoprics since the Reformation until our period opens. In 1877 the Diocese of Truro was formed; the year following, that of St. Albans; in 1880, that of Liverpool; in 1882, that of Newcastle from Durham; in

1884, that of Southwell; and in 1888, that of Wakefield. By voluntary subscription there had been raised for endowing these Sees to 1890: Truro, $350,000; St. Albans, $275,000; Liverpool, $470,000; Newcastle, $440,000; Southwell, $320,000; Wakefield, $465,000; in all, $2,345,000.

The colonial bishoprics now number nearly one hundred, under the supervision of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Besides these, there are seventeen suffragan bishops, and, including the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, some two

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 555

hundred and fifty bishops in communion with the Primate of England.

Since 1861 there has met annually a Church Congress, in which all shades of opinion in the Church of England find representation and expression. It is unquestionable that these have promoted the peace and power of the Church. Though the High Church party is clearly in the ascendant, it is largely because it has ceased to be sectarian, and has absorbed the best of the Broad Church teaching as proved by “Lux Mundi” and its successors, and by the primacy of such a radical as Archbishop Temple. On the other hand, though the old Evangelicals died out with Lord Shaftesbury, yet Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool, Moule, Bishop of Durham, and the Keswick movement, prove that the leaven is still there, and does not cease to work. Indeed, as Professor Webb says, “ It must be observed, moreover, that a later generation of High Church clergy in the Anglican body have found themselves able to give to the characteristic ‘ Evangelical ’ experience of conversion a place in their own scheme of spiritual life which would have been grudged to it by their predecessors.”

The Church of England had in England itself 2 archbishops, 23 bishops, and 17 assistant bishops, 31 deans, 91 archdeans, 810 rural deans, 13,872 _Atthe
End benefices, and 8,500 of these are in the pat- of the ronage of lay proprietors. There are, in ^Century* all, 22,800 clergy.

The population of England and Wales in 1901 was 32,526,075. There are 15,309 churches and chapels of

556 History of the Christian Church.

the Church of England, and 12,578 churches and chapels belonging to the Nonconforming Churches. The poorest showing the Church of England makes is in its number of communicants, being only 1,974,629. The Methodist bodies alone report a membership of 1,053,452, and very few of these are noncommunicants. Other Nonconformists report a membership of 840,000, excluding Unitarians and Friends. Can it be that the triumph of the High Church party, by overemphasizing the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and by Romanizing practices, has repelled the majority of those who should join in holy communion at her altars ?

The Nonconforming Churches of England.

At the beginning of this period the Wesleyan Communion, the largest of the Methodist bodies, was rent by bitter internal divisions. It did Methodists. ^{not re}g^aiⁿ its former numbers until some years had elapsed. The autocratic power of Dr. Bunting was broken, but the body, as a whole, continued strongly conservative for the first half of this period. In politics, its leading ministers were Tories, and ecclesiastically leaned toward the Established Church much more than toward their fellow Nonconformists. Many of their sons entered the ranks of the clergy of the Church of England. The close of the period saw all this changed. A large number of the Methodists followed the Liberal party, and they took their natural place in the Confederation of Free Churches of Great Britain. Doubtless the increasing ritualism of the Church of England contributed to this result, but even more a clear-eyed con

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 557

sciousness of the mission of the Methodist Churches to the modern man and modern society. This led to new methods and much more extensive influence in reaching and saving men.

In 1862, Sir Francis Lycett gave $250,000 for a Metropolitan Building Fund to secure sites and erect Methodist Chapels in London. He raised $250,000 and left at his death $ 450,000 for like purposes, which became available in 1896. Methodism was strong in the country, but comparatively weak in the cities At the close of this period, nowhere as in the cities was it doing such aggressive work. This was largely owing to two Methodist ministers, Hugh Price Hughes and William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. The London West Central. Mission was established in 1887.

Hugh Price Hughes came to its control in 1886, and has been powerfully aided by Mark Guy Pearse since 1887.

The 'Salvation Army is the extreme left wing of the Methodist Movement, and finds its chief mission in rescue work among the morally-neg- _The lected or degraded. It does Christlike salvation work in the prisons, the slums, and for the ^Army* outcast women of the street. Many it has reached, and many it has saved. It has proved, in a generation priding itself upon its intellectual culture and reckless of religious creeds and careless of religious emotions, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ saves to the uttermost them that believe. With sensational features and some extravagances, it has a strict discipline, a firm organization, and has been ruled with a devotion, wisdom, and financial prudence that make

558 History of the Christian Church.

it a marvel among the religious organizations of its time. It has sought to save the soul; but it has also ministered to the body, and endeavored to make men and women self-sustaining and self-respecting members of society, and also to make the social surroundings help, and not hinder, the Christian life.

William Booth, originator and commanding general of the Army, was born in 1829. He was brought up in the Church of England, but at thirteen ^BooTh? j°i^ne(i the Wesleyans, and four years later began his work as a local preacher. In 1853 he joined the Conference of the Methodist New Connexion. His intention was to serve as an evangelist, and he was greatly influenced by the work of James Caughey. Soon he went into the pastorate; but in 1861 he began again his evangelistic career in Cornwall, and in 1865 came to London. His wife, Catherine Tucker Booth, is one of the saints of the nineteenth century. Having charge of the East London Christian Mission, he began his Mission Stations in 1876. About this time he wrote the famous sentence which gave the distinctive name to the work he was founding and had led: “The Christian Mission is a Salvation Army of Converted people.” There was much that seemed irreverent and revolted the religious feelings and taste of men like Lord Shaftesbury at the beginning of tne movement, but it secured the attention of the nonchurch-going and the neglected classes. If Archbishop Tait would not condemn the work of the extreme ritualists in East London because of their extravagance, who shall condemn the Salvation Army if they reach and save the unreached and unsaved, however much we may dislike some of their methods?

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 559

In 1878.appeared the “Orders and Regulations of the Salvation Army,” and the movement took permanent form. Its organ, The War Cry, began its work in

1880. Between 1880 and 1885 it spread to the English Colonies, British India, the United States, and gained a footing in France, Switzerland, Sweden, and Germany. Mrs. Booth died October 4, 1890, leaving four sons and five daughters, most, or all, of whom are in one way or another connected with this movement. Before this the Prison Gate Brigade had begun its work, and Rescue Homes had been founded. In 1890 appeared General Booth’s “Darkest England and the Way Out,” of which two hundred thousand copies were sold, and which brought funds which enabled the “Army” greatly to enlarge its work. It founded, and has successfully carried on, labor colonies both in manufacturing and agricultural communities. In 1896, Ballington Booth, son of General Booth, founded the “Volunteers of America,” whose field is in the United States. In this country, however, the older organization has a large following in the great cities. At the close of the century the Salvation Army reported 142 institutions for the care and help of the neglected or outcasts, and 4,200 officers, in England. In the United States, both branches reported 3,189 officers, 953 stations, and 42,000 members.

A man, the opposite in temperament and work of General Booth, but who wrought no less effectively in the Wesleyan communion than General Booth outside of it, was William Arthur (1819-1901). William Arthur was a religious genius. This genius was enshrined in a feeble

560 History of the Christian Church.

body, but, perhaps through this, became even more effective. He knew no blare of trumpets; but his influence, like the light, came, and darkness disappeared. He is the author of the religious classic in the English tongue of this period. If the “ Christian Year” is the religious classic of the first half, the “Tongue of Fire” is the religious classic for the second half of the nineteenth century. In the same class, but at a distance, stands Hannah Pearsall Smith’s “ Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life.”

William Arthur was a master of pure English, and an eloquent preacher. He was born at Kels, Ireland, in 1819. In 1839 he graduated from Hoxton College, London. From 1840 to 1843 he was a missionary in India, and on his return he published an admirable work on Indian mission work, entitled, “A Mission to the Mysore.” In 1846, and for some years, he served as a missionary in France. He became greatly interested in the progress of Italian unity and in the religious regeneration of that country. He learned to use Italian with the freedom of his native tongue. He was an easy master of French, and knew German. With Dr. James H. Rigg he won the battle for free speech in the Wesleyan Conference, though there was never aught of the bitterness of the controversialist in his disposition. He was earnest in his work for the Evangelical Alliance, and exercised great influence in its councils. He was one of the successful founders of the Ecumenical Conference of the Methodist Churches. As a man, his sweetness of spirit and his warm, fraternal feeling, ever making for peace, made him loved as have been few Christian ministers in

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 561

high station and wide influence in the century in which he lived.

His “Tongue of Fire” appeared in 1856 ; “ Italy in Transition,” going to six editions, in i860; and, later, “The Pope, the Kings, and the People,” in two volumes. In 1883 he published a timely book on “The Difference between Physical and Moral Law.” His last work was “ Religion without God,” 1884, against Frederic Harrison and Herbert Spencer, and “God without Religion,” 1887, against Sir James Stephen.

The maxi who did more than any one man toward the transformation of the Wesleyan Communion into an effective, aggressive Church in England in the last half of the century, was Hugh ^HHug_h^^ice Price Hughes (1847-1902). Dr. Hughes was born in Caermarthen, Wales, where his father, a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and who had been educated at Kingswood School, held almost every public office ot honor and trust in the community.

Hugh Price Hughes’s grandfather was a Wesleyan preacher, who brought Dr. Bunting to terms. The grandson was converted while at school, at thirteen, and the next year preached as a local preacher. The son wrote to his father that he would like to be a Methodist preacher. The father replied, “ I would rather see you a Methodist preacher than Lord Chancellor of England.” Dr. Hughes graduated at London University. He entered the Wesleyan Conference, and served in the usual pastorate until coming to West London Mission in 1887. In 1885 he founded

562 History of the Christian Church.

the Methodist Times, which made him a leader of the young men and the progressive element in the Wesleyan Communion. He published, besides his work as editor of the Methodist Times, two volumes of sermons of wide influence, “ Social Christianity,” 1889, and “ The Philanthropy of God,” 1890. No Methodist since John Wesley has been so widely known outside of his own Church. He was president of the Wesleyan Conference at his death. As preacher, evangelist, editor, organizer, and party leader, while foremost in every good work, he left no successor.

Methodist scholarship in England was well represented by Dr. Wm. F. Moulton, who translated and edited Winer’s “ Grammar of the New Testament,” and who served on the Committee of Revision of the English New Testament of 1881. By his side stood Dr. William B. Pope, author of a “ Systematic Theology,” and Dr. J. Agar Beet, whose “ Commentaries ” are of enduring value.

The century closed with the raising of $5,000,000, as a thank-offering for what God had wrought for and

_The through the Wesleyan Methodists in Eng-

Twentieth- land. A site opposite the house of Parlia-century Fund. _ment jj_as k_{een an(}J _a g_reat

Central Church house, as a head center of aggressive Methodism in the largest city in Christendom and the world, will be raised upon it. This fund will also greatly strengthen all other work of that Church in England. No other man contributed more to its success than Hugh Price Hughes, who is said to have personally raised $1,250,000, besides all contributions to the Twentieth-century Fund. Not the least service to Evangelical Christendom of this Twentieth-century

Evangelical Church in Great Britian. 563

Fund, in idea and realization, was that it was the fruitful parent of other Twentieth-century Funds among the Evangelical Churches, which, in the aggregate, make the Papal Jubilee look small indeed. At the close of the century, by the official census of Great Britain and Ireland, the Wesleyans reported in England and Wales, 552,933 members; the Primitive Methodists, 185,075; the Calvinistic Methodists, 156,058, mainly in Wales; and other Methodist communions, 159,406, making a total of 1,053,372. From this total should be deducted the Calvinistic Methodists, who, in doctrine, though not in origin or polity, belong with the Presbyterians. But to this should be added the forces of the Salvation Army, which would more than counterbalance.

The next most numerous of the Nonconforming Churches in England and Wales is the Congregational. Its history was illustrated in this period by such preachers as R. W. Dale, ™ti₀MHst*’ of Birmingham; Robert F. Horton, of London; and John Brown, of Bedford, who have each crossed the Atlantic and lectured on preaching on the Beecher foundation at Yale.

Newman Hall (1816-1902), for years preached to large congregations at Surrey Chapel, London, 1854

1893, and of which he was pastor emeritus at his death. He was a warm friend of the North during the Civil War, and visited the United States several times. His tract “ Come to Jesus,” written in 1846, had a wider circulation than any other tract of the century. It was translated into forty languages and four million copies were sold.

A preacher of unusual vigor of thought and often

564 History of the Christian Church.

rare beauty of diction, both in prayer and public address, was Joseph Parker (1830-1902). Dramatic in his delivery, he denounced sin in high Parker pl^aces
and oppression everywhere. Of humble origin, he was converted in a Methodist chapel, and early began to preach. With scant opportunities for an education, in large measure he was a self-trained man. He was ordained in the Congregational ministry in 1853. Banbury was his first pastorate, 1853-1858. Then followed Manchester, 1858-1869. In the latter year he became pastor of the oldest Congregational society in London. In 1874 its new church edifice, City Temple, was dedicated. He remained its pastor until his death. His leading works were “Ecce Deus,” 1868; “Ad Clerum,” 1870; “The Paraclete,” 1874, and twenty-five volumes of sermons. They had a large sale, yet not equal to Spurgeon’s, though they were of much higher intellectual value. From boyhood Dr. Parker was a total abstainer. Twice he visited the United States. He was an earnest and devoted man, and his pulpit was a power for righteousness.

At the close of the century the English Congre-gationalists numbered 398,741 members.

The Baptists increased in numbers and influence during this period. They had in Dr. Alex-Baptists ander Maclaren, of Manchester, a great preacher, and in Dr. John Clifford a great Church leader.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892), however, was the most celebrated Baptist in the ’ world during this period. His father and grandfather were Congregational preachers. He was

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 565

born at Kelvedon, Essex, and got a fair academic education at Colchester and Newmarket. In January, 1850, in a Primitive Methodist chapel in Colchester, Spurgeon heard a sermon from “ Look unto me and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else,” and Spurgeon found the salvation which he was so wondrously and successfully to preach. He was baptized in the Baptist Church, May

3, 1851, and the same year began preaching. In April, 1854, he entered upon his ministry at New Park Street Chapel, Southwark. His first sermon was published before he became of age. In January, 1856, he married, and his wife proved a worthy helpmeet to his life and in his work.

In October, 1856, Mr. Spurgeon began preaching at the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall, which he occupied until the completion of his Tabernacle, which was dedicated in March, 1861. It cost $155,000, and has seats for 5,500 people, with standing room for a thousand more. It has a double row of galleries, and its dimensions are 148 by 81 by 68. At the dedication, the church had 1,178 members; in the succeeding ten years 3,569 were added to its membership, and it grew to 6,000 before his death. Krom 1855 his sermons were published until their number reached 2,200. In 1865 he founded his periodical, The Sword and the Trowel. In 1857 he sent out his first student preacher. In 1867 three Orphan Houses at Stockwell were begun. By 1875 his building for the Pastor s College, costing $75,000, was completed and paid for, and by 1890 had sent out nearly a thousand preachers. The Stockwell Orphanage takes children from six to ten, and keeps them until they are fourteen; they

566 History of the Christian Church.

accommodate five hundred boys and girls. His col-portage work came to employ nearly one hundred men in selling Christian literature of a popular character, so as to displace the vile. He also erected an almshouse for the aged poor, and founded a Ragged School where four hundred children were taught. The income for his church poor fund was $5,000 a year.

Spurgeon’s sermons had a larger circulation and in greater quantity than any other English preacher. They were sincere and earnest; they were well illustrated, with not seldom a pithy saying or a touch of humor. His “John Ploughman’s Talks,” which have some of their best qualities without their repetitions, reached a sale of 320,000 copies before his death. Spurgeon had a marvelous voice, clear and sweet; it could reach 12,000 persons, and he preached sometimes to audiences of 20,000 people. His chief literary work is his “ Treasury of David,” a Puritan comment on the Psalms.

Spurgeon’s orthodoxy was of the rigid sort. He left the London Baptist Union because they saw the Lord’s leading in moving rather than in standing still. Spurgeon was warm-hearted and unselfish, and could always be counted upon to remain where he was. In Lord Shaftesbury he had a warm friend. His was an active life of great usefulness, not one of intellectual progress. His noblest monument is not the Metropolitan Tabernacle, or his Pastor’s College, or his Orphan Houses, but the changed conditions of that section of London in which his Tabernacle stands and where his work was wrought. “ The whole quarter has been converted from a scene of sordid poverty and the lowest forms of vice to one of health

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 567

ful peace and comparative prosperity.” Like the true, stubborn Englishman he was, he did not take kindly to the total abstinence movement. But, with all defects, he wrought such a work as was not equaled in his day. At the end of the century there were 346,082 Baptists in England and Wales.

The Presbyterians, who are the people in Scotland, and a strong contingent in Ulster, are a comparatively small body in England. Perhaps the mem- _{Presbyterlans} ory of the forcible imposition of the Solemn League and Covenant remains. However, they rank well in quality, and Professor Oswald Dykes, of their Theological Training-school, furnished the creed of the United Free Churches in 1898, the most successful effort of creedal irenics of the century among English-speaking people. At the close of the period they numbered in England 74,571.

The Friends, or Quakers, numbered 16,611; but of that number was Professor Rendall Harris, of Cambridge University, one of the first New Testament scholars living. The Unitarians unuarfan”? report no membership, but 350 churches.

They can hardly be said to have grown, and they do not occupy relatively anything like the position of one hundred years ago.

But they gave to Christendom one of the purest characters and one of the clearest thinkers of the century, who wrote with an ease and grace unequaled by any other ethical or philosoph- _Mart^eau. ical writer of his generation. James Mar-tineau (1805-1900) was educated at Manchester New College, and ordained in 1828. For the next four years he was pastor in Dublin, but in 1832 he came to

568 History of the Christian Church.

Paradise Street, Liverpool, of which he remained pastor until 1857. Then he came to Portland Street, London, where he was pastor from 1857 to 1872, and made a reputation as one of the foremost English preachers of his time; in the latter year friends presented him with a purse of nearly $50,000. Besides this work, he taught Moral Philosophy from 1840 at Manchester College. He was its principal, 1869-1885; president, 1885-1887; and vice-president, 1887-1900. In 1848 he studied in Berlin and Dresden, and knew well modern as well as ancient thought. The character of his mind and the value of his thinking can well be discerned from his works,—“ Religion as Affected by Modern Materialism,” 1874; “Modern Materialism: Its Attitude Toward Theology,” 1876; “Study of Spinoza,” 1882 ; “ Types of Ethical Theory,” 1885; “A Study of Religion,” 1888; “Seat of Authority in Religion,” 1890; and “Essays, Reviews, and Addresses,” 1890-1891. Of these, “A Study of Religion ” is easily the ablest and most comprehensive. In his “Seat of Authority in Religion he showed that his historical knowledge and judgment were hardly equal to his ethical thinking. -

James Martineau was a deeply religious man, with a depth of religious feeling and sentiment beyond his creed. In the battle with materialism, no other man or score of men rendered the service which he did, and he put an end to the scornful assumptions of scientists who had only half thought out the problems of our being and destiny. For character like his, and work like his, however soon some of it is superseded, and however far we are from his individualist and

Evangelical Church in Greai Britain. 569

anti-Trinitarian position, Christian men can only have praise.

Two visits of Americans largely affected the Christianity of England in this period. One was that of Messrs. Moody and Sankey in 1873 and _Moodyand

1881, who came from Edinburgh .to Oxford, _s°_a°_n£.y" Cambridge, and London, and left an enduring impress upon the Christian life and work of England.

The second was that of Mr. and Mrs. Pearsall Smith, 1875. From their teaching, particularly that of Mrs. Smith, arose the Keswick Movement _TheKeswick in the English Church and in the Noncon-

Movement.

forming bodies. It seeks the definite experience and attendant conduct and witness of the Higher Christian Life. It has done much for a spiritual life in the Church of England that is not nourished by, but rejects, the predominant tendency to ritual observance as a means to a holy life.

There are 1,500,000 Roman Catholics _Roman in England and Wales, most of them Irish _Cath₀iios. or of Irish descent. They had 1,572 chapels and stations and 3,018 clergy.

The former half of the century was one of awakening and disruption in the Church of Scotland; the latter part was one of quickened and act- _ScotIand ive Church life and of reunion. The formation of the United Presbyterian Church in 1858 has already been mentioned. In 1900 the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Churches united. This has greatly strengthened the Christian Church and religion in the land of Knox. This growth and union

570 History of the Christian Church.

among the Nonconforming bodies was accompanied by a large increase in power and influence of the Established Kirk. In 1900 it had 1,374 parishes and 1,795 churches, chapels, and stations, with an income of $1,700,000. Since 1845 there were added 408 new parishes and $12,500,000 in endowments for parish support. In 1900 the Church reported 661,629 communicants, a most favorable contrast with the number of communicants in the Church of England. On the other hand, the now United Free Church reported in 1900, 1,661 congregations, with 1,781 clergy, and 488,795 members, and voluntary offerings of over $5,000,

000 a year. It has three theological colleges in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. In scholarship, the Free Church clearly leads, having given to Christendom in this period, Alexander B. Bruce, A.

B. Davidson, Marcus Dods, James Robertson, George Adam Smith, and Professor William Ramsay.

The Episcopal Church in Scotland, in 1900, had 318 clergy and 121,000 adherents; communicants not given. The Roman Catholics had 482 clergy, 354 chapels, and 365,000 people, mostly from Ireland.

The most noteworthy event in the Church history of Ireland in this period was the disestablishment of Ireland ^t^^e Episcopal Church. This act of justice removed an ancient wrong, and the greatest hindrance to Evangelical work in Ireland after the conquest of Cromwell and the penal laws of William of Orange. In 1900 the census showed a decrease of

6. 7 per cent in the population in ten years. The only Church that increased in numbers between 1890 and 1900 was the Methodist. The census shows the Roman Catholic population to be 3,310,028, consider

Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 571

ably less than the Irish element in the Roman Catholic population in the United States.

The Episcopal Church has 1,400 churches, 1,700 clergy, and a population of 579,385; the voluntary offerings are $850,000 annually. The Presbyterians have 669 clergy, 106,070 members, and a population of 443,494. The Methodists come next with 61,255 members. There are in Ireland 9,898 Congregation-alists, 6,896 Baptists, and 2,623 Friends, or Quakers, in the land where William Penn was converted to their faith. With the settlement of the land question, it may be that the tide of emigration which has diminished Ireland’s population nearly one-half in fifty years will be stayed.

Chapter VIII.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES.

A marked increase in population and wealth in the last fifty years of the nineteenth century was a chief characteristic of the nations of Christen-^onduiVns.^1
dom» ^excePt France, Ireland, and Spain.

In some, as Great Britain, Germany, and Russia, the advance has been beyond all precedent. But that of the United States in population and wealth, in education and culture, in power and influence, has been beyond all comparison in ancient or modern times. A population increasing from five to seventy-six millions, and area open to settlement from 400,000 to 3,000,000 square miles in a century, is a record without parallel. If by the side of this we place the lines of steam communication by water and by rail, and the great cities which have grown up beside them, we may see something of the material growth in the creations of one hundred years. Never in any land in the same length of time has there been anything like the same expenditure for common schools, Sunday-schools, colleges and universities, and schools for technical and professional education. In no land beneath the sun has so much money been given in the same number of years as in the United States in the last decade of the century for public charities and benevolence. The same may probably be said of expenditures for churches and for the found-

572

Christian Church in United States. 573

in g, endowment, and support of distinctively Christian institutions of education and charity. At the end of the century the United States was in the foremost rank in mining, agriculture, manufacturing, and in commerce among the nations of the earth.

There were influences which affected the stages of the nation’s growth and the life and work of the Church. These will pass in rapid review:

The Civil War, 1861-1865, overthrew the social order and industrial system of the South, and left her a heart-sickening heritage in impoverishment and desolation. The courage shown ^T w£^,vil in the dark days of reconstruction and the refounding of free commonwealths was not less than that shown on the battlefield. In North and South alike there had been a deluge of blood and tears, and a destruction of property and an accumulation of indebtedness that seemed appalling. The war did one\/ thing, it sobered and disciplined the nation. There was none of the political buncombe and desire to whip all creation of ante-bellum days. Men addressed them* selves to realities, and these were often sad and hard enough. Ten years after the war, in 1876, was held the first great World’s Exposition in America. It probably was, up to that date, the greatest object lesson and popular educator in the history of the American people. What they had to show so soon after such a devastating conflict was indeed wonderful, but what they learned from what other nations had to show was even more wonderful. The Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia will always mark a distinctive era in the nation’s progress.

But the Christian nations of Europe sent over the

574 History of the Christian Church.

sea to the New World, not only their goods and the evidences of their art and refinement, they sent over their people by the million. In the last fifty immigration. y_{earg cen}t_ury they sent as immi

grants over 16,000,000, nearly 17,000,000, of people. In 1850 the population of England and Wales was 17,

927,000, and that of the United States was 23,000,000. So a new nation, as large as England and nearly three-fourths as large as the United States, came to this country from over the sea in these years. These immigrants dug the canals, built the railways, sewered and paved the city streets, and in large part settled the Great West. Their descendants of the second and third generation became the truest of Americans in the country where they and theirs have prospered. Indeed, many in the first generation have become princes in the land, like Alexander T. Stewart and Andrew Carnegie.

Invention and emigration made possible the winning of the West to civilization in this period. While the most of the settlers in the West were

* of American birth, their places were taken by immigrants in the communities they left. Owing to the fact that the advance guard was of native origin, there has been preserved a remarkable homogeneity in language, in political, social, and religious institutions throughout the country. Foreign colonies which have preserved another speech and other customs are the exceptions.

These elements of growth itself would cause a financial expansion, but this was accelerated by “ Wild Cat” banking before i860, by an irredeemable paper currency after the war, and by speculation in real

Christian Church in United States. 575

estate and mines wliich always outran all legitimate growth. In consequence came the financial crises of

1857, 1873, 1884, and 1893. The suffering _F|nanda| and the brave endurance of it by multitudes Expansion of business men, who were impoverished ^and by the results of fatuous legislation previous to 1873 and 1893, will always remain one of the saddest and one of the most inspiring memories of the generation which witnessed the Civil War. That economic revolution which, in 1884 and the years following, caused a decline of thirty per cent in the price of wheat, caused financial stringency and suffering difficult to estimate.

One effect of this fall in values in farm products and lands was a necessary emigration to the cities. This growth of the urban population from 1885 to 1890 was too rapid to be healthful.

It was one cause of the dire effects of the panic of 1893. With returning prosperity came a more varied industry and advance in prices, which in some measure restored the equilibrium, which electric traction in the country districts will yet more facilitate.

The opportunities for speculation, and, not to put too fine a point upon it, /or thieving from the public, afforded by the Civil War, the era of irredeemable paper money, the financing of Eruption, railway systems, the expansion of cities, and a flood of public improvements, proved too much for the virtue of the ordinary politician. There came a lowering of the tone of the public conscience, a lowering of the standards of public service. Speculation and peculation brought in a reign of political corruption. “Rings” and “bosses” made their nox

576 History of the Christian Church.

ious influence felt. The Tweed Ring, the Philadelphia Gas Ring, the Whisky Ring, the Ring whose rule caused the Cincinnati riots, the rule of Tammany, and the rule of the boss and the party machine, are unpleasant memories, as they were unpleasant experiences in our national life. Fortunately the record of the National, and as a rule the State, administrative service has been exceptionally good. The worst evils were in houses of legislation and markedly in city governments. The progress in the last ten years of this period in civic righteousness, in the extension of the civil service reform, in the scrutiny, publicity, and reform of municipal expenditure and administration, has been one of the most cheering signs of the better political conditions which are to prevail, and which must come, before the community can deal effectively with the liquor-traffic. When we remember the immense national debt at the end of the war of $2,845,000,000, and that in the North, the States, counties, cities, and townships were loaded down with war debts, while so much of the public and private property in the South was destroyed; when we recall the Whisky Ring, the Tweed Ring, the reconstruction era, and municipal extravagance, and remember that these debts have been paid, in the local governments wholly, in the national government more than half; that all thought of repudiation was rejected by a population sorely tested by a great fall in values, and that the reform of the civil service and of municipal government have become accomplished facts in the life of one generation, we conclude that religious influence and sentiment, that Church life, that the preaching and living of right

Christian Church in United States. 577

eousness, have not been in vain in the generation that freed the slaves and saved the Union. We may well hope that the present generation will have wisdom and conscience enough to deal with the “boss,” the race problem, and the liquor-traffic.

A comparison between the ordinary home and its comforts in 1850 and the same in 1900, would be most significant. In architecture, in labor-saving

^ •, , • Popular

appliances, m refinement, where there is no comfort and increase in the cost, the change is most Artistic

, , ™ J, Conditions.

marked. Photography, chromo-lithography, and the illustrated periodical press, notably the American magazines, have made a new artistic world and environment for the people. An almost equal advance has been made in music for the people in its addition to the course of instruction in the common schools, in the wide use of the reed organ and the piano, as well as in the musical culture of our cities.

In the churches the general use of hymnals with music set to the hymns, the popularity of the Moody and Sankey “Gospel Hymns,” and the flood of evangelistic and Sunday-school music, mark a great change since 1850, as well as the much more extensive use of the pipe-organ in churches.'

In church architecture, there has been an immense advance in comfort, convenience, and artistic effect, though sometimes the different orders and styles of architecture sit down in amazing proquinity, if not concord, in the same edifice. As a rule, the more ambitious efforts of the church architect, if they do not achieve lasting success, are not examples of monumental ugliness or colossal ignorance. There are some traditions of ecclesiastical order that the boldest 37

578 History of the Christian Church.

do not defy; but with our public buildings it is not so. Here American architecture is at its worst. While there are some fine exceptions, from the Capitol at Washington down, nevertheless, in many of our public structures, especially those adapted for and expressing the public life of the county or the municipality, it is evident that the choice of the architect was political, not artistic. That upon a county whose seat is a populous city of wealth, education, and culture, should be foisted the private dwelling of a foreign nobleman as the expression of its public life, with a fitness equal to that of a palm-tree in an arctic landscape, only shows how dignity and simplicity, the expression of public spirit, and the power of the community may be thrown to the winds, if made up by an ostentatious interior.

From this sketch of the trials and triumphs of our national life it may be seen how naturally the mind and the endeavors of the people have been ^Ma*Tr^id^^IC absorbed in commercial pursuits and their aims have been directed so largely to financial ends. Money value and financial influence have more power at the end of the century - than at its meridian. The literature that found its leadership in Bryant, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, and Holmes, has seen no successors to these bards with their ideal aims and high ethical standards. On the other hand, no generation has ever seen money so universally and so generously given to Churches and the purposes of Church life, for education, for benevolences, and for charities. With an equal sacrifice of time and self, culture of the soul, and discipline of the life, great

Christian Church in United States. 579

things for the establishment of the kingdom of God may come from Christian America, the future far surpassing a wonderful past.

To this tendency toward money-making and business absorption, added to the natural selfishness and sinfulness of man which the gospel of Jesus Christ had to combat, came two specific co^Sons. Antichristian movements. The one was led by Theodore Parker, and presented a purely human and humanitarian Christ. Reform and benevolence constituted the sum of human duties. For prayer, or religious worship, or reverence, it had but little place. The apathy of many of the Churches on the question of slavery gave large entrance for this teaching to many minds. The havoc made in the religious experience and life of thousands of earnest men and women through this “ liberal theology ” is sad to contemplate. Its consequences reach often to the second and third generations.

Soon after the close of the Civil War, Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, an eloquent orator and a witty debater, lectured in all the chief cities on “ Hell,” “ The Mistakes of Moses,” and kindred themes. Arrogant, superficial, and without a touch of reverence for anything human or divine, he caught many who wished to believe there was no God and no hereafter, as well as many unthinking people who were carried away by his audacity or the novelty of his statements. There was nothing new in his thought or the objections he brought forward; but to many he made the Christian religion appear as a sham and a fraud. At first he was bold and defiant in his denials of all realities beyond

5S0 History of the Christian Church.

this life. In his later years he said, “ I do not know.” The trend of scientific skepticism greatly helped him at first; but it soon appeared that he had no solution to the problem of human destiny, and men like Joseph Cook showed how much larger that problem was than he had been able to conceive, and how the best thought of the world was against him, as well as the feelings and instincts of the race.

As if in response to these challenges came the great revivals of 1857 and 1875-9. The first was very general throughout the Northern States, and had no particular leader or center. It especially honored Christian prayer everywhere. The second was led by Mr. Dwight L,. Moody, with Mr. Ira D. Sankey assisting him. This was at first effective mainly in the large cities; but its influence pervaded the remotest hamlet, and largely changed the methods of revival work, and the expressions of Christian experience.

The work of the Church in these years, never more arduous or important or, in the main, successful, was

carried on by the tens of thousands of de-Th<j work of _vote(j _an(j consecrated men and women in

the Church. _

every communion, among the laity and clergy alike, whose names and records can not find place upon history’s page, but which are in God’s keeping, and whose reward will be beyond all human computation. These founders of Christian homes, Christian Churches, Christian institutions, and Christian communities will one day shine as the sun in the firmament and as the stars for ever and ever. Here we can find record only for those whose opportunity or ability made them conspicuous among the captains of the host of our Lord.

Christian Church in United States. 581

When we come to name those clergymen who in this period had a national reputation and _Leaders
of influence, we see that the Congregational National Church, though small among the great ^Inf,uence* American Churches, was strongest in men of widest fame.

Horace Bushnell (1802-1876) was the most original, suggestive, and powerful thinker among the American preachers of the century. He was born in Litchfield, Conn. Educated at Yale College, he spent the years of his ministry and of his life, when not traveling in search of health, in Hartford. He was a New Englander of the New Englanders, and a lifelong loyal son of Connecticut. He understood the New England mind, and some of his books can hardly be understood without taking into account his environment. His father’s mother was a woman of vigorous mind and a zealous Methodist. His father, though he joined the Congregational Church as the only one near enough for his family to attend, was always an Arminian in his opinions. It is not strange that from such ancestry came the man who more than any other was to disintegrate New England Calvinism. Young Bushnell spent the years of his boyhood on his father’s farm and in his woolen mill, and finally entered college at twenty-one. Four years latter he graduated. Then he taught school, went to New York for a few months to edit the Journal of Commerce, studied law for a little time, and finally, in 1829, accepted a tutorship at Yale. There he finished his two years’ study of law, and was ready for admission to the bar when, in the winter of 1831, he was thoroughly converted. In February,

582 History of the Christian Church.

1833, he accepted a call from the North Congregational Church of Hartford, of which he remained the pastor until 1859. Dr. Bushnell prepared his sermons with great care, and, when fully written out, read them. With no knowledge of how to use his vocal organs, he brought on, first, clergyman’s sore throat, and then a lifelong battle with consumption.

By 1845, for his health, he spent a year in Europe, visiting England, Scotland, the Rhine country, Switzerland, Italy to Rome, France and back to England again. Few letters of travel give one so vivid an idea of the influence of the enlarged horizon on the traveler as those of Dr. Bushnell. Soon after his return he published his first book on “ Christian Nurture,” a book well worth reading now.

In 1848 he entered upon a deeper experience of the things of God, which enriched his life and strengthened his ministry. This came through reading the “Life of Madame Guyon ” and Fenelon. He did not rest in Quietism, but passed to a positive and clear knowledge of God, which made a new man and a new preacher of him. In 1849 he published “God in Christ,” an attempt to solve Unitarian difficulties through the necessary limitations of language. For this, as for his former book, he was trenchantly assailed, and the Fairfield West Association sought to secure a Church trial of his orthodoxy, 1850 and June 27, 1852. On the latter date his Church withdrew from the Hartford Association and stood alone, but impregnable. Some two years later his strongest opponent and colleague in the ministry in Hartford, Dr. Hawes, became reconciled to him and remained his lifelong friend. Dr. Bushnell’s bearing in contro

Christian Church in United States. 583

versy was an admirable manifestation of the Christian spirit. In 1851 he published “Christ in Theology,” developing more in the line of defense the views expressed in “ God in Christ.” His health requiring a change, he took a trip in 1852 to Minnesota and Missouri. In 1855-1856 he spent the winter in Cuba and the South; in 1856-1857 he was in California.

In 1858 he published two books which will ever make memorable his name; they were “ Sermons for the New Life” and “Nature and the Supernatural.” Few have ever read them without having their own thought cleared and their hearts warmed. The latter book is, perhaps, the chiefest American contribution to Christian apologetics of the century.

In 1859, with inexpressible sadness, he resigned his twenty-six years’ pastorate. From henceforth he was the most public-spirited and distinguished citizen of Hartford. Well does its beautiful park bear his name. The winter of 1859-1860 was spent in Minnesota.

In 1863 appeared his volume of sermons, entitled “Christ and His Salvation;” in 1872, “Sermons on Living Subjects.” In 1866 he published the “Vicarious Sacrifice,” and the continuation of its thought in 1874, “ Forgiveness and Law.” In these he advocated the moral theory of the atonement, but in such a way as to deepen the reader’s conception of its meaning and significance, even if he did not agree with him.

Dr. Bushnell was not a great scholar, but he was a most vigorous and original thinker. Had he read more it would have saved him some unnecessary work, but, doubtless, with the loss of some of his verve and original flavor. The man who can read Bushnell’s

584 History of the Christian Church.

sermons and not know himself and God better, must be strangely constituted.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1877) was a fellow-townsman of Horace BushneH’s, being born in Litchfield, Conn., eleven years later. He was ^HeBeecher^fd P^r°bably the most largely-gifted and richly-endowed pulpit orator in America in the nineteenth century. Son of a strong thinker and a famous preacher, Dr. Lyman Beecher, Henry Ward received his education at Amherst College, and his theological tuition at Lane Theological Seminary. In 1837 he began his first pastorate at Lawrenceburg, Ind., and two years later he went to Indianapolis, where he remained for the next eight years. In 1847 he accepted a call to Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, where he remained as pastor until his death, forty years later. This church seated three thousand, and was crowded during his ministry. Besides his pulpit work, for twenty years he was a contributor to The Independent, and its editor in 1861-1863. In 1870 he founded the Christian Union, now The Outlook. Besides this work he lectured in the chief cities in the United States and in England, receiving sometimes as much as $500 a night. In addition, he was active and earnest as a political orator, whose words had immense influence until after the Civil War. In 1863, at the instance of the Government, he went to England to affect public sentiment favorably to the North. He achieved great success, and his addresses were published under the title “ Freedom and War.” In 1865 h^e went to Charleston and Fort Sumter when the flag was again raised over the Fort, and delivered the address; he was there when President Lincoln

Christian Church in United States. 585

was shot. He was a zealous Republican until 1884; after that, a Democrat. In 1872, 1873, and 1874 he delivered the Yale “Lectures on Preaching.” Two volumes of his “ Sermons” were published and a “ Life of Christ.” In 1878 he declared his disbelief in eternal punishment, and in 1882 he and his Church withdrew from the Congregational Association.

In 1874 he was sued for breaking up the home of Theodore Tilton. The jury did not agree, standing nine for acquittal and three for conviction. But the trial revealed enough to check the popularity of the most popular of American preachers. No other man, for so long a time, so held and inspired his audience. God gave great gifts to Henry Ward Beecher. He had a regal imagination of almost inexhaustible fertil_ ity. He had breadth of mind, great warmth of heart and strong spiritual aspirations. His was a large nature, and its outpouring in prayer and sermon were wonderful. On the other hand, he had little place for argument or philosophy. Theology of the schools sat lightly upon him. A widely read, well-informed man₍ he was not a scholar. Nor had he a well-thought-out or consistent view of life. He was, first and last, an orator. He had none of that organizing ability which crystallizes a life or the work of a Church in an institution. Had his reason been equal to his imagination^ or his judgment to his impulse, or his devotion to his oratorical fervor, his record would have been different and his fame unsurpassed.

Richard Salter Storrs (1821-1900) was the most distinguished citizen in the great city in _{Df storrs} which he ministered for over fifty years, the most eminent clergyman of his Church, and a

586 History of the Christian Church.

man whose abilities, devotion, and lofty character made his name a potent influence throughout the world. Like Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. Storrs’s father was a clergyman, and he came to Brooklyn one year before his famous compeer. Two more dissimilar natures and careers it would be hard to imagine. Dr. Storrs was a scholar, a man of not only depth of thought and breadth of view, but of remarkable soundness of judgment, and whose influence increased each year he lived. No great crowds hung upon his lips, but he built up an influential Church, and made a permanent impression upon the city and his Church communion. His sermons and addresses have interest and unfailing value. Born in Braintree, Mass., he was graduated from Amherst in 1839. He studied law with Rufus Choate for two years; then making the ministry his life work, he was graduated from Andover Theological Seminary in 1845. The same year he was ordained and served at Brookline, Mass., for a year, when, in November, 1846, he became pastor of the Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn, N. Y. This position he held until his death, but his active pastorate ceased in 1899. He was one of the founders of The Independent, and one of its editors, 1848-1861. He was President of the American Board of Foreign Missions in a critical period of its history, 1887-1897. His address at the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, and that on Foreign Missions before the International

I Council of Congregationalists in 1899, show how a great man can use a great theme on a great occasion. In 1875 he published a small volume on “Preaching Without Notes,” which had a wide influence. His chief works are the Graham Lectures, 1856, on “The

Christian Church in United States. 587

Constitution of the Human Soul; ” the Lowell Lectures, 1884, on “The Divine Origin of Christianity Indicated by Its Historical Effect,” one of the noblest monuments of Christian thought and scholarship of this period; and “Bernard of Clairvaux,” 1892. His life went out amid increasing honors, as he honored his native land, his Church, and his Lord.

Far different from all these men, and of a wide and powerful influence on both sides of the Atlantic, was Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899).

Mr. Moody was born at Northfield, Mass. ^D^oodyT His father dying when he was four years of age, his mother, with nine children, was able to afford him only the advantages of the common school. After having worked for some years on the farm about Northfield, in 1854 he went to Boston, finding a place as clerk in a shoestore. There he gave himself to Christ, and offered himself to the Congregational Church in May, 1855, but was not received until a year later. He himself fixed the date of his conversion as in 1856. In September of that year he went to Chicago and engaged in business with all the overflowing energy of his eager, impulsive nature. Until i860 he was a salesman and commercial traveler for a firm dealing in boots and shoes. He was enthusiastic and successful in business; but he felt that the call of God was upon him, and in i860 he became city missionary, having from his first coming to Chicago been interested and active in Sunday-school work and in the Young Men’s Christian Association. In 1862 he married, and the same spring he went to the front as a member of the Christian Commission, and continued in this work until the end of the war. Here, in ad

588 History of the Christian Church.

dition to his natural qualities and gift of speaking helpfully to a perfect stranger, he acquired that habit of expectation of immediate results from the presentation of the truths of the gospel which characterized his work. Preaching to men about to go into battle, and pointing men dying in the hospitals to the Savior crucified and risen, gave an earnestness and immediateness to his preaching such as is not often seen. On his return he threw himself into the State Sunday-school work, assisting in the first series of International Sunday-school Lessons in 1869. Iⁿ these years he was active, as he was his life long interested, in the work of the Young Men’s Christian Association, and was president of its International Convention in 1879, having greatly aided in the erection of the buildings for the Chicago Association which preceded the present structure, the finest of the kind in the world.

In 1867, partly on account of his wife’s health, he made a visit to Great Britain, and made valuable acquaintances as a Young Men’s Christian Association worker. In 1871, largely through an English preacher who came to Chicago, Henry Moorehouse, he came into a deeper experience in the spiritual life and greater power in preaching the gospel. In 1872 he was again in London for a short time, and attended the Mildmay Conference. Incidentally this prepared the way for his extended evangelistic tour, June, 1873, to August, 1875. this tour he began his work at York, and went north. He met with great success at Edinburgh and Glasgow, powerfully stirring, as no other man of the century, Scotchmen of all Churches and creeds. In both places, in departing, he preached

Christian Church in United States. 589

to audiences of twenty thousand. Then he preached in the north of Ireland, and thence came to London. Here, as in Scotland and Ireland, he achieved great success. His tour was made in connection with Mr. Ira D. Sankey, whom he first met in 1870. Their book of “ Sacred Songs and Solos” was first published in 1873. In 1875 it was published in America as “ Gospel Hymns.” Six different books of that title have been published. The profits to Messrs. Moody and Sankey have been $354,000, before 1901, of which not one cent went into their pockets, but all has been given to benevolent work.

On Mr. Moody’s return to America he held five series of special religious services, 1875-1877, in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and Boston. These meetings may be said not only to have resulted in bringing many thousands to Christ, but they also made the entire service and work of the Evangelical Churches less conventional and more effective. In 1881-1884, Mr. Moody was again in Great Britain and Ireland. Again he conducted a great campaign in London. He also worked in 1882 in Oxford and Cambridge. In 1891 and 1892 he was again in Great Britain, and in the latter year visited the Holy Land. In 1893, during the World’s Fair, he conducted a six months’ campaign in Chicago, expending in it $60,000. From 1875 until his death, when in this country, he held each year special revival services or missions in the chief cities of the land.

But Mr. Moody was more than a revivalist. He felt his own lack of early training and resolved to help those who wished a better education, and yet were

590 History of the Christian Church

very poor; also lie desired to give a suitable training to lay workers in the Church. From this arose the Northfield Seminary for girls. Here they are given a good, thorough, secondary education. They do the necessary domestic work of the institution themselves. This school was established in 1879; in 1881 came the Mt. Hermon School for boys. Boys do manual work. The tuition and board is $100 a year. In both schools the Bible is thoroughly taught. Before the century’s end, nearly six thousand students had enjoyed the advantages of these schools. The Bible Institute at Chicago for the training of Christian workers was founded in 1889. It has a two years’ course. In the first ten years it sent out one hundred and eighty-six foreign missionaries, besides all the workers at home. Its property is valued at $300,000.

But Mr. Moody’s work and influence culminated in his Northfield Bible Conferences. The first was held in 1880, and since 1885 they have been held annually. In wide influence and permanent results, probably no evangelist of the nineteenth century equaled Mr. Moody, though very many of them were men of much greater intellectual ability. A part of Mr. Moody’s power, doubtless, was that he was a layman, and presented the gospel in such a direct, telling, and entirely unconventional manner. But Mr. Moody had great gifts. He loved men, he loved his Lord, and he was thoroughly unselfish. He was an excellent man of business, and had a practical sense seldom equaled. He knew men as few men have ever done, and he knew his Bible. He received the love of God in its fullness, and did more than any other man of his time to bring together and in active co-operation Christians

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of different Churches. He had intense earnestness, wonderful directness of appeal, and entire simplicity. He said, “ I know that, in any place I go, there are better preachers of the gospel than I; but God uses me.” And how wonderfully God used him! There are two marked characteristics of his life. He was always a man of prayer, and he was always learning better how to do God’s work in reaching and saving men. His work was his great school; and how he grew in it!

A very different man from these, but the equal of any of them in the command of an audience, and unsurpassed in the century as a master of pathetic eloquence, was Bishop Matthew _Sfm_p^h_s°n. Simpson (1811-1884), of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Bishop Simpson was born at Cadiz, Ohio. His father died when he was a year old. He was brought up by his mother, and owed his training to two uncles—his mother’s brother, William Tingley, for more than twenty years the clerk of the court; but mostly to his father’s brother, for whom he was named, and who, unmarried, became a father to his brother’s only son. This uncle, Matthew Simpson, was quite an inventor, an efficient schoolmaster, and for ten years a member of the Senate of the

State of Ohio.

Young Simpson was a delicate child, with a thirst for learning, and remarkable power of application and acquisition. He was in the elementary school but a few months; then at home he picked up German and some French, botany, chemistry, and geology. At last, in 1823, by agreeing to do half a day’s work each day besides, he went to the academy and made rapid

592 History of the Christian Church.

progress in Latin and Greek. His uncle opening a school, he served as his assistant, 1826-1828. In the latter year he was two months at Madison College, but left for want of funds, having walked all the way to college and walking all the way back. On his return, in 1829, he was converted at a camp-meeting, though with no unusual demonstrations. From 1830 to 1833, while supporting himself, he studied medicine, and in the spring ot that year began its practice. At the Conference in July he was appointed third preacher on his home circuit, it being understood that he could not leave home on account of the fatal illness of his sister.

Matthew Simpson was now a young man of unusually alert and receptive mind, with the temperament of an orator, but with a quickness and firmness of practical judgment seldom surpassed. He was tall, thin, ungainly in appearance, bashful in manner, with a high, thin voice, a tendency he never overcame to flat his vowels, and with weak lungs. He would do nothing in any way toward securing a license or entering Conference. These steps were all taken without his co-operation. Finally he told his mother that he thought God called him to preach. To his great surprise she replied, “My son, I have been looking for this hour ever since you were born,” and she told him how his dying father prayed that the infant son might become a minister of Christ’s Gospel. In the spring of 1834, his sister having died, he gave up his medical practice and gave himself wholly to the work of his circuit. In July, 1834, he was appointed to Pittsburg, Pa., against his desire and expectation. In 1835 was

Christian Church in United States. 593

appointed to Liberty Street, Pittsburg, the circuit being divided, and in that year he married the companion of his heart and life. In 1836 he was appointed to what is now Monongahela City, twenty miles below Pittsburg.

These four years were the extent of the pastoral service of Matthew Simpson. In 1837 he became Professor of Natural Science in Allegheny College, at Meadville, Pa. Here he staid two years and learned the routine of college work and administration; but, best of all, he had an opportunity, which he prized and improved, in the college library of six thousand volumes. In 1839 he was chosen president of Indiana Asbury University at Greencastle, then in the acorn stage of its development. Here he remained and wrought for the next nine years, living largely on hope, but making many acquaintances, acquiring a powerful influence as a pulpit orator, and showing rare gifts as an administrator. In 1848 he became editor of the Western Christian Advocate. Here he took his position in the days of political compromise as a determined Antislavery man, winning for his editorials the written commendations of Salmon P. Chase.

Matthew Simpson had been a member of the General Conference of 1844. In that of 1848 he, in part, framed the resolution which declared the Plan of Separation null and void. In that of 1852 he wrote the report which was adopted, and which declared lay delegation at that time inexpedient. Bishop Simpson had to this time never been a robust man. He changed from Meadville to Greencastle, and from Greencastle to Cincinnati, mainly on ac

594 History of the Christian Church.

count of his health. In 1852, on the first ballot, he, with Scott, Ames, and Baker, was elected bishop. In 1853, the first bishop of any Church from the East, he visited California and Oregon, revisiting this field again in 1862. In 1857-1858 he crossed the Atlantic, being, with Dr. McClintock, fraternal delegate to the Wesleyan Conference. Before the Conference, where he carried all before him, he visited Norway. Afterward he was present at the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in Berlin, and preached, in English of course, in the Garnison Kirche. Thence by Prague, Vienna, and Constantinople, he journeyed to the Holy Land. Thence to Egypt, Naples, Marseilles, Paris, and London, home.

Bishop Simpson, in understanding and grasp of the situation, in genuine kindness of heart, in the unfailing courtesy of Christian brotherhood, has had no superior in the high office he held. The discharge of its duties and the countless calls for special public service as a chief pastor of his Church might well absorb all his time. Yet probably, outside of this, he rendered his greatest service in cheering his countrymen in the dark days of the Civil War, where no man in the American Churches exerted a wider influence, in his advocacy of lay representation in the General Conference, and in his paving the way for fraternal relations between the Methodist Episcopal Church and her separated sister of the South.

Bishop Simpson was a personal friend of President Lincoln, and of Secretary Edwin M. Stanton, who was born of a Methodist family. He was often sent for to consult with them, and when, in the hour of triumph, the “First Great American” lay low by

Christian Church in United Srates. 595

the hand of an assassin, it was Bishop Simpson who delivered the address at his grave. His great speeches in New York in November, 1864, in Philadelphia at the opening of the Fair of the Sanitary Commission in the spring of that year, and in the House of Representatives in January, 1866, were upon great occasions for his patriotic eloquence, and occasions nobly met.

In 1852 he had opposed lay representation; he came out for it strongly in 1863, the only one of the Episcopal Board, and against a powerful opposition. In 1868 the minority became a majority, and in 1872 lay representation became an accomplished fact. In 1870, by visiting the bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in company with Bishop Janes, the way was prepared for the sending of the first fraternal delegates to their General Conference at Nashville in 1874, and the return of the courtesy by that Church to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Baltimore in 1876. This made way for the Cape May Commission of August, 1876, which removed all obstacles to fraternal union.

In 1874, Bishop Simpson made an Episcopal visit to Mexico, and the year following to Italy, Germany, and Scandinavia. In the winter of 1878-1879 he delivered the Yale “Lectures on Preaching.” It is suggestive that Horace Bushnell, with a splendid physique, by reading his sermons preached himself into the consumption, which made the last twenty years of his life one long disease, while Matthew Simpson, never vigorous, hollow-chested, and with weak lungs, preached himself by extempore speaking into health and the vigor of large performance until past seventy years of age.

596 History of the Christian Church.

He was a fraternal delegate again to the Wesleyan Conference in 1870, at Burslem, and seldom surpassed the effect of his address on that occasion. He was greatly interested in the First Ecumenical Conference in London in 1881. In the address on the death of President Garfield in Exeter Hall, he swayed the audience and brought it to its feet with all the ease of his younger years. In great feebleness, he attended the sessions of the General Conference of 1884, and gave the parting address. Humbly and devotedly he had lived the Christian life, and on the 18th of June_? 1884, the great preacher and bishop passed to his reward.

Bishop Simpson was the rare combination of a poetic imagination, practical judgment, and admirable administrative capacity. His oratory was persuasive rather than instructive, but it was overwhelming. A thorough Christian gentleman, at his death he left nothing that could wound those who loved and trusted him while living. Few men more loved their kind than this man, whose words moved multitudes as the tempest moves the forest.

Bishop John H. Vincent is the originator of the Chautauqua Assembly, the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, the Chautauqua Univer-\Mncent. ^s^y> ^an(^ perhaps, more than any one man, has influenced the interdenominational development of the Sunday-school work of the Evangelical Churches, and indeed in no slight degree of all Churches in all lands. In this latter work he has had able co-workers, notably in Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull, editor of the Sunday-school Times. Hence, no man in the Methodist Episcopal Church is so widely

Christian Church in United States. 597

known and loved in all the American Churches and in foreign lands as the founder of the Chautauqua Movement. No man has done more to raise the standards and ideals of Sunday-school teaching, or has more widely reached the children of the Methodist Churches in the nineteenth century, than John H. Vincent.

John Heyl Vincent was born in Tuscaloosa, Ala., in 1832. Six years later, with his parents, he came to Northumberland County, Pa. He studied in Milton and Lewisburg Academies, in the Preparatory School of Lewisburg University, and the Wesleyan Institute at Newark, N. J. He was licensed as a local preacher in 1850, and joined the Conference in 1853. From 1853 to 1857 he served Churches in New Jersey, and in the latter year was transferred to the Rock River Conference, where he was pastor at Joliet, Galena, Rockford, and Chicago. At Galena he was pastor of the family of General Grant. His interest, enthusiasm, intelligence, and success in Sunday-school work caused him to be called to New York in 1865, to take charge of that work in the Methodist Episcopal Church. This position he occupied until his election as bishop in 1888. Before this election he had visited Europe six times, and Egypt and Palestine twice.

In 1874, with Mr. Lewis Miller, of Akron, Ohio, he organized, on Chautauqua Lake, the Chautauqua Assembly, a radical modification of the Methodist Camp-meeting. The gates were not open on Sunday, the main interest was in the study and teaching of the Bible, and the time was extended to a month instead of a week. This became the parent of many scores of like Assemblies, which are known from the Atlantic to the Pacific, including those among the Roman

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Catholics and the Jews, and have come to be a very considerable factor in the summer life of the American people. Four years later the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle was founded, and brought more intellectual culture in a religious spirit into the American home than any other single means used in the last fifty years. Its work and influence is felt in all lands. Bishop Vincent has been assiduous, faithful, and successful in the duties of his office. Since his election as Bishop he has been repeatedly chosen university preacher at Harvard and Cornell. Long may he remain with the Church, and long after may his work flourish!

Another Methodist preacher of national influence and world-wide reputation was William H. Milburn

(1823-1903), he having served for twenty-

Dr. Milburn. . _r ,

two years as chaplain to Congress, lor the last eighteen continuously, a much longer period than that occupied by any of his predecessors in office. Dr. Milburn was born in Philadelphia. His sight was perfect until, at the age of five years, an accident in play and a physician’s malpractice destroyed one eye and gradually extinguished the sight of the other. After two years in darkness, for over fifteen years, with great difficulty he was able to read a little each day. His father, a prosperous merchant in Philadelphia, lost his fortune in 1837, and the family moved to Jacksonville, 111. There he assisted his father in a store, and read largely from a good library to which he had access. He learned Latin and Greek; but the cramped posture necessary to read made it necessary for him to give up college work in order to retain his health. Hence, at twenty years of age, he joined the

Christian Church in United States. 599

Illinois Conference and traveled its circuits. Two years later, having been appointed financial agent of a Western college, he set out for the East. He left Cincinnati for Wheeling on a steamboat. There was a crowd on the boat, and among them several Congressmen of each House. They swore, played cards, and drank heavily. On Sunday morning, young Mil-burn was asked to preach. Toward the close, he addressed these representatives of the people, saying: “ Consider the influence of your example upon the young men of the nation—what a school of vice you are establishing! If you insist upon the right of ruining yourselves, do not, by your example, corrupt and debauch those who are the hope of the land. I must tell you that, as an American citizen, I feel disgraced by your behavior; as a preacher of the gospel, I am commissioned to tell you that, unless you renounce your evil courses, repent of your sins, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ with your hearts unto righteousness, you will certainly be damned.”

Soon after the service, and while he was in his room, a gentleman called upon him and presented him with a purse of between, fifty and one hundred dollars, and said that, if he would allow the use of his name, that would assure him of an honorable election as chaplain to Congress. After consulting with a clergyman on the steamer, he gave his consent. Thus he became chaplain of the House of Representatives, 1844-1846. After serving six years in the pastorate in the South, he came North, and was again chosen chaplain, 1853-1855. Then he was in the pastorate, mainly in New York, until 1862. Meantime, he came to be in great demand as a lecturer. In 1862 he lo

6oo History of the Christian Church.

cated and joined the Protestant Episcopal Church. Sixteen years after, he returned to the Church of his love and the Conference of his early service. For forty years he traveled, preaching and lecturing extensively in all the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Ireland. Before 1898 he calculated he had traveled one million six hundred thousand miles.

Dr. Milburn brought the cultivation of the memory and the voice to a perfection unequaled by any public man of his time. To the author, his conduct of the service in dignity, and the modulation of his voice in beauty and in harmony with his thought, excelled anything he has ever heard. He was the author of several works, “The Rifle, Ax, and Saddlebag” being the first. “What a Blind Man Saw in England” was his most popular lecture. As a preacher he ranked with the best. The London Athenaum described his eloquence as next to Milton’s, and the editor of the Christian World pronounced him superior to any preacher he had ever heard.

When Philip SchafF came to New York as a professor in the Union Theological Seminary and a member of the Presbyterian Church, he was the ^Pschaff.°^r
most distinguished teacher of Church History in the United States, and such he remained until his death. In these years he published his translation and American edition of Lange’s “Commentary;” his “Creeds of Christendom,” the fullest and best work on Christian creeds; his edition of Bryennios’s “Teaching of the Twelve;” his abridgment, translation, and additions to Herzog’s “ Encyclopedia for Protestant Theology and the Church,” and “ Library of the Christian Fathers,” in which he

Christian Church in United States. 601

co-operated with Bishop Coxe and others. His life long, he was interested in the progress of religious toleration, especially in Roman Catholic lands, though Evangelical intolerance seemed to hurt him worse than any other. He was greatly interested in the Parliament of Religions held in connection with the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. He soon became ill, and survived his return from it but a few weeks.

The man who, more than any other American, made his countrymen at home in German theological thought, was Henry Boynton Smith (1815— professor j8₇₇)_# Professor Smith was delicate in

Smith. • •' , .

physique and refined in expression, but a tireless worker. Early in his college and theological course his health was on the point of giving way. Having finished his college course with distinction at Bowdoin, and studied theology at Andover and Bangor, and taught awhile at Bowdoin, in 1837, at the age of twenty-two, he was sent to Europe to check, and if possible cure, incipient consumption. Few letters of an American student in Germany have the value of Professor Smith’s letters, 1837-1840. He became a lifelong and intimate friend of Tholuck and his wife. He heard, besides Tholuck, Erdmann, Ulrici, and Kahnis, at Halle, and at Berlin Neander, Hengsten-berg, and Twesten. He not only heard, but he assimilated. Probably no American of the century better understood German theological thought or more independently judged it.

For two years after his return there seemed to be no opening for him in a college or in the settled pastorate. Finally, after years of discouragement, in

602 History of the Christian Church.

which he came to know all that was worth knowing in Boston through his addresses on German philosophy, he accepted a call to West Amesbury, Mass., and became a townsman of John G. Whittier, 18431847. He was ordained and married soon after on a salary of $500 a year, the parsonage, and the wood lot from which to procure his fuel. In 1847 he became Professor of Moral and Mental Philosophy at Amherst College, where he remained until 1850. In that year he accepted a call to the Presbyterian Union Theological Seminary in New York at $2,000 a year. This, in view of the increased expense, was less than he received at Amherst. The sad thing about it was, that these narrow circumstances necessitated a large amount of literary work, which both prevented his giving his best to the world, but also finally broke his health. Elected Professor of Church History in 1850, and three years later of Systematic Theology, this work was but a fraction of his toil. His health weakened in the strain, and in 1859 he had a second time to seek rest across the Atlantic. This year he gave his attention to Ireland and Great Britain, France and Switzerland, going on to Italy, and returning by the Rhine. In 1866 he revisited the familiar scenes and the old friends of his student life more than twenty-five years before. In 1869-1870, in great weakness, he set out for a tour of the Mediterranean countries, on the way passing through England and Germany, both in going and returning, including especially Egypt, Palestine, Constantinople, and Athens. There came a partial relief, but in January, 1874, felt compelled by his health to resign his professorship. For three years he

Christian Church in United States. 603

held the post of librarian, and then, on February 7, 1877, went home to God.

Professor Henry B. Smith, though of frail physical constitution, had work born in him as a constituent of his blood. To his tireless energy we owe his “ Chronological Tables of Church History,” 1853-1859; his translation and editing of Hagenbach’s “ History of Doctrines;” his translation of Gieseler’s “History of the Christian Church,” 1857-1877; and his revision of the translation of Stier’s “ Words of the Lord Jesus. His “System of Christian Theology” was published after his death. No work was more important than his “ Faith and Philosophy.”

Besides all this, beginning with his Andover address on “ The Relation Between Faith and Philosophy,” he gave addresses of great value each year at college commencements and on other special occasions. As if this were not enough, he was a constant contributor to the best theological periodicals and to encyclopedias. In 1859 he began The American Theological Review, which four years later was merged in The Presbyterian Quarterly.

The hard financial conditions which made these expedients necessary, in later years gave way. Through George Bancroft, who could appreciate the needs of a sensitive scholar better than his colleagues, and was better able to head a subscription, in 1864 over $5,000 was raised to pay off a mortgage on his home. In later years the salary was made adequate. Perhaps the best contribution which he made to the life of the American Churches was his forwarding, as no other man, the reunion of the Old School and New

604 History of the Christian Church.

School Presbyterian Churches in 1869. His character, his learning, and his disposition, alike, contributed to that end.

Trained a Congregationalist, educated in the best teaching of Germany, and doing his life work as a Presbyterian, he belonged to Evangelical Christendom. In the goodly company of thinkers and scholars who have adorned the teaching and the life of the Christian Church, Henry B. Smith has his sure remembrance.

John Henry Barrows (1847-1902) was the son of a professor in Olivet College, a Congregational institution in Michigan. He studied at Yale Col

* lege and at Union and Andover Theological Seminaries. He was ordained in the Congregational Church, but in 1881 he became pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, which position he held until 1895. In 1893 he was the moving spirit and the president of the World’s Parliament of Religions. In 1896 he went to India to lecture on the Haskell Foundation. These lectures were published on his return. In November, 1898, he became president of Oberlin College. He had begun a great work for that famous school of learning, when, in the midst of his years, the days of toil ended, and he hastened whither are gathered God’s elect.

Phillips Brooks (1835-1893) was the son of a well-to-do merchant, and born in Boston, and was graduated from Harvard College in 1855. He studied Brook*, theology and read largely the best English literature, making copious notes, at Alexandria, Va., 1856-1859, and was ordained the latter year. From 1859 to 1862 he was pastor in Philadel

Christian Church in United States. 605

phia of the Church of the Advent. From the first he made his mark as a preacher. In 1862-1869 he was rector of Holy Trinity, Boston. This was the throne of his power. Here the finest church, architecturally speaking, in that great city was erected for the use of his congregation. Here he remained until he was elected Bishop of Massachusetts, 1891. This honor he did not long survive, dying January 23, 1893.

Phillips Brooks was one of the great preachers of the century. He instructed and built up as well as enchained the congregation. It was not logic or emotion, but the whole man, that preached in Phillips Brooks’s pulpit, and its appeal was to the whole man. Few men have so exalted Christian manhood. His are the rare sermons enjoyed in book-form by both preachers and people.

Henry W. Bellows (1814-1882) was of Massachusetts birth and educated at Harvard, where he was graduated in 1832, and from the Cambridge _{Dr BeIIows} Divinity School in 1837. In 1837 he was called to the pastorate of the first Unitarian Church in New York City, which became the scene of his labors until the end of his life.. In 1857 he delivered the Lowell lectures on “The Treatment of Social Diseases;” the same year he publicly defended the theater. In 1868 he published a volume of sermons, and in this year visited Europe. His great and never-to-be-forgotten service was as president of the United States Sanitary Commission, 1861-1878. In the years of the Civil War the Commission raised and distributed $15,000,000 in supplies and $5,000,000 in money. In his church there is a memorial tablet to his memory by St. Gaudens.

606 History of the Christian Church.

What profession has given more exalted and devoted public service than that rendered by these men? Where is there a larger field for the noblest influence of the greatest gifts than in the Christian ministry ?

As in England, so in the United States, the middle of the century saw a divided Methodism. In 1852 the membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church was 728,700. But the force of the The Methodist expanding life was in this as in the other Episcopal Churches. The University of the Pacific^ ^U * at San Jose, Cal., was founded in 1851, and the same year came into being that great educational center for Methodism in the Northwest, the North' western University, at Evanston, 111. Iowa Wesleyan University was founded in 1854, and Garrett Biblical Institute at Evanston, in 1855 ; while, farther east, Genesee College, later Syracuse University, began its career in 1850.

There was a similar expansion in the Church press. The Northwestern Christian Advocate, Chicago, was established in 1852 ; the California Christian Advocate, San Francisco, in 1854; the Pacific Christian Advocate, Portland, Ore., in 1856; and in the same year the Central Christian Advocate, at St. Louis ; and the Northern Independent, 1857-1868, at Auburn, N. Y., in 1857.

The new era in the development of the Methodist Episcopal Church opened with the election, in 1852, of Levi Scott, Matthew Simpson, Osmon C. Baker, and Edward R. Ames to the Episcopacy. Two of these men, Bishops Simpson and Ames, were administrators of unusual ability; Bishop Scott came from the Book Concern, and Bishop Baker, more than any

Christian Church in United States. 607

other bishop, was the father of theological education in the Methodist Churches. Bishop Waugh died February 9, 1858.

In i860 came the legislation against slavery, of which mention has been made. In the same year, out of an excitement and concerted effort to restore the earlier usages of Methodism, in which the teaching of entire sanctification and opposition to secret societies came to the front, in what was known as the “Naza-rite” movement in the Genesee Conference, arose the Free Methodist Church. Not a little fanaticism and bitterness accompanied the movement. Notwithstanding it carried away some of the most conscientious of the membership of the mother Church, it has never made large growth in the territory of its origin. Its school, Chesborough Seminary, is doing good work. In 1861 and 1862 a vote of the membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church was taken on lay representation, and the majority was against it.

The war caused at its opening a loss in the border Conferences; 66 preachers and 16,756 members withdrew in the Baltimore Conference alone. The General Conference of 1864 prohibited slaveholding altogether in the membership. All the Churches in the North rallied to the defense of the Union, but none more than the Methodist Episcopal. In some cases the able-bodied men of the Church, with the pastor at their head, enlisted for the war. This fact was recognized by President Lincoln when the Committee of the General Conference waited on him, May 18, 1864, when General Grant was fighting his way with great loss to Richmond. In reply to them, he said:

“ Gentlemen,—In response to your address, allow

60S History of the Christian Church.

me to attest the accuracy of its historical statements, indorse the sentiment it expresses, and thank you, in the nation’s name, for the sure promise it gives. Nobly sustained as the government has been by all the Churches, I would alter nothing which might in the least appear invidious against any. Yet, without this, it may fairly be said that the Methodist Episcopal Church, not less devoted than the best, is by its greater numbers, the most important of all. It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospitals, and more prayers to Heaven than any. God bless the Methodist Church—bless all the Churches—and blessed be God, who, in this our great trial, giveth us the Churches.”

The drain of the war was shown in the statistics for 1864 which reported a decrease of 50,951 members. After the close of the war, this Church extended the sphere of her operations in the South. The Mississippi Conference was organized in September, 1865; the South Carolina and Tennessee Conferences in 1866; the Texas and Georgia Conferences in 1867. These were Conferences of colored Churches. In June, 1868, the Holston Conference of white membership was organized. In 1868 there was reported a gain of 117,000 members from the South. The General Conference of 1864 extended the term of the Methodist Episcopal pastorate from two to three years, and attendance upon class-meeting was made voluntary. At this session, Davis W. Clark, Edward Thomson, and Calvin Kingsley were elected bishops. Bishop Clark came from the editorship of the Ladies' Repository, Bishop Thomson from the editorship of the

Christian Church in United States. 609

New York Christian Advocate, and Bishop Kingsley from that of the Western Christian Advocate. At this time the Church Extension Society was authorized, but did not begin its work until three years later. In this decade, in 1866, fell the Centennial of the first Methodist preaching and society in America. The gifts of the people at this commemoration amounted to $8,709,498. This started the Church in a career of large usefulness. The Drew Theological Seminary, the Hack-ettstown Centenary Institute, the Central Tennessee College at Nashville, one of the first and largest of the schools for the colored people, and the Children’s Fund to help students in the schools of the Methodist Episcopal Church, owed their origin to this movement, as did countless new churches, and churches thoroughly repaired or freed from debt.

In 1867 the Freedmen’s Aid Society, which has done so much where there was greatest need, was organized. In 1869, Boston University was founded, and the same year, in the same city, the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society. In 1869 and 1870 a vote of the membership declared in favor of lay representation. This was concurred in by the members of the Annual Conferences. ~ These years saw many of the strong men of the Church removed.

Bishop Thomson died March 22, 1870; Bishop Kingsley, April 6, 1870; Bishop Clark, May 23, 1871; and Bishop Baker, December 8, 1871. With these went the sturdy educator, editor, and controversialist, Dr. Charles Elliott, January 6, 1869; and the accomplished John McClintock, president of Drew Theological Seminary, perhaps at that time the most scholarly mind in Methodism, March 4, 1870. He

610 History of the Christian Church

originated, and Dr. Strong carried to completion, “ McClintock and Strong’s Encyclopedia,” a work needing such revision as Herzog’s Encyclopedia in German is now receiving, but still the best religious Encyclopedia in the English language.

In 1872 the General Conference opened the new and larger sphere of action and influence for the Church in admitting laymen to membership to the General Conference (the Annual Conferences as before were composed of ministers), and by electing eight bishops: Thomas Bowman, William 1,. Harris, Randolph S. Foster, Isaac W. Wiley, Stephen M. Merrill, Gilbert Haven, Edward G. Andrews, and Jesse T. Peck. Of these, Bishop Bowman was the president of Indiana Asbury University, Bishop Foster of Drew Theological Seminary, Bishop Harris was Missionary Secretary, Bishop Wiley was editor of the Ladies’ Repository, Bishop Merrill of the Western Christian Advocate, Bishop Gilbert Haven of Zion's Herald, and Bishops Peck and Andrews came from the pastorate.

This Conference opened the way for fraternal relations with the South, and allowed separate colored Conferences. It also ordered a greatly-needed work, which was well done, the revision of the Hymnal. Soon institutions for the colored people of the South sprung up, like Clark University, at Atlanta, Ga.; New Orleans University, at New Orleans; Wiley University, at Marshall, Texas; and Claflin University, at Orangeburg, S. C. Bishop Ames (1806-1879) died April 25, 1879. Bishop Janes (1807-1876) died September 18, 1876; he was a deeply spiritual man and tireless in liis work. Bishop Gilbert Haven (1821-

Christian Church in United States. 6ii

1880) died January 3, 1880; he was the first of the younger bishops to be called from their work; he had proved himself a brilliant and a versatile man.

In the General Conference of 1880, Henry W. Warren was called from a most successful pastorate; Cyrus D. Foss from an exceptionally able _iggo presidency of Wesleyan University at Middletown, Conn.; John F. Hurst, the Church historian of Methodism, from the presidency of Drew Theological Seminary; and Erastus O. Haven, after having been a popular college president at Michigan State, Northwestern, and Syracuse Universities, from the secretaryship of the Board of Education, to the re sponsibilities of the Episcopacy.

Dr. James M. Buckley was elected editor of the Christian Advocate, a position he held with ability and usefulness until the end of our period, surpassing all his predecessors in length of service, and for it declining the Episcopacy.

The Ecumenical Conference at London, England, September, 1881, marked a new stadium in the development of world-wide Methodism. In 1880 the Woman’s Home Missionary Society was organized, and in the same year the University of Denver was founded. In 1865 had been founded the Philadelphia Home for the Aged; in 1879, the Bennett Orphan Asylum at the same city; and in 1887, the Brooklyn Hospital, the beginning of the charitable institutional work of Episcopal Methodism on a large scale. The German Methodists began their work in Orphan

Asylums in 1864.

Bishop Levi Scott (1802-1882), leaving a name fragrant as a Christian, died July 13. ^l882* Bishop

6i2 History of the Christian Church.

Jesse T. Peck (1811-1883), versatile in occupation and achievement, who left his main impress upon the Church in the founding ot Syracuse University, died May 17, 1883.

In 1884, William X. Ninde, president of Northwestern University; John M. Walden, agent of the Western Book Concern; William F. Mai-

l884«

lalieu, presiding elder; and Charles H. Fowler, who had been president of Northwestern University, editor of the Christian Advocate, and was then missionary secretary, were elected bishops. In the same year, in December, was held at Baltimore the Centennial commemoration of the organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

June 18, 1884, Bishop Simpson (1811-1884) entered into rest, leaving a peerless name among American Methodists. Bishop Wiley (1825-1884) died in China, November 22, 1884, where in early life he had been a missionary. Bishop Harris (1817-1887), the first of the bishops to make an episcopal tour of the globe, and a wise administrator, died September 2, 1887.

In 1888, the General Conference elected as bishops, John H. Vincent, secretary of the Sunday-school

_j8g8 Union; James N. FitzGerald, recording-secretary of the Missionary Society; Isaac W. Joyce, from the pastorate at Cincinnati; John P. Newman, pastor at Washington; and Daniel A. Good-sell, who had spent his life in influential pastorates, but was at that time secretary of the Board of Education. It also extended the pastoral term from three to five years, and authorized the Deaconess Movement, order, and institutions.

Christian Church in United States. 613

In 1884, William Taylor, of world-wide fame as an evangelist, was elected Missionary Bishop for Africa; in 1888, James M. Thoburn, the Indian missionary of his Church, was elected Missionary Bishop for India.

In October, 1891, the second Ecumenical Conference was held at Washington. The General Conference of 1892 recognized the organization of the Epworth League for the young peo- 1892. pie, which had been founded May 14, 1889.

In 1896 the General Conference elected Charles C. McCabe and Earl Cranston bishops. Bishop McCabe served as chaplain in the army, and raised ,3^5. large sums of money for the Christian Commission during the war. He originated the Loan Fund of the Church Extension Society, and carried it well towards a million of dollars, which it has since far passed. He also carried the Missionary Society to enlarged usefulness by his cry of “A Million for Missions from Collections Only,” which has been greatly exceeded. Bishop McCabe has probably sung the gospel to more people than any other Methodist preacher in the world. Bishop Cranston made his reputation as an able preacher and wise administrator as presiding elder in Colorado, as pastor, and as Agent of the Western Book Concern at Cincinnati. Bishops Bowman, Foster, and Taylor were retired on account of age. Joseph C. Hartzell, for many years secretary of the Freedmen’s Aid and Southern Education Society, was made Missionary Bishop of Africa.

The General Conference of 1900 was an epoch-making body. It admitted the laymen in ^ equal numbers to the General Conference.

It adopted a constitution for the Methodist Episcopal

614 History of the Christian Church.

Church, which received the necessary concurrent votes of the Annual Conferences. This settled the question of the admission of women as delegates to the General Conference, which had been a burning question since 1888, by making legal their election. It also removed the time-limit from service in the pastorate in the Methodist Episcopal Church. It fixed a term of five years for the supernumary relation, and assigned the bishops to Episcopal residences. The laymen made their influence felt in the reduction of missionary secretaries, and in a determined movement for the consolidation of the publishing interests and of the Church benevolences.

Bishop John P. Newman (1826-1899), ^an impressive, pulpit orator, and the lifelong friend of General Grant, died July 5, 1899. In 1900, David H. Moore, editor of the Western Christian Advocate, and former chancellor of the University of Denver, was elected Bishop. John W. Hamilton, secretary of the Freed-men’s Aid and Southern Education Society, and formerly pastor of the People’s Church in Boston, was chosen to the same office. Edwin W. Parker and Frank W. Warne were chosen Missionary Bishops for Southern Asia.

Three men largely affected the life of this Church in the earlier years of this period. John P. Durbin r. r. (1800-1876) was a most excellent orator,

Dr. Durbin. , ,

and the man who made the Missionary Society take its rightful place in the love and service of the people. Born in Kentucky, he was converted at seventeen, and at twenty joined the Ohio Conference. From 1822 to 1825 he attended the Miami and Cincinnati Universities. In 1830-1832 he was professor in

Christian Church in United States. 615

Augusta College. In 1832-1834 he edited the Christian Advocate. In 1834-1850 he was president of Dickinson College. In 1842-1843 he visited Europe. In 1850-1876 he was the missionary secretary in his Church. In him a powerful spirit, equal to great efforts, dwelt in a slight and frail physical tenement.

Daniel Curry (1809-1887) possessed on^ of the strongest minds that guided the Methodist press. His command of terse and expressive English was remarkable. He made the Christian ^Dr‘ ^Curry* Advocate such a power as it had never been. In the first half of this period few men were so influential in the Church. He strenuously opposed lay representation, but gracefully yielded when it became the law and the fact. He was graduated from Wesleyan University in 1837. He taught in Troy Conference Academy and Georgia Female Seminary, Macon, Ga., 1837-1839. He was in the pastorate in Georgia, 1844 J then in the North in the pastorate. In 1854-1857 he was professor in Indiana Asbury University; then again in the pastorate. In 1864-1876 he was editor of the Christian Advocate; 1876-1880, of the National Reposi_ tory; N. Y., 1884-1887,-of the Methodist Quarterly Re. view. He was a stanch antislavery man, and, with Matthew Simpson, was most instrumental in declaring the Plan of Separation null and void.

Daniel D. Whedon (1808-1885) was, after Wilbur Fisk, one of the first Methodist preachers to receive a college education. In 1828 he was graduated .

^& ^ Dr. Whedon.

from Hamilton College, and then studied law at Rochester, N. Y. In 1831-1833 he was a tutor at Hamilton, and for the next ten years was professor in Wesleyan University, at Middletown, Conn. I11

616 History of the Christian Church.

1843-1845 he was in the pastorate. Then for the next ten years he taught Rhetoric and Logic in the University of Michigan. After a year in the pastorate, he was elected editor of the Methodist Quarterly Review, a position he occupied from 1856 to 1884. His chief work was a treatise “ On the Will.” He was a controversialist of courtesy, but of remarkable vigor. His notes to a Calvinistic article caused The Independent to say that they gave a new meaning to the term “foot-notes.” The Quarterly of these twenty-eight years is his monument.

Two men made memorable their service for the Church in these years through their authorship.

Charles W. Bennett (1828-1891) was graduated at Wesley, 1852; he then, for ten years, taught, joining the Conference in 1862. From 1864 to 1866 he ^ennetT ^was principal °f Genesee Wesleyan Seminary at Lima, N. Y.; 1866-1869 he spent in study abroad, chiefly at Berlin. On his return he was two years iu the pastorate. From 1871 to 1889 he was Professor of History in Syracuse University; 18891891 he was Professor of Church History in Garrett Biblical Institute at Evanston. His “ Christian Archaeology” is the fruit of the ripest scholarship of the Methodist Church in any land. The curator of the Museum for Christian Archaeology at Berlin, Professor Nicholas Muller, told the author that it was always open on his table.

Dr. John Miley (1813-1895) was honored and successful as Professor of Systematic Theology at Drew ^ Theological Seminary. He was the author

Dr. Miley. „ .

of The Atonement m Christ, ”1879, and of “ Systematic Theology,” 2 vols., 1892, which is the

Christian Church in United States. 617

standard work for Methodist preachers in the Course of Study.

Dr. James Strong’s work culminated in his monumental achievement, the greatest of concordances, “ The Exhaustive Concordance,” a concordance of the Holy Scripture in the original Greek and Hebrew, as well as English.

John Morrison Reid (1820-1896) developed a manysided activity. He was graduated from the University of the City of New York in 1839. For

, „ . . . , - , Dr. Reid.

the next five years he was principal of the school connected with the Mechanics’ Institute of that city. He was graduated from the Union Theological Seminary in 1844, and joined Conference the same year. After successful years in the pastorate, he was chosen president of Genesee College, 1858-1864. In 1864 he was chosen editor of the Western Christian Advocate, and in 1868 of the Northwestern Christian Advocate. In 1872 he became missionary secretary, which post he held until'his death. He purchased and gave the Von Ranke library to Syracuse University. In 1880 he published a “ History of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church,” two volumes.

Bishop John F. Hurst (1834-1903) was easily the first writer on Church history in his Church in this period. With a fine acquaintance with the _M

* • r j Bishop Hurst.

German language and literature from study in the Fatherland, he always read widely. He did excellent work as professor at Drew Theological Seminary, besides securing a permanent endowment for the institution. In his earlier works he is in some respects at his best, as in his “ History of Rationalism ”

618 History of the Christian Church.

and translation of Hagenbach’s “Church History of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” His “Shorter History of the Christian Church” is a good book. In his later work the best is often by other hands, as in his “ History of the Christian Church,” two volumes. His greatest influence was in his irenic spirit and in his scientific method of the study of Church history. One of the best things from his pen was the last article from him published in the Methodist Review on the “Counter Reformation.” The American University at Washington will be the enduring monument of his breadth and clearness of vision as well as of his faith and courage.

Dr. Sheldon, of Boston School of Theology, published a most valuable “ History of Doctrine,” two volumes, and in 1894 his Church history

Sheldon. , * ^ . .

lectures as a History of the Christian Church,” a work of enduring value. Dr. Bradford P. Raymond, published a “System of Theology.”

The succession in Methodist hymnology in this period fell to Mrs. Frances Crosby Van Alstyne, who Croab k^aS published more popular hymns and sacred songs than any other author of her time. Her songs, with their accompanying music, won many who would not have cared for the statelier and more enduring songs of the Church. Never great, her work has always been good in sentiment and taste and helpful to the Christian life.

The General Conference of 1854 made Nashville, Tenn., the headquarters of the Methodist Episcopal The Methodist Church, South. It chose, as bishops, Church!' George F. Pierce, who died in 1884, and south. Hubbard K. Kavanaugh, who died in the same year, and John Early, who died in 1873.

Christian Church in United States. 619

The next General Conference met in Nashville in

1858, and struck out of the Discipline all reference to slavery; but, alas! this did not abolish the fact. In i860 there were reported 757,205 members. Then came the Civil War, and the besom of destruction passed over the South. The General Conference did not meet again until 1866, in New Orleans. There were then reported 511,161 members, a loss of nearly one-third since i860. Many of these were in bloody graves, for this Church was as zealous in the cause of the South as the Methodist Episcopal Church was in behalf of the Union. This General Conference adopted lay representation in equal numbers in the General Conference, and also in the Annual Conferences. It abolished membership on probation, and extended the pastoral term from two to four years. It elected as bishops, W. M. Wightman, who died in 1882 ; E. M. Marvin, died in 1877 ; D. S. Doggett, died in 1880; H. N. McTyeire, died in 1889.

The General Conference of 1880 gave the Episcopate power to veto acts which they deemed unconstitutional. Then they could only be enacted by a two-thirds vote. This General Conference constituted the “ Colored Methodist Episcopal Church ” as a separate organization under its care, with 60,000 members. Colored schools also were founded for this Church at Augusta, Ga., and Jackson, Tenn. The Southern Review was accepted as a General Conference periodical. John C. Keener was elected bishop. In 1871 died Bishop J. O. Andrew, the original occasion of the separation of 1844. In 1874 the membership had risen to 712,717 members, nearly the number in i860, which, however was not passed until 1878, at 798,862 members. This session witnessed the first reception of

620 History of the Christian Church.

fraternal delegates from the Methodist Episcopal Church,—Dr. Albert S. Hunt, Dr. Charles H. Fowler, and General Clinton B. Fisk.

Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., was founded in April, 1874, and opened in 1875. The veteran editor, T. O. Summers, died May 3, 1882. In 1882 the Board of Church Extension was founded. In 1886 a rapid increase in membership was reported. There were elected bishops, W. W. Duncan, C. B. Galloway, E. R. Hendrix, and J. S. Key.

Dr. J. B. McFerrin, probably for the previous thirty years the most influential member of this Church, died May, 1887. For many years he had charge of its publishing interests. In 1890, the broadminded and greatly-loved Atticus G. Haygood was elected bishop, and also O. P. Fitzgerald.

The Centennial Offering of 1884 was $1,382,771.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church saw Wilberforce University founded in Ohio, for the education of Negroes, in 1856, and since its transfer to the care of that Church, it has done much for its work.

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church endured a schism in 1852-1860, which was then healed. Its periodical is the Star of Zion. In 1880, Livingstone College was founded at Salisbury, North Carolina.

The Methodist Protestant Church has grown during this period, though not as rapidly as those with an Episcopal form of government. In 1857, Adrian College, a flourishing institution, was founded at Adrian, Mich.; in 1868, Western Maryland College, at Westminster, Md.; and in 1896, Kansas City University, at Kansas City, Kan., came into being.

The United Brethren Church founded its theolog

Christian Church in United States. 621

ical school at Dayton, Ohio, in 1871, and its Young People’s Christian Union in 1890. In 1890 this Church suffered a division because the rule against secret societies was relaxed. Sixteen thousand members withdrew. Now less than half the services are in German.

In 1861 the Northwestern College of the Evangelical Association was founded at Napierville. near Chicago. The Ebenezer Orphan Home was established at Flat Rock, Ohio, in 1870. The Young People’s Alliance began its work in 1890. In consequence of a division in the Episcopacy in 1891, twenty-five thousand members withdrew; but one hundred and twenty-five thousand remained, and the breach has been well-nigh healed.

Statistics in 1900.

Parsonages, 11,202; value, $19,486,073. Churches, 27,382; value, $126,293,871. Sunday-schools, 32,119; teachers, 350,271; scholars, 2,700,543.

Churches.

Clergy.

Members.

Methodist Episcopal.....

1850-1900 : Gain,......

Methodist Episcopal, South,

1850-1900: Gain,......

African Methodist Episcopal

1850-1900: Gain, . ......

African Methodist Episcopal Zion

1850-1900: Gain,.....

Methodist Protestant, . . .

1850-1900: Gain,.....

Wesleyan.........

1850-1900: Loss,.....

Primitive..........

Gain,...........

Free Methodist.......

Gain,...........

Colored Methodist, ....

Gain,..........

Evangelical Association, .

Gain,...........

United Brethren,.....

Gain,...........

1850-1900: Gain, ....

14,190

"5,852"

*1,808

2,341

506

857

1,427

2,367

4,898

17.752

13,622

5,950

4,354

5,630

5.503

2,902

1,831

^X,§°§

1,698

595

975

2,039

1.3"

1,106

2,465

2,015

2,924,764

2,235,863

1,468,390

954,091

675.462

553.335

536,271

531,454

183,714

117,899

17,201

3.209

6,549

5-437

27,292

204,972

157,338

135.694

265,935

215.483

36,316

4.693.503

622 History of the Christian Church.

Total Methodists in the United States, and missions, in 1900, excluding the United Brethren and the Evangelical Association, was 5,916,249, a gain since 1850 of 4,590,618.

The Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church raised for missions in 1900, $1,223,904. Of this amount, $677,653, was for foreign missions. The Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society raised in the same year $414,531, a total for foreign missions of $1,092,184. The Missionary Society gave $460,710 to home missions, and the Woman’s Home Missionary added $240,911, making a total of $701,621 for home missions.

The Missionary Society employs 546 foreign missionaries. Among them are not only men of devotion, but of ability equal to the task of

The Workers. , , / , . „ , ^ .

laying the strong foundation of the Christian Empire of the future. India and China have been the greatest mission fields of this Church. It has had large success also in Japan, Mexico, South America, and in Europe.

In 1900, on the foreign fields of this Church, there were 181,956 members and probationers. There were in the United States, in 1900, 5,916,349 members in Methodist Churches; in Canada, 284,901; in Great Britain and her other dependencies, 1,202,663; a total in world-wide Methodism of 7,403,913.

The Church Extension Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church had, in 1900, a Loan Fund of $1,136,954, and its income from collec-Benevotences. ^{tions was} $99,238. It has aided 11,677 Churches. The Freedmen’s Aid and Southern Education Society, at the end of the century, had

Christian Church in United States. 623

forty-seven schools, nearly equally divided between the white and colored people of the South. It had lands and buildings worth $2,165,000. In 1900 its receipts from collections from the Churches was $91,218, and from all sources, $355,805. It had, in 1900, nearly 3,000 colored students in industrial work, besides the scholastic training; $50,000 was collected from the Churches in 1900 for the work of the Sunday-school Union and the Tract Societies. The educational work of this Church is under the charge of its Board of Education. The Children’s-day collections for the aid of students in Methodist schools, in 1900, amounted to $60,328. In that year, 1,830 students were assisted.

At the close of the nineteenth century the Methodist Episcopal Church had three prosperous and fairly-well-endowed theological schools: at Boston ; Drew, at Madison, N. J.; and Garrett, at Evanston, 111., besides the Iliff Theological School at Denver, Col. The attendance upon these three schools was very evenly divided, ranging from 173 to 178, an aggregate of 527 students. At Atlanta, Ga., in connection with Clark University, is Gammon Theological School, a well-endowed and equipped school for colored men, with an attendance of 83. In all, this Church had, at that date, including theological schools on mission fields, 25 theological institutions, with buildings valued at $1,659,136, an endowment of $1,702,341, and 1,225 students. It also had 56 colleges and universities, with buildings and equipment, valued at $10,843,402, and endowment of $12,093,404, and 28,619 students. Of these institutions, six had an attendance of over one thousand stu

624 History of the Christian Church.

dents each; nine others, of five hundred or more. Four had an endowment of over $i,000,000, exclusive of buildings, etc., and three others of over $500,000. These figures have been largely surpassed each year since, and are valuable chiefly for comparisons with the past with the institutions of other Churches, and with the growth of future years.

At this date, the leading institutions of the Methodist Episcopal Church were: Boston University; Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn.; Syracuse University; Ohio Wesleyan, Delaware, O.; DePauw University, Greencastle, Ind.; Northwestern University, Evanston, 111.; Denver University; and Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa.

The educational work of this Church has been wisely planted, with little rivalry and waste, and the opening years of the new century have seen it greatly strengthened. Its greatest need, compared with either the increase in the number of its churches or its ministry, or the provision of other churches, is to augment its facilities for theological instruction and training.

It has also 60 classical seminaries, 35 of which had an attendance of 150 or more. The buildings, etc., of these institutions are valued at $3,121,261, and endowment of $754,588; 9,320 students were in attendance.

There were eight institutions for women; their buildings were valued at $1,413,000; endowment, $375>°°°; and attendance, 1,178. There were also four Missionary Institutes and Bible-training Schools, with buildings valued at $284,000; endowment, $26,000; and attendance, of 453. On the foreign mission fields there are 99 schools for higher education ; their build

Christian Church in United States. 625

ings are valued at $628,632, and their endowment at $30,000; they have 7,454 students in attendance. In the United States, at the schools for higher education of this Church, there were in attendance, in 1900, 38,091 students.

In 1900, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, reported twenty universities and colleges, with 3,224 students in the regular courses, and 1,585 Educational in the preparatory departments. These statistics, schools had buildings, etc., valued at $2,- Methodist

476,000, and an endowment of $2,601,000. churches. The smaller institutions are doing good work, and some of them are of historic renown. Vanderbilt University, at Nashville, Tenn., had 200 students in collegiate work, and 600 in professional schools. Its buildings, etc., are valued at $750,000, and its endowment is $1,200,000.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church had four institutions, with 238 in college courses and 314 in preparatory departments. The property of these institutions is valued at $294,000, with $30,000 endowment. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church had one college, with 50-students and 130 in preparatory work.. Its buildings were valued at $125,000. This seems a good record for purely colored churches. The Methodist Protestants had two institutions doing good work. They have 250 in college work and 174 in preparatory departments. Their buildings are valued at $300,000, with $80,000 endowment. The Free Methodists had one college, with 14 students and 25 in preparatory work. The building is valued at $30,000 and the endowment $8,000. The Evangelical Association had two colleges, with 87 students

626 History of the Christian Church.

and 147 in the preparatory departments, with $62,000 in buildings, and $40,000 in endowments. The United Brethren had eight small colleges, but well located, with 336 students and 552 in preparatory work. These institutions are valued at $421,000 with $182,000 of endowment.

More than ninety per cent of this enrollment, property, and endowment in these schools in all Churches in Methodism, and its allied branches, is the increase of the last fifty years, and the far greater part of it of the last twenty-five years.

The charitable work of the Methodist Episcopal Church is largely under the charge of the Order of Deaconesses instituted in 1888. There are ° work^{ble ten} institutions for the training of deaconesses. The oldest of these is at Chicago; others are at New York, Boston, and Cincinnati. The Woman’s Home Missionary Society has training-schools at Washington, San Francisco, and Kansas City. The Annual Conferences have such schools at Brooklyn, Grand Rapids, and Des Moines. These institutions had property in 1900 worth over $350,000. There were over 600 licensed deaconesses and 700 probationers at the clbse of this period, and there were 80 institutions in the United States, 13 in Europe, and 9 in Asia, under their care. Besides the money invested in Orphanages, Hospitals, and Homes for the Aged, there are $800,000 invested in buildings for Deaconess Work in the United States, and $300,000 in Germany, where there were over 200 deaconesses employed. The initiation of Deaconess Work in this Church is due to the Germans in Europe and

Christian Church in United States. 627

America. The deaconesses wear a distinctive garb, but are under no vows.

The Methodist Episcopal Church had Immigrant Homes established at New York and Boston.

At the end of the century the Methodist Episcopal Church had in the United States fifteen Orphanages, caring for over a thousand orphans, in buildings valued at $862,000, and with over ’

$300,000 endowment.

This Church had also eighteen Hospitals, with buildings and equipments valued at over

* Hospitals.

$1,700,000, and with over $500,000 of endowment.

It also had established nine Homes for the Aged, caring for over five hundred inmates. The buildings for this purpose were valued at $460,000, and there is $50,000 endowment. Besides this, one institution reports an annual income of $15,000.

This is but the beginning, for almost all of it was the bestowal of the last twenty-five years of the century.

All these institutions, especially those for education, received great and needed help from the Twentieth-century Fund. This, under its able _Th^ and skillful secretary, Dr. Edmund M. Twentieth-Mills, raised $20,000,000 for the work of ^Cen*^ury

Fund*

the Methodist Episcopal Church as a Thank-offering at the opening of the twentieth century. The offering of the Methodist Church, South, for the same purpose reached $1,500,000; that of British Methodism was over $5,000,000. In all, probably, nearly or quite

628 History of the Christian Church.

§30,000,000 came to world-wide Methodism in consequence of this movement, besides all the new churches and parsonages built and repairs made. Through it two-thirds of the indebtedness upon Methodist Churches has been paid, and at the same time its con-nectional benevolences have increased.

The Baptists, being congregational in their government, do not have as plainly-marked stages of ecclesiastical growth as the Methodists, Baptists hut they stand by their side in numbers and influence. They have not the same eminence in scholarship and education as the Congregationalists, but their work at Vassar and Chicago vies with the best. The secret of their growth, largely, is the emphasis upon individual responsibility and personal work for Christ and his Church. Two things mark the passing of the years in this Church—the added interest in the education of the ministry, and the lessened Calvinism in Baptist teaching. The endowment of Lewisburg, now Bucknell University, and of Madison, now Colgate University; the added facilities at Colby University, and Brown, as well as at Newton Theological Seminary; the founding and endowment of the Rochester University and of the Rochester Theological Seminary; the removal of the Southern Theological Seminary from Greenville, S. C., to Louisville, Ky., and its endowment, as well as the munificent gifts that mark the founding of Vassar College and of Chicago University,—show the mighty influence this Church is to exert in Christian education in the United States.

In these years missions were established in several European countries. In Sweden, in 1855, Dr. Oncken

Christian Church in United States. 629

began a mission which at the end of the century numbered 40,000 members. In 1870 a mission was established in Spain, and in 1874 one in Italy.

^r . Missions.

In 1887 mission work was begun m Russia where, in 1900, there were reported 21,000 Baptists; in 1889, in Finland; in 1891, in Denmark; and in 1892, in Norway. In Finland and Denmark there were reported, in 1900, over 2,000 members each, and over 3,000 in Norway. The most successful work of the Baptist missions has been in Southern India and in Assam and Burmah. They also have a flourishing mission in Cuba.

Like all great Churches, the work done in the Baptist Churches is, in the main, by the mass of the ministers and the people. A few men, however, have rendered such conspicuous service that, in any record of the life of the Church, their names must find mention.

Such a man was Martin B. Anderson (1815-1890), the founder of Rochester University. Dr. Anderson was born at Bath, Maine, and educated at Waterville College, now Colby University, _And^₀n. 1836-1840. He then spent a year at Newton Theological Seminary, after which he returned to Waterville to teach. He was never ordained to the ministry, though his life and service were most effective preaching of the gospel. At Waterville he remained, teaching first Latin and Greek, and then rhetoric, logic, and history, from 1841 to 1850, meanwhile preaching often as a supply. On one of these occasions, in New York, he met his wife, and they were married in August, 1848. In 1850 he left Waterville to go to New York as editor of the Chris

630 History of the Christian Church.

tian Recorder, which later, under Dr. Edward Bright, became The Examiner, 1853-1894, and the leading periodical of the Baptist Church.

In 1853, Dr. Anderson accepted a call to the infant University of Rochester. He gave his life to the work, except that in 1862-1863 he visited Europe. Of that institution he was the motive power and soul until his resignation in June, 1888. He did not long survive, but February 26, 1890, four days after the death of his beloved wife, he died in Florida. Together their remains were brought to Rochester, and borne to the church and to the grave. One should have seen the stalwart form of Dr. Anderson, and heard him in the classroom or in his chapel talks, to appreciate his influence. He was a man of wide reading and of comprehensive and practical thought. For years he was the most eminent and influential citizen of the fair city in which he lived. Rochester University, which he loved as his child, is his enduring monument.

With Dr. Anderson wrought, for many years, his early friend, Ezekiel G. Robinson (1815-1894), the founder in the true sense of the Rochester Robinson. Theological Seminary. The two men were very different. Dr. Anderson was in a very real sense a public man. Dr. Robinson was a deeper and more logical thinker, with little of Dr. Anderson’s wealth and variety of thought or his breadth of view and warm human sympathies. Dr. Robinson’s quest was truth, and his life its expression as he saw it. Other things were secondary. He was born in Massachusetts, six miles from Providence, R. I. When he was four years of age his father died, leaving him the

Christian Church in United States. 631

youngest of four children. His education, in these circumstances, as depicted by himself, seems to have been as desultory and ineffective as could be imagined for any one who enjoyed such opportunities at all. He owed his intellectual awakening to a friend, who, having graduated from New Hampton, N. H., came back to review his studies. He joined the Baptist Church in 1829. With a poor preparation he entered Brown, 1835-1839, where the teaching was meager, except but one year under President Wayland and work with Dr. Hackett. Six months’ post-graduate study did little for him, and he turned to Newton Theological Seminary, where Dr. Hackett’s and Dr. Sears’s teaching greatly benefited him. After two years at Newton he accepted a pastorate at Norfolk, Va., 1842. While there he was invited to serve as one of the chaplains of the University of Virginia, and while serving there he met the lady who became his wife. On account of malaria he left Norfolk for Cambridge, Mass., where his wife suffered a hemorrhage, which necessitated another removal. He accepted the Professorship in Hebrew in the Western Theological Institute at Covington, Ky. After two years, the antislavery sentiments of the president were too much for the Board of Trustees. He and Dr. Robinson resigned in June, 1848. For the next five years he occupied a pastorate in Cincinnati, Ohio. Finally, in 1853, at the solicitation of Dr. Anderson, he came to Rochester as Professor of Theology in the new University of Rochester. In 1868, Trevor Hall was erected on a site removed from the university campus. From 1859 an independent endowment was sought to be secured. In 1863 the course of study

632 History of the Christian Church.

was extended from two to three years. It will always be a matter of regret that the two institutions which began life together could not have done their work on the same campus.

In 1865-1867, Dr. Robinson spent two years in Europe, and richly profited by them. Of the separated institution, of course, Dr. Robinson was the president. In 1868 his salary was made $4,000, and good progress was made toward a satisfactory endowment, $240,000 being raised. In 1872, Dr. Robinson accepted the presidency of Brown University, where he remained until 1889. In these years, in buildings, in endowment, and in enlargement of the course of study, he saw the refounding of Brown University. He died June 13, 1894, and was buried at Rochester beside five daughters who had preceded him to the real world for immortal spirits.

Dr. Robinson left his mark upon the ministry and the Church he served. He could not be called a constructive theologian, but he was a stimulating and inspiring teacher. Dr. Robinson had an analytical and critical mind, and a gift of incisive speech. Both Dr. Anderson and himself opposed the plans of the American (Baptist) Bible Union, but only Dr. Robinson could say, “The scandal brought upon the denomination by the Bible Union among intelligent men, to say nothing of the useless waste of funds, is among the painful memories among those of us who have survived those days of noise, pretense, and fanaticism.”

Dr. Robinson gave the Yale “ Lectures on Preaching” in 1883. In 1865 he published the translation of Neander’s “ Planting and Training of the Christian

Christian Church in United States. 633

Church.” In 1888 appeared his “ Principles and Practice of Morality.” After his death in 1894, his “Christian Theology ” was published, and the next year his “ Christian Evidences.”

A man of more power in the pulpit than Dr. Robinson was Dr. John Albert Broadus (1827-1895). He was educated at the University of Virginia and remained there after his graduation, ’ ’ 1851-1853, as Assistant Professor of Latin and Greek. From 1851 to 1859 he was pastor of the Baptist Church at Charlottesville, Va. In that year he was called to the Chair of New Testament Exegesis and Homiletics at Greenville, S. C. Later, under his presidency, the institution was removed to Louisville, Ky., where it became the strongest Baptist Theological Institution in the South. Dr. Broadus will be long remembered by his valuable works on “ The Preparation and Delivery of a Sermon,” 1870; his “History of Preaching,” 1877; his “Sermons and Addresses,” 1886; and his “Commentary on Matthew” of the same year. Influential as a preacher and a president of the Theological Seminary, in this work he still speaks to men.

The Baptist Educational Society was founded in 1888; the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society in 1871; the Woman’s Home Missionary Society in 1877; the Baptist Young People’s Union in 1891; and the American Baptist Historical Society in 1853.

In 1900, the Regular Baptists reported 43,959 churches, 29,890 ministers, and 4,223,236 communicants. The total of Baptists, thirteen

. , • Statistics.

organizations, is: Churches, 50,257; ministers, 34,221; communicants, 4,535,462,—a gain, 1850-1900, of 35,553 churches; 24,748 ministers,

634 History of the Christian Church.

and 3,536,429 communicants among the Regular Baptists, and of 38,598 churches, 27,218 ministers, and 3,720,250 communicants in the total. Regular Baptist Sunday-schools, 25,200; teachers, 197,484; scholars, 1,974,820. Value of church property, $88,146,386. Number of parsonages, 1,543. Total current expenditures and benevolences, $13,790,000. Total Baptists throughout the world, 5,012,880.

In 1900, the Baptist Churches reported 622 foreign missionaries, with 1,912 churches in foreign fields, and 206.746 members. Their most flourishing

Missions. . . , , . —I 1 a

missions have been m Burmah, Assam, Southern India, Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia. They raised over $550,000 for foreign missions in 1900.

The Baptist Churches have seven well-endowed and well-equipped theological seminaries; the Freewill Baptists have two theological depart-

Education. . „ , ^ •

ments m colleges; the Seventh-day Baptists, one. The seven institutions above mentioned had 995 students, $1,275,238 of property, and $2,640,952 of endowment.

The Baptists reported in 1900, 105 universities and colleges, with 27,241 students. These institutions have $13,891,684 in property, and $13,660,842 in endowment. Of this amount, Chicago University reported 1,966 students, buildings valued at $3,079,384, and $5,726,350 in endowment. There are three institutions having over one thousand students, and three more having over five hundred.

The leading Baptist Universities are: Brown University, Providence, R. I.; Columbian University, Washington, D. C.; Chicago University; Colgate Uni

Christian Church in United States. 635

versity, Hamilton, N. Y.; Richmond University, Richmond, Va.; Rochester University; Denison University, Granville, O.; and Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. The Baptist Church also had 90 seminaries and academies, with 11,127 students; 31 of these had an attendance of 150 or more.

The Baptist Church, in 1900, reported fifteen Orphanages, with $494,000 of property; thirteen Homes for the Aged, etc., with $931,000 of property; and five Hospitals, with $10,000 of property.

The Presbyterian Church, perhaps from its form of government, has its strong influence in the local communities. While its ministry is surpassed

1 , _r 1 /-a, 1 • ill- Presbyterians.

by that of no other Church m scholarship, it has not so widely affected our national life as would naturally be expected. It prides itself upon being a theological Church. Such Churches, like the Presbyterian and Lutheran, will always be strong in theological seminaries, but will always carry in their train any amount of powder prepared for sudden and unexpected explosions. Much of the time and effective force in each Church has been taken up with internal divisions and efforts to heal the breaches. All must be thankful that in each a better era has dawned. In local influence, in the character of its leading laymen, in certain elements of stability and power, no Amerj ican Church surpasses the Presbyterian Church. \

The great events in the history of the Presbyterian Churches in this period were Reunion and Revision.' In 1857 the Associate and the Associate Reformed Churches united to form the United Presbyterian Church; in 1858 they were joined by the General

636 History of the Christian Church.

Synod Reformed Church. The Southern Presbyterian Church was founded in 1861, in consequence of the war and the attitude of the Northern Churches on slavery. The Kentucky and Missouri Synods joined them in 1868 and 1874, and the Associate Reformed Presbyteries of Alabama and Kentucky, in 1867 and 1870. The Pan-Presbyterian Council was held at Philadelphia, November 8, 1867. November 8, 1869, at Pittsburg, Pa., occurred the healing of the schism which, since 1837, had rent the Presbyterians into the Old and New School Churches. This reunion was consummated in the one General Assemby at Philadelphia in 1870. The Thank-offering for this reunion in 1870 amounted to $7,607,491. This was the greatest act of ecclesiastical reunion which has taken place 4—in the history of the Christian Church in the United States.

In 1874, Professor David Swing was tried for heresy, and acquitted, but withdrew from the Presbyterian Church. In 1889 the movement for the Revlon, revision of the Westminster Confession began; with it, in 1891, was connected the charges against Professor Charles S. Briggs, of the Union Theological Seminary in New York. The shibboleth of his accusers was “the inerrancy of the Scriptures.” The prosecution in 1897 was extended to include Dr. Archibald C. McGiffert, a professor in the same institution with Dr. Briggs, for some passages in his work on the Apostolic Church. Dr. Briggs was suspended in 1893, after proceedings drawn out for five years; in 1898 he withdrew, and joined the Protestant Kpiscopal Church. In the same year Dr. McGiffert withdrew, and joined the Congregational

Christian Church in United States. 637

Church, and so stopped the proceedings in his case. The trustees sustained the professors, so their connection with Union Theological Seminary remained unchanged. In their departments there are not two men of greater learning in the United States. Ten years later the utterances for which they were summoned to trial would not excite an ecclesiastical ripple in the same Church. The matter of creed revision was settled in 1902, and consummated the following year, (1) By revising certain chapters and sections in the Confession of Westminster; (2) By the addition of chapters on the Love of God, on Missions, and on the Holy Spirit. Besides, there was reported a “ Brief Statement ” designed to be used as an explanation and popular statement of the confessional position of the Church. These were all adopted by the General Assembly in New York in 1902, without a dissenting voice. All but the “ Brief Statement ” was adopted by the Presbyteries, and becomes the law of the Presbyterian Church. The “Brief Statement” was also adopted in 1903. All good Christians will rejoice in this result and in this happy ending of a dozen, years of strife. _

The Presbyterians participated in the general movement of Church life in the United States. They greatly profited by the Moody and Sankey revivals. In 1870 was formed their Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions, and, five years later, that of the United Presbyterian Church, and in 1880 that of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The Southern Presbyterians_; did not approve of this work for women. In 1878 was formed the Presbyterian Woman’s Board of Home Missions, and, ten years later, the like organization

638 History of the Christiaa Church.

came into being in the United Presbyterian Church. In 1869 the colored members withdrew from the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and formed a separate organization with 13,000 members.

The Westminster League of Young People was J formed in 18—, but most of the Churches support the Christian Endeavor Society. Pan-Presbyterian Councils were held in 1867, at Philadelphia; in 1877, at Edinburgh; in 1887, at Belfast; and, in 1897, at .

Men who largely influenced the life of the Presbyterian Church were James McCosh, John Hall, Howard Crosby, Samuel Irenaeus Prime, Henry M. Field, and Benjamin M. Palmer.

James McCosh (1811-1894) was the last representative of the Scotch philosophy of Stewart, Reid, and Hamilton. He was born in Ayrshire,

Dr. McCosh. « - , , . -

Scotland, and studied in the University of Glasgow, 1824-1829, and in that of Edinburgh, 18291834. In the latter instiution he was a pupil of Chalmers; 1835-1839, he was pastor at Arbroath, and, 1839-1852, at Brechin. In 1843 he went with the Free Church. In 1852-1868 he was professor in Queen’s College, Belfast, Ireland. In the latter year he came to America, and, from 1868 to 1888, he was president of Princeton University, which was practically refounded in these years.

His “ Method of Divine Government,” 1850, and “Supernatural in Relation to the Natural,” 1852, procured him his professorship at Belfast. His “ Intuitions of the Human Mind” appeared in i860, and his “ Psychology of the Motive Powers” in 1888. His philosophic system receives its clearest statement in his “Realistic Philosophy,” 2 vols., 1887.

Christian Church in United States. 639

The ability of Dr. McCosh turned the tide of students toward Princeton; their number rose from 264 to 603, and he often had 200 in his classes to hear his lectures.

Dr. John Hall (1829-1898) was born in the county of Armagh, Ireland. At thirteen, he entered the Belfast College, and was there graduated. In

John Hall.

1849 he was licensed to preach. He preached in Armagh, 1852-1858, and in Dublin, 1858-67. In the latter year he came to New York, and was chosen pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. Their new church edifice, erected in 1875, cost over a million of dollars. Alexander T. Stewart was his steady and influential friend. In 1882 he was chosen chancellor of the University of the city of New York. He was selected to preach the funeral sermon of the Hon. Salmon P. Chase. In 1875 he delivered the Yale “ Lectures on Preaching.”

Howard Crosby (1826-1861) was one of the most scholarly preachers of his time. He was graduated from the University of the City of New

■' Dr. Crosby.

York in 1844. In 1851, after years of foreign study and travel, he was called to the professorship of Greek in his Alma Mater, 1851-1859. In the latter year he accepted a call to the same position at Rutgers College. There he remained for the next four years, and also served as pastor of the church in New Brunswick, N. J. In 1863 he was called to the pastorate of the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, which he held at his death. In 1871 he delivered the Yale “Lectures on Preaching;” in 1877 he was a delegate to the Pan-Presbyterian Council at Edinburgh. In the same year he founded

640 History of the Christian Church.

the “ Society for the Prevention of Vice.” In 1851 he published an edition of Sophocles’ “ CEdipus Tyran-nus;” also Yale “Lectures on Preaching,” 1871; “The Humanity of Christ,” 1880, and a Commentary on the New Testatament, 1885. He wrote largely for the Sunday-school Times. He stood against total abstinence from intoxicants, to the regret of most of the American Churches.

Samuel Irenaeus Prime (1812-1885) ^{was tiie} influential editor of the New York Observer, in these _e years the organ of the Old School Presby-^r* * * terians. Dr. Prime received his education at Williams College, and spent one year at Princeton, when his health failed. He was licensed to preach in 1833. He was pastor at Balston Spa, 1833-1835, and at Matteawan, 1837-1840. Then, on account of chronic affection of the throat, he was forced to give up the active ministry. In 1840-1885 he was editor of The Observer. He traveled largely abroad in 1853,

1856-1857, and 1876-1877. He wrote more than forty volumes, including many books of travel. He also wrote the “ Life of Professor S. F. B. Morse ” and the “Life of Nicholas Butler.” Of his “ Power of Prayer”

175,000 copies were sold.

Henry M. Field (1822-19 —), brother of Cyrus W. Field who laid the Atlantic cable, and of the distin-Dr Field S^ui^s^^e^ jurists, David Dudley Field and

* Justice Stephen G. Field, of the Supreme Court of the United States, was a minister’s son. He was graduated from Williams College in 1838, and studied theology at Windsor and New Haven the next four years. From 1842 to 1847 ^he was pastor at St. Louis. In the latter year he went to Europe. This was

Christian Church in United States. 641

the turning point of his life. There he married a cultivated French lady. On his return he published “ The Good and Bad in the Roman Catholic Church,” and, in 1851, “The Irish Confederates, a History of the Rebellion of 1798.” He resumed the pastorate at West Springfield, Mass., 1851-1854. In the latter year he became editor of the New York Evangelist, which place he retained for many years. He published many books of travel. He enjoys an honored age.

More eloquent than any of these eminent men, and in his own Church more influential, was Dr. Benjamin Morgan Palmer (1818-1902), the founder.

• • ’Dr. Palmer.

and in all these years the ablest minister, of the Southern Presbyterian Church. He was graduated from the University of Georgia in 1838, and three years later from the Theological Seminary at Columbia, S. C. Entering the pastorate, he preached at Savannah and Columbia, S. C., and in 1856 he went to New Orleans, which was his residence until his death in 1902. In 1847 he founded, and since then edited or contributed to, the Southern Presbyterian Review. He published “ Life of Dr. James H. Thorn-well,” 1875, ^and “ Sermons,” two volumes, 1875-1876.

In this period these Churches made steady and substantial growth. They changed their Church names to “ The Reformed Church in Amer- .

The Dutch

ica” and “The Reformed Church in the and German United States,” respectively. They have Reformed

’ ^r iii* Churches.

shown their zeal in Sunday-school work, 111 education and in missions, and in Young People’s Societies. A large emigration from Holland to Michigan led to the founding of Hope College at Holland, Michigan.

642 History of the Christian Church.

The German Reformed Church celebrated the tercentenary of the Heidelberg Catechism in 1863. English Synods were organized in this Church, 18701873. Soon there were five English Synods to three German ones. The Liturgical Movement, which opened with the “Provisional Liturgy” of 1857 was finally brought to a conclusion, after a sharp controversy from 1863, by the adoption of the “Revised Directory of Worship ” in 1887. Most of the classes in both Churches voted to a union of these Churches in 1886-1892, but on technical grounds it fell through. It is to be hoped that it will soon succeed, and join both to the great Presbyterian Church.

In 1900, Presbyterians formerly included in the Old and New School Churches reported 7,779 churches, ₄. 7)532 clergy, and 1,025,388 communicants.

Oiflstistics* .I, , , _{# #}

This is a gam since 1850 of 3,576 churches, 3,533 clergy, and 677,837 communicants. There are in the Sunday-schools, 1,058,110 scholars; total current expenses and benevolences, $16,338,361.

In 1900 there were

CLERGY

CHURCHES

MEMBERS

Cumberland Presbyterians.........

Cumberland Presbyterians, colored, . . .

Southern Presbyterians,.........

Two Associate Churches,.........

Four Reformed Churches,........

United Presbyterians,..........

Welsh Calvinists,.............

1,596

450

1,461

116

159

918

2,957

400

2,959

243

151

⁹¹l

158

180,192

39,000

225,890

21,134

15,335

H5,90I

12,152

Total in twelve bodies, 11,959 clergy, 15,157 churches, and 1,584,400 members.

This Church reported in 1900, 690 ministers, 619 churches, and 107,504 members. This was a gain,

Christian Church in United States. 643

since 1850, of 404 ministers, 320 churches, and 73.974 members. In the same year the German Reformed Church reported 1,074 ministers, 1,653 _Dutch churches, and 242,831 members. This was _Reformed. a gain, since 1850, of 774 ministers, 1,397 churches, and 172,831 members. Thus, at the close of this era, the great Presbyterian family in the United States numbered about 2,000,000 of communicants.

The Presbyterians have six well-endowed theological seminaries,—Princeton, Western, Lane, Union, Auburn, and McCormick. These, in 1900, _Educat|_0n. had 6 s2 students, and their buildings were Theological

„ . . m. r Training.

valued at $1,876,000, with $3,941,000 of endowment. Since then, Princeton has become the wealthiest of American theological seminaries, with an endowment of over $3,500,000. In 1900 there were thirteen theological seminaries belonging to the Presbyterian Church. Two of these were for colored preachers, and had 27 students. The eleven seminaries had 803 students, their buildings were valued at $2,502,000, and their endowment was $4,618,000. Five institutions of the Southern Presbyterians had 156 students; the buildings were valued at $290,000, with an endowment of $738,000. The United Presbyterians had two institutions, 94 students, buildings valued at $155,000, and endowment of $381,000. The Cumberland Presbyterians had one institution, with 54 students, $50,000 in buildings, and $82,000 in endowment. The Reformed Presbyterians had two institutions, with 15 students, buildings valued at $25,000, and an endowment of $107,000. The Reformed Dutch had two institutions, with 63 students, the buildings were considered worth $260,000, and the

644 History of the Christian Church.

endowment was $475,000. The German Reformed had four institutions, with 127 students; their buildings were valued at $86,000, with $218,000 of endowment.

That is, these Presbyterian Churches in 1900 had, in all, twenty-seven institutions for theological training. These schools had 1,139 students, their buildings were valued at $3,368,000, with an endowment of $6,609,000.

The Presbyterian Church had, in 1900, forty-four institutions of college grade; these had 3,914 students in college work, and 1,506 in preparatory

Colleges j.

’ departments. The buildings and grounds were valued at $10,206,000, and the endowment at $7,992,000. The other Presbyterian Churches in the United States, including the Dutch and German Reformed Churches, had twenty-two institutions of college grade; these had in the college 2,203 students, with 2,233 in preparatory work. They also have 102 academies, with 4,902 students.

The leading Presbyterian universities and colleges in this country are Princeton University, New York University, Rutgers College, Hamilton College, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa.; La Fayette College, Easton, Pa.; Wooster University, Ohio; and Lake Forest University.

The Presbyterians give a generous support to local charities, but have fine hospitals in the large centers

charities P°P^u^^ati°ⁿ' ^at New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, Allegheny, Pa., and other cities. The two hospitals at New York and Philadelphia cost nearly $350,090 a year for running expenses, and treat nearly 20,000 patients. The hos

Christian Church in United States. 645

pital at Canton, China, was founded in 1838, the first of foreign missionary hospitals.

Next to the Roman Catholics, the Lutherans have profited most by the immense immigration of these fifty years, which brought to the United States nearly or quite seven millions of _Luther^e_ans. people from Germany and Scandinavia.

There are in this country seventeen different kinds of Lutherans. This era is marked by the decline of the General Synod, the formation of the General Council in 1866, and the advance of the Missouri Synod, which became the Synodical Conference in 1872.

In this latter body there is no language for use in the Church or in the transaction of its business but the German, and as much attention is paid to the school as to the Church. There are _Con?_e°_r^d_en^. no open questions in its theology, in which it is quite predestinarian. All the symbolical books of the Lutheran Church must be received. The books used in all churches and schools must be of the strictest Lutheran pattern. There must be a regular call of the pastors. The Church government is congregational, yet there is a district president, who visits all congregations, hears the preachers preach, and examines the schools and the details of the Church administration.

All synodical resolutions, to be valid, must be ratified by the congregations. The practical result of this exclusive German and High Church tendency is, that they fellowship with no other Christian Church. They will have no mingling of Churches or faith. They are the most exclusive and the most proselyting of all the Evangelical denominations. In 1850,

646 History of the Christian Church.

C. F. W. Walther resigned his pastorate in St. Louis, and devoted himself to teaching theology in the theological seminary in that city. In 1851 he revisited Germany. In 1853 he established his theological journal Lehre und Wehre. Those following his leadership founded the Synodical Conference in 1872. As the head and soul of this organization, Dr. Walther wrought until his death in 1887.

The General Council of Lutherans was founded in 1867. Its leader was Charles P. Krauth, Jr. At first it admitted pulpit exchange at the discre-Co^Cundi! ^{tion the} P^astor- Then arose the cry, “ Lutheran pulpits for Lutheran ministers only; Lutheran altars for Lutheran communicants only.” In 1875 it was decided that all exceptions were of privilege, and not of right, and the rule includes those who accord with the Word of God and the Confession of the Church. An English Church Book was published in 1868, a German Church Book in 1877. The General Council has missions in India and Muhlenburg College, at Allentown, Pa. It has also a theological seminary in Chicago and at Mount Airy, near Philadelphia.

The General Synod, formed in 1821, is the oldest and most liberal of the larger Lutheran bodies. It stands for American Lutheranism and exsynod! change of pulpits. In 1866 the General Synod lost half its strength by the withdrawal of the Pennsylvania Ministerium, and that of New York, and the Synods of Pittsburg, Texas, and the English Synods of Ohio, Illinois, and Minnesota, because a Synod was admitted to the General Synod

Christian Church in United States. 647

with only a prospective subscription to the Augsburg Confession.

The statistics for 1900 show the immense preponderance of the Synodical Conference. While the tide of German immigration keeps up, this may be maintained; but the time will come ‘

when the language question will be one of life and death. For that time the great Synodical Conference is not ready.

The Synodical Conference reports 590,987 communicants; the General Council, 362,409; the General Synod, 198,575. Independent Synods report 515,253 communicants. They claim a population in the United States of 9,000,000, and in the world of 65,000,000; but these figures seem to be exaggerated.

The Lutherans in the United States have 24 theological schools; these have 1,015 students; their buildings are valued at $1,078,000, and they

1 s. r, s 1 /tv* Education.

have $586,000 in endowment. The strongest of these are at Philadelphia, Gettysburg, Columbus_# O.; and at Chicago, Springfield, 111., and St. Louis. They also have 22 colleges, with 1,908 students in college work, and 1,460 in preparatory departments. These institutions have buildings valued at $2,124,000, and an endowment of $1,275,000. The largest of these colleges is Augustana, at Rock Island, 111.; Capital University, at Columbus, O.; Wittenberg, at Springfield, O.; and the College of Pennsylvania, at Gettysburg, Pa.

The Lutherans have been forward, according to their means, in establishing Orphanages, Homes for the Aged, and in Deaconess Work.*

*The Lutheran Church has in the United States more than fifty Hospitals and many Orphanages and Homes for the Aged. No American Church has been more forward in these charities in proportion t.. its ability.

648 History of the Christian Church.

In 1893 the Ministerium of Philadelphia reported

115,000 communicants. The Liturgical and Confessional controversy in the General Synod ended in the adoption of the “ Common Service” of 1888, and this was included in the “ Church Book ” of the General Council in 1891.

The Iowa Synod was formed by the pulpits of Nettelsdau, in Germany; it is more liberal in the interpretation of the Church Symbols than the Missourians. The Theological Seminary was founded at Dubuque, in 1853. The Norwegian Lutheran Church was founded in Wisconsin in 1853. Lars Paul Ebs-jorn founded the Swedish Lutheran Church in the United States in 1850; in 1862 he returned to Sweden. The Danish Synod was formed in 1872. The Norwegians and Swedes and Danes do not take kindly to the Synodical Conference, as they prefer to have the debates in Church Assemblies in English rather than in German.

This young and vigorous Church made rapid growth in these years. Its largest constituency is in

the valley of the Ohio River, and in the

The Disciples. , . ,

last decade of the century it made considerable gains across the Mississippi River. In 1875 it entered into the common life of the Churches in the organization of its Missionary Society. Its mission in India was founded in 1882. In 1873 a Woman’s Board of Missions was organized, but mainly for work in the United States. Its new educational institutions, like Drake University, at Des Moines, Iowa; Cotner University, near Lincoln, Neb.; and Carleton College, Bonham, Tex., testify to this new life in the Church. It also has its Young People’s organizations, and is

Christian Church in United States. 649

doing good work in its Sunday-schools. In 1890 this Church reported 6,528 ministers, 10,528 churches, and

1,149,982 members. This was a gain, since 1850, of 5,685 ministers, 8,632 churches, and 1,031,364 members.

* The Disciples had, in 1900, three theological seminaries,—one at Canton, Mo., one at Berkeley, Cal., and one at Eugene, Ore. These schools

Disciples’

had 74 students. The buildings were val- Muom™* ued at $16,000, and the endowment was ^or * $50,000. The work in the colleges is older and better established. In 1900 they reported 19 institutions, with 1,620 students in college work, and 1,343 in preparatory departments. These institutions had buildings valued at $1,171,000, and an endowment of $1,049,000. The strongest of the colleges are: Butler, at Irvington, Ind.; Kentucky University, at Lexington, Ky.; Hiram College, at Hiram, O.; and Drake University, at Des Moines, Iowa.

The growth of the Protestant Episcopal Church in these years was not so rapid as some others, but in wealth and influence it has more than held p_rot_estant its place. It has been influenced by the Epi«op-i changes in the Church life of the Church of England. The same parties have been formed here as there. During his life, Bishop Whittingham, of Maryland, was the man of greatest weight and influence, and/ following him, the Dean of the Episcopate for many years, Bishop John Williams, of Connecticut. These were both High Churchmen of the school of Bishop Wilberforce. Bishop Whipple went to Minnesota in 1859, and made a distinguished name as a frontier bishop, a missionary to the Indians, and a founder of Church institutions. Bishop Perry, of Iowa, and

650 History of the Christian Church

Bishop Coxe, of Western New York, left their mark upon Christian literature; the former by his work on Church history, and the latter as a poet, and by his work in connection with Dr. Schaff in making accessible to American clergymen the Ante and Post Nicene Fathers. Bishop Huntington, of Central New York, and Bishop Phillips Brooks, of Massachusetts, represented the Broad Church element in the Protestant Episcopal Church. Dr. DeKoven, of Racine, Wis., who died in 1879, was the leader in the ritualistic movement in this Church. His party has had an increasing following, though his favorite scheme to make Racine College a great institution proved a failure.

Perhaps after Phillip Brooks, Dr. Edward A. Washburn was the most distinguished leader in the Broad Church party. Here would belong Dr. Elisha Mul-ford, author of “The Nation ” and “The Republic of God,” works of permanent value when the controversies of the time have passed away. With them, also, would stand Dr. A. V. G. Allen, of the Episcopal Divinity School of Harvard, whose “ Continuity of Christian Thought” is, at the same timetable and brilliant.

In 1853, Dr. William A. Muhlenburg, whose life work is connected with St. Luke’s Hospital, presented a memorial on Liturgical Revision. Dr. Muhlenburg was a Churchman after the model of Bishop White. This memorial began a movement which caused a great deal of controversy, and which did not end until the completion of the revision of the Prayer-book in 1892. This work occupied the twelve preceding years.

Christian Church in United States. 651

The revision of the Hymnal was carried on from

1859, and found its completion in the same year that saw the revised Prayer-book. The Revision of the Constitution of the Church was finished at the Triennial Convention of 1899. The revision of the Canons was in progress when the century ended.

The war, 1861-1865, brought on a temporary separation of the Northern and Southern Dioceses. Bishop Polk, of Tennessee, became a Confederate general, and was killed at the battle of Kenesaw Mountain while resisting Sherman’s advance upon Atlanta.

In 1871 the bishops issued a declaration affirming that baptism “ does not determine that a moral change is wrought ” in the recipient. In 1873, Bishop Geo. D. Cummins, of Kentucky, withdrew from this Church, and founded the Reformed Episcopal Church for those Episcopalians who could not assent to the High Church principles that were becoming predominant in the Protestant Episcopal Church. This Church has not grown largely in the later years of the century. The sentiment seems among American Christians to be not more, but fewer, Churches, and those larger, more comprehensive, more efficient, and more worthy of the name they bear. In 1874, a canon, restricting ritual innovation, was adopted by the Protestant Episcopal Church. It forbade any elevation or act of adoration toward the elements in the sacrament of

the Lord’s Supper.

In 1874 was held the first Church Congress. The Declaration of the House of Bishops, in 1886, on Christian unity brought to pass the Lambeth Declaration of 1888. Missions were established in Japan in 1859; in Hayti, in 1874; and, in Mexico, in 1879.

652 History of the Christian Church.

Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Conn., was founded in 1850; the Divinity School at Faribault, Minn., in 1857; the Philadelphia Divinity Education, *_n . _an(j the Divinity School at

Harvard University in 1867. St. Stephen’s College, New York City, was founded in i860, and Hobart College, Geneva, N. Y., in the same year took its present name. The University of the South took its beginning from i860 at Sewanee, Tenn. Lehigh University was founded in 1865.

No Church in America possesses anything like the position and power represented by the buildings at Morningside Heights, in New York City. There are grouped Columbia University, the wealthiest institution in resources in America, the marble buildings of St. Luke’s Hospital, and there future generations will worship in the magnificent cathedral of St. John the Divine.

In organizations the Protestant Episcopal Church has partaken of the spirit and movements of the time. The Woman’s Auxiliary to the Board of Missions was formed in 1871. The Church-building Society came into being in 1880, and Brotherhood of St. Andrew for young men in 1886. The Church also strongly patronizes “The King’s Daughters.”

Laymen of ability and wealth, like Seth Low, Pierpont Morgan, and Andrew J. Drexel, as well as families like the Astors and the Vanderbilts, give this Church levers of influence which it is its mission wisely to use. At the same time it has not been slow to enter upon Rescue Mission work and work in the slums.

Christian Church in United States. 653

In 1900, the Protestant Episcopal Church had 4,811 clergy, 6,421 churches, and 710,356 communicants. This is a gain of 3,216 clergy,

. Protestant

5,071 churches, and 620,997 communicants Episcopal since 1850. The Reformed Episcopal Church

™ 1 . 1 • , „ Statistics.

Church reported in 1900, 100 clergy, 78 churches, and 9,282 communicants.

The former Church, in 1890, had thirteen theological schools, with 422 students. The buildings were valued at $2,468,000, and their endowment

^ Z ata-i ^ ^ , Education.

was $3,256,000. The General Theological Seminary in New York had, in that year, 127 students, buildings worth $1,473,000, and an endowment of $2,096,000. The next most influential schools are the Theological School at Cambridge, Mass., Berkeley Divinity School at Middletown, Conn., the Divinity School at Philadelphia, and the Seminary at Alexandria, Va.

They also had seven colleges and universities, with 1,886 students in college work, and 253 in preparatory departments. The buildings of these institutions were valued at $11,381,000, and the endowments at $16,936,000. -Columbia University easily leads in this list. She had, in 1900, 956 students in college work, 329 in post-graduate work, and 1,197 iⁿ professional schools. Her buildings were valued at $8,200,000, and endowment at $13,265,000. In its site and its library, Columbia University is unsurpassed in America. Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., and Lehigh University, at Bethlehem, Pa., are well-endowed institutions, doing effective work.

The Protestant Episcopal Church is doing good

654 History of the Christian Church.

work in its charities. Its deaconesses, sisterhoods, hospitals, Homes for the Aged and Orphans, attest its zeal and effort. Unfortunately this

Charities. . . .

work is so largely diocesan that statistics are not available. Its preparatory schools, like St. Paul’s at Concord, N. H., and Garden City, Long Island, and its splendid St. Luke’s Hospital in New York, are examples of its best work.*

The Congregational Church in this era produced men. Some of the chief of these have been noticed, The Conjjre- ^ut there remain Dr. Leonard Bacon, from gationai 1825 to 1866, pastor of First Church, New Church. Haven; Joseph P. Thompson, pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle, from 1845 to 1871, and others like them in the pastorate.

In the schools were men like Mark Hopkins (1802-1887), president of Williams College, and President Garfield’s old instructor. Dr. Hopkins

Dr. Hopkins. _tTT.„. . __

was graduated at Williams m 1824. He remained there as tutor, 1825-1827. He then studied medicine, and in 1829 began practice in New York City. In 1830 he was called back to Williams as Professor of Moral Philosophy. Here he spent the rest of his life; from 1836 to 1872 as president of the College, and from 1836 to 1883 as pastor of the College Church. He was “one of the most acute” students of Moral Philosophy since Jonathan Edwards. His teaching is set forth in his works, “Law of Love and Love as a Law,” 1869, and “Outline Study of Man,” 1873. Few men have exerted in that century an influence equally wide and profound.

Austin Phelps (1820-1890) was, perhaps, the most brilliant teacher of sacred rhetoric in America in these

•The Protestant Episcopal Church has large and finely equipped Hospitals in New York and Philadelphia, and an excellent one in Albany. There are many others, as well as Homes for the Aged and Orphanages under diocesan control.

Christian Church in United States. 655

years. He was the husband of one gifted authoress and the father of another. Born in Massachusetts, he was graduated from the University of Pennsyl-

. . , _r , Dr. Phelps.

vania 111 1837, and afterward studied at Andover and Union Theological Seminaries. He was pastor at Boston, 1842-1848. Then he began his life work as professor at Andover, 1848-1879, and from that time he was Professor Emeritus until his death. He is known from his books, “ The Still Hour,” 1858; “The New Birth,” 1867; “ The Theory of Preaching,” 1881; “Men and Books,” 1882; and “English Style in Public Discourse,” 1883. Seldom has such a man of genius had the mission of training men for the Christian pulpit.

With these men in the schools wrought those sturdy defenders of the Congregational faith and polity, Dr. Henry Martyn Dexter and Dr. Alonzo H. Quint.

Henry M. Dexter (1821-1890) was graduated at Yale in 1840, and at Andover in 1844. He served as pastor at Manchester, N. H., 1844-1849, and at

’ > -rr -r?’ _Df D_exter.

Berkeley Temple, Boston, 1849-1867. The Congregatioyialist was founded in 1849, and Dr. Dexter was editor from 1851 to 1890; also with Drs. Clark and Quint, of the Congregationalist Quarterly, 18591866.

Dr. Dexter is the author of “ Congregationalism; What is it?” 1865, “The Congregationalism of Three Hundred Years as seen in its Literature,” 1880, a monumental work of great interest and value; also of “As to Roger Williams,” 1876, and “The Story of John Smyth,” 1881. He was unsurpassed in his knowledge of early Congregational history.

6 56 History of the Christian Church.

Dr. Alonzo H. Quint (1828-1896) contributed four hundred articles on Antiquities of Congregational history. He was graduated at Dartmouth

Dr. Quint. . . _A

in 1846, and Andover m 1852. As pastor, he served at Roxbury, 1853-1863. As chaplain he was at the front with the Second Massachusetts Infantry, 1861-1864. He was pastor at New Bedford, 18651873. He was member of the Legislature of New Hampshire, 1881-1882, and member of the Massachusetts Board of Education, 1855-1861. He edited the Congregationalist Quarterly, 1859-1876. Dr. Quint served as secretary of the Massachusetts General Association, 1856-1881, and of the National Congregational Council, 1871-1883.

The Congregational Church Building Society was organized in 1853, ^an(i ^a “ Congregational Year-Book” was published from 1854. The Congregational Library Association was founded, 1851-1853, and in 1871 came into possession of its new home in the Congregational House in Boston, 1871.

In education this Church, in these years, remained true to its traditions. The Chicago Theological

_ Seminary was founded in i8s8; that at

Education. '' . ° '

Oakland, Cal., m 1869; Washburn College, Topeka, Kan., began its career in 1865; Carleton College, Northfield, Minn., in 1867; Doane College, Crete, Neb., in 1872; Drury College, Springfield, Mo., in 1873; Colorado College, Colorado Springs, in 1874; Yankton College, Dakota, in 1881; and Whitman College, Walla Walla, Wash., in 1883.

Two things specially marked the conciousness of Church life which this Church shared with the other Christian Churches,—the formation of a bond of

Christian Church in United States. 657

national union among the Congregational Churches, and the splendid support it has rendered to the American Board of Foreign Missions.

The year 1886 marks the beginning of serious controversy in the Congregational Churches of America with regard to the hypothesis of a proba-

„ 1. _r r a. 1 Doctrinal

tion in the future life for those to whom _ControVer8ies. the gospel message has not come in the present world. The storm-centers of this controversy were the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the Foreign Missionary Agency of the Congregational Churches, and Andover Theological Seminary, the oldest divinity school of the Church.

The Rev. R. A. Hume, a returned missionary from India, had expressed the opinion that the hypothesis of a future probation for those who had not heard the gospel in this life might bring relief to the minds of converts from heathenism, who were troubled as they thought of the future of relatives and friends who had died in heathenism before the message of Christ could be brought to them. On account of the utterance of these views, Mr. Hume’s application for reappointment as a missionary to the field in India, where he had formerly labored, was not granted until a long and significant delay had occurred.

At the annual meeting of the Board following this action, in Des Moines, Iowa, October, 1886, the issue was sharply joined between the liberal and conservative elements in the Church as to what theological tests should be applied to candidates for missionary service. For several years the Prudential Committee rejected all candidates for missionary service who inclined toward the disputed doctrines. After long de-

4²

658 History of the Christian Church.

lay, Mr. Hume was reappointed as a missionary on account of his excellent record of service, and in view of the fact that his statements with regard to a future probation did not involve a declaration that he positively accepted the doctrine. As other candidates for service in the foreign field who looked favorably upon the hypothesis were uniformly rejected, the dissatisfaction of the liberal party in the Church continued, and each recurring annual meeting of the Board was clouded by this controversy. As a result, interest in foreign missionary work decreased, contributions fell off, and it seemed as if the organization of another Foreign Missionary Society would be inevitable.

The Rev. \V. H. Noyes, whose application for appointment as a missionary had been rejected by the Prudential Committee because he held that the doctrine of a future probation was a permissible hypothesis, was sent to Japan as a missionary by one of the leading Congregational Churches of Boston, the Berkeley Temple, with the co-operation of other Churches opposed to the policy q{ the Board.

Happily, however, at the annual meeting of the Board in October, 1893, a basis of agreement between the opposing elements in the constituency was reached, and the necessity of a permanent division of the denomination in its foreign missionary interests was avoided. The Board requested the Prudential Committee to appoint Mr. Noyes as one of its staff of missionaries in Japan. The Des Moines resolution against the doctrine of future probation was not rescinded, but the decision to appoint to missionary service a man who had before been rejected on account of his apparent sympathy with this doctrine

Christian Church in United States. 659

indicated a marked modification of the policy that had governed the Board since 1886. Since this action was taken, the Board has received the undivided support of the Congregational Churches.

In the discussions relative to the doctrine of a Christian probation in the future life, certain professors in Andover Theological Seminary took a leading part. In the Andover Review, and particularly in a series of papers entitled “ Progressive Orthodoxy,” these professors set forth in outline a system of theological opinions closely akin to the systems of Dorner and other theologians of the school of Schleiermacher. Charges were preferred, before the Board of Visitors of the seminary, that Professors Egbert G. Smyth, William J. Tucker, J. W. Churchill, George Harris, and Edward Y. Hincks were teaching doctrines contrary to the creed of the seminary, to which all members of the Faculty were, by the terms of the charter, required to subscribe.

The Board of Visitors decided that the charges were sustained in the case of Professor Smyth, the president of the Faculty, and that therefore his relation to the seminary as president and professor should cease. The Board of Trustees, however, refused to accede to this demand, claiming that the Board of Visitors did not have the original, but only appellate jurisdiction, in such cases; that the charges should have been presented to the trustees rather than to the visitors, and that, on independent investigation, the trustees had reached the conclusion that the teachings of Dr. Smyth and the other professors had been within the limits of liberty allowed by the creed of the seminary. Professor Smyth appealed from the decision of

660 History of the Christian Church.

the visitors to the court of Essex County, Massachusetts. The opponents of the accused professors were unsuccessful in their efforts, and the controversy resulted in vindicating and permanently establishing the right of the members of the seminary Faculty to Christian liberty of thought and instruction.

The American Board Controversy, which at times threatened to divide the denomination, served indirectly to deepen the sense of denominational solidarity, by bringing the missionary agencies of Congregationalism under the direct control of the Churches. The boards and societies through which American Congre-gationalists had conducted their missionary enterprises at home and abroad, were independent, self-governing bodies. They had been founded, not by the Churches as such, but by individuals interested in the special departments of missionary work that the several societies were doing. As the denomination had not created these organizations, it could not control them. The American Board controversy called attention to the powerlessness of the denomination in the matter of the control of its missionary agencies, and an urgent demand arose that such changes should be made in the organization of these agencies that the Churches sustaining them should also control them. These changes have gradually been made, and the Congregational Missionary Societies are now composed of representatives elected or nominated by the contributing Churches or by the district and State organizations of Churches. This joint responsibility of the Churches for the support of their missionary enterprises and the management of their missionary agencies has greatly strengthened the bond uniting the Churches to one another.

Christian Church in United States. 66i

During the past decade, Congregationalists have been true to their history as a college-building denomination. Dr. D. K. Pearsons, of Chicago, has made generous gifts to many colleges and academies, principally in the West and South, conditional on their raising such a sum as will make the united gift sufficient to carry them to a vigorous life.

The National Councils, meeting every three years since 1865, have been a bond of increasing union. The great International Council of Congregationalists held its second session in Boston in 1899. Representatives were present from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Norway, Turkey, India, China, Japan, Africa, Hawaii, and Micronesia.

Churches, 5,650; clergy, 5,560; communicants, 635,791. This is a gain, since 1850, of 3,679 churches,

3,873 clergy, and 438,997 communicants.

X , 7 , , 7 / , ^ Statistics.

Sunday-school scholars, 671,743, and 186,448 in Societies of Christian Endeavor. Benevolences, $2,201,161; Current expenses, $7,497,930.

In 1900, the Congregationalists gave $697,371 for foreign missions, and $1,699,074 for home missions. Their successful missions_ in Turkey, India, China, and Oceania deserve a history ^Con^_|^r₁^e_g^^tion‘ of their own They made Christian Hawaii.

In 1900 the Congregationalists had seven theological seminaries. These had 323 students, buildings valued at $1,042,000, and an endowment of $3,386,000. Those most largely attended ^Ed““^t_r'_k⁰_<^nal were: Yale, Hartford, Oberlin, and Chicago.

The last had the largest endowment, nearly a million of dollars.

The Congregationalists lead all American Churches

662 History of the Christian Church.

in the amount of money invested in colleges, and in their renown. This is but natural; they inherited more than the others at the beginning of the century. They have 22 universities and colleges among the white people of the United States. These had, in 1900, 7,480 college students, with 3,009 in preparatory departments. The buildings of these institutions were valued at $14,346,000, and their endowment was $17,062,000. Besides these, there were six colleges among the colored people, with property worth over a million of dollars, and nearly a thousand students. The three chief of these institutions were: Atlanta University, which has also a theological department; Fisk University, at Nashville, Tenn.; and Straight University, at New Orleans, La. The stronghold of Congregational education is still in New England, though they have large schools at Oberlin, O.; Jacksonville, 111.; Beloit, Wis.; Grinnell, Iowa; and at Colorado Springs, Colo. In New England they have Yale, Dartmouth, Williams, Bowdoin, Amherst, and Middlebury. These are all famous names. In 1900 they enrolled 3,439 students; their buildings were valued at $6,775,000, and their endowment at $10,914,000. The three Women’s Colleges of New England—Mt. Holyoke, Smith, and Wellesley—had, in the same year, 2,300 students; their buildings were valued at $2,537,000, and their endowment was $1,541,000. Together, these institutions had 5,755 students, with buildings worth $9,387,000, and an endowment of $12,465,000. Five-sevenths of the students, and over two-thirds of the wealth, were in New England. Yale, of course, led the list, with 1,719 students in college work, 137 in post-graduate studies,

Christian Church in United States. 663

and 430 in professional schools. Her buildings were wortli over $4,000,000, and her endowment was

$4,942,000. ^

In the higher education of women, this Church maintains her superiority. Next to her Women’s Colleges, the best in the country, in 1900, were: Vassar, Bryn Mawr, and Baltimore; together, these had 1,263 students, with buildings worth $2,511,000, and $2,414,000 endowment. The united effort of Baptists, Methodists, and Friends in these institutions do not, on the whole, equal her work in New England for the higher education of women.

The Friends in these years made a slow growth, but with a gratifying, internal development. They fell into line with the great Sunday-school _{Thg Fr|endg} movement. The Orthodox Friends sing ^

Gospel hymns, and the Conference in 1887, at Richmond, Ind., introduced a pastorate for the churches. They have been earnest and wonderfully successful in mission work among the Indians in the United States, and in mission work in Alaska. In 1865 their first foreign mission was begun at Ramleh, near Jerusalem. In 1893 their Board of Foreign Missions was organized, and it had, at the close of this period, missions in Japan, Syria, and Mexico.

In education they have distinguished themselves m the last half of the century. Besides sustaining several thoroughly-endowed secondary schools, _EducatJon> they had seven institutions of higher education at the close of our period. All but two were founded after 1850, and those two were refounded. The leading institutions were: Haverford College, Pennsylvania; Earlham College, Richmond. Ind;

664 History of the Christian Church.

Wilmington College, Ohio; Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, founded in 1885, among the Orthodox; and Swarthmore, founded in 1869, among the Hicksite Friends. In 1900, in the college work of the Friends, was reported 1,028 students, besides 305 in the preparatory departments. These institutions had property in buildings valued at $2,268,000, and an endowment of $2,535,000. This is certainly a fine showing for the size of the communion. In 1900, in the United States, there were reported among the Orthodox Friends, 1,279 ministers, 830 churches, and 92,468 members; among the Hicksite Friends, 115 ministers, 201 churches, 21,992 members; all other Friends, 49 ministers, 62 churches, 4,700 members. This is a total of 1,443 ministers, 1,093 churches, and 119,160 members, a gain, since 1850, of 24,160. The Orthodox gained 22,468 ; the Hicksite lost 3,008.

No Church has been a better or more influential friend of the American Indian.

The Moravians continue to be one of the smallest of American Churches, but also one of the most zealous in missionary effort. These years saw

Moravians.

great changes in the internal organization of the Church, which might well have come earlier for the growth of their communion. In 1857 the General Synod granted home self-government to each province. In June, 1850, the Provincial Constitution of the American Church, North, was adopted at Bethlehem. The sum of $116,000 was given from the real estate to the Sustentation Fund, and the publishing-house was removed from Philadelphia to Bethlehem, Pa. This Church has always been zealous in missions among the American Indians. In 1895 it counted

Christian Church in United States. 665

among them 12,000 communicants, besides 20,000 adherents. Their mission in Alaska dated from 1885.

The Moravians have but one college, and that is located at Bethlehem, Pa., and has but 28 students, with property valued at $215,000. They _Education support, also, a Young Ladies’ Seminary at Bethlehem, Pa., and Nazareth Hall and Linden Hall, all three institutions dating from the eighteenth century. In the West they have Chaska Seminary in Minnesota, for boys, founded in 1864, and Hope Seminary in Indiana, for girls, founded in 1866. Perhaps their most distinguished minister was Bishop Edmund de Schweinitz, the Church historian, who died in 1887. In 1900 the Moravians in the United States numbered 117 ministers, 122 churches, and 14,817 members.

This Church has increased slowly in this period. Its ministers are better trained, and it has become much more Trinitarian in belief and sentiment. Its leading institution of learning is _chri8ti^e_ans. Antioch College, in Ohio. In 1900 the Church numbered 1,151 ministers, 1,517 churches, and 109,278 members. Of these, 84,838 formed the Christian Connection, and 24,440 were known as Christians, South.

The Adventists in the United States in 1900 were divided into six divisions. In all, they embraced 1,505 ministers, 2,286 churches, and 88,705 mem-

1 The

bers. In 1850 they reported 40,000 mem- _Adventists. bers. The Seventh-day Adventists were the most numerous of these bodies. They reported 386 ministers, 1,494 churches, and 54,539 members. They had one institution of higher education at College View, Neb. It is called Union College, and had

666 History of the Christian Church.

113 students, besides 413 in preparatory work. It was founded in 1891; its buildings were valued at $200,000, and it reported no endowment.

„ Of those in the United States there were,

I tie

piymoth in 1900, four divisions, with 314 churches, Brethren. _&n(j _memberS.

These progenitors of all the modern Baptists, retain many of their old-world and old-time customs.

There are twelve branches of them, differ-

Mennoiiites. ⁱⁿS ^larg^elY ^{in the} strictness with which they adhere to these customs. In all, in 1900, in the United States, they numbered 1,112 ministers, 673 churches, and 58,728 members.

Of these German Conservative Baptists,

TheDunkards. , ^ ,

m 1900, m the United States, there were four branches, with 2,987 ministers, 1,081 churches, and 112,194 members.

A branch of the German Reformed Church of God was founded in 1830 by John Winebrenner. They The Church of k°ld ^to immersion, feet-washing, Church God (Wine- care of the poor, and evangelistic services, brennarians). reject the Calvinistic doctrine. In

1900 they numbered 460 ministers, 580 churches, and

38,000 members. They have a small college at Findlay, Ohio.

Church of the In this Communion there were in the iem^W(Sweden- United States, in 1900, 143 ministers, 173 borgians.) churches, and 7,679 members.

The Salvation Army in the United States, in 1900, was reported as having 2,361 officers, 663 “ stations, and 19,490 members. This is, however, but a slight indication of the work or its influence.

Christian Church in United States. 667

The Unitarians had during this period some able men; such preachers as Thomas Starr King (18251860), and Robert Laird Collier (1837- _UnitarIan8 1890)—who went to them from the Methodists in 1866; such leaders in Boston as James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888), author of “Ten Great Religions,” and foremost in every philanthropic enterprise; and Edward Everett Hale, still among us and greatly revered. They had also, at Harvard College, such a saintly soul as Andrew F. Peabody, and such a representative of the best culture as Frederick H. Hedge (1805-1890) ; to say nothing of the influence of Harvard University, the most famous institution of learning in America, as it is the oldest, under the brilliant and successful administration of Dr. Charles W. Eliot.

In this connection may be mentioned Dr. Orville Dewey (1790-1882), who stands next to Channing among Unitarian leaders in the United _{Dr Dewey} States. Dr. Dewey was graduated from Williams in 1814, and from Andover in 1819. He had been a Calvinist, but now became a Unitarian, and served in the pastorate at New Bedford, 18231833. In that year he visited Europe, and again in 1842-1844. He was pastor of Second Church, New York City, 1835-1848. Then, on account of his health, he went on a farm at Sheffield. He delivered two courses of Lowell Lectures, which were published, one on “The Problems of Human Destiny,” and the other on “ The Education of the Human Race.” He was again in the pastorate one year at Albany, two at Washington, and four years at Boston, when he finally retired to his farm, after a pastorate of thirty years.

668 History of the Christian Church.

Dr. Howard Furness, of Philadelphia, has long enjoyed the reputation of being the most learned Shakespearean scholar living.

When we see these, and other names that might be mentioned, we feel that, if the Unitarian Church is not one of the leading Churches of the land, and if it has not maintained its relative place among the American Churches, it has not been for the lack of culture, nor of men of character and of remarkable intellectual ability. We can only conclude that the defect is in the message they bear.

In 1850 there were reported 246 churches; in 1900, 460 churches, with 71,000 members, and this, with the stimulus of the National Conferences of 1864, 1886, and 1893. Iⁿ *850 they reported 206 churches.

Harvard College is under the control of this Church. Under President Eliot it has become the first, as it is the oldest, of American universities. In 1900 it had 2,421 students in collegiate work, 313 in post-graduate studies, and 1,363 in professional schools. Its buildings, etc., were valued at $4,500,000, and its endowment was $12,615,000.

This Church has developed internally, but has not held its relative position among the Churches. In 1851 it reported 642 churches; in 1900, 776 Unive^Tr8aii5t8. churches, with 52,739 members. In these years it has founded Tufts College, at Medford, Mass., in 1852, and its Divinity School in 1869; Lombard University, at Galesburg, 111., in 1853; St. Lawrence University, at Canton, N. Y., in 1858; Buchtel College, at Akron, Ohio, in 1872; andThroop Institute, at Pasadena, Cal., in 1891. A Young People’s Union was formed in 1889, as a branch of the

Christian Church in United States. 669

Christian Endeavor Society. The Church seems to have 110 gospel for the heathen; at least, it has no Foreign Missionary Society.

The most famous Universalist preacher of this period was Edwin H. Chapin (1814-1880.) He studied at the seminary at Burlington, Vt., and was ordained in 1837. He preached at Rich- ^Dr* ^Chapln* mond,Va., 1837-1840; Charlestown, Mass., 1840-1846; and New York City, 1848-1880. In 1850 he was in Europe. In 1866 his new church took the title of the Divine Paternity. He was in large demand as a popular lecturer. He published some volumes of sermons. The Chapin Home for the Aged perpetuates his name.

In the early part of this period the Mormon Church grew largely from immigration. This in the last ten years was largely checked. The increase, however, has been mainly from the growth ^Lasitnts.^ay of the Mormon population in the new States of the Rocky Mountain territory. In 1894 the bill for the admission of Utah as a State put an end to the public practice of polygamy. Upon promising compliance with this law Utah was admitted as a State in the Federal Union in 1896.

In 1899, B. H. Roberts, a confirmed polygamist, was refused a seat in the House of Representatives by an overwhelming vote. Economic causes, as well as moral influence, and public opinion, are working against this “ relic of barbarism.” It is hoped that soon its secret practice and public defense will alike disappear. In 1900 they were reported as having 2,900 ministers, 1,396 churches, and 343,824 members ;

43,000 belonged to the branch which has never recog

670 History of the Christian Church.

nized polygamy. In 1900 they reported two colleges, Graceland College in Iowa, of the latter division, with 23 students and $22,000 worth of property; and Brigham Young College, at IyOgan, Utah, with 9 college students and 591 in the preparatory work.

The greatest rise and fall of any religious body in these years was that of the Spiritualists. At one time they claimed hundreds of thousands of

Spiritualists. ^J . , ,, ^

members, and adherents by the million. Exposures manifold, and the inherent barrenness of the teaching, as well as the often attendant impostures, could but have their natural result. In spite of the adhesion of many able men and women, and those of wealth as well, in 1900 they counted in the United States but 334 churches and 45,030 members, and their decrease in influence was more than that in members.

These, like the Spiritualists, in this era, suffered marked decline. Some, like the Oneida Community and several Shaker Communities, became ^Societies!^{0 tota}lly extinct. In 1900, in the United States there were seven such societies, with 31 places of worship and 4,010 members. Of these, the Shakers had 1,650 members, and the Amana 1,600; none others over 250. The course of their experiment in religious life may be said to have been finally determined. •

In these years there was no such defection from the Christian faith as that of Mormonism or Spiritualism. But a perversion arose in an electi-Science" ^c*^sm
w^ich mixed the Vedantic philosophy and pantheism of the Hindus with Christianity in its phraseology, but with a complete empty

Christian Church in United States. 671

ing of the meaning of the leading truths of Christian teaching. Mary Baker Eddy, with Mother Ann Lee and Joanna Southcote, form a trio of female founders of religion. The movement gained impetus as a reaction from the teachings of materialistic science, and as the aftergrowth of the idealistic pantheism of Emerson and the New England Trancendentalists. Its positive teaching, and a teaching in which there was value, was the power of the mind over the body. The importance and influence of mental states and the emphasis upon mental hygiene are of unquestioned benefit to a race as nervous as the Americans. That this often resulted in physical cure is not strange; that it also resulted in the crudest fanaticism and loss of health and life, is also undeniable. Mrs. Eddy claimed that the revelation of this new religious principle came to her in 1866, when she was cured of sickness. The “ Science of Health,” by Mrs. Eddy, was published in 1875. The first Church of Christian Scientists was formed in Boston in 1875. The Christian Science Journal began its work in 1883. In 1887, Mrs. Eddy published a work entitled “The Unity of Good and the Unreality of Evil.” The new edifice for their church in Boston, built in 1895, cost $250,000.

They were reported in 1900 as having 90,000 members; but the next year but 48,000. Evidently the former report was too large. They will prove whether sin and evil and disease can be overcome by denying their existence.

John Alexander Dowie, a Scotchman who came to the United States from Australia, in Chicago since 1890, has» by his personal magnetism, colossal conceit, and

672 History of the Christian Church.

preposterous claims, led away a multitude. It only shows how much of ignorance of Christ, his teachings, his work, and the offices of his Church, there is among professedly Christian people. In view of this, there can hardly be too much emphasis laid upon the intelligent, reverent, and careful study of the Bible and the history of the Christian Church. In 1900 it was estimated he had 40,000 followers.

The growth of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States in this period was phenomenal. In no Roman other part of the world was there a like inCatholic crease in numbers, wealth, churches, mo-

Church in . .

the united nastic, educational, and charitable mstitu-states. tions; we may also say, in the average intelligence and comfort of its population. In numbers it increased considerably over seven millions in these years. Its growth was not only in numbers, but in costly churches, with St. Patrick’s Cathedral at New York at their head, whose corner-stone was laid August 15, 1858, and which was dedicated May 25,

1879.

This Church is the Church of the immigration. That it has been so successfully gathered and firmly established speaks volumes for the wisdom of the Episcopate and the devotion, zeal, and industry of the clergy—a clergy which, in intelligence and character, is not surpassed by the Roman Catholic clergy of any other country.

But to this great success there is another side. From the immense immigration from Roman Catholic lands there has been an immense leakage. The Roman Catholic Church has gathered not more than

Christian Church in United States. 673

one-half to two-thirds of those owning allegiance to her beyond the sea who have made their homes in the New World. Many of these have found homes in the Evangelical Churches. They are found in the ministry and among the laity of every considerable Evangelical Church in this country. The author has never had a parish where he did not number some such among the communicants of his Church. But there are large numbers who depart from any form of religious faith, and many from any restraints of morality. Many of the latter are found in our penitentiaries and prisons. This is especially true with the large influx of immigrants from Southern Italy and Sicily, where the ignorance, immorality, and superstition for which the Roman Catholic Church in those fair lands for ages has been responsible, shows at its worst.

Then, in the United States, the Roman Catholic Church, more than any other Church, is a foreign Church. Comparatively few, except those of recent foreign extraction, kneel at its altars. Its forms of worship and discipline are foreign, its higher ecclesiastics are educated abroad, and in many dioceses the majority of its priesthood are of foreign birth. This, of course, is but a temporary phase, and would not be important but for the policy of educating Roman Catholic children in Roman Catholic schools. But for this, the children of the second and third generation of immigrants would mix in all social and political, civic and religious life as Americans. This they will not now do; it is not intended that they should do so.

For purely defensive purposes, no doubt, this is a wise policy. For any policy of aggressive conquest

674 History of the Christian Church.

and impression upon the great masses of the people who are not of Roman Catholic descent, it can not be effective. It increases and perpetuates the foreign aspect of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. No greater defense against Roman Catholic growth among native Americans than the Roman Catholic school system could be devised.

One greater blunder they have been delivered from by the wise prevision of Archbishop Ireland and of Cardinal Gibbons. The policy of perpetuating foreign peculiarities of race and speech, known as Cahensleyism, did not prevail. The English speech and loyalty to American political and governmental •institutions will prevail in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. Upon this both that Church and the nation are to be congratulated.

The growth of the Church, as shown in its records, is chiefly the growth of its hierarchy and the prosperity of its individual dioceses. Nowhere else in Christendom does more depend upon the character and the ability of the Episcopate than in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. Their power has been so great and so unchecked that a permanent limitation has been put upon it. In 1866 there met the second Plenary Council of Baltimore. The third met in 1884. The administration of two members of the Episcopate in the United States led to a fundamental change in the relations of the prelates to the Vatican. The controversy between Archbishop Corrigan, of New York, and Dr. McGlynn, rector of St. Stephen’s parish in that city, and that between Bishop McQuaid, of Rochester, and Father Lambert, a learned priest and the author of one of the most

Christian Church in United States. 675

effective replies against Robert G. Ingersoll, led to the sending of Archbishop Satolli to the United States as papal ablegate in 1893. The decision was in each case against the incumbent of the Episcopal office. There was such a division in the hierarchy between the followers of Archbishop Ireland and Cardinal Gibbons on the one side, and those of Archbishop Corrigan and Bishop McQuaid on the other, that the mission of Archbishop Satolli was made permanent as an apostolic delegation, and when he was recalled, Monsignore Martinelli was sent to take his place. Thus there is established a permanent representative at Washington who is to report upon the condition of the Episcopate, and, even more important, give advice upon the selection of candidates for vacant Sees. The way of favor at the Vatican will largely be through the influence of the papal representative at Washington. This is hardly offset by the creation of Archbishop McCloskey in New York, as Cardinal in 1878, or of Archbishop Gibbons, of Baltimore, in 1886.

In 1899 was founded the Roman Catholic University of America, at Washington, through the gift of $325,000 by Miss Caldwell. At the close of the century it reported 23 professors, with 180 students. Its grounds and buildings were valued at $757*607, and its endowment at $910,907.

In the war against Spain, the sympathies of Leo XIII were with Spain, as those of Pius IX had been with the Southern Confederacy. Nevertheless, the conquest of the Philippines and the acquisition of Porto Rico, adding as many more people of Roman Catholic descent and training as were before under the protection of the United States flag, at the same time in

676 History of the Christian Church.

creased the importance of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, and made it more un-American than before. The bridge over this increasing chasm will not be formed by Italian ecclesiastics, or by the Vatican authorities, but by those able architects of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States in the last century,—by the sons of Ireland, who sit in high places in the Church ruled from the banks of the Tiber.

In 1900, in the United States, there were reported:

11,848 Roman Catholic clergy, 12,263 churches, and 8,600,6 s8 communicants; Polish Catholics:

Statistics. ’ , j

19 clergy, 18 churcnes, and 20,000 communicants; Russian Orthodox: 40 clergy, 31 churches,

40,000 communicants; Greek Orthodox: 5 clergy, 5 churches, and 5,000 communicants; Armenians: 15 clergy, 21 churches, and 8,500 communicants; Old Catholics: 3 clergy, 5 churches, and 425 communicants ; Reformed Catholics: 6 clergy, 6 churches, and 1,500 communicants. Total—clergy, 11,936; churches, 12,349; communicants, 8,766,083.

In 1900 the Roman Catholics reported, in the United States, 30 institutions of theological instruction. These institutions had 1,913 students.

Education in ^ _

Roman Their buildings were valued at $2,839,000, Catholic _an(j their endowment was $366,000. This ’ Church also had in that year, in the United States, 63 institutions giving collegiate instruction. All of these had preparatory departments, except the Catholic University of America, at Washington. They had 1,384 instructors, 7,147 students in the preparatory departments, and 5,859 in collegiate work. Thirty-eight of these institutions had less than 100 students

Christian Church^in United States. 677

in college work. Only four colleges had over 200 students in collegiate studies. These were: the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, with 408; Georgetown College, District of Columbia, 367 ; St. Ignatius, Cleveland, O., 360; and Boston College, Massachusetts, 220 students. The Catholic University of America had 122 students, buildings valued at $757,000, and endowment of $310,000. The buildings of these 63 institutions were valued at $17,713,0°°, and there was but $640,000 of endowment. They claim 1,000,000 children in parochial and secondary schools. These schools number 4,000.

The policy of the Roman Catholic Church in its theological and college instruction, seems to be to erect costly buildings, and then to make the tuition fees, or charity, pay the expenses. This is also the policy in its secondary schools and charitable work. It can do this the better, as most of its instruction and care cost very little.

This Church carries on extensive charitable work in the great cities, mainly in its orphanages and hospitals ; the latter are largely supported by those outside of the communion of the Roman Catholic Church. They report, with no great definiteness but in round numbers, 250 protectories and orphanages, caring for

60,000 children, 50 foundling asylums; also 340 hospitals, large and small.

The great consolidation of Churches in this period, after that of the Presbyterians in the United States, was that of the Methodists of all branches

The Christian

in Canada in 1883. This made them the largest of the Evangelical Churches in the Dominion. This was followed by a similar union of

678 History of the Christian Church.

Methodist Churches in Australia in 1900. The Churches in Canada have grown in wealth, institutions, and influence, quite equal to the increase in numbers in the last fifty years of the century.

According to the census of 1901, Canada had a population of 5,338,813. Of the Evangelical Churches, the Methodists had 916,862 members; Presbyterians, 842,301; Episcopal Church, 680,346; Baptists, 292,485; Free-Will Baptists, 24,229; Lutherans, 90,394; Congregationalists, 28,283; Disciples, 14,872 ; Salva-tation Army, 10,307; Plymouth Brethren, 8,071; Adventists, 8,064; Friends, 4,007; Universalists, 2,589; Unitarians, 1,934; Dunkards, 1,531.

The Free-Will Baptists and the Plymouth Brethren showed a large decrease since 1891. Smaller decrease was reported by the Universalists and the Friends. The large gains were made by the Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, and the Lutherans.

The Roman Catholics numbered 2,228,997. The jews had 16,402.

Chapter VIII.

EASTERN CHRISTENDOM.

For the first time since the Saracen Conquest in the seventeenth century, the Eastern Christians, as a whole, had opened before them the path of tolerance, respect, and development. France brought to an end the expensive war in Algeria by allowing the Mohammedan population to have their own mosques and manage their own religious affairs. In return for this, when the maddened Druses and Mohammedans, in

i860, began massacring the Christians in Lebanon, and the craze reached Damascus, Abd-el-Keber, the exiled leader of the Algerians, opened his house and did all that he could to save from slaughter the Christians of Damascus. This uprising resulted in a French intervention and a Christian protectorate over Lebanon. The increasing crowds of Christian tourists, and the building of railroads in Egypt up the Nile, and in Palestine itself, has increased the necessity for the protection of Christians. This, of course, has been made more secure and complete by the English occupation of Egypt since 1881, and of Cyprus in

1880, the French occupation of Tunis in 1880, and the Greek occupation of Crete in 1897. Turkey and Europe this process has rapidly extended. Roumania became independent of the sultan in 1863, and Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, with Thessaly and a part of Epirus, in 1880, as a result of tlie Russo-Turk-ish war. Thus, there came relief to a large number of Eastern Christians. The Nestorians, however, were systematically raided by the Kurds. Of the Armenians, nearly one-half ot the people became Russian subjects in 1880. The remainder Sultan Abdul Hamid II sought to exterminate, in a series of bloody massacres, in 1897.

The Christians in Macedonia were yet under that same misrule and violence from which Greece, Servia, Bulgaria, Roumania, Bosnia, and Herzegovina have been freed. May the redemption be not long delayed!

In ecclesiastical matters, the Greek Church of Greece has taken the lead, especially in establishing the schools as well as churches beyond the bounds of Greece. Notably is this true in Macedonia, in the ports of Asia Minor, and in Syria and Palestine. Russia has not been pleased with this growth of ecclesiastical power and jurisdictions of Greece. She is anxious that all the religious influence of the Greek Church should advance her political and national interests. Hence she favored the Bulgarian Church in declaring its independence of the.Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, and appointing an Exarch as the head of its National Church in 1870. The Church of Roumania had declared itself independent in 1865. It has also sought to stir up the Servians against the Greeks in Macedonia, and the Syrians against them in Palestine and Syria. Russia has established a Russian State Normal School at Nazareth, and has sought steadily to increase her power and influence in the monasteries at Mount Athos, that nursery of Greek priests and ecclesiastics.

Eastern Christendom. 681

We can hardly speak of any wide development or growth among the Eastern Churches except the Greek, unless in intelligence, in self-respect, and in general well-being. In all these there has been advance among the Armenians, Nestorians, the Maron-ites, the Copts, and, last and least, among the Abyssinians, who have preserved both their independence and their ignorance. These, together, are supposed to number ten millions of people. The American schools and pervasive influence at Beyrout, and the Jesuit rivalry in schools, press, and medical work, have immensely raised the tone of the intellectual and religious life in that part of Syria. The missions of the American United Presbyterians in Egypt has been of steady growth in numbers and influence. Few missions have been more far-reaching in affecting the immediate environment. The mission of the American Board at Constantinople, and the influence of Robert College and the missions in Southern Bulgaria, have been permanent and widespread. All these influences have elevated the position and alleviated the lot of the Eastern Christians. The most marked characteristic has been the progress made in the education of the daughters of the people.

In the course of these years, since i860, the position of the Ecumenical Patriarch at Constantinople has been becoming slowly more independent. He promises soon to be a real head of the Greeks under the rule of the sultan, and not a mere creature of Turkish politics. There are said to be ten millions of Greeks under Turkish rule.

The Russian Church has grown with the expansion of Russian power in these years. She has not lacked

682 History of the Christian Church.

able scholars, or devoted missionaries, or saintly workers. On the other hand, the clergy are undisciplined

and the people are untaught. It is true that

Russian _an(j _cj_rclli_ation of the Bible is allowed in the language of the people; but how can that greatly help them when eighty per cent of the people can not read? The grossest superstitions flourish amid their ignorance and with a non-preaching clergy. The Russian Middle Ages have yet to see their Reformation and Revolution. God grant that it may come peaceably, but grant also that it may come quickly! There are in Russia 14 archbishops, 48 bishops, and 66,000 churches, of which 36,500 are parish churches. Seventy-one per cent of the population are said to belong to the Greek Church, on the authority of the “Statesman’s Year-Book;” that is,

92,590,000 people, nine per cent to the Roman Catholics, nine per cent to the Mohammedans, and five per cent to the Evangelical Churches, mainly in the Baltic provinces and Finland. The oppressions of these Christians in the Russification of these countries is the heavies^1- burden the Evangelical Churches have had to bear in the last thirty years. This policy has known no scruple and shown no mercy. There are three millions of Germans in the Baltic provinces. In 1874 mixed marriages were declared void; that is, both parties must become members of the Greek Church. After 1886, no foreigners could buy land in Western Russia. This was to put a final end to that tide of German immigration which, in nineteen years,

1857-1876, had carried 558,000 Germans into Russia. In the same year the names of their cities and towns were made Russian instead of German, and the Russian language was made compulsory in the law courts. In 1887 all the German corporation schools were made to teach Russian, and two years later the same course was made obligatory in the private schools. In the same year the University of Dorpat, founded in 1630, and the glory of the Baltic provinces, was Russianized. All administrators, judges, schoolmasters, and university professors were replaced by Russians. In the year 1889 the final step was taken, and the teaching of the German language was made a crime, and the German local administration was destroyed. The same course of procedure was begun in the last of the century in Finland, whose liberties were protected by the strongest treaty and constitutional guarantees. We are forced to the sad conviction that civil and religious liberty and Russia can not dwell together, a conviction strengthened by the last twelve years of persecution of the Russian Jews, which has driven hundreds of thousands of them to America. There are said to be 12,000,000 of Dissenters in Russia; that is, of those who are Greek Christians in faith, but out of communion with the State Church. Unless the oppressive policy of the government ceases, there will be more of them in spite of constant emigration.

A marked feature of Russian religious life is a tendency to mysticism and utter distaste and disregard for this world. This was seen in Gogol, who, for the last twenty years of his life, lived as a recluse in Rome. This was a strange end for the author of “Dead Souls” and “Taras Bulbas.” Count Tolstoi shows the same tendency in his later years. This is also seen in different Russian sects, of whom the Dukhoubers are the most familiar to us. To the great Slavic race and the great Russian nation an awakening must come. May the railway bring the spelling-book, and, in the new era, may the Church of Jesus Christ in Russia triumph in light and rule in love!

statistics, Russian Greek Church, 92,500,000;

Population. Greek Oriental Church, 10,000,000; other Eastern Churches, 10,000,000. Total, 122,000,000.

At the end of the nineteenth century, of those people from whom sprang the Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles, the early founders of the Christian

* Church, there were reported as being in the world 11,242,665. Of these there were in Europe, 9,351,735; ^Asia> 368,000; Africa, 430,800; America, 1,103,135; Australia, 16,000. There were reported in the United States at that date 301 rabbis, 570 synagogues, and they claimed a population of 1,058,135. These are almost all in the large cities, 600,000 being said to be in New York alone.

Chapter IX.

OUTER CHRISTENDOM.

Outer Christendom is that body of Christian people, clergy, and laity, who live where Mohammedan or heathen religions prevail, and including the early home and conquests of the Christian faith now under the rule of the Turks, and who are included in that body of one hundred and thirty millions of Christian believers who compose Eastern Christendom. Outer Christendom then includes the mission fields of the Christian Church.

Unfortunately, late and reliable accounts of the missionary activity of the Roman Catholic Church are not accessible. France has always been Roman the protector of Roman Catholic Missions, c.thoHc even when her government has been infidel, and never more than at the close of the century. There is little missionary activity in the former Spanish or present Portuguese colonies. Austria and Italy have no colonies. Leopold II, of Belgium, would be a queer protector of any Christian enterprise. Hence the field is clear to France, and nowhere in the world are Roman Catholic missions more strenuously furthered by the government than in all the French colonies. Madagascar will do as a specimen of all.

The information here given is from from the “Geography and Atlas of Protestant Missions, by Harlan .

Other Roman Catholic missions are in Evangelical and Slavic countries, or in such non-Christian lands as China, Japan, and India. They have also large establishments in Syria and Palestine under French protection. In China it is estimated there are i ,000,000 Roman Catholics. They have had missions there since 1550; the Evangelical Churches only since 1840, to reach the population. In India the census returns 1,315,000 Roman Catholics, a little less than half of the Christian population. In Africa the activity of the Roman Catholic missionaries is very conspicuous, especially within the territory protected by the flag of France. Eastern Christians do little mission work outside of Turkey in Asia and Europe and the territories of the Russian Empire.

Hence our consideration of Outer Christendom is largely concerned with the work of the Evangelical Churches of America, Great Britain, Ger-^EMisfions^al
many> Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and the Churches of France and Switzerland.

There are in this Outer Christendom 435 Missionary Societies and organizations at work. Of these, 134 are American, 211 are British, including British Colonies and dependencies, and 90 are Continental in Europe, or Asiatic. Many of these are strong organizations. The Church Missionary Society of Great Britain has an income a little less than $2,000,000. The London Missionary Society comes next with $666,526; then the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, $661,775. The Wesleyans follow with $557,901; the Baptists, with $376,657; English Presbyterians, $117,985; English

Outer Christendom.

687

Universities Mission, $174,950. Of this amount, the Church of England is represented by $2,725,860 in the three large Societies. The English Nonconformists contributed from their chief Societies $1,880,922. But there are so many organizations, many for work among the Jews, others for educational or medical work, including missions to the lepers and the blind, that the total contribution of the Evangelical Missionary Societies of Great Britain in the year 1900 wa $7,766,740.

In America the Societies connected with the large Churches contributed, approximately: the Presbyterian, $1,387,694; the Methodist, $1,092,184; the Baptist, $730,180; the Congregationalist, $644,200; the Protestant Episcopalian, $235,029; the Disciples, $144,000; the Lutheran, $72,000; in all, $4,620,579. The total contributions of other Societies was but $100,000, or, in all, $4,720,579.

The chief of the Continental Societies are the Basel, with an income of $250,000; the Berlin, $100,000; the Moravian, $125,000; the Rhenish, $120,000; Leipzig, $100,000; Hermannsburg, of Pastor Harms, $58,000; Gessuer, $40,000. Besides these German Societies are the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish Societies; the two latter contribute annually 358,000 and 315,000 kroner annually.

The Paris Missionary Society’s income is $75,000; the Free Church of Switzerland, $15,000; or in all the Continental Societies, $ 1,886,744. Adding to these the income of the Societies in Canada, Australia, Africa, and Asia, mainly British, $966,779, the grand total at the beginning of 1900 for foreign missions

688 History of the Christian Church.

from the Evangelical Churches of the world was $15,360,693, and this amount has increased a million a year each year since.

But the contributions of these Societies have been greater in men and women than in money. Missionaries, like Bishops Selwyn, Patteson, and Christendom^ Hannington, the two latter who fell as martyrs; like Mackay and Paton; like James Gilmore, of Mongolia, and Falconer, of Arabia; like Moffat and Livingstone; like Ashmore and Martin; like William Taylor and James M. Thoburn, with others of the uncounted host best known to God,—would make illustrious in any age the annals of the Christian Church. The men and women of Outer Christendom will stand with the martyrs and saints on yonder holy ground. Their converts have not been unworthy of them, as has been often proved in the South Sea Islands, among the cannibals, in Africa at Uganda, and in the Chinese uprising of 1898. There were as true martyrs and as holy seed of a future Church as any Christian century saw.

Let us now look a little nearer at this Outer Christendom, and see what it is. In the first place, it does not include Siberia, Eastern Turkestan, Thibet, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Arabia, or French IndoChina, which are practically unoccupied by Evangelical Christian missionaries, and are the only countries so unoccupied.

In America we have missions among the Indians, the Chinese and Japanese in the United States, missions in Alaska, and in Canada. In these

America.

fields there are 813 foreign missionaries and 413 native workers. There are 17,657 communicants, with 14,875 adherents, or a total of 32,526. There are 211 day-schools, with 5,307 pupils; 35 high schools, with 780 pupils and 12 hospitals. There is in these fields about one foreign worker to 1,250 of the people.

In Mexico, 21 societies are at work with 210 foreign and 547 native workers. These have the care of 20,769 communicants and 17,000 adherents, or a total °f 37>769- In educational work there are 148 day-schools, with 7,073 pupils, and 18 high-schools, with 2,217 pupils, and there are four hospitals and dispensaries. There is one foreign missionary to 64,502 of the people.

In Central America there are 11 societies at work. There are 102 foreign and 293 native workers, with 4,969 communicants and 6,454 adherents, or a total of 11,423 ; one foreign worker to 34,804 of the people.

In the West Indies the work has been carried on much longer, and largely among the Negro population. There are 36 societies at work. There are 444 foreign and 4,073 native workers. The number of communicants is 68,807, with 170,773 adherents, or a total of 259,580. These have 494 day-schools with an attendance of 54,608; and weight high-schools, with 163 pupils.

In South America there are 36 societies at work. There are employed 682 foreign missionaries and 1,087 native workers. There are 37,843 communicants, with 55,173 adherents, a total of 93,016, or almost as many Evangelical Christians in South America in 1900 as there were Roman Catholics in the United States in 1800. Of the schools, there are 200 day-schools, with 16,437 pupils; and 14 high-schools, with 943 pupils.

There was a foreign worker to 54,935 ol the people. That is, in Spanish America and Brazil the Evangelical Churches have 1,438 foreign workers, 6,ooo native workers, 132,388 communicants, 249,400 adherents, or a total of 381,788. What may these not come to in the next fifty years as these countries come to be opened up to civilization and econonomic development? These Christians have 735 pupils in the day-schools, and 3,323 in the high-schools. In these latter lies the hope of speedy and rapid advance.

Now let us add to these the work in Papal Europe. There are at work 27 societies. They have 274 foreign and 930 native workers. There are 10,007 communicants, with 18,502 adherents, a total of 28,509. These have 106 day-schools, with 7,910 pupils; and nine high-schools, with 462 pupils; and seven hospitals and dispensaries. That is, in Roman Catholic countries on the fringe of this Outer Christendom, there are nearly 1,800 foreign missionaries and nearly 7,000 native workers, with a communicant membership of 139,395, and a total constituency of over 410,000 in these countries, not far from and soon to be half a million of people; and all of this, except a little work in British West India, in the last thirty years of the nineteenth century. Why should we not expect full as large an Evangelical population in these lands, as Roman Catholic population in Evangelical lands? Would it not be a blessing to entire Christendom ?

This outer Christendom, not according to our definition, but in fact, comes in contact with the Sons of Israel. There are 112 societies working for the redemption of Israel. In these are 812 foreign and 204 native workers. There is one foreign worker to 13,777 of the Jewish people. There are 35 day-schools, with 1,594 scholars, and 35 hospitals and dispensaries. There are on record in the nineteenth century, the names of 250,000 Jews who have become Christians. Among these were such men as Mendelssohn, the great musician; August Neander, Delitzsch, Philippi, and Stahl, and eminent scholars in England as well as in Germany. The work seems scattering. Perhaps the time may come for stronger and more concentrated effort to win the people of whom was our Lord according to the flesh.

In Persia are six societies in the field. There are 85 foreign and 281 native workers. These have charge of 3,120 communicants and 79 adherents,

. ^ , Persia.

or 3,199 in all. There are among them 114 day-schools, with 3,060 scholars; one high-school, with 70 scholars; and 11 hospitals and dispensaries. There is a foreign worker to 105,882 of the people. In Turkey there is much activity. There are 31 societies at work. They employ 637 foreign and 805 native workers. There are 168,367 communicants and 51,244 adherents, a total of 219,611. In no mission is more attention paid to education. There are 767 day-schools, with 36,719 scholars; and 51 high-schools, with an attendance of 3,251. There are also 63 hospitals and dispensaries. There is one foreign worker to 37,416. In these two Mohammedan countries there are 722 foreign and 2,086 native Christian workers. There are 171,487 communicants, with a total constituency of 222,810. Certainly not a small number, when we remember that there are 40,000 in in the day-schools and over 3,300 in the high-schools.

But, alas! but few of these are Mohammedans. This work is largely for the regeneration of Eastern Christendom in Bible lands. When will the day come that will open these countries to Evangelical Christian missions, as Papal Europe was opened to them in 1870? Certain it is, that in India converted Mohammedans make the best of Christian preachers and teachers. May that be true of Turkey, Persia, and Arabia in the days in which we live !

We are now come to the real Outer Christendom We will consider, first, Oceania, in the Pacific. There are nine societies. In these are 338 foreign and 3,058 native workers. There are 75,681 communicants, 277,458 adherents,—a total constituency 353,139. There are 2,756 day-schools, with an attendance of 72,638; and 38 high-schools, with over a thousand pupils. Thirteen hospitals are also established among them. Here the English Wesleyans won their great triumph at Fiji, and the American Congregationalists in Hawaii.

In New Zealand, among the Aborigines of Australia, and in New Guinea, there are 14 societies on the ground. They have 135 foreign and 548 native workers. These have 4,958 communicants and 28,942 adherents, a total of 33,900. There are 101 day-schools, 4,451 pupils. There are three high-schools, with an attendance of 81 ; and there are ten hospitals.

In Malaysia there are 26 societies employed, having 30 foreign and 1,553 native workers. There are 37,746 communicants and 56,494 adherents; a total of 94,240. For these there are 393 day-schools, with an attendance of 19,190. There are also 15 high-schools, with 250 pupils; and there are 8 hospitals. In all these islands—that is, in Oceania and Malaysia—there are 778 foreign and 5,159 native workers. These have the care of 118,385 communicants, and a total constituency of 481,279, with 95,000 in day-schools. This is not a small result of Christian effort.

As we come to Asia, we first consider the Japanese Empire. There we find at work 47 societies, employing 772 foreign and 1,817 native workers. ^ ^ There are 42,835 communicants and 41,559 adherents, a total of 84,394. There are 148 day-schools, with 87,094 pupils ; and 54 high-schools, with 3,735 scholars. Thirteen hospitals also are maintained. There is one foreign worker to 60,172 of the people.

Korea, an independent kingdom, once owning allegiance to China, has a population of some 12,000,

000. There are 11 societies at work. These have 141 foreign and 157 native workers.

There are 8,288 communicants, with 2,042 adherents, a total of 10,330. Among these are 43 day-schools, with 600 pupils; and 6 high-schools, with 113 pupils. There are also 12 hospitals.

China, India, and Darkest Africa are the three great centers of Outer Christendom. In this most populous of the nations, there are in the _chjna field 68 societies; these employ 2,735 foreign and 6,388 native workers. There are 112,808 Chinese communicants and 91,111 adherents, a total constituency of 204,072. As China is a literary nation_> of course there must be schools. There are 1819 day-schools, with an attendance of 35,412; and 170 high-schools, with 5,150 pupils. There are no less than 259 hospitals. Not in vain, we believe, has been this sowing, among a great people, capable of producing great Christians. There is one foreign worker to 132,136 of the people.

In all India there are 9 societies at work in Siam, Laos, and the Straits Settlements; there are 11 in Burmah, 11 in Ceylon, and 93 in ’ India proper. In all these countries there are 4,431 foreign and 28,411 native workers. There are, in the larger India, 437,482 communicants and 703,423 adherents, a total Christian constituency, in a population of over 300,000,000, of 1,140,905. Soon every two hundreth person in the population will be a Christian. There is one foreign worker to about 70,000 of the people. In education there are 9,758 day-schools, with the large attendance of 421,740. There are also 444 high-schools, with 27,535 scholars. There were, besides, 349 hospitals and dispensaries.

Africa and her islands make our last division. In Africa there are 95, and in Madagascar and the islands, 12 societies in the field. These employ 3,341 foreign and 22,279 native workers. There are in the Dark Continent and these African islands, under the care of these workers, 342,857 communicants, with 679,695 adherents, or a total Christian constituency of 1,022,502, excluding white settlers. In the 6,528 day-schools there is an attendance of 369,650, and in the 132 high-schools there are 4,880 pupils. There are 143 hospitals and dispensaries. There is one foreign worker in Africa to 49,559 of the people.

In this Outer Christendom, with the large extension before given, there are 16,668 foreign missionaries, including medical missionaries. There are also 75,381 native workers, or over 92,000 missionary workers. Not a bad result for 107 years work, only the last half of which could be, in any sense, productive; and these are, of course, mainly those, in these years, gathered into the Churches. To these workers is committed the care of ¹ >397,04² communicants and 2,216,349 adherents, or a total Christian constituency of 3,613,391 gathered from non-Christian people. Care is taken of the body as well as the soul, in 347 hospitals and dispensaries. From one of these went that Methodist woman-physician, Miss Leonora Howard, who successfully treated the wife of Li Hung Chang, and opened the way to the highest circles of Chinese society. This work is to be perpetuated, as the activity of 23,723 day-schools, with 1,093,205 scholars, attests. These will be taught from the graduates of 1,005 high-schools, some of them equal to high-class colleges and universities, which now have 54,648 students.

These figures speak with decisive voice in answer to the question, “ Are missions a failure?” They are, indeed, when the obstacles are taken into the account, the great success of an age of successes. But figures can not express the spirit of a great movement. It is this spirit that is the judge of the ultimate success, in the largest sense of the word, of Christian missions.

This spirit was shown in the organization of the Students’ Volunteer Movement in 1886, until it has gathered volume and power in each year _student5. since. It appeals to the consecrated man- Volunteer hood and womanhood among the best- ^Movement* trained minds and lives of the schools of America and

696 History of the Christian Church.

of the world. So great is its success that soon, from the United States alone, five hundred well-trained men and women will go each year to foreign fields. For the last years of the century the Church Missionary . Society, the largest and wealthiest Evangelical Missionary Society, sent out every applicant, of whose fitness they were assured, without respect to the funds on hand, believing that the needs of these workers God and his Church would supply. Wonderfully was their faith justified by the result. When God raises up the men, the means have not been lacking. Wonderful as the century has been, in nothing has it been more wonderful than in the creation of this Outer Christendom, with its noble men and women, its reflex influence on Christendom at the centers, its calling millions of money into this service, like waters from the rock at the touch of Moses’ rod, and its results in Christian character and in the new Christian society. This is, then, the thin, red line of conquest.

The crowning event in this development in this era of Outer Christendom was the Ecumenical Missionary Conference in New York, April 21 Mission to May 1, 1900. There were 1,666 missionary members; 50,000 tickets were sold; 1900. 2,500 were present at its first session. Ex-President Benjamin Harrison, President William McKinley, and his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, spoke from the platform of the Conference. Such indorsement from three Presidents of the United States could scarcely have been received in any of the earlier decades of the century. The proceedings were of great interest and value, and were published by that accomplished missionary editor, Dr. John T. Gracey.

Chapter X.

CHARACTERISTICS AND TENDENCIES.

There are certain plainly-marked characteristics of every age of Church life. These are as evident in this era as in any other. It was an era, Enlargement especially in America, of expansion and _Enr|®^_ent enrichment of the life of the Christian of Christian Church. The eighteenth century, in preva- ^Life* lence and permanence, gave us the prayer-meeting and the revival; the first half of the nineteenth century, the Sunday-school and the missionary societies. To these permanent elements in the life of the Evangelical Christian Church, the latter half of the nineteenth century added woman’s work for women in organized form.

In this period arose the Woman’s Foreign and the Woman’s Home Missionary Societies in all the Churches, which, in America alone, collect, _Woman’« annually, over a million 'and a half of dol- work in the lars, and the Deaconess Movement. No ^urc ’ work was more needed in foreign fields and at home than this Christlike ministration to those who could have no other helpers. The second contribution, of the later years of the nineteenth century, was the great Young People’s Movement, and the establishment of Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations in all large centers of population throughout the world.

These characteristics are plainly seen in two organizations originating in the United States, but of worldwide extent, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Society of Christian Endeavor, and the different Church Leagues and Unions of Young People.

The spirit ot the age was a spirit of political and of social reform. The great triumph of the Christian ₍ spirit in this era was the overthrow of slav-Christian ery iu America, and so throughout the Temperance _WOrld. This reforming spirit could not

* pass by on the other side, and leave the drunkard and his family, his business, his reputation, and character at the mercy of the liquor-traffic. These two tendencies, the enlarged scope of effort for Chris" tian women, and this reforming spirit, came together in 1874, and, as a result of the Women’s Crusade in Ohio, founded the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Of that organization, for the twenty years preceding her death, Frances E. Willard was the soul and leader. No more courteous, chivalric, or Christian leader ever entered the list of the world’s great reforms. In ability and courage, in hope and temper, she is a model for all leaders in the work of moral reform. The State of Illinois is erecting a statue to her memory. Some day, all Americans will write her name high on the roll of the world’s saintly Christian women and reformers.

The temperance movement aroused the hostility, not without fault of its own, of the two great political parties; the number addicted to the use of intoxicating liquors was increased by each shipload of emigrants ; those of the wealthier classes who crossed the

Characteristics and Tendencies. 699

Atlantic, often came back bringing foreign drinking habits with them; but the work, though checked, moved on. Industrial and commercial conditions made necessary total abstinence. No man wanted a drunken engineer; costly machinery can not be run by drunken men. Commercial conditions were such that only men who could be depended upon to be themselves could be employed or trusted. The drinking man was always at a discount. Then the movement for the purification, elevation, and invigoration of local government in our American cities and communities meant the overthrow of the saloon power. An awakened personal responsibility for the public weal, and a will to destroy what works against it, will abolish the liquor-traffic. To this must be added the fact that, owing to the work of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the voters coming of age in the United States for the last ten years have been instructed in the common schools, as well as their sisters, in the physiological effects of alcohol and narcotics. But, most of all, the Church of Jesus Christ must be true to her duty, and rouse the Christian conscience against this ally of the gambling-hell and the brothel, this enemy of the Church, the home, and the soul.

In 1888 a gentleman of New York, in memory of a greatly-loved daughter, deceased, founded the Florence Crittendon Mission for fallen women. It _FIorence seems to have proved itself the sanest, Crittendon truest, and most successful effort of the ^Mo'^ement* kind known in years. Of course, such work is always carried on in connection with Rescue Missions and by the Salvation Army. The motto of the Christian

700 History of the Christian Church.

worker in the last decades of the century was, “ The whole man for Christ, and Christ for every class and individual in society.”

The second world-wide movement of American origin was the Young People’s Society of Christian Young Endeavor, which originated in the Con-Peopie’s gregational Church of Portland, Maine, Movement. pastor, Dr. Francis E. Clark;

in 1881. It has entered every American Church, either in the original form, or in some other which is more in accord with the spirit of its Church life. It has compassed the globe, and is known wherever Christian people assemble to form a Church, and find young people among them. As the Society of Christian Endeavor, as the Epworth League, 1889, as the Baptist Young People’s Union, 1891, as the Westminster and Luther Leagues, and other Young People’s Societies, its worship and work have become as much a part of the Church life of the Evangelical Churches as the Sunday-school. It needs devotion, tact, and leadership beyond any other department of the work of the Church, and none has greater possibilities.

If we turn our gaze from that which was peculiarly American, in origin at least, to tendencies felt throughout the Christian world, we shall find four of them plainly discernible. These are not the only, or the chief ones, but they are those upon which the Church in all lands and of all names laid particular emphasis.

We are in an age of renewed appreciation of the value of just political and social institutions. They are the great conquests and treasures of the race. The Christian Church is the noblest of them, and

Characteristics and Tendencies. 701

the foundation upon which in Christendom the others rest. The practical value of the Church could not but strike a practical age. Then only the _The ,_ncrea8ed Church can meet the awakened need of value of the Christian brotherhood in the believer’s ^Chu»'^ches

' and of

heart. So the experience of the Chris- institutional tian life demands the Church. Again the ^Christ,anity* conquest of the world for Christ is vain without that organization Christ founded. All these considerations prepared Christian people to pay more attention to the record of the life of the Early Church in the New Testament and in. the earliest of its recorded monuments. Now it was seen that to the personal relation which the believer sustains to the Lord Jesus Christ there is given a form of expression in life, and in alliance with other Christian believers in the Church he loved and purchased with his own blood.

So the increasing scope and importance of the work of the Church has led to greater interest in the manifold agencies employed in the life of the local Church, and in great missionary organizations and their work, in the educational and charitable institutions in which the Church trains and serves the generations. This, of course, has led to a necessary inquiry into the history of an institution of such age and extent, scope and beneficence.

This wider acquaintance has allowed us to preserve what was good in the old, without rejecting what is better in the new, life of the Christian Church. Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, belong to all Christians.

From this inquiry into the life of the Christian Church, came an historic valuation of the creeds. The creeds of Christendom have to be judged from the

702 History of the Christian Church.

circumstances of their origin, and the end they were to serve when they were formulated. We do not see

how one with a sense of the life of the Church m the past vividly before him, can wish to destroy the Westminster Confession. It is a great monument of a great age, much of it of unchangeable value. But how could any one, with a sense of the life of the Church of the present tingling in his veins, wish to be shut up in the Westminster Confession ? God was with the Fathers as they wrote with their best light, and we prize their work; but God is also with the sons, and the interpretation or the addition may be as essential as was the original creed. We must hold fast the form of sound words, but also remember that the Holy Scriptures are the sole rule of our faith and practice, and that the best creed is that which best interprets and sets forth the truths they teach. But because the words of the various creeds are not of themselves conclusive or exclusive, all the more the believers recognize in them great monuments of the Christian faith,—results of imperishable value as the conclusion of great controversies ; and hence always worthy of his respect, his careful study, and his reverent regard. There will always be the necessity for the statement of the things Christians believe, and the Church of the future will not have less, but more profound, convictions of the value of distinctive Christian truths. The Church of definite convictions and beliefs is the Church of the people.

Doubtless there is a decided change in the attitude of the average Christian believer or Sunday-school

Characteristics and Tendencies. 703

teacher toward the Bible at the beginning and at the end of the nineteenth century. Why should there nof be ? Has any other century since the fceerin-

• t. 1 I ^The Bible.

mng thrown so much light upon the meaning of the sacred page? It has not weakened or discredited one fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith, while it has shed light upon the whole method and purpose of the Divine redemption in the better understanding of the Christian Scriptures. The criticism of the Old Testament has made void and of none effect most of the objections of Thomas Paine and of Robert G. Ingersoll. Has this change of view in respect to the Bible made men believe it less? Nay, verily. It was never so extensively read, never so intelligently studied, so greatly loved, or so helpful in uplifting and keeping men, as to-day. What have the centuries found to take its place ? What other words are like these words of life to men born to die ? What other words are such sure guides for conduct here, or reveal such a living hope for the hereafter ? The Bible has passed through the fires of criticism, but from them it has emerged more valuable, better understood, and more highly prized than ever.

Christian experience,' as the result of faith in the revelation of God in Christ, and of trust in Christ as the Savior of the whole man in both worlds, with, and also without, the attendant emo- _E^pertence. tion, has justified itself to thinking men.

But its value is not solely or chiefly in its initial stage, but in the result of the process. That is, Christian character is the test and result of a genuine Christian faith, and the pledge of the acceptance of God’s prom

704 History of the Christian Church.

ise for the hereafter. That knowledge of God which results in Christian character is eternal life.

Result of the ^t ^t^^{ie c}^^ose century of revolu-

studyofthe tion, of criticism, of the freest possible ^Afof'the^IOn investigation and discussion, these things Christian seem assured as the conclusion of the

^Falth* best scholarship and the ripest thought of the times:

1. That the battle of Materialism and Pantheism with Christian Theism has been fought out, and Christian Theism has won. A personal God is the only solution for the riddle of the universe. All other explanations explain only by leaving out the most significant factors of the problem. In this victory for the personality of God comes that of the supernatural order, law, and manifestation.

2. The one representative man, the ideal man of the race, is Jesus Christ. There is none other to compare with him. Our enemies being our

* judges, in any survey of the history of these centuries, his is the supreme character and the supreme influence of the race. Christians affirm that he, and he alone, as the Son of God, makes reasonable man’s being and destiny.

3. There is a general consensus among thinkers that man is, by his constitution, a religious being. Ignoring does not change this fact.

4. Fair-minded men all allow that the experiences of the religious life are as valid facts as those of the intellectual, emotional, or aesthetic life. They deserve attention and regard. Meanwhile, Christians unite in affirming that prayer and the communion of the human spirit with the Divine Spirit are not fancies, but realities of life and power.

5. The reception of the Spirit of Christ, and its fruits in Christlike service, are facts whose beneficence no man disputes; men who serve Jesus Christ are better men.

6. Eternal life and the kingdom of God are the great Christian ideals. There are none like them in the thinking and teaching of the race.

7. The Christian Church exists for the realization of these ideals in the individual and in society. Its chief and primary work must be spiritual, with the things of man’s spirit and the Spirit of God. But, like the Spirit of God, it will pervade and shape all human thought, customs, standards of conduct, and institutions. That God has been, is now, and will be, in the Church and in his world for human redemption, is the profoundest conviction resulting from the study of the life and work of the Christian Church.

The century closed with two chief tendencies clearly discernible,—the one toward Christian union, the other toward Christian conquest.

The movement in America resulting in organic union among the Presbyterians in the United States and the Methodists in Canada, and also the Methodists in Australia, are the forerunners of the union on a more extensive scale of Churches which are similar in doctrine or organization. The marked movement toward Church consciousness of the last century has accentuated, sometimes, distinctive differences in worship and customs, but it must lead to a consideration of the larger life of Christendom, and that tends toward a closer union. This is seen in the unity of doctrine and of Church life, increasingly evident in Free Evangelical Churches. The preaching is practically the same in all Churches in regard to the fundamental truths of the Gospel. The author has heard sermons in Roman Catholic and old Catholic pulpits in which there was not a word that could offend an Evangelical Christian. Seldom did he attend a service, during two years in Germany, in a Lutheran Church, without being fed with the bread of life. The prayer-meetings, missions, and revivals in the different Churches have the same spirit, even though they may differ in minor essentials.

In Church government, even, there is a growing approximation in methods under different forms. The Reformation brought an open Bible, and the right of private judgment. The Puritan Reform brought individual liberty in Church and State. The Evangelical revival brought to the man, free before God from external authority, submission of the will and personal assurance of salvation. This right, liberty, and assurance of the individual. soul, the Evangelical Churches will preserve. But to this they will also add efficiency in their work. This involves union and supervision; this, in some form or under some name, will come in all the Churches.

Not that there are no differences; for there are, and are not all unimportant; but where Churches lay emphasis on the vital and saving truths of Christianity, they are always of subordinate value and influence.

The whole tendency of Christian history seems, as evidently as the last charge of our Lord to his disciples, to lead to the Christian conquest of the world. This tendency is especially marked in the history of the nineteenth century. Great as has been the progress of the race in that century conquest in personal and political liberty, in popular enlightenment and comfort, and in humane service to dependent classes; marvelous as has been the advance in science, in inventions, in the transfer of populations and the settlement of new countries_} far outstripping all known in the history of the race, nevertheless, the internal development and external conquest of the Christian Church has equaled or surpassed them all. In secular life, the growth and development of the United States has been the most striking phenomenon of the century. Yet the growth of the Christian Church in America has been much more rapid than that of the population. Compare the position of the Christian Church at the beginning of Napoleon’s consulate and at the death of Queen Victoria, and there is no other contrast in the history of the century so striking or so significant. To the high service of this purpose have come all revision of creeds and liturgies, and searching criticism of the Bible text and authorship. Christians bring a better Bible, a more united and better Church, than ever before, to the non-Christian millions of the world. What will not serve this purpose must soon drop away. Our Lord shall see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied.

This purpose imposes, upon this and succeeding generations of Christians, obligations as serious and as weighty as upon the Christians of the first generation. Only a devotion and sacrifice equal to theirs will meet them; for this purpose includes the thorough Christianization of Christendom. It means the Christianization of public and commercial life. It means the Christianization of wealth and labor. It means missions to university students and to men of wealth and high position, and the most intelligent and aggressive work among artisans and laboring men and their families. It means the fearless facing of the problems of the times, and no cowardly shrinking, as in the slavery agitation, from the liquor-traffic, political corruption, or social problems. In a word, it means a serious and united attempt to Christianize the populations of Christendom. It means, at the same time, the pushing of all the spiritual forces of the Church, and the moral and intellectual forces of Christendom, upon the non-Christian world for its speedy and effective conquest.

This work demands the whole man, and demands this of every one who names himself by the name of Jesus Christ crucified and risen, and who believes in and has received-'his kingdom.

So will the twentieth century see surpassed the wonderful record of its predecessors, including the splendid achievements of the last of them, in receiving the fulfillment of the prayer taught by our Lord, “Thy Kingdom come.”