BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
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 1891 
 
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arV16895 C ° rne " Un,vers,,y Ubrar y 
 \inmLi!iiLfS,V thern church 
 
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A SAINT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 MEMOIR OF THE RIGHT REVEREND 
 
 NICHOLAS HAMNER' COBBS 
 
 DOCTOR OF DIVINITY, FIRST BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE OF ALABAMA 
 
 WITH NOTICES OF SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 A CONTRIBUTION 
 TO THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN STATES 
 
 BY THE REVEREND 
 
 GREENOUGH WHITE A.M. B.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH 
 
 AUTHOR OF "AN OUTLINE OF THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 JAMES POTT & COMPANY 
 
 285 FOURTH AVENUE 
 1897 
 
 fc 
 
Copyright by 
 
 Greenough White A.M. B.D. 
 
 i897 
 
 THE NEW YORK TYPE-SETTING COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED BY J. J, LITTLE AND CO. 
 
TO 
 
 THE BISHOPS 
 
 OF THE CHURCH IN THE SOUTH 
 
 THIS PORTRAIT 
 
 OF ONE OF THEIR SAINTLY PREDECESSORS 
 
 IS RESPECTFULLY PRESENTED 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE writer's cue may be found in the following passage 
 from Bishop R. H. Wilmer's first address to his con- 
 vention, in the year 1 863 : 
 
 ' I cannot but express the regret that no one of Bishop 
 Cobbs' most intimate friends has yet announced the prepa- 
 ration of his memoirs. It would be sad indeed to think that 
 the record of such a life should be lost to the church. 
 
 ' I have no fear that those who knew him personally will 
 ever forget him while memory lasts ; but we would fain see 
 a faithful portraiture of the first bishop of the diocese handed 
 down to future generations, that our children might know 
 and love him for his virtues and his works' sake.' 
 
 A whole generation has passed, and the want yet remains 
 unsupplied. It demands fulfilment, for the preservation of 
 a beautiful memory now fast fading away, for the sake of 
 the diocese of which he was the first bishop, of the univer- 
 sity that he helped to found ; it is necessary to amplify and 
 perfect the picture of church life and conditions throughout 
 this whole region and therefore in the country at large in 
 the period between the War of 181 2 and the civil war. 
 Hence it comes about that the task is at last essayed by 
 a stranger of another generation. The immediate occasion 
 of writing is the general satisfaction, highly gratifying to 
 
 5 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 the lecturer, that greeted a lecture upon the life of Bishop 
 Cobbs delivered before the senior class in the Theological 
 Department of the University of the South, and attended 
 by many visitors, in the month of June, 1896. It was de- 
 signed as an example of ecclesiastical biography, and from 
 different quarters came requests for its publication. It 
 seems peculiarly appropriate that the memoir should fall to 
 the lot of the professor of church history in the institution 
 that the bishop aided in founding, — that it should appear 
 as a pious tribute to a parent's merit. Certainly the collec- 
 tion, preservation, publication of church-historical data con- 
 cerning this region should be the particular province of that 
 chair. 
 
 The writer cordially accepts as his aim that 'faithful 
 portraiture ' demanded by Bishop Wilmer. This can only 
 be attained by placing the subject in his historical setting. 
 No one of course can be understood out of relation to his 
 times : it is remarkable how historic processes make a career 
 and character luminous and in turn are illustrated by biog- 
 raphy. This great, indeed infrangible principle is not 
 seldom abused, and the abuse gives occasion to narrow and 
 unreasonable views of the biographer's function ; a professed 
 ' Life ' often turns out to be a history of the ' Times ' — 
 and accordingly it is argued that the 'Times' should be 
 severely excluded. It shall be the present writer's study 
 to subordinate the times to the man, and not to let the 
 frame distract attention from the picture. 
 
 To carry out the figure, and let the reader know exactly 
 what to expect: this will be a critical biography. There 
 are those who would totally eliminate an author's personal- 
 ity in this department of literature : paint the portrait, they 
 say, and let it speak for itself. But beside the silent fea- 
 
PREFACE 7 
 
 tures one needs the commentary of the living voice. He 
 would be a brilliant teacher who should station his pupil 
 before a great picture and never say a word about it, 
 vouchsafe no explanation, point out no merits or defects, 
 never call attention to what would probably be overlooked. 
 No : the function of the biographer is also critical, interpre- 
 tive ; it is the duty of one who by long study has thoroughly 
 assimilated his subject to assist his readers to see it in all 
 its bearings. In another sense this study will be critical, in 
 that there shall be spread over it no false and sentimental 
 glamor. 
 
 Among sources of general information may be cited 
 Bishop Elliott's sermons with memoir by T. M. Hanckel, 
 Bishop Lay's memorial sermon on Bishop Atkinson, Bishop 
 Green's life of Bishop Otey, Bishop Polk's life by his son, 
 and convention journals of southern dioceses ; Jefferson's 
 ' Notes on Virginia ' and correspondence, Dr. Hawks' 
 history of the church in Virginia, Dr. Henshaw's memoir 
 of Bishop Moore, Bishop Meade's ' Old Churches and 
 Ministers of Virginia,' certain articles in recent numbers of 
 the 'Sewanee Review,' addresses by A. B. Meek, and 
 J. W. Du Bose's life of Yancey. These last throw light on 
 the literary and political situation in Alabama during 
 Cobbs' episcopate. Particular information may be classi- 
 fied as follows : 
 
 I. Documentary: 
 
 A. Published or printed : 
 
 Bishop Lay's memorial article in the ' Church Review ' 
 for January, 1869, — the fullest sketch yet of Cobbs' life 
 and character, but injured by a partisan tone in its very 
 non-partisanship ; memorial sermons by Bishop Elliott and 
 Dr. George F. Cushman ; Bishop Wilmer's Recent Past ' ; 
 
8 PREFACE 
 
 diocesan journals of Alabama with Cobbs' convention ad- 
 dresses ; his apologetic tract, ' An Answer to some Popular 
 Objections against the Protestant Episcopal Church,' 
 printed in Tuscaloosa in 1849, an( ^ s ' x °^ ^ s sermons, 
 some of which were widely circulated as tracts. 
 
 B. Manuscript: 
 
 The bishop's own journal, some of his letters — only too 
 few — and letters from Rev. Everard Meade, Rev. F. W. 
 Baker, Professor Scheie De Vere and Mrs. M. H. Clark. 
 
 II. Oral: 
 
 From the bishop's descendants in Greensboro and Mont- 
 gomery, from conversations with Bishop Wilmer at Spring 
 Hill, Rev. W. A. Stickney at Faunsdale, Rev. Drs. J. M. 
 Banister and W. M. Pettis, Mrs. C. E. Stickney and Mrs. 
 Charles Richardson. 
 
 There are portraits of the bishop in his son's residence 
 at Greensboro and in St. Luke's Oratory, Sewanee. 
 
 The writer would hereby render grateful acknowledgment 
 to all who have assisted him in collecting material for the 
 work, especially to the ladies to whose nice observation and 
 retentive memories he is indebted for almost all those per- 
 sonal and domestic details that are indispensable to the 
 lifelikeness of biographical portraiture. 
 
 University of the South 
 New Year's Day, 1897 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Early Years page 13 
 
 Condition of the Virginian church before the Revolutionary 
 War.— Quarrels about salary.— Relation of church and 
 state. —The religious life. — Education : College of William 
 and Mary. — Dissent.— Fall of the establishment. — The 
 church after the Revolution. — Severance of religion and 
 education.— Infidelity and immorality. — Critical times.— 
 Birth of N. H. Cobbs. — Maternal influence. — Points of 
 character. — Virginian church at close of century XVIII. — 
 Disendowment. — Depression and revival of religion. — 
 Births of Green, Rutledge, Otey, Polk, Elliott, Davis, 
 Atkinson. — Evangelical effect of disendowment. — Cobbs' 
 childhood and education. — Begins to teach. — Evangelical 
 revival in Virginian church: its notes. — ' Worldly conform- 
 ity' excluded. — The convention on slavery. — Clerical educa- 
 tion. — Cobbs' religious experience.— Montanistic strain. — 
 Studies the prayer-book. — Studies for the ministry. — Edu- 
 cation of Green, Otey, Davis, Polk, Rutledge, Elliott. — 
 Births of Gregg and Lay. — Cobbs' marriage and ordination. 
 
 II 
 
 Pastorate 35 
 
 Periods in Cobbs' pastorate. — 'Era of good feeling.' — 
 Parochial labors.— Meade's testimony. —Advanced to priest- 
 hood.— Outward aspect and character. —At New London 
 9 
 
10 CONTENTS 
 
 Academy.— Problem of clerical support.— Moore's appeal.— 
 Cobbs' relations with sectarians. — Conduct of services. — 
 Preaching. — 'The Message to Peter.' — Addresses to chil- 
 dren. — Missionary zeal. — Success as pastor. — Letter to one 
 in affliction. — Communion with God. — Official duties. — Re- 
 port for 1827.— Moore's tribute.— Reports for 1828, '29.— 
 At General Convention. —Report for 1830. —Meade's tribute. 
 —Meets Polk. — Reports for 1832, '33. — Chaplain at the Uni- 
 versity of Virginia. — Jefferson's ideal of education. — Reac- 
 tion against it. — Elliott and the College of South Carolina. 
 — Growth of Christian education. — Polk's conversion, ordina- 
 tion, and visit to Europe. — Otey in Tennessee: conception 
 of a literary and theological seminary. — Cobbs' chaplaincy. 
 — Report of his year's work. — A Whig. — Crisis in Virginian 
 politics. — Opinions of slavery. — Consecration and missionary 
 tour of Polk. — Cobbs to Petersburg. — His method during 
 revival. — A confirmation class of ninety-three.— Growth of 
 the parish.— 'The Doubting Christian Encouraged.'— Answer 
 to prayer. — Proposed as bishop for Texas; as assistant for 
 Virginia. — Evangelical movement crystallized into low- 
 church party. — Opinions of Oxford movfment. — Parti- 
 san decadence of evangelicalism. — Cobbs' spirit catholic. — 
 His gentle nature. — Doctor in divinity. — To Cincinnati. — 
 Otey's ' Three Sermons. ' — Gregg a candidate for orders. — 
 Mcllvaine's tribute to Cobbs. — His consecration as bishop of 
 Alabama. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Episcopate page 82 
 
 The house of bishops in 1844. — The southern bishops. — 
 Cobbs to Alabama. — The state and the diocese. — Condition 
 of society in the era of speculation and afterward. — Pros- 
 pects of literature.— Alexander Beaufort Meek.— Relation 
 of culture to religion.— Reasons for the backwardness of 
 the church in the southern states.— Cobbs at Tuscaloosa. — 
 Need of a native ministry. — Cobbs as bishop. — Evangeliza- 
 tion of the slaves. — Sermon on ' Naaman and the Hebrew 
 Maid.' — The political situation in Alabama. — Church edu- 
 
CONTENTS 11 
 
 cation. — Inadequate support of clergy. — Endowments 
 needed. — Cobbs' relations with sectarians. — Views of other 
 bishops.— Charge of proselytism. — His apologetic. — Preju- 
 dice against the church as unevangelical. — Consecration 
 of Green. — View of ritualism.— Reasons therefor.— Ser- 
 mon on Baptismal Covenant. — Consecration of Rutledge. — 
 Sermon on Avarice. — Letter of 1852.— Removal to Mont- 
 gomery. — Defection of Ives. — Catena of references thereto, 
 and views of the Roman church. — An American tradition. — 
 Consecration of Atkinson, Davis and Scott. — Oil portrait of 
 Cobbs. — His visit to England. — The political situation after 
 his return.— Cobbs' and Otey's love of England. — Project 
 of a southern university. — Polk's ideal. — The meeting of 
 1857- — The trustees at Montgomery. — Financial crisis. — 
 Sermon on Christian Kindness. — Impression of increasing 
 worldliness : catena of opinions. — Idea of an American 
 cathedral.— General Convention of 1859.— Consecration of 
 Whipple, Lay and Gregg. — Character and work of the 
 latter as pastor and bishop. — Pen portrait of Bishop Cobbs. 
 — His domestic life. — Participation in the ceremony of lay- 
 ing the corner-stone at Sewanee. — Shadows of civil war. — 
 The bishop's Farewell Message.— His death.— Memorial 
 tributes. 
 
EARLY YEARS 
 
 THE provincial church of Virginia in the last stage of 
 its history — that is, in the interval between the Seven 
 Years' War and the Revolution — presents a melancholy 
 picture. It may not be possible now to trace all the causes 
 that led to its decay and duly to apportion the blame, but 
 it is evident that that condition was the eclosion, the final 
 full display and harvest of evils that had long been at work 
 within it. The occasion of their sudden ripening was the 
 distress incident to the Seven Years' War. In the year 1763 
 the impassioned eloquence of Patrick Henry set the clergy 
 of Virginia in an odious light as the minions of a despotic 
 master, only intent on exacting to the uttermost their tithes 
 of mint, anise and cummin. The clergy were simply press- 
 ing their just claim ; legal right was entirely on their side ; 
 but it was unfortunate that they chose that moment of de- 
 pression to seek to enforce it. They were made to appear as 
 rather anxious to extort their legal dues than to deserve them. 
 Undoubtedly they were injuriously treated — but there can 
 be nothing more humiliating, more subversive of spiritual 
 interests than quarrels about money. Such unhappily were 
 the staple of the church history of those days. We see on 
 one hand a clergy whose dominant thought seemed to be to 
 
 13 
 
14 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 secure their salaries, and on the other a laity whose ruling 
 idea in ecclesiastical matters seems to have been to see how 
 little they could be made to pay. The parsons were bitterly 
 unpopular, and that unpopularity was reflected in perpetual, 
 disastrous friction between the church and the civil au- 
 thority. Governors and assemblies seemed to take malicious 
 pleasure in humiliating the church in the person of its com- 
 missary and in baffling his well-meant attempts at discipline. 
 The establishment was manifestly falling into ruin: both 
 church and state were restive under the connection : both 
 were opposed to the introduction of a bishop into the 
 province, the church, strange to say, as well as the gov- 
 ernor ; though it was the one step that might raise it from 
 its degradation, churchmen opposed it as 'inexpedient.' 
 As a consequence of these disorders, missionary spirit was 
 practically extinct ; perhaps indeed that decay of zeal was 
 their principal cause. In all the province Devereux Jarratt 
 was the sole harbinger of the evangelic summer, — and he 
 was disliked, suspected, ridiculed and almost persecuted by 
 his latitudinarian brethren. The services were carelessly 
 rendered, carelessly attended; the sermons were at best 
 moral essays ; sacramental life was at its lowest ebb. Sunday 
 observance was lax : after public worship the people thought 
 it not unseemly to go hunting. The parsons indulged in 
 all kinds of worldly amusements, and not only were their 
 manners irregular but they were also exceedingly ill edu- 
 cated. Here we touch a point concerning which more in- 
 formation is greatly to be desired. The College of William 
 and Mary, designed as a training-school for a native clergy 
 as well, had been in operation for two generations. In 
 spite of the rapid advance of letters and science in that 
 space of time, it would appear that its curriculum remained 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 15 
 
 unchanged. It had long ceased to offer an education 
 suited to the times. Doubtless it too was seriously handi- 
 capped for want of funds, but it is not difficult to divine 
 (for documentary proof would in the nature of the case be 
 wanting) that the claims of education were being sacrificed 
 to a supposed religious necessity, that the instruction was, 
 in part at least, partisan and apologetic, that the school 
 was being converted into a bulwark of the establishment. 
 Certainly that would be sufficient to explain any lack of 
 funds. Meanwhile dissenting bodies were rapidly spread- 
 ing through the province; the Presbyterians were strong, 
 the Baptists aggressive. These latter seem especially to 
 have aroused animosity and to have been severely dealt 
 with by the clergy and the authorities : hence they became 
 the bitterest enemies of the church. And so the mental 
 soil of old Virginia was being richly fertilized to bring to 
 luxuriant growth the seeds of French infidelity already 
 wafted thither. 
 
 In 1776 the blow fell. Dissenters and sceptics struck up 
 an unholy alliance for the destruction of the establishment 
 and, aided by the popular rancor against the clergy— a 
 large majority of whom adhered to the crown, — found no 
 difficulty in moulding the legislature to their will. The old 
 idea of a comprehensive church — a church for all the 
 people — gave way completely to a general religious equal- 
 ity and toleration of irreligion. Henceforth in the view of 
 the civil power the church was simply one among a number 
 of religious bodies of equal rights, and with this disestablish- 
 ment one main source of its revenue was cut off : all rates 
 ceased ; no one was obliged any more to contribute to its 
 support. Three years later the complete religious equality 
 of all denominations and their purely voluntary support 
 
16 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 were confirmed. One great source of the church's income 
 still remained— that from her lands ; but because this gave 
 her an advantage over the unendowed sects the sale of 
 those lands was already bruited: it was voted that they 
 were public property. 
 
 The church emerged from the tempest of revolution with 
 her houses of worship in disrepair, many of them desecrated 
 and falling to ruin, her clergy reduced to less than one third 
 of the number recorded only five years before, and that 
 remnant impoverished even to destitution. The only hope- 
 ful feature of the situation was that after this drastic, 
 Cromwellian purge, her remaining ministers were in sym- 
 pathy with the new civil polity. The first incentive to 
 action was the danger of losing the glebes : that she might 
 continue to hold them her identity with the provincial 
 church was asserted and she was incorporated in the year 
 1 784, on application to the assembly, under the title ' Prot- 
 estant Episcopal.' Mindful of former disputes and jealous 
 of clerical control the laity were careful to keep the control 
 of her property in their own hands. 
 
 Changes no less radical were in progress at the old College 
 of William and Mary. The subordination of educational 
 to ecclesiastical policy wrought its revenge, and now by the 
 flail of revolution the ecclesiastical element was annihilated. 
 Two chairs of divinity and one of Greek and Latin were 
 suppressed and in their stead professorships of Law, Anat- 
 omy and Medicine, and Modern Languages were erected. 
 Thus a college which had been practically a theological 
 seminary was thoroughly secularized, and became a nursery 
 of scepticism. It is noticeable that the classics shared in 
 this depression. Such were the influences under which new 
 institutions of learning — notably the state universities — 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 17 
 
 took their rise. ' Free inquiry ' was the password of the 
 day : ' Difference of opinion,' said Jefferson, ' is advan- 
 tageous in religion ' ; he thought that uniformity therein, if 
 it were attainable, was no more to be desired than identity 
 of feature and stature. Madison enunciated definitively the 
 principles upon which church and state are sundered in 
 this country. 
 
 Unhappily the new-found liberty degenerated into license ; 
 moral dissolution is an inseparable attendant on war ; after 
 the Revolution infidelity and profligacy were widely prev- 
 alent. 
 
 Such was the day in which the subject of this memoir 
 first saw the light. It was a critical moment for his state 
 and country. Federal influence had been just strong enough 
 to cause Virginia to unite with the other states and to elect 
 Henry Lee as governor — but it was fast expiring. There 
 had been a breach in Washington's cabinet, and Jefferson 
 had retired to Monticello. There was war with the Indians 
 and danger of war with England, who refused to relinquish 
 the western forts. Algerine corsairs were preying on Amer- 
 ican commerce. To cap the climax, an insurrection broke 
 out in western Pennsylvania in contempt of a late excise 
 act : Washington had to call upon Lee to suppress it. The 
 sensitive plant of public credit in the young nation shrivelled 
 under the blast ; it was the first of those financial crises and 
 periods of depression that have marked with increasing 
 frequency, severity and protraction the course of our history 
 as a nation. 
 
 In those 'hard times,' on the fifth day of February, 
 1 795, was born one who was to co-operate faithfully in the 
 regenerative movements of the coming century. He was 
 born in Bedford county and Russell parish, not far from 
 
18 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 the new settlement of Lynchburg, and in view of the Peaks 
 of Otter. ' One should be a better man ' he used to say 
 in after days 'who was born within sight of those peaks.' 
 From them he drew in his fervent love of the hills. His 
 father, John Cobbs, was an infidel of the Jeffersonian type : 
 his mother on the contrary was a stanch churchwoman; 
 thus the discords of the time were reflected in his own 
 family. There is no evidence of other dissonance of opinion 
 or sentiment between his parents, but that in religion was 
 of itself sufficiently painful. Tradition runs that the Cobbses 
 were of Welsh descent ; ' cob ' is said to be Welsh for 
 ' harbor ' ; certain it is that the soul of this boy as it un- 
 folded manifested characteristics markedly Welsh : a know- 
 ledge of his character may assist in solving the problem of 
 the temperamental contributions of the multifarious constit- 
 uents of our population. He was however yet more his 
 mother's son — affording fresh illustration of the theory of 
 oblique impress of the sexes : that is, that mothers of strong 
 character transmit a formative influence to their sons, and 
 fathers to their daughters. Mrs. Cobbs was a woman of 
 decided character and exerted a determining influence on 
 her son's destiny. She was resolved that he should be 
 baptized into the church ; there was no pastor, not even a 
 missionary thereof in the whole county; she carried her 
 infant son therefore on horseback full sixty miles to the 
 nearest clergyman. Her family name was Hamner; to 
 that she prefixed Nicholas (presumably for her father), and 
 by that name her boy was baptized. 
 
 To summarize the points of character so far gained, we 
 have certain Welsh traits derived from his father ; a tender 
 conscience and church principles, from his mother; appre- 
 ciation of the beauties of landscape, to be derived from 
 impressions of his earliest years ; and if we bear in mind 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 19 
 
 the rudeness incident to young settlements, the lack of in- 
 tellectual and aesthetic advantages, and recall that his birth 
 fell in the last year of Henry Lee's governorship, whose 
 Federal principles might seem to have passed into his 
 blood, we have already all the necessary data for the con- 
 struction and interpretation of his character, its excellences 
 and deficiencies, — the latter entirely attributable, as far as 
 we can see, to lack of early educational advantages. 
 
 To conclude concerning his immediate family : he was 
 the eldest of a goodly number of brothers and sisters. Of 
 the former, one became a physician, the other, a merchant, 
 and rose to be mayor of Lynchburg. 
 
 With the closing years of the eighteenth century the de- 
 pression of the Virginian church grew deeper. Though it 
 now had a bishop, his efforts were powerless to stay the 
 downward course of events that at last overcame his spirits 
 also. The church buildings were getting more dilapidated, 
 the clergy decreasing in number : old ministers dropped off 
 and none came forward to take their place — and those that 
 remained were becoming more secularized, owing to the 
 hateful contest over property. In the year of Cobbs' birth 
 no convention was held ; it was galvanized into action the 
 year after by the imminent danger of a loss of the glebes. 
 In 1799 an act of assembly tolled the knell of the endow- 
 ments : it repealed all legislation ' in which the existence 
 of a governmental church was directly or indirectly recog- 
 nized.' The church was now reduced to the passivity of 
 despair, and in 1802 fell the last paralyzing blow: it was 
 enacted that the glebes should be sold for the benefit of 
 the poor. Thus the last external sign of her superiority to 
 other religious bodies was obliterated, and the malice of her 
 enemies was exhausted. 
 
 Outwardly the church seemed prostrated. The long, 
 
20 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 disheartening struggle had told upon Bishop Madison's 
 health and spirits; he practically confined himself hence- 
 forth to his duties as head of William and Mary College. 
 It was rumored that he had turned sceptical— but it was 
 only of the future of the church in Virginia. For a term 
 of years no convention met. It is remarkable that other 
 dioceses exhibited at the same time depression similar if not 
 as grievous nor from the same cause. It seems as if the 
 energies of the national church had been consumed in the 
 task of organization. In the largest view it is apparent 
 that the interests of religion in general were similarly de- 
 pressed at the turn of the century, but as it progressed we 
 discover steadily increasing signs of revival. The Roman 
 Catholic communion, which during the provincial age had 
 been only a Jesuit mission, had lately received proportion- 
 ately large accessions from abroad in consequence of the 
 troubles in France and Ireland ; Pope Pius VII was en- 
 couraged accordingly to create an American province of 
 his church, with archbishop and suffragans, in the year 
 1808. Baptists and Methodists meanwhile were compet- 
 ing in enthusiastic revival work : the success of the inde- 
 fatigable veteran Asbury — he visited annually every state 
 in the Union, sent out scores of evangelists, preached hun- 
 dreds of sermons — makes one regret that Bishop Madison's 
 statesmanlike plan of union was nipped in the bud: it 
 seems as if at that date some concordat might have been 
 concluded. Especially interesting are the secessions that 
 then took place from the Presbyterian ranks, both on 
 account of their bearing on the progress of religion in the 
 southern states and because they resemble blind gropings 
 after catholic truth. In Virginia Alexander Campbell was 
 led by his study of the New Testament to a conviction that 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 21 
 
 Presbyterianism had fallen far from the Scripture model; 
 he therefore discarded with vehemence the Westminster 
 and all other confessions and advocated with originality and 
 power a return to Holy Scripture and the apostolic age. 
 Having discovered through his reading in the book of the 
 Acts of the Apostles that baptism confers the gift of the 
 Holy Ghost to the washing away of sin, he forthwith mag- 
 nified that sacrament; and noting beside that Philip and 
 the eunuch went down into the water, he concluded that 
 immersion was the only mode, and united himself for a 
 time with the Baptists. Furthermore, it came upon him 
 like a revelation that the disciples met every Lord's day to 
 break bread ; he therefore revived the practice of weekly 
 communion. His sect ultimately extended beyond the 
 mountains and flourished in Kentucky and Tennessee. In 
 the former state, which about the year 1804 was afflicted 
 with veritable revivalist convulsions that recall like strange 
 phenomena all along the pathway of .religious history, what 
 was at first simply a schism in a presbytery resulted, from 
 the Calvinist point of view, in heresy. The religious excite- 
 ment was so contagious that it taxed the machinery of the 
 Presbyterian society to the uttermost to provide for it, and 
 in the Cumberland presbytery several evangelists were 
 irregularly sent out. When they were repudiated by the 
 synod, that presbytery broke away from the body, and not 
 only revived the ancient order of itinerants but shortly also 
 developed Arminian views, asserting the universality of 
 Christ's redemptive work, and that salvation and reproba- 
 tion are conditioned by the human subject. This new sect 
 likewise spread into Tennessee. 
 
 It is cheering to reflect that during those darkest days 
 in the outward fortunes of the Episcopal church through- 
 
22 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 out the land and in particular in the southern states, souls 
 were being born into the world destined to be God's agents 
 in her strengthening and extension in those states. In 1 798 
 William Mercer Green was born in Wilmington, in 1799 
 Francis Huger Rutledge in Charleston. Early in the year 
 1800 there was born to a family named Otey— of some 
 military and political distinction in Bedford county, in 
 Cobbs' neighborhood and yet closer to the Peaks of Otter 
 — a younger son who was named James Hervey, after a 
 member of Wesley's club at Oxford, author of a once 
 famous production — still popular evidently in that part of 
 the world — entitled ' Meditations among the Tombs.' 
 Contrary to the inference one would draw from such evan- 
 gelical patronage, the Oteys were not associated with any 
 religious body. In the spring of 1806 there was born at 
 Raleigh to a Colonel William Polk, of Revolutionary and 
 political note in North Carolina, a son who after the classic 
 fashion of the time was called Leonidas. Colonel Polk 
 illustrates, like Cobbs' and Otey's fathers, the prevalence 
 of Jeffersonian scepticism : honor was his criterion, but he 
 was not a religious man. In the summer of the same year 
 Stephen Elliott was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, — a 
 scion of a cultured family. We note also the birth, in 
 1804, of Thomas Frederick Davis at Wilmington, and in 
 1807 of Thomas Atkinson in Dinwiddie county, Virginia. 
 Of the last some fuller account than Bishop Lay has fur- 
 nished is much to be desired. 
 
 The history of the Virginian church and the educational 
 interests connected with it are certainly deeply instructive 
 to students of religious establishments in general and all 
 who are interested in them and in the relations of religion 
 and education. We see clearly that disestablishment and 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 23 
 
 disendowment are not identical or synchronous, for in Vir- 
 ginia a quarter of a century elapsed between them, — a space 
 of time in which the church was offered a fair chance to 
 retrieve herself and prove her spiritual as well as legal title 
 to her lands. This she failed to do. The act of 1802 
 confiscating the glebes was without shadow of legal right : 
 it meant revolution, spoliation, sacrilege. And yet, para- 
 doxical as it may sound, it was the salvation of the church. 
 Her enemies had at last done their worst : they had killed 
 her body or, rather, stripped from it the soiled and tattered 
 garments of earthly reliance ; they could not touch her soul. 
 The endowments had in truth spiritually ceased to realize 
 the intention of their donors : they had become a snare, a 
 sorry dependence, a source of anxious thought, of faithless 
 worry, of spiritual corruption. It was necessary that the 
 provincial church should die down to the root that thence 
 the new church in the state should spring up and flourish. 
 And so the last Erastian shred was snatched away; the 
 long, sullying strife between church and state, clergy and 
 laity, finally ceased ; the church, freed from false trust, false 
 hopes and fears, was thrown upon her own interior re- 
 sources, — upon God, her first and last resort. It is a fact 
 that from that moment she began to mend ; already she 
 felt the ground-swell of the evangelical revival. Jarratt 
 had just died, but he left devoted followers ; and the ordi- 
 nation of William Meade in 18 11 was an event of happiest 
 augury. Elsewhere that year the consecration of Griswold 
 and the conversions of Milnor and Ravenscroft marked the 
 irresistible set of the evangelic current. 
 
 We should like well to know how the young Cobbs was 
 passing his days in this interval; we can only infer that 
 they were lapsing peacefully away. We should like to see 
 
24 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 the kind-hearted lad in his home, among his younger bro- 
 thers and sisters, or among his playmates at the rustic ' old 
 field ' school,— to know if he ever or often saw his little 
 neighbor James Otey, and of any excursions he made to his 
 beloved peaks,— but in this world such glimpses can never- 
 more be recovered. We know that his mother drilled him 
 in the catechism and that an aunt on his father's side 
 exerted great influence over him religiously. She was a 
 zealous churchwoman, and in the absence of church min- 
 istrations abstained on principle from attending any con- 
 venticle of the heterodox. The young Cobbs' religious 
 impressions were of this domestic kind ; he grew up without 
 once seeing and hearing a service of the church, — for none 
 was rendered in his county. This personal touch is a strik- 
 ing illustration of the dearth of spiritual life, the absence of 
 missionary activity in the diocese in Bishop Madison's 
 time. What the lad's father thought or said about this 
 home religious training we do not know ; presumably he 
 ignored it, and interested himself solely in his son's tem- 
 poral education. He certainly gave him the best in that 
 kind that the neighborhood afforded, sending him to an 
 'old field* school kept by a Scotch Presbyterian. There 
 the training, if narrow, would appear to have been thorough : 
 the foundations of an English education were firmly laid 
 and the youth was drilled in Latin ; it is said that ever after 
 his pronunciation of that language betrayed his tuition by 
 a Scottish burr. In 1812, being then seventeen years of 
 age, he himself began to teach. So while Otey was a child 
 and Polk and Elliott were infants, Cobbs' mind was already 
 being exercised, in however humble a way, over questions 
 of religion and education. Indeed, in the bosom of his 
 family, in his own parents, he could see embodied opposing 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 25 
 
 views of their relation. Such an object-lesson is suited to 
 make a young mind think, and to leave upon it indelible 
 impressions. 
 
 We should like to see the youth in his novitiate of teach- 
 ing, — to know whether he opened school with daily read- 
 ings in the Bible and with the Lord's prayer. Taking a 
 more discursive view, we should like to know what he 
 thought of the great events transpiring in his time, rumor 
 of which reached him in his quiet country home, — of the 
 career and character of Bonaparte, for example, (we know 
 how they excited Otey), and whether his ardent love and 
 admiration of England were engendered in the course of 
 that great contest, and if so, what he thought of the War 
 of 1 812. That year Bishop Madison died, and the young 
 teacher must have marked with engrossing interest the pro- 
 gress of the long negotiations that resulted in the consecra- 
 tion of Richard Channing Moore of New York as his 
 successor, — but of his thoughts on that occasion and of the 
 growth of his mind and sentiments in general no known 
 record remains. 
 
 The date of that consecration — 1814 — was as epoch- 
 marking in the Virginian church as 1776 and 1802 were, 
 and indeed more truly so, for the latter marked stages of 
 decline and despondency, but 18 14 an era of new life and 
 hope. In after days the memories of those who had lived 
 through it loved to travel back and dwell upon it fondly : 
 it seemed to them 'a vernal season, a time of refreshing 
 from the Lord.' Bishop Moore found active and devoted 
 fellow-laborers in the diocese : the evangelic tide rose fast, 
 to break in a great wave over the communion. 
 
 If we seek to discriminate the point of departure, the 
 turning point of the movement, it will be found in opposi- 
 
26 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 tion to the world. The previous latitudinarian age had 
 been worldly ; exclusion of all worldliness therefore was the 
 motive of the new movers. They rejoiced in their free- 
 dom from entangling alliance with the state. The age was 
 sceptical : they censured ' proud philosophy ' and delighted 
 to smite the sinful intellect with the inscrutable doctrine of 
 the Atonement. The thirty-nine articles were rehabilitated : 
 the ninth to the nineteenth awoke especial enthusiasm. The 
 plenary inspiration of the Bible was asserted against the 
 rationalistic criticism of the hour. The evangelicals lived 
 in an ever-present sense of sin, death and the judgment; 
 their conviction of the infinite significance of the immortal 
 soul and its destiny induced a veritable Pentecost of mis- 
 sionary zeal ; the church was baptized afresh with missionary 
 spirit from on high. Preaching assumed fresh importance 
 and in its style reflected the reaction ; the moral disquisi- 
 tions of the past were disparaged and replaced by fervent, 
 pathetic appeals grounded on the corruption of human 
 nature, its total inability to save itself, and sole reliance on 
 the grace of God through Christ. Consciousness of recon- 
 ciliation sought expression in' bursts of sacred song. So- 
 cially the age, relaxed by scepticism, was characterized by 
 self-indulgence, especially in liquors, by moral laxity and a 
 plague of profanity — the infallible index of ill-regulated 
 passions : at its best it was given to distracting gaiety, 
 fashionable competition and worldly amusements ; against 
 these accordingly the evangelicals set their faces like flint, 
 earnestly dissuaded from all 'worldly conformity,' de- 
 nounced vulgar swearing and upheld an ideal of sobriety 
 and purity. Against prevailing laxity they laid stress on a 
 strict observance of the Lord's day. 
 
 An interesting phenomenon of the new era was an attempt 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 27 
 
 to adjust more happily the relations of religion and educa- 
 tion. The restriction and distortion of education by 
 ecclesiasticism, the exclusion of religion by an equally in- 
 tolerant sciolism, had both proved untenable. In 1815 
 there came a proposition from the president of William and 
 Mary's regarding a revival of theological instruction at that 
 institution,— the re-establishment, that is, of professorships 
 of divinity, like those that had been suppressed thirty-three 
 years before. That suggestion was a note of the ensuing 
 generation. 
 
 The same year Bishop Moore consecrated two churches, 
 ordained three and admitted four candidates for holy 
 orders, and confirmed one hundred and eighty souls. The 
 year following the latter number was exceeded by nearly 
 six hundred, and a society was formed for disseminating 
 copies of the prayer-book. These were sadly needed : the 
 young Cobbs had long wished to possess a prayer-book of 
 his own and thought himself fortunate in getting one at last 
 for a dollar and a half, and that a second-hand copy. He 
 always thought that the backwardness of the church in his 
 part of the diocese could be largely explained by this scar- 
 city of books and costliness of the editions : a happy conse- 
 quence, however, of the difficulty in getting a copy was 
 that in his case it induced an extraordinary regard for it. 
 It is to be noted, beside, that the evangelical movement 
 proceeded at the outset along churchly lines and tended to 
 increase regard for the public worship and sacraments of 
 the church and to swell the attendance upon them. 
 
 The particular interest of the years through which we 
 are now travelling in thought is their bearing upon our 
 subject proper. They were the finally and peculiarly 
 formative period in Cobbs' life. He was then twenty or 
 
28 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 twenty-one years of age, his soul awake ttf the events 
 transpiring around him and receptive of their influence; . 
 then it was that the mortal metal of his character was cast 
 in the mould by which it was ever after known. Indeed, 
 the years of man's life from twenty to twenty-four put in 
 general the finishing touches to character, imbuing it with 
 principles of which the whole after career is simply the 
 application. 
 
 For several successive meetings the mind of the Virginian 
 convention had been exercised over the matter of lay dis- 
 cipline and the standard of Christian living to be required 
 of communicants. At last, in 1818, evangelical opinion 
 was recorded as against the ' worldly conformity ' winked 
 at in the latitudinarian day. In its condemnation of popu- 
 lar amusements that opinion coincided interestingly, though 
 doubtless unwittingly, with the proscription of the games, 
 circus and theatre by the Christians of the primitive age. 
 It was proposed to prohibit ' amusements involving cruelty 
 to the brute creation ' ; dancing was seriously objected to ; 
 it was finally resolved that in view of difference of opinion 
 concerning certain fashionable amusements and the need 
 of some authoritative judgment in regard to them, 'the 
 convention does hereby declare its opinion that gaming, 
 attending on theatres, public balls, and horse-racing should 
 be relinquished by all communicants of this church.' 
 
 In 1 81 9 the convention approved an address prepared 
 by one of its committees on the project of transporting 
 negroes to the coast of Africa. 'The forebodings of the 
 politician, the regrets of humanity, and the prayers of 
 Christians,' said they, 'have long been turned upon the 
 question of providing a remedy for the evils growing out 
 of the slave population in this country.' They commended 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 29 
 
 with enthusiasm accordingly the aims of the Colonization 
 Society ' to rescue this unhappy class of our fellow-creatures 
 from the ignorance, vice and degradation to which the 
 habits and sentiments if not the necessities of the present 
 social state will forever doom them while they remain in 
 this country ; to restore a people whom God hath made of 
 one blood with ourselves to their natural birthright of 
 human beings; and ... to deliver our land from a 
 calamity which in its present progress is portentous of in- 
 calculable misery and disaster. 1 In conclusion they ex- 
 pressed the hope that as divine providence brings good 
 out of evil so American slavery might be made to contribute 
 to the evangelization of Africa. The convention ordered 
 that the address be sent to the president of the Colonization 
 Society. 
 
 A commanding interest of the epoch was that of Chris- 
 tian and especially clerical education. It appears that 
 already, some years before the establishment of the General 
 Seminary in New York, instruction in divinity was imparted 
 by a professor in William and Mary College, in accordance 
 with its president's recommendation before noted. The 
 foundation of the General Seminary in 1820 furnished a 
 powerful incentive to the organization of a similar school 
 for southern candidates for orders — not, as was expressly 
 stated, by way of opposition to the former but, we may 
 add, by way of polarity ; the ostensible motive was to pro- 
 vide a training-school for a native ministry. That was a 
 sufficient motive ; we need not look behind it ; strict evan- 
 gelical principles and a sentiment of diocesan independence 
 had much to do with exciting interest in the project. In 
 1 82 1 the Virginian convention, 'taking into consideration 
 the deficient condition of the diocese as respects the means 
 
30 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 of theological instruction, and the importance of retaining 
 among ourselves, for education, those young men who may 
 be disposed to devote themselves to the sacred office of the 
 ministry,' for 'there are peculiar circumstances which 
 render it necessary to cherish a seminary in the southern 
 district,' recommended the establishment of a divinity 
 school at Williamsburg, and communication with the stand- 
 ing committees of adjacent dioceses with regard to possi- 
 ble co-operation thence. As no notice was taken of the 
 communication by the ecclesiastical authority in North 
 Carolina, and as that of Maryland was opposed to the 
 proposed location, for sufficient reasons, geographical, 
 financial and educational, the seminary was established at 
 Alexandria in the year 1823. Courses in Biblical literature 
 and systematic divinity were opened ; others in ecclesiastical 
 history and pastoral care were added later. 
 
 These advantages of study came too late to be of avail in 
 Cobbs' case, — he was already finishing his preparation for 
 ordination. Hisreading had been carried on under many dis- 
 advantages and discouragements : its prosecution is proof of 
 a considerable degree of moral energy on his part as well 
 as religious zeal. His only external incentive thereto came 
 from his family, and in that only from its female members. 
 Outside there were none to stimulate and cheer, no minister 
 of the church within reach to look to for aid and counsel. 
 In default of other opportunities for public worship he did 
 not follow his aunt's religiously exclusive example but, 
 whether for better or worse, sought such help as was offered 
 in Presbyterian meetings. For a season, to use his own 
 language, he ' quailed ' under the powerful preaching of a 
 Presbyterian divine of the neighborhood and was convinced 
 of sin. It cannot be said that Cobbs was ever ' converted ' 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 31 
 
 in the technical sense of the term; he went through no 
 specific spiritual convulsion to which he could assign a 
 date. He had indeed nothing in particular to be converted 
 from, unless it were the teachings of a pious mother — and 
 happily he was never convinced of the inemcacy of those. 
 The term ' vice ' is ludicrously incongruous with his sweet 
 and simple nature : he had no vices to discard, no moral 
 throes to suffer : from such his Christian nurture had effec- 
 tually shielded him. That period therefore was one of 
 gradually deepening religious consciousness, at the conclu- 
 sion of which there was wrought into the fibre of his being 
 a conviction of the inability of human nature to save itself. 
 Thus the staple of his religious character was evangelical, 
 and remained so to the end. That was the warp on which 
 was woven the sacramental pattern of his life. Yet further, 
 it would appear that for some time, under the spell of a 
 one-sided preaching with its mischievous confusion of sin 
 and guilt which was all that he had to hear, he was involved 
 in toils of painful thought, was in as morbid a frame as was 
 possible to his healthy nature, thought of himself as crimi- 
 nal, feared that he was reprobate. This mood also left its 
 lingering mark upon his mind — a Montanistic prejudice 
 against certain and those the highest aspects of beauty and 
 many social pleasures in themselves innocent as exerting in 
 some mysterious way a maleficent influence upon the soul. 
 It was at or about the time of this crisis that he secured a 
 copy of the prayer-book and by its aid ' groped ' his way 
 to sounder views of salvation than were promulgated from 
 the Presbyterian pulpit. It is hard for us to realize with 
 what consoling sweetness passages like these would strike 
 upon an unfamiliar ear: 'the Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, who desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather 
 
32 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 that he should turn from his wickedness and live, . . . 
 pardoneth and absolveth all those who truly repent. . . . 
 God, who despisest not the sighing of a contrite heart, nor 
 the desire of such as are sorrowful, . . . hatest nothing 
 that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those 
 who are penitent, . . . declarest thy almighty power chiefly 
 in showing mercy and pity, . . . whose mercy is over all thy 
 works, . . . who knowest our necessities before we ask, and 
 our ignorance in asking, . . . whom truly to know is ever- 
 lasting life.' They fell upon Cobbs' stricken soul with the 
 force almost of an additional revelation, and inspired him 
 with an undying affection for the book of common prayer. 
 His heart was now strongly inclined to the work of the 
 holy ministry, and he began reading theology and church 
 history. It must be remembered that his days were con- 
 sumed in teaching others, so he had to devote his evenings 
 to his private studies. As to material for these, it happened 
 fortunately that there were dispersed about the neighbor- 
 hood relics of old colonial libraries, probably supplied by 
 the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. 
 These his friends lent him, and he was thus enabled to read 
 many standard treatises of divinity and polity. It would 
 be interesting to know precisely what these were ; we know 
 that Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity was among them and 
 that he prized it highly ; others, presumably, were Pearson 
 on the Creed, Barrow on the Pope's Supremacy, Burnet on 
 the Articles, Butler's Analogy, and the like. He worked 
 by himself through a Hebrew grammar, so that at length 
 he could add to his other avocations the reading of a chap- 
 ter a day in the Hebrew Bible. Certainly his perseverance 
 and devotion are a rebuke to the indolence of a highly 
 favored generation. 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 33 
 
 His young contemporaries, destined to equally high 
 place and heavy responsibility in the church, were all more 
 favored in the matter of education than he, — were all grad- 
 uates of institutions of higher learning, conspicuous among 
 which was the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 
 While Cobbs was making his painstaking, solitary progress, 
 Green was studying at the university of his native state, 
 where he was joined by Otey, a tall stripling with the look 
 of an Indian. While yet in his sixteenth year Otey was 
 six feet in height, and his figure and features, his piercing 
 black eyes, sunburnt skin and straight black hair won him 
 from his college-mates the nickname ' Cherokee.' He was 
 an indefatigable student and performer on the violin. His 
 remarkable attainments in literature and history secured for 
 him at his graduation in 1820 the novel degree of ' Bache- 
 lor of Letters,' and an appointment as tutor in Greek and 
 Latin in the university. In this capacity he may have in- 
 structed the young Davis, who had recently gone up from 
 Wilmington to Chapel Hill. In 1821 Leonidas Polk was 
 also entered there. One of Otey's duties as an officer was 
 to take his turn in holding prayers at the break of day ; as 
 we know, he had had no religious culture; the duty was 
 therefore exceedingly distasteful to him, indeed quite in- 
 tolerable, until a lady friend presented him with a prayer- 
 book. This exactly answered his need ; his mind was 
 relieved ; to that happy occurrence may be dated his first 
 serious interest in religious matters and consequent attach- 
 ment to the forms of the church. The same year he mar- 
 ried and journeyed to Tennessee, purposing to open a school 
 for boys, but was summoned back to North Carolina to suc- 
 ceed the Reverend George Washington Freeman in charge 
 of a school at Warrenton. His college-mate Green had just 
 
34 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 been ordered deacon by Bishop Moore, and was in charge of 
 the parish in that place ; there, by him, Otey was baptized. 
 
 Before we finally leave this period, we note the birth of 
 Alexander Gregg at Society Hill, South Carolina, in the 
 year 1819, and in 1823 that of Henry Champlin Lay at 
 Richmond, Virginia. In the latter year Francis Rutledge, 
 having finished his theological course in the seminary at 
 New York, was ordered deacon by Bishop Bowen. In 
 that year, moreover, Stephen Elliott was transferred from 
 Harvard College to that of South Carolina, and young 
 Polk entered the military academy at West Point. 
 
 In 1 82 1, at the age of twenty-six, Cobbs committed the 
 only apparently imprudent act of his life — yet even in this 
 his judgment was not at fault. He took from his school, 
 wherein she was a pupil, a cousin, Lucy Landonia Cobbs, 
 who had not yet seen fifteen summers, to be his wife. It 
 is reported that the marriage ceremony was delayed : that 
 at the appointed time the bride was caught wading in the 
 brook! She made him a fond and helpful wife; their 
 married life was one of perfect concord only broken by his 
 death after nearly forty years. 
 
 At the age of twenty-nine, having made all due prepara- 
 tion, he applied to Moore for ordination. The convention 
 met that year in Staunton, Augusta county. Thither ac- 
 cordingly he journeyed on horseback, full of apprehension 
 over the approaching ordeal, the examination and the ser- 
 vice. He had only once before participated in public wor- 
 ship according to the usage of the church. On one and 
 the same day he was confirmed, ordered deacon, and par- 
 took for the first time of the supper of the Lord. The 
 place was Trinity Church, Staunton ; that red-letter day in 
 his history, the twenty-third of May, 1824. 
 
II 
 
 PASTORATE 
 
 THE twenty years of Cobbs' ministry, almost entirely 
 spent in his native state, were divided into two equal 
 halves by his appointment as chaplain at the University of 
 Virginia and removal thither in 1834. To an examination 
 of the earlier half, the first ten years of his pastorate, we 
 now address ourselves. 
 
 No other period in our history can have been as perfectly 
 in accord with Cobbs' spirit as that in which he began his 
 pastoral labors. It was the ' Era of Good Feeling,' per- 
 fectly expressive of his own sentiment, which ensued upon 
 the adoption of the Missouri compromise, and was marked 
 by the ascendancy of Henry Clay — an orator and statesman 
 after Cobbs' own heart. It is perhaps actually the most 
 interesting period in our annals, for it was the dayspring of 
 American humanism, an era of reviving enthusiasm for the 
 classics, of beginnings in literature and art. 
 
 On his way home from Staunton Cobbs stopped at the 
 house of a married sister of his and there held his first ser- 
 vice and preached his first sermon. Starting literally with 
 nothing but God's grace, preaching and teaching in private 
 dwellings or any convenient place, he recovered the few 
 remaining church people scattered widely about the county, 
 
 35 
 
36 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 won others soul by soul, organized congregations, interested 
 them to the point of sacrifice, and had the happiness to see 
 church-building begun in two foci of his extensive parish. 
 On the broad and deep foundations thus laid in his year's 
 diaconate he was henceforth securely to build. When in 
 1825 he drove with a friend from Lynchburg to Richmond 
 and took his seat in convention as the first regular repre- 
 sentative from Russell parish, he was able to report that 
 in spite of its long dissolution, the late complete prostration 
 of the church, prevalent ignorance of her services and pre- 
 judice against them, they were slowly gaining in esteem, 
 responses were becoming more general, the newly gathered 
 congregations were attentive, he had baptized twenty- three 
 souls, and had promise of two neat brick churches. The 
 revival of that parish, wrote William Meade in a later day, 
 ' is to be ascribed under God to his zealous and for a long 
 time almost gratuitous services, since his support was 
 mainly derived from a school. Under his ministry St. 
 Stephen's and Trinity churches were built and other posi- 
 tions occupied.' It is pleasant to record this tribute, for at 
 their first meeting Meade was not favorably impressed by 
 the young missionary. Some rusticity possibly, some awk- 
 wardness of manner, led him to remark to Cobbs' friend 
 from Lynchburg : ' Another clog upon the church ! ' ' Wait 
 and see,' was the reply. Never was man more deceived 
 by a first hasty impression. 
 
 After the adjournment of the convention Cobbs was ad- 
 vanced to the priesthood by Bishop Moore in the Monu- 
 mental Church, on Sunday, the twenty-second of May. 
 
 One naturally desires at this juncture a glimpse of the 
 personality of the man and his outward aspect. 
 
 He was tall and spare, nearly if not quite six feet in 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 37 
 
 height, and pale of complexion. Face and figure told of 
 years of studious application : all his life after he had to 
 bear the burden imposed by those early days of teaching 
 and nights of prolonged study: those sedentary pursuits 
 made him a lifelong victim of dyspepsia. He was never 
 strong, and was subject to attacks of ill-health. His cir- 
 culation was sluggish : hence his lack of color and hence 
 to him the luxury of heat. It is inspiring to mark the 
 peaceful triumph of his spirit over the impediments of this 
 physique. His native goodness irradiated with real beauty 
 and sweetness of expression a countenance otherwise plain, 
 — a serene brow, clear, mild, benevolent blue eyes slightly 
 near-sighted, a mouth somewhat large, persuasive lips, and 
 a chin in which firmness and gentleness joined. His char- 
 acter was a singular blend of simplicity and sagacity ; he 
 was amiable, unsuspicious, of sympathies so strong that 
 they were constantly imposed on, — and yet possessed of 
 almost unerring penetration into motive. He was abso- 
 lutely unworldly, supremely indifferent to his own ease, 
 claims to consideration and the like, while unfailingly 
 thoughtful of others'. So he had the very substance of 
 courtesy, without which that virtue is the veriest sham and 
 indeed ceases to be — a kind heart. He was simple in his 
 habits, rose early, dined at midday, had early supper, fol- 
 lowed by family prayer, and went early to rest. 
 
 It must have been about this time that he was engaged 
 in conducting the academy at New London in his native 
 county, some miles from Lynchburg. Thence his income 
 was almost entirely derived — as indicated by Meade in the 
 extract quoted, — for many years he received practically 
 nothing for his pastoral services : the people had not learned 
 to give. Already we find in his history and that of the 
 
38 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 diocese the singular contradiction implied in a demand for 
 men and want of funds to support them. Of course a de- 
 sire that has no effect is not a want but mere velleity ; we 
 know from economics that a want, a demand, implies some- 
 thing effectual, substantial — that one is willing to give 
 something for what he wants and, if he has nothing, to 
 work until he gets it. If he will neither give nor work it 
 is sign enough that the missionary had better pitch his tent 
 elsewhere. A piteous case drew from Bishop Moore the 
 following affecting appeal to his convention : ' In the plea 
 which I now offer in behalf of the clergy I am not pleading 
 for a support unreasonable and extravagant. I ask only 
 for a sufficiency to enable them to live in comfort. I ask 
 not for any of the luxuries of life. I am only soliciting for 
 a provision which will enable their children to appear in the 
 society in which they move, decently habited and properly 
 instructed. Should the minds of any of the people of our 
 charge be impressed with the idea that this is already the 
 situation of the clergy embraced in the proposal, a journey 
 through some of our parishes would convince them of their 
 mistake. On a late tour through an extensive district of 
 this diocese, I met with an instance of extreme penury in 
 the case of a truly pious, well-educated and excellent clergy- 
 man belonging to our communion. Patient under his 
 sufferings, humble as a little child, he poured no complaint 
 whatever in my ears; but being told by a wealthy and 
 humane neighbor of his wants I was surprised at the forti- 
 tude he manifested and the silence he had observed.' 
 
 Five days in the week Cobbs labored for his livelihood 
 and that of his growing family, and devoted the other two 
 — his Saturday holiday and Sunday — to pastoral and 
 priestly offices. 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 39 
 
 In his relations to the sectarians with whom the county 
 abounded, many of whom offered bitter opposition to the 
 church, Cobbs was pacific. He kept the even tenor of his 
 way, preferring to dwell upon points of union, refusing to 
 be drawn into controversy while ever ready for discussion 
 with a sincere inquirer. By this course he assuaged the 
 hostile feelings of many and attached not a few. Of all 
 denominations his sympathies went out in most limited 
 measure to the Baptists ; indeed, he had a positive antipathy 
 to their tenet of immersion. Of course he would not refuse 
 to immerse an applicant, but there is no evidence that he 
 ever had occasion to; he disliked the practice as it was 
 commonly conducted and felt strong aversion to an intol- 
 erant insistence upon it, with its uncharitable inference that 
 none that are not immersed are truly baptized. 
 
 In public worship he was rubrical, in a lax age. He 
 encouraged congregational song, though he himself had 
 little or no ear for music. His favorite hymn was the 
 evangelical classic — Toplady's ' Rock of Ages.' In prayer 
 he knelt facing the people, — naturally, for he had never 
 seen the contrary position ; it should be remembered that 
 the people turned and knelt at their seats. That was the 
 evangelical improvement upon the sitting service of the 
 latitudinarians. His sermons — always written — were short ; 
 he adhered pretty closely to the twenty-minute standard. 
 His delivery was quiet, almost without gesture. His style 
 abounded in adjectives, and he loved to reiterate and 
 underscore significant words — marks, these, of fervent feel- 
 ing. His preaching was characterized by the true, the 
 indispensable evangelical pathos ; it sprang from and ap- 
 pealed to the affections ; if not great, it was absolutely 
 sincere and was richly blessed. He knew and could track 
 
40 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 the windings of the heart. He was never weary of repeat- 
 ing a passage from the third chapter of St. Peter's epistle : 
 ' Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another ; 
 love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous.' 'The sum of 
 the gospel,' he used to say, ' is sympathy for man ' ; Christ's 
 love even to death for erring man was his constant theme. 
 
 Let us hearken to his own accents in the most character- 
 istic of his sermons, 'The Message to Peter' — given in the 
 last chapter of St. Mark's gospel. Especially noteworthy 
 is the argument of the affections for the divinity of Christ. 
 
 ' Although the name of Peter is incidentally mentioned, 
 yet, we doubt not, it was introduced for a substantial and 
 merciful reason, and that a great deal was conveyed in the 
 simple addition of that one word — ... a considerate and 
 merciful afterthought, suggested by his late shameful 
 downfall. 
 
 ' Our Lord knew that Peter was so much mortified and 
 crushed by a sense of his guilt that he would be ashamed 
 to acknowledge himself a disciple, and that he needed to 
 be encouraged, to be inspired with confidence. Perhaps, 
 without some such merciful intimation on the part of the 
 Saviour, Peter might have gone off in despair and have 
 become reckless and hardened and lost. And this was the 
 more likely, as he seems to have been naturally of an 
 ardent, impulsive and sensitive temperament. And there- 
 fore it was that our blessed Lord, with the most delicate 
 tenderness, caused a special message to be sent to Peter. 
 
 ' Ah, what mighty power is there in one word of kindness 
 judiciously uttered! . . . Oh, the misery that might be pre- 
 vented and the happiness that might be conferred if there 
 were a little more considerate kindness in the world ! 
 
 ' How different the conduct of our Saviour from the 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 41 
 
 spirit of the world ! . . . What a delicate regard did he thus 
 manifest for the sensibility, the wounded pride and lacerated 
 feelings of a fallen man! How interesting and lovely does 
 the character of the Saviour thus appear! How infinitely 
 exalted above the narrow, selfish, unforgiving, malicious and 
 vindictive spirit of the world ! . . . Most justly might it be 
 inferred that such spontaneous and exuberant goodness 
 could have emanated only from the abode of heaven, from 
 the bosom of the God and Father of Mercies. 
 
 ' Let the penitent be emboldened by the restoration of 
 Peter to return to the Lord in faith, to take hold of his 
 promises of mercy. . . . Let it be well remembered that 
 all those deep convictions of sin, all this hungering and 
 thirsting after righteousness, all this struggling against in- 
 ward corruptions, are the messages which the Saviour sends 
 through his Spirit of grace to call the penitent back to him- 
 self and to restore him to the paths of peace and salvation. 
 
 ' One of the great duties earnestly enjoined by our Sa- 
 viour and powerfully enforced by his example is that of for- 
 giveness of injuries. . . . But alas! how little of this 
 forgiving spirit is exhibited even among those who call 
 themselves the followers of the meek and lowly Jesus and 
 who often repeat the words of his prayer. With what 
 exacting tenacity do people cling to their own rights, and 
 with what stubborn perseverance do they hold out in hatred 
 and revenge! How eagerly do they catch at any plausible 
 arguments to soothe the pride of self and to justify hatred 
 and malice under the name of "principle" and "con- 
 science"! And even when people do extend forgiveness 
 it is oftentimes reluctantly extorted and with a bad grace, 
 in an unkind and unfeeling manner, in a spirit of chiding 
 and reproach, dwelling upon the errors and faults of the 
 
42 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 offender, harrowing up his feelings of shame and remorse 
 and thus by a rude and rough hand deepening the wound 
 it professes to heal. . . . Ah, how little is thought of the 
 wounded pride and mortified feelings and penitential sorrows 
 and inward conflicts of soul experienced by those who make 
 confession and ask for forgiveness at our hands ! 
 
 ' How many are there, now crushed and fallen into sin, 
 who need only the look of kindness and the voice of love 
 or some little expression of sympathy to win them back to 
 the paths of virtue ! . . . What a want there is in the world 
 of spiritual sympathy, of compassion for the faults and in- 
 firmities, for the wounds and diseases of the soul! . . . How 
 seldom are those to be found who would send a kind and 
 inviting message to an offending though penitent Peter! 
 
 ' Ah, if we would be Christians in deed and in truth . . . 
 let us cultivate the spirit of forbearance, of charity, of love ; 
 let us remember our own failings and learn to look with 
 pity and indulgence on the infirmities of others ; let the law 
 of kindness be ever in our hearts and its accents familiar to 
 our lips ; and let us be tender of the name and the rights 
 and the feelings of those around us.' 
 
 The preacher concluded with the collect for the Sunday 
 before Lent,— 'Pour into our hearts that most excellent 
 gift of charity.' 
 
 He was happy in addressing children. It was the era 
 of the introduction into America of the system of Sunday- 
 schools ; whether he adopted the idea at this time we can- 
 not say ; he was faithful in catechizing the little ones before 
 service in the afternoon, closing the exercise with a simple 
 talk. Through clear memories of his own childish expe- 
 rience, and having been brought up in a large family, he 
 knew their temptations, their griefs and joys, and could 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 43 
 
 always engage their attention and set them thinking. The 
 childlike in his own nature appealed to them, quick as 
 children's intuition into character always is ; in private they 
 would cluster round him, confessing his kindly charm ; their 
 elders had no chance at him when there were children in 
 the room. 
 
 He was filled with the true spirit of missions; he not 
 only explored his own county thoroughly but extended his 
 missionary tours and labors over four adjacent counties also. 
 In the course of his pastorate he had the privilege of hold- 
 ing the first service in a dozen churches. The now flourish- 
 ing parish at Wytheville — then Wythe Court-house — is a 
 case in point : it originated with a single communicant, a 
 lady, who wrote asking him to hold a service there. The 
 distance — almost a hundred miles — caused him not a mo- 
 ment's hesitation ; he accepted the invitation with alacrity. 
 The smallness of a congregation did not in the least dampen 
 his zeal ; he did his best, irrespective of numbers ; indeed, 
 he loved to address small gatherings of the faithful, and 
 would preach with the utmost earnestness to a dozen souls. 
 
 He excelled as a pastor. His disposition was social and 
 he thoroughly enjoyed parish visiting. While making a 
 pastoral call he talked little of himself, was a good listener, 
 but gently changed the conversation if it took a gossiping 
 turn. He took an unfeigned, engrossing interest in the 
 spiritual interests of every member of the family. There 
 was that in him that elicited confidence, and he loved to 
 handle individual cases, — the revivalist's treatment of them 
 in the gross was distasteful to him. He never lost an op- 
 portunity while on his tours to enter into religious conver- 
 sation, which he would conduct with as much care as he 
 would take in preparing a sermon ; indeed, specific cases of 
 
44 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 religious difficulty often fatigued him more than preaching 
 — but such labor told perhaps as much in the end, and so, 
 stone by stone, he built up his parish. To the poorest and 
 lowliest he was most courteous ; he early took an especial 
 interest in the religious instruction of the slaves, and incul- 
 cated upon masters their duties toward them. In the most 
 difficult cases, of sickness, spiritual depression, bereavement, 
 he was at his best— was in his element, — because his sym- 
 pathies, unlike those of most, needed no tutoring but were 
 spontaneous, flowing forth in times of sorrow in perfect 
 measure and degree. It is remembered that once, during 
 the severe illness of a friend, he rode daily for a week upon 
 his ' old gray horse ' to visit him — and the round trip was 
 eighteen miles. At the bedside of the sick he exercised 
 without restraint his gift of extempore prayer — without 
 which such pastoral success as his is impossible. There is 
 extant a letter of his dated March 4th, 1829 (the day that 
 Jackson and Calhoun were sworn into office) that illustrates 
 his system of pastoral correspondence as well as visiting, 
 and shows how he seized the moment when a thoughtless 
 heart was softened by affliction to strike a saving blow. It 
 was addressed to one who had just been left a widower 
 with two young children : 
 
 ' Sympathizing most sincerely with you under your late 
 heavy bereavement I would venture in the spirit of friend- 
 ship to write you a few lines which the knowledge of your 
 character induces the hope will be received without giving 
 any offence. In the present gloom and desolation of your 
 prospects, where shall you look for peace and hope and 
 consolation? Here the world will officiously offer its aid 
 and persuade you to drown your cares and sorrows in its 
 hurry and its bustle, its follies and its vanities. But my 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 45 
 
 dear sir, I would cherish the hope that you are too wise 
 and have seen and felt too much of this world's emptiness 
 to be imposed upon by its false pretensions. What can the 
 votaries of this world expect, what have they ever gained 
 as their reward, but disappointment, despair and misery? 
 Though for a moment they may drown reflection in the 
 giddy round of folly, yet there will be periods when con- 
 science will be heard and felt ; when the soul filled with 
 horror and writhing under the anguish of self-inflicted tor- 
 ments sees that sin is misery and acknowledges that there 
 is a just God who governs the universe. Go not then to 
 a false and deceitful world but to the religion of the gospel, 
 to the God of heaven for comfort and consolation. Oh! 
 embrace the doctrines of that blessed Saviour who being 
 touched with the feeling of our infirmities mercifully offers 
 his rest to the weary and heavy laden. These doctrines by 
 unfolding the character of God, by explaining the real con- 
 dition of man and the high destinies of his future existence, 
 by connecting the present state with another life and 
 thereby solving all the mysteries of divine providence, by 
 breaking down the partition wall between heaven and earth 
 and holding forth to guilty mortals the promises of pardon 
 and salvation, give to the soul that peace and support 
 which can nowhere else be found. Will you not accept 
 them ? Remember, my dear sir, your high responsibility ; 
 you must act not only with reference to yourself but to two 
 precious immortal beings left you as a legacy by one now 
 in heaven and who loved you with a love stronger than 
 death. Remember, — those dear children look up to you 
 to guide them, both by precept and example. They have 
 a right to expect that you will conduct them to their mo- 
 ther in glory. Let me then affectionately beg and entreat 
 
46 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 you for the sake of your own soul, for the sake of your 
 precious children, for the sake of your dear departed wife, 
 to give up your heart to the service of God, who now freely 
 offers you the pardon of sin and the comforts of his Spirit. 
 Oh, turn from this poor perishing world and with a holy 
 resolution fix your affections on the realities of heaven.' 
 
 Through and under all his active labors was felt a life of 
 interior contemplation, of communion with God. He did 
 not separate these states of the soul and so needed not to 
 apportion specific hours to each ; in his life they were in- 
 woven. He derived much help in his meditations from 
 the saintly Bishop Wilson's ' Sacra Privata ' : his copy of 
 the book still exists, worn with constant use. 
 
 He was regular in attendance upon diocesan conventions 
 and faithful in the discharge of his duties in committees of 
 which he was repeatedly appointed a member. In 1826 
 he could report that the interests of the church in his county 
 were slowly but steadily advancing ; and he was put upon 
 a committee with William Wilmer, Meade and others, 'to 
 take into consideration the state of the church in this dio- 
 cess.' In several subsequent years he served upon the 
 same. In 1827 he reported as follows: 'The prejudices 
 against our forms are rapidly subsiding ; the confidence of 
 the public is regained and the affections of the young, 
 particularly, are secured. The congregations are always 
 seriously attentive. . . . Though the gain to the church 
 has been rather in the way of moral weight than of numer- 
 ical accession, yet since the last convention six communi- 
 cants have been added [making the total number sixteen]. 
 By the erection of two churches in a small and infant 
 parish, the congregations have not hitherto been enabled 
 to contribute' to external charities, 'but for the future 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 47 
 
 better things may be expected' — and, we may add, the 
 parish did not disappoint these expectations but paid its 
 assessments with commendable regularity. ' In each of the 
 churches a Bible class has been formed, with the prospect 
 of good.' In his convention address, speaking of his first 
 visitation in Russell parish, Bishop Moore uttered the fol- 
 lowing eloquent tribute : ' I passed into the county of Bed- 
 ford and consecrated two new churches — churches owing 
 their existence to the pious and disinterested labors of the 
 Reverend Mr. Cobbs. Since the ordination of Mr. Cobbs 
 several offers have been made to him by the acceptance of 
 either of which his situation would certainly have been 
 much improved ; but with a magnanimity of mind which 
 rendered him superior to pecuniary considerations and with 
 that regard to the infant state of the church which reflects 
 the greatest credit on his piety, he declined them all and 
 determined to remain in his present situation. I mention 
 this circumstance not only because it is honorable to the 
 character of Mr. Cobbs but from a hope that his parish- 
 ioners will consider it their duty to use every means in their 
 power to contribute to the comfort of himself and his 
 family.' 
 
 This year he was made one of a committee ' to examine 
 the parochial reports.' 
 
 He was absent — was it through sickness, or the sickness 
 and death of his mother?— from the convention of 1828, 
 but reported that in a year his roll of communicants had 
 nearly doubled, and that beside his ' sabbatical ministrations 
 in his two churches ' he had for some time past ' officiated 
 on Saturdays in various and remote parts of the county,' 
 and had been pleased to find ' a general kind feeling ' man- 
 ifested toward him. He was commissioned with others to 
 
48 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 solicit contributions within the diocese for its theological 
 school, and was elected a delegate to the approaching 
 General Convention. 
 
 In 1829 a diocesan missionary society was instituted and 
 he was put upon its executive committee, and was beside 
 appointed a trustee of the General Theological Seminary. 
 He presented the following glowing parochial report : ' The 
 state of the parish is more interesting and encouraging than 
 at any former period. During the past year the spirit of 
 the Lord has been poured out on the congregations and a 
 number have been brought to profess an experimental 
 knowledge of the truth. Thirty-two members have been 
 added to the communion and an increasing spirit of prayer 
 and zeal seems to prevail among the people. . . . The 
 rector is cheered with the hope that a day of better things 
 is dawning on our Zion. In all the southwestern counties 
 of Virginia the field is ripe for the harvest, and we only 
 need ministers of self-denying habits to enter in and labor.' 
 
 In this optimistic mood he went on to Philadelphia to 
 attend the General Convention, which met in the middle 
 of August. It was the first time he had passed the boun- 
 dary of his native state. And now without doubt for the 
 first time he met William Mercer Green — a delegate to the 
 same convention from North Carolina. Other marked 
 men — whom to know was a liberal education — served with 
 him in the house of clerical and lay deputies: Doctors 
 Jackson Kemper, B. T. Onderdonk and C. E. Gadsden, 
 Alonzo Potter, Francis L. Hawks, John Henry Hopkins, 
 John Johns. Milnor, Muhlenberg, Bedell and Tyng were 
 admitted by special vote and attended the sessions of the 
 house. It was a goodly evangelical gathering. In the 
 house of bishops were the patriarchal White and Cobbs' 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 49 
 
 own diocesan, with Griswold, Hobart and Ravenscroft. 
 Before the next convention met the last two had left the 
 world. The chief interest of this session was the conse- 
 cration of William Meade as assistant bishop of Virginia. 
 
 Cobbs preached the opening sermon at the Virginia con- 
 vention of 1830. He had to acknowledge in his report 
 that his enthusiastic expectations of the previous year had 
 been somewhat disappointed : ' Not as much has been ful- 
 filled as was anticipated.' Still, a ' favorable change in the 
 public mind,' in regard to the character of the church and 
 her services, was plainly perceptible ; and among his new 
 communicants was a candidate for orders. 
 
 The assistant bishop could speak with unqualified praise : 
 ' I cannot leave this parish,' he said in relating his first 
 year's work to the convention, ' without noticing how the 
 rich blessing of heaven has been poured out on the zealous 
 exertions and affectionate preaching of Mr. Cobbs. But a 
 few years since and there were not more than two or three 
 communicants in the county and not a place of public wor- 
 ship belonging to the church. Now there are more than 
 seventy communicants and three places of public worship 
 where service is regularly performed, besides many private 
 houses which are freely thrown open for religious exercises. 
 But what is far more important is that good evidence is 
 afforded of the prevalence of real piety, and it is pleasing 
 to perceive the animation and holy zeal with which the 
 sendees of the church are conducted.' 
 
 At the following convention which met in Norfolk Cobbs 
 made the acquaintance of Leonidas Polk, who appeared 
 as assistant minister of the Monumental Church — the bish- 
 op's church in Richmond. They served together upon the 
 executive committee of the missionary society. At the next 
 
50 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 meeting Cobbs was continued on that committee — but Polk 
 was in London. Of Russell parish the rector reported that 
 ' during a great part of the last year there was manifested 
 a deep and general interest in religion, and he was gratified 
 to perceive a number of pious and valuable members added 
 to the communion. But at present he is constrained to say 
 that this interest has abated, that many are becoming more 
 indifferent to the claims of religion.' And yet he has oc- 
 casion ' gratefully to acknowledge the liberality of his 
 parishioners in having subscribed nearly two thousand 
 dollars for the purchase of a farm for the benefit of the 
 rector and his family.' 
 
 In 1833 the depression of the parish or of his spirits was 
 at the lowest point : ' Throughout all the region there has 
 been a general indifference towards religion. The houses 
 of public worship are thinly and irregularly attended, the 
 zeal of multitudes has abated, and many who gave fair 
 promise of being faithful servants of the cross have returned 
 to the world. The rector is pained to say that his congre- 
 gations have been affected by the prevailing spirit of luke- 
 warmness, and he has had the mortification to see some of 
 the communicants apostatize from the faith and bring upon 
 themselves the necessity of being separated from the com- 
 munion of the saints.' 
 
 Yet there were causes for gratitude. The faithful mem- 
 bers generally 'are becoming more decidedly attached to 
 the distinctive principles and doctrines of the church.' 
 Amid the divisions of new sects, continually multiplying, 
 ' many are beginning to see that our ancient church pre- 
 sents to the humble and honest inquirer after truth a place 
 of quiet and an ark of safety.' Despite backsliding, the 
 communicant roll at last touched one hundred. 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 51 
 
 One would like to look deeper into the causes of the 
 spiritual losses above recorded — but it was an emotional 
 age, when acceleration was quickly succeeded by retardation 
 or retrogression, elevation by depression ; and doubtless the 
 preacher's sensitive temperament registered accurately the 
 disturbances of soul around him. 
 
 His recent experience and discouragement contributed 
 to make the prospect of a change more acceptable, — for 
 now his light began to shine abroad : the humble and faith- 
 ful priest and missionary was found out ; he was called to 
 a position not as laborious but equally, perhaps more exact- 
 ing and more conspicuous,— that of chaplain to the univer- 
 sity of his native state. 
 
 That university had only been in operation for about 
 eight years. It was the dominant interest of Jefferson's old 
 age, and he lived to see it open. In it his views of educa- 
 tion were embodied, as a standard for future generations. 
 That individual preference and capacity might have free 
 scope, there was no prescribed course of study. From its 
 teaching the ' poison ' of federalism was sedulously excluded, 
 and of course there could be no 'public establishment of 
 religious instruction.' 'A professorship of theology ' (that 
 ■charlatanry of the mind'), wrote Jefferson to the like- 
 minded Thomas Cooper, ' should have no place in our in- 
 stitution.' He congratulated himself that he had secured 
 Dr. Cooper as head of the infant institution— when from 
 various pulpits, especially the Presbyterian, arose such a 
 ' hue and cry ' that the latter thought it best to decline the 
 appointment; 'they charge him with Unitarianism,' said 
 Jefferson, ' as presumptuously as if it were a crime.' It is 
 manifest that the unexpected vigor of this opposition post- 
 poned for some years the opening of the university, thus 
 
52 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 marking the rise of religious zeal : thirty years before the 
 appointment would have created no excitement. At last 
 the skilful politician struck the right chord, pointing out 
 that troops of young Virginians were at Harvard and 
 other northern colleges imbibing principles at variance with 
 the Missouri compromise: 'those who are against us are 
 fashioning the minds of our youth ' ; we should have a uni- 
 versity that should be the ' rallying centre of the South and 
 the West.' Under the response to that stimulus the build- 
 ings were soon ready for occupancy, but it appears that the 
 faculty did not assemble until the winter of 1826. Among 
 the students that year was Edgar Allan Poe. Some ses- 
 sions later a contagious disease twice visited the university, 
 and several students died of it : Bishop Meade having been 
 invited to preach there improved the occasion, pointing the 
 moral : the visitation was God's rod of affliction — a judg- 
 ment designed to convince men of their dependence on 
 him. We are left to infer that a result of the impression 
 made by the sermon was the creation of a chaplaincy, of 
 which Cobbs was the first incumbent. 
 
 Other evidence of religious awakening, of strong and 
 deep reaction against Jeffersonian ideas, is afforded by the 
 history of the College of South Carolina. For fifteen years 
 Dr. Cooper was connected with that institution, at first as 
 professor of chemistry, for most of the time as president. 
 He was not only antichristian and an infidel — he was ab- 
 solutely irreligious. For him matter and motion made up 
 the universe, and Christianity was the greatest of humbugs. 
 Yet as president he had to conduct daily prayers at the 
 college! — the effect upon the mind of the students can be 
 imagined. Little by little the public conscience mounted 
 against this worse than grotesque anomaly; among those 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 53 
 
 that felt it keenly was the young Stephen Elliott. He had 
 graduated at the college with distinction and had then 
 studied law and practised in Charleston and Beaufort, in- 
 dulging meanwhile in literary pursuits and social gaieties. 
 But in the year 1831 he was deeply moved by the preach- 
 ing of a Presbyterian minister at Beaufort ; his high spirits 
 were chastened; he was converted to serious piety, and 
 turning from the world with all its pleasures and prospects 
 of advancement, he sought admission to the sacred minis- 
 try. While he was prosecuting his studies to that end there 
 took place, in 1834, the moral and spiritual righting of the 
 college : Dr. Cooper and other instructors were discharged, 
 the faculty was reorganized, and a chaplaincy, with chair 
 of Christian Evidences attached, was created. Dr. William 
 Capers was the first nominee for the new position, and upon 
 his declination Stephen Elliott was elected and accepted 
 the appointment. The young Gregg, who had gone up to 
 the college at the time of that exciting crisis, enjoyed the 
 new professor's ministrations and instruction for the re- 
 mainder of his course. 
 
 At that very period the policy of excluding religion from 
 education received its finishing touch, reached its superfine 
 limit, in the foundation of Girard College : not only were 
 ministers of the gospel excluded from its teaching force — 
 they were even forbidden to trespass on the premises. 
 The force of prejudice — as illiberal as the sheerest dogma- 
 tism — could no further go : it was in fact the expiring effort 
 of a past generation, an offence to the awakened conscience 
 of a new. Undoubtedly the second quarter of the nine- 
 teenth century will ever be looked back to as having given 
 an extraordinary propulsion to the cause of Christian edu- 
 cation in America. About the year 1825 Trinity, Hobart, 
 
54 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 and Kenyon colleges were founded, and in 1828 Muhlen- 
 berg began his richly influential labors. To afford educa- 
 tion for the ministry free of charge was a leading motive in 
 the minds of the founders of Amherst College. The 
 Methodists and Baptists were active, especially in Virginia, 
 where the former founded Randolph-Macon and Emory- 
 and-Henry, the latter, Rector and Richmond colleges, and 
 in North Carolina, Wake Forest. In 1841 Alexander 
 Campbell started a seminary for his sect at Bethany, Vir- 
 ginia, and the Cumberland Presbyterians organized their 
 university at Lebanon, Tennessee, in 1844. Nor were 
 the Roman Catholics behind, with their seminaries of 
 Spring Hill, by Mobile, — Mount St. Mary's, Emmitsburg, 
 — St. John's, Fordham, — Holy Cross, Worcester, — and St. 
 Mary's, Delaware. In 1842 Bishop Whittingham and in 
 1 846 Bishop Doane opened colleges in Maryland and New 
 Jersey respectively. 
 
 This kindling enthusiasm for Christian education found 
 earnest response in the breast of the young Leonidas Polk, 
 even from the time when as a cadet at West Point he made 
 his Christian profession. That event profoundly impressed 
 his comrades ; indeed, it was one of the most interesting 
 phenomena of that evangelic age. Up to the date of his 
 conversion no religious influence is known to have ruffled 
 the dead sea of infidelity in which from its inception the 
 academy had been immersed. Among the officers there 
 was no professing Christian, among the cadets no evidence 
 of any religious interest, but much of irreligion. The chap- 
 lain in Polk's time was Charles Pettit Mcllvaine ; for nearly 
 a year he had performed the duties of his office, giving 
 addresses upon the evidences of Christianity, without elicit- 
 ing any perceptible response. It was disheartening work— 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 55 
 
 until at length a single cadet beGame sufficiently interested 
 to call upon him. Mcllvaine gave him' a couple of tracts, 
 one of which in an opportune moment Polk caught up and 
 read— and by its means the work of God was wrought in 
 his soul. It happened (as we say) that he had long been 
 brooding over a severe scholastic disappointment, embit- 
 tered by a sense of injustice ; the collapse of youthful am- 
 bition opened his soul to spiritual influences. He too 
 called upon the chaplain, and evinced by voice and manner 
 that his spirit was profoundly stirred. Henceforth he knelt 
 in prayer at the chapel services — and to the feeling heart 
 that must ever remain the most affecting scene in his event- 
 ful history, and one upon which the imagination will most 
 love to dwell : the solitary kneeling figure and bowed head 
 among the seated ranks of cadets. 
 
 The feeling first awakened among his companions was 
 simply one of overpowering curiosity, — that Polk the high- 
 spirited, the talented, the soldierly, should suddenly turn 
 pious! They could not understand it, but all knew his 
 habitual conscientiousness and none could help respecting 
 him ; through investigation of the case others were touched 
 to seriousness, and ere long the sight of a ' praying squad > 
 rewarded the chaplain for his year of seemingly ineffectual 
 labor. Polk's was the first recorded case in the history of 
 the institution of a cadet making public profession of 
 religion, the first instance there of the ministration of adult 
 baptism. His father chafed greatly at his change and, 
 when summer came and his son returned home, would 
 leave the room if he sought to turn the conversation to 
 what was nearest to his heart. A professorship at Amherst 
 College was now offered the young man, and he was in- 
 clined to accept it : he was conscious of the narrowness of 
 
56 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 his military training and greatly desired an opportunity to 
 read, to attain the proportion of culture, — but his father, 
 ambitious of military distinction for him, would not allow 
 it. And now, to his parents' great chagrin, Polk's heart 
 was irresistibly inclined to the Christian ministry. He had 
 to be satisfied with his father's unwilling acquiescence in his 
 resignation of his lieutenancy after successful graduation in 
 the summer of 1827. Even his mother disapproved the 
 step, and his father told him that he was spoiling a good 
 soldier to make a poor preacher. In the fall of the year he 
 entered the seminary at Alexandria ; the change of spiritual 
 and intellectual environment was complete. He was seri- 
 ously handicapped by lack of suitable literary preparation, 
 but at Alexandria that made the less difference because 
 everything was subordinated, as in his own mind, to evan- 
 gelical divinity. The course in church history was quite 
 inadequate. In the spring of 1830 he was ordered deacon 
 by Bishop Moore and, as we have seen, became his assis- 
 tant at the Monumental Church, and the year following en- 
 countered Cobbs in the convention at Norfolk. But his 
 health had for some time been seriously affected, and his 
 physician prescribed a trip abroad. He sailed accordingly 
 in the summer and spent the winter in Italy. In Rome he 
 thought oftener of St. Paul than of classic story ; in fact, 
 owing to the preoccupation of his mind and its practical 
 nature and lack of historical knowledge he was totally un- 
 prepared to appreciate the remains of ancient and mediaeval 
 art amid which he moved. Paris impressed him with its 
 worldliness, and he was glad to get to London. He was 
 delighted with the rural culture of England, and wrote 
 home : ' The more I see of those who are without slaves the 
 more I am prepared to say that we are seriously wronging 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 57 
 
 ourselves by retaining them.' In June he was at Oxford, 
 where he enjoyed everything but the choral service which, 
 beautiful as it was, seemed to him wholly designed for 
 effect. The university presented, however, the fairest reali- 
 zation he had yet seen of the ideal union of culture and 
 piety, and he sailed homeward in the autumn of 1832 with 
 a great conception in his brain. That very year, in view 
 of the great need of the church in the southwest, the 
 diocesan convention of Tennessee, of which Otey was an 
 active member, entered in its journal a resolution, ' if funds 
 can be obtained, to establish at some eligible location in 
 this diocese a classical and theological seminary of learn- 
 ing, in order to educate or aid in the education of persons 
 who are desirous of obtaining Holy Orders.' 
 
 After ordination by Bishop Ravenscroft, Otey had 
 settled in Maury county, Tennessee, and while doing mis- 
 sion work supported himself by teaching school, meditating 
 much on a union of religious instruction with ' the lessons 
 of the school-room.' At his earnest entreaty, Ravenscroft 
 visited Nashville in 1829 and presided at the first conven- 
 tion of the infant diocese, which later enjoyed the nursing 
 care of Meade and Ives. In the spring of 1833, after a 
 winter spent at his home in Raleigh, Polk also removed to 
 Maury county, where he occupied lands belonging to his 
 family, about fifty miles south of Nashville. That year, the 
 canonical number of resident clergy having been reached, 
 Otey was elected bishop of Tennessee. He was conse- 
 crated at Philadelphia, early in 1834 — a memorable year 
 in our review, — by the venerable White, assisted by both the 
 Onderdonks and Doane. At the first convention over 
 which he presided he spoke, though not hopefully, of the 
 prospects of theological education in the diocese, but hav- 
 
58 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 ing been invited to visit Mississippi by the standing com- 
 mittee there, he encountered on all hands such illiteracy 
 and impiety that he was profoundly impressed by the 
 urgency of the need and the importance and magnitude of 
 the problem. On his return from a second visitation in 
 1836 he wrote of his 'ardent desire, connected with the 
 journey, ... for a literary and theological seminary to 
 meet the wants of Episcopalians in Tennessee, Mississippi 
 and Louisiana.' The imperative need, in view of the ex- 
 clusion of Christian teaching by state institutions, ' of com- 
 bining education and religion in order to form a moral 
 sentiment against the wickedness and lawlessness of the 
 Southwest, — to train up clergy, teachers, and enlightened, 
 virtuous citizens ' ; the existing necessity of sending youth 
 northward for education, at the risk of their health and of 
 the weakening of local ties ; the increasing wealth of the 
 region, — all seemed to him arguments sufficient for begin- 
 ning the work without delay. The convention concurred 
 at all points in the views of its diocesan and referred the 
 matter to a committee (of which Polk was chairman) which 
 recommended the adoption of the bishop's suggestion that 
 agents be appointed forthwith to canvass the territory for 
 subscriptions. 
 
 Cobbs meantime was justifying his friends' confidence, 
 vindicating in his modest way the perfect consonance of 
 Christian doctrine and human learning in the intellectual 
 capital of Virginia. It was a difficult task, requiring a 
 rather exceptional temperament, in a community where 
 religion and its ministers had been regarded with aversion 
 and contempt. It would be interesting and helpful to know 
 precisely what his methods were — but a single glimpse 
 must suffice. Soon after his settlement at Charlottesville 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 59 
 
 he was dining in company when a student present — un- 
 aware of his office, we may hope — displayed his talent by 
 heaping criticism and ridicule upon parsons and preachers. 
 When dinner was over Cobbs went up to him and taking 
 him by the hand said, ' It is not often, my dear sir, that we 
 of the clergy have the benefit of hearing our faults so 
 frankly commented upon. I thank you, and trust that I 
 shall profit by your observations.' One can picture the 
 lad's confusion of countenance ; he was converted by the 
 incident into one of the chaplain's most devoted friends. 
 Cobbs' kindly sensibilities shine through the report of his 
 year's work at the university : ' He is confident that a re- 
 ligious influence is decidedly gaining ground, and he looks 
 forward with pleasing anticipations to the time when that 
 institution will send forth many champions in the cause of 
 the gospel. There is manifested a great regard for religion 
 and its ordinances, and the undersigned can truly say that 
 he never preached to a more orderly and attentive congre- 
 gation than at the University of Virginia. He has been 
 uniformly treated with respect and kindness by the faculty 
 and the students ; indeed, he should feel himself ungrateful 
 if he did not bear this public testimony to the kindness and 
 liberality manifested toward him, as well by the students as 
 by the different families connected with the institution. 
 Among the students are some ten or twelve who are mem- 
 bers of different churches ; these young men have been a 
 great comfort and support to the officiating minister, and 
 though of different churches have been literally a band of 
 brothers. For several sessions they have kept up among 
 themselves a weekly prayer-meeting, in which the cause of 
 religion at that institution is a special subject of suppli- 
 cation. If ever the undersigned has heard earnest and 
 
60 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 fervent prayers, it has been while listening to those pious 
 young men praying for a spiritual blessing on the Univer- 
 sity of Virginia. There is now in operation, and has been 
 for several sessions, a Sunday-school under the supervision 
 of the young men ; this school, though necessarily small, is 
 admirably conducted and is in a most flourishing state. A 
 Bible society has also been formed, of which about ninety 
 of the students are members.' 
 
 While serving as chaplain, Cobbs took charge of the 
 church at Charlottesville, which had been in a depressed 
 condition. His successor testified to the vivifying effect 
 of his labors in that parish. 
 
 When his year's chaplaincy was over, he was urged to 
 remain yet another session, but thought it best to return to 
 home scenes and his former labors. It appears that the 
 growth of his native parish was such as to warrant a divi- 
 sion ; a portion of it accordingly was set off as West Rus- 
 sell parish, and was received into union with the convention 
 of 1836. 
 
 At the same convention a new religious organ, ' The 
 Southern Churchman,' was earnestly commended to the 
 favor of the diocese by both the bishops. On a previous 
 occasion Bishop Moore had praised its ' moderation and re- 
 spect for the opinions of other Christian societies.' 
 
 It is not too much to say that Cobbs' chaplaincy, short 
 as it was, wrought a complete change in the estimate put 
 upon religion at the University of Virginia, working out the 
 sceptical, Jeffersonian leaven, and initiating a new tradition. 
 It is not a little remarkable how fondly and for how many 
 years that single year of labor was remembered : ' His rep- 
 utation as an excellent, God-fearing man, beloved by all, 
 revered by those who knew him best, reached me '— writes 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 61 
 
 Professor Scheie De Vere— ' when I came there in 1844.' 
 Some years before that date a ' neat and commodious 
 chapel ' had been provided there for divine service. 
 
 Before we pass on to his pastorate at Petersburg it would 
 be fitting here to indicate, once for all, his relation to the 
 great political controversies of that day. Cobbs was a 
 Whig— a member by sympathy and conviction of that 
 party whose external record is scarce anything but a series 
 of defeats, — that saw its favorite measures checkmated one 
 by one,— that failed to put its hero into the president's 
 chair — and that yet accomplished the indispensable task of 
 keeping the country together for thirty critical years. The 
 rise of the party was symptomatic of a new stage in the 
 national consciousness ; in a word, the nation, which was 
 a theory only in 1789, had in Clay's and Webster's time 
 become a fact, an entity, a being with a history of half a 
 century, round which memories, affections and hopes might 
 cluster. Cobbs could not, like his neighbor John Randolph, 
 circumscribe his affections by the boundaries of his native 
 state, much as he loved her, — could not conceive and 
 speak of her as his ' country.' He saw that there could 
 be, ought to be and in fact was such a sentiment as love 
 of country, together with sectional and state loves. In a 
 generous soul like his we can discern that expansion of 
 sympathy to the utmost confines of the great republic, — ■ 
 which is in fact so large that few souls are able to contain 
 it. Happily there were enough like him to hold the states 
 together for one generation more. 
 
 The growth of the Whig party in the years 1833—36 was 
 truly phenomenal in the land of Jefferson and Randolph. 
 It was a consequence of a recent crisis in state politics,— 
 a repetition of the old feud between the plain and the 
 
62 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 mountain. The revolutionary constitution was outgrown ; 
 the centre of population had shifted while that of political 
 power remained unaltered. Long-standing dissatisfaction 
 with this inequality came to a climax about the year 1830 
 in a struggle for extension of the suffrage and redistribution 
 of representation in the state legislature, in which the new 
 settlers in the highlands were pitted against the old, slave- 
 holding families of the ' tide- water ' counties. The latter, 
 be it noted, were adherents of the Episcopal church — the 
 former, of the various evangelical sects. Alexander Camp- 
 bell (with whom Cobbs was acquainted) was active in the 
 democratic campaign. In their recoil from the levelling, 
 Jeffersonian tendencies of the highlanders the wealthy 
 planters of the plain and shore threw themselves into the 
 arms of the Whigs. 
 
 We have made mention of slavery. There was a re- 
 markable development of opinion in regard to it in the very 
 period under review. In 1831 Nat Turner's insurrection 
 created wide-spread alarm : some of the speeches occasioned 
 by it in the Virginian assembly the following year must 
 have warmed the hearts of the abolitionists, then in their 
 feeblest infancy as a party. It is perfectly plain that some 
 "Virginians were as fully awake to the ills of slavery as any 
 cf their northern critics, — perhaps more so. The historical 
 opinion concerning it — what we may call the Virginian 
 tradition, — the view of Jefferson, Madison and indeed all 
 the southern statesmen of the first generation of the repub- 
 lic, — was that it was a necessary evil, an inherited evil, it 
 was hoped, transient. And necessary for the clearing of 
 vast tracts of land it apparently was, and necessary in this 
 climate and for the production of the great staples negro 
 labor apparently is, while to the masters slavery was an 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 63 
 
 undoubted ill,— a burden, an anxiety, a heavy cost and 
 responsibility. But now, partly in consequence of the 
 opening up to it, through Indian treaties, of great tracts 
 of the best cotton land, partly in opposition to incipient 
 moral aggression and British emancipation, there sprang 
 up what we may call the Carolinian opinion — that slavery 
 was a positive good, to be perpetuated. And in fact it was 
 an almost unalloyed good to the slave — an indispensable, 
 probationary middle term, civilizing and Christianizing, be- 
 tween the horrors of African savagery and heathenism and 
 the approaching stage of freedom. We note that this view 
 synchronized with the southward migration of leadership 
 in the national councils. Thus there were three opinions : 
 a mass of conservative sentiment, and the abolition and 
 Carolinian views, both equally radical, and destined to in- 
 tensify and enhance at the expense of the first. It is need- 
 less to state to which of the three our subject gave in his 
 undeviating adhesion. 
 
 In 1837 his friend Green became professor of rhetoric 
 and belles-lettres (nauseous term ! ) at his alma mater, Chapel 
 Hill. (It is to be noted how many of the pioneer bishops 
 of the south were conversant, through experience, with 
 educational problems.) The year following his friend Polk 
 was chosen by the General Convention to be missionary 
 bishop of the southwest, and was consecrated at Cincinnati 
 in December by Bishops Meade, Bosworth Smith, Mcll- 
 vaine and Otey, Mcllvaine preaching the sermon. 'The 
 chaplain again met the beloved cadet.' The new bishop 
 was but thirty-two years of age— one of the youngest ever 
 consecrated. He set out straightway, in January, 1839, 
 like an itinerant apostle of old, upon a tour of evangelical 
 exploration over his vast jurisdiction which took him six 
 
64 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 months to accomplish — for his charge included the states 
 of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas, the In- 
 dian Territory and the republic of Texas! He travelled 
 as best he could, chiefly on horseback through brake and 
 briar, through woods, over prairies, through swamps, ford- 
 ing streams. On occasion he would take a river-boat, to 
 find himself amid the motley company described by Thorpe 
 in one of his inimitable sketches : ' Here may be seen jos- 
 tling together the wealthy southern planter and the peddler 
 of tin-ware from New England — the northern merchant 
 and the southern jockey — a venerable bishop and a des- 
 perate gambler— the land speculator and the honest farmer 
 — professional men of all creeds and characters — men from 
 every state in the Union and from every portion of the 
 globe — Wolverenes, Suckers, Hoosiers, Buckeyes, and Corn- 
 crackers, beside a plentiful sprinkling of the half-horse and 
 half-alligator species of men, who are peculiar to " old 
 Mississippi," and who appear to gain a livelihood simply by 
 going up and down the river.' Little demand for the sedate 
 Episcopal church in such a crowd! In Texas particularly 
 Polk encountered a disorderly society, for the raw republic 
 was a refuge for malefactors and — after the violent mone- 
 tary shrinkage of 1837 — a paradise of debtors: as he 
 wended his way among them it was a fruitful theme of 
 conjecture to which class the bishop belonged! 
 
 While Polk was on this picturesque missionary journey, 
 Rutledge removed, after years of hard and faithful work 
 in his native state, to the territory of Florida, having been 
 called to Trinity Church, St. Augustine. Into that mission- 
 ary jurisdiction he imported the strong churchly views of 
 Hobart and Dehon. At the same time, also, Thomas At- 
 kinson, who had turned from the practice of law to divinity, 
 removed from a cure in Norfolk to one in Lynchburg. Of 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 65 
 
 all the good men — some of them truly great — in this group 
 that we are studying, Atkinson most resembled Cobbs in 
 disposition and view, and was of all he whom Cobbs grew 
 to love the most. Finally, also in this year 1839, Cobbs 
 himself effected his second and, as it proved, final removal 
 from home. He was, of course, by this time well known 
 throughout the diocese, and was called to take charge of 
 Bristol parish, Petersburg. There he introduced obser- 
 vance of the saints' days, and exhibited a pattern of priestly 
 life never witnessed in that place before. In 1841 there 
 was a ' general awakening of souls ' throughout the borough ; 
 his report at the next convention yields valuable evidence 
 of his method of improving such periods of revival — of 
 which this was the chief in his experience. He was thank- 
 ful to be able to give a favorable account of the condition 
 and prospects of the parish : ' For several months during 
 the past year there was evidently visible a great degree of 
 sensibility to divine truth, which encouraged the hope that 
 the Spirit of God was moving upon the hearts of many. 
 This sensibility continued to increase till about the begin- 
 ning of winter, when it was heightened to a very remark- 
 able degree of interest. Such was the desire to hear the 
 word that the church was opened for divine service once 
 and frequently twice a day for the space of two months. 
 But whilst the rector felt it his duty and privilege to cher- 
 ish this religious awakening by multiplying his services, he 
 carefully abstained from all measures promotive of artificial 
 excitement. The prayers of the church were invariably 
 and exclusively used on every occasion of worship, and no 
 other means were employed to produce effect but the sim- 
 ple exhibition of gospel truth, followed up by prompt and 
 vigilant pastoral visits.' 
 
 This ' time of refreshing ' completely covered over certain 
 
66 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 old dissensions in the parish which the reconciling, uniting 
 spirit of the new rector had already done much to heal. 
 Cobbs prepared ninety-three souls for confirmation that 
 year : when the day came, and the candidates were invited 
 to come forward, ' it seemed as if the whole congregation 
 was in motion.' Including accessions from other parishes, 
 one hundred and fourteen names were added to the com- 
 municant roll, almost doubling its number. The number 
 of baptisms the same year was forty-two, of whom nineteen 
 were adults. The congregation speedily outgrew the seat- 
 ing capacity of the church ; in consequence of the overflow 
 a mission was begun. ' For want of seats to accommodate 
 those who might be induced to attend the services of the 
 church, the ladies of the parish determined to employ a 
 missionary to preach to the poor of the town, and especially 
 to officiate amongst the families dependent upon the fac- 
 tories.' 
 
 Certain distressing phenomena — the most perplexing 
 cases in pastoral theology — that almost inevitably ensue 
 upon such religious excitement, — morbid introspection, 
 ' poring upon one's corruptions within,' doubts of salvation, 
 melancholy sinking to despair,— elicited Cobbs' greatest 
 homiletic effort, 'The Doubting Christian Encouraged,' 
 upon the text, ' Lord, I believe ; help thou mine unbelief.' 
 It is an inquiry ' into some of the causes of a weak and a 
 doubting faith among believers. For it is obvious that a 
 large number of them are laboring under a heavy burden 
 of doubts and fears ; that their spiritual prospects are often 
 confused and overclouded, and that the calmness of a set- 
 tled and prevailing peace is a stranger to their bosoms. 
 
 ' It is true that in many cases these fears proceed from 
 neglect of duty, from the consciousness of transgressions, 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 67 
 
 from worldly-mindedness and from not attending upon the 
 ordinances of the gospel. In all such cases it is right and 
 proper that Christians should be distressed ; it is a mercy 
 that they are so : these doubts and fears may be the means 
 of their safety, the way by which they are to be brought to 
 self-examination, to repentance and reformation. . . . But 
 yet there are numbers of humble, sincere, conscientious and 
 tender-hearted people who are often distressed with doubts 
 . . . proceeding from the want of a clear view of the doc- 
 trines of the gospel. 
 
 ' i . Some persons confound faith with assurance, and 
 think they cannot have a saving faith unless they are cer- 
 tain of being converted and accepted. 
 
 'To these very common difficulties, experienced by 
 humble and serious inquirers, we would say that faith is a 
 different thing from assurance, from a certain confidence of 
 being converted. Persons may be very confident of being 
 converted, may think to have an assurance of the pardon 
 of their sins, and yet have no true saving faith, no vital 
 religion. Indeed, it sometimes happens that those who 
 have the most confidence and assurance have the least 
 claims to true evangelical faith. 
 
 ' Faith is a looking to Christ, is an humble trusting in 
 Christ, an acceptance of Christ ; it is a belief in the word 
 and promise and power of Christ; it is submission to his 
 laws ; it is the resting upon Christ of one's whole hope of 
 mercy and salvation ; it is the embracing of Christ as he is 
 set forth in the gospel, as the way, the truth, and the life. 
 ... As to the doctrine sometimes taught, that we can- 
 not be Christians unless we know the time and place of our 
 conversion, we would remark that according to this standard 
 of judging we cannot know that we are alive unless we can 
 
68 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 remember the time and place of our natural birth : that 
 where this evidence is wanting we are dead and have never 
 been born. . . . And as regards the witness of the Holy- 
 Spirit, we must determine that important fact not from any 
 glow or excitement or transport of feeling, not from any 
 notion or fancy or impression fastening itself upon the mind, 
 but by calmly comparing our exercises, views, feelings, 
 hopes, desires and conduct with the word of God as 
 revealed in the gospel. 
 
 ' 2. Some persons labor under doubts and fears from mis- 
 apprehending the whole plan of gospel salvation. Being 
 awakened to the knowledge of the truth, seeing and feeling 
 themselves to be poor, miserable, guilty sinners, [they] are 
 afraid to go to Christ — they feel too unworthy, they are not 
 good enough. Others [say they] may have hope and peace 
 and joy, but with me all is darkness and doubt and fear. 
 In the words of the hymn : 
 
 I hear, but seem to hear in vain, 
 
 Insensible as steel ; 
 If aught is felt, 't is only pain 
 
 To find I cannot feel. 
 
 ' Now with these persons the great difficulty is that they 
 endeavor to justify themselves and to become righteous be- 
 fore they go to Christ. . . . Instead of sewing up fig-leaves 
 to make to themselves garments, they must go naked to 
 Christ and be clothed of him in the robes of righteous- 
 ness. . . . [They] will never go to Christ if they wait till 
 they become fit, worthy, good enough, — if they hope to find 
 in themselves any reasons by which they may think them- 
 selves entitled to claim the mercy of God. . . . They must 
 give themselves up unconditionally to God in Jesus Christ, 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 09 
 
 with a full consciousness of being altogether unworthy. . . . 
 In this way the painful conflict in their breasts will be ter- 
 minated, the burden of guilt will be removed; . . . the 
 dark clouds will be dispersed from their spiritual horizon 
 and hope and peace and comfort will be felt in their souls. 
 
 1 3. [Others] overlook one of the great objects of gospel 
 revelation, which was to certify us of God's good will to 
 men. These think they are to determine whether God is 
 willing to have mercy upon them by some strange unnatural 
 feeling, by some peculiar manifestation, by some extraor- 
 dinary impression upon their minds, by some special inward 
 revelation of God's grace and pardon. They say they do 
 believe — but yet with them all is darkness and doubt and 
 fear. No light of hope cheers their dreary prospects, no 
 voice of mercy greets their anxious ears, no evidence from 
 on high has been received that their sins have been forgiven. 
 
 ' The difficulty with these persons is this : they disregard 
 the settled testimony of God's word and institutions, the 
 plain simple purpose of the gospel revelation, and look for 
 an extraneous evidence which is vague and indefinite, — an 
 evidence which can be subjected to no fixed rules of 
 examination but which depends on frames and feelings, 
 upon impulses and fancies. . . . Now if it is by our frames 
 and feelings alone that we are to determine God's purposes 
 towards us— if it is yet to be left to . . . individual illu- 
 mination to determine the momentous question of God's 
 willingness to save sinners, then indeed the gospel was given 
 in vain. ... If it is to be left to our feelings and impulses 
 to ascertain our adoption and acceptance, how are we to 
 distinguish the true from the false, the workings of the 
 Spirit from the conceits of imagination? ... If there is 
 no definite standard by which these feelings are to be tried, 
 
70 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 then all this boasted] assurance, derived alone from this 
 source, is but a blind leap in the dark. Brethren, the great 
 question ... is too momentous to be left to any frames 
 or feelings of mortals. It was the express object of the 
 gospel revelation to certify us of God's willingness to save 
 sinners, — it is now our duty and privilege to be guided by 
 the gospel as a sure and infallible standard. 
 
 ' 4. Some persons are filled with doubts and fears because 
 of an injudicious comparison of their own religious exercises 
 with the exercises of others. They see others strong in the 
 faith, cheerful and happy in the enjoyment of religious 
 comforts, apparently growing in grace and in the know- 
 ledge of Christ, while they themselves are weak and feeble, 
 full of fears, and groaning under a burden of sin and cor- 
 ruption. They therefore become discouraged, they sink 
 down in despondency, and oftentimes conclude that they 
 know nothing of religion. 
 
 'They should remember that all have their trials and 
 difficulties, their doubts and fears, their temptations and be- 
 setting sins, their days of darkness and desertion, . . . and 
 that though they find in their hearts so much sin and cor- 
 ruption and think that surely none can be so unworthy as 
 they, yet that all have to complain of the plague of their 
 hearts and to confess and bewail their infirmities and sinful- 
 ness in the sight of heaven. . . . They must look to Jesus 
 Christ ; from first to last they must go as sinners to the cross 
 of Christ . . . and rest upon no merits or works of their 
 own but altogether upon God's mercy. 
 
 ' 5. The great importance of the interest at stake has a 
 natural tendency to produce, in some, agitation, fearfulness 
 and alarm. Some persons from constitutional temperament 
 are prone to look on the dark and unfavorable side of ob- 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 71 
 
 jects ; they are predisposed to melancholy forebodings and 
 seek morbid gratification in creating and cherishing a crowd 
 of imaginary fears and evils. When persons of this tendency 
 become interested in the momentous truths of religion and 
 find in themselves, after all their efforts, so much sin, they 
 very naturally give way to sadness and melancholy and ask 
 if it is possible that such as they can be Christians. They 
 think that they must be strangers to the converting and 
 sanctifying power of grace. . . . The startling question 
 will sometimes press itself into notice, What if they should 
 be deceived? What if after all their profession of religion 
 before men they should at last become castaways from the 
 presence of God and instead of gaining the joys of heaven 
 should be sentenced to endure the torments of hell? 
 
 ' Now to such we would say that those who have the 
 deepest religious feelings are sometimes most doubtful of 
 their religious attainments ; that where there is most grace 
 there is commonly the most humility ; that a weak faith may 
 be as sincere and saving as a strong one ; . . . that those 
 who have the least confidence and make the least preten- 
 sions are oftentimes the most faithful in duty and the most 
 persevering in well-doing. ... It should be remembered 
 too that the Christian's life here below is a state of warfare, 
 and that no soldier can reasonably expect always to enjoy 
 ease and comfort. . . . Though the way may be rough and 
 the prospect may be dark and their spirits may be sad, yet 
 let them hold on to the promise and all will come right at 
 last ; the hills will recede and the way will become more 
 smooth ; the fury of the storm will be hushed, the clouds 
 will disperse, the birds will resume their songs, the fields 
 will look green and gay and the sun, which had been so 
 long concealed or faintly seen at intervals, will shine forth 
 
72 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 in full-orbed glory and sink to rest without a cloud or speck 
 to dim his disk. 
 
 ' In conclusion we would remark that the best remedy for 
 all these doubts and fears is humble prayer to God. . . . 
 Faith is the gift of God, and we should therefore pray to 
 him to bestow upon us that most precious gift. . . . And 
 we have every encouragement to pray, for God has prom- 
 ised to hear when we call and to give when we ask. . . . 
 Let us then day by day lift up our hearts to God ; let us 
 pour out to him the wants and sorrows of our souls ; . . . and 
 we shall find to our comfort that our hearts, so long con- 
 tracted by doubts and fears, will be relaxed and softened ; 
 the affections of our souls will flow out and fasten them- 
 selves upon the Saviour ; the painful conflict in our bosoms 
 will be terminated; and the blessed peace of God which 
 passeth all understanding will take the place of guilty and 
 accusing fears.' 
 
 In these accents we catch distinctly echoes of the 
 preacher's past experience ; the verification of these ills in 
 his own life at one period made him ever after a wise 
 physician of the soul. 
 
 A noteworthy instance of immediate answer to prayer 
 during his pastorate at Petersburg is attested, beyond the 
 possibility of incredulity, by competent and faithful wit- 
 nesses. A young girl was dying of brain-fever ; her expres- 
 sion of countenance, her straining eyes, her incoherent talk 
 were painful to see and hear. Her poor mother, having 
 exhausted all human aid, groaned out in anguish of mind 
 as her pastor entered to pay his regular visit, ' Oh, if she 
 could only speak to me once more it wouldn't be so hard 
 to let her go ! ' Cobbs' sympathies were profoundly stirred : 
 ' Let us go into an adjoining room,' he said, and there, both 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 73 
 
 kneeling down, he put up a prevailing prayer to God that 
 the longing of that mother's heart might be fulfilled. They 
 returned to the sick-room: the dying girl's face had re- 
 sumed its natural expression, the light of sense shone in her 
 eyes. ' Mother,' she murmured in natural tones, ' I am not 
 afraid to die,' — trying feebly meanwhile to draw from her 
 finger a ring which she said she wished to give to a favorite 
 sister. The revulsion of feeling was almost too much for 
 the mother to bear. 
 
 When in 1841 it was proposed in General Convention to 
 consecrate a bishop for Texas, Cobbs' name was seriously 
 brought forward : proving that at last he had become known 
 beyond the boundaries of his diocese. To his great relief 
 the project fell through, owing to failure of concurrence on 
 the part of the house of deputies, solely on the ground of 
 lack of jurisdiction, Texas being still an independent state. 
 
 He was now a marked man, and when upon the death 
 of Bishop Moore his successor required an assistant, Cobbs 
 was the candidate of the laity but, well aware that he had 
 not Bishop Meade's confidence, he made known through 
 his friend Atkinson his particular desire that his name 
 should not be used. This incident would strike the unen- 
 lightened reader with astonishment ; painful though it be, 
 it must be fully explained and illustrated : history requires 
 that the truth of the matter should be told. 
 
 The evangelical movement was entering its second gen- 
 eration, was progressing into a new stage. Its heroic period 
 was over, its ascendancy absolute, latitudinarianism was 
 extinct. According to an inevitable law, the school, or 
 movement, was now crystallizing into a party, exclusive, 
 intolerant, denunciatory; it had its shibboleths, its party 
 organ. The process was hastened by external pressure — 
 
74 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 the rise of a new and antithetic school. In 1839 the alarm 
 was sounded in convention at Norfolk over the approach 
 of the ' enemy,' the ' heresy ' and ' poison ' of the Oxford 
 tracts, the ' novel doctrines ' of ' restless and speculative 
 men.' At Alexandria, in 1841, the committee on the state 
 of the church reported that though ' the spirit of error and 
 popery ' had been permitted by God, as a punishment, to 
 array itself against the church, Virginia had yet been gra- 
 ciously spared the infection of the plague, and the danger- 
 ous tendency of Oxfordism had become so patent that even 
 the ignorant were not likely to be caught in its snare. Since 
 those without ' stand ready to reproach us with secret lean- 
 ings towards popery,' the report continued, it is ' due to the 
 cause of Protestant truth and real godliness to say distinctly 
 that the church in Virginia disclaims all sympathy with the 
 Oxford tract system and denounces it as containing some 
 of the worst doctrinal errors of popery. We are obviously 
 called upon ... to make ourselves more fully acquainted 
 with the hydra heresies, superstitions and abominations of 
 that corrupt church from which we have been happily de- 
 livered, and with whose worse than "beggarly elements" 
 some who call themselves Protestants have recently become 
 so much enamored.' The report was approved 'by a very 
 large majority.' At Staunton, in 1842, Bishop Meade re- 
 turned to the charge, inveighing against the 'heretical 
 opinions and Romanistic tendencies ' of the new school, 
 and its extravagant view of sacerdotal authority. 'Thou- 
 sands of martyrs,' he said, ' died the most cruel deaths rather 
 than for a moment assent to doctrines and practices of the 
 Church of Rome which some would now have us believe 
 differ little from our own.' He deplored the suspicion re- 
 awakened by the new movement of an affinity between that 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 75 
 
 church and ours, whereas of late there had been a growing 
 conviction that the line between the churches of England 
 and Rome was "so broad and deep that fellowship was 
 impossible.' William Sparrow, the new professor of divinity 
 at the Alexandria Seminary, thought that ' Tractism ' ma- 
 terialized religion, to the dishonor of God's word ; ' Evan- 
 gelical and high-church principles do not agree,' he wrote ; 
 'a man cannot hold Apostolical [or, as he branded it, 
 'digital'] succession and Protestant principles.' 
 
 With such undiscriminating condemnation, with the spirit 
 and mode of expression of these utterances, Cobbs and a 
 few like him found it impossible to sympathize, and were 
 in consequence regarded with suspicion by the dominant 
 majority. For now, narrowed by such unreasoning reaction, 
 the evangelical movement degenerated into the low-church 
 party. The genial missionary zeal of former time hardened 
 into grim dogma, — that of the unconditional damnation of 
 the heathen. The ictus was made to fall upon the article 
 of conscious conversion, and there was much fraternizing 
 with sectarians. Every reaction has its compensations ; we 
 note with satisfaction and a degree of surprise that in so 
 short a time, comparatively, the old, bitter sectarian hatreds 
 of the days of disestablishment had been mollified if not 
 actually extinguished. It is a pity that that desirable con- 
 summation could not be attained without disparagement 
 of apostolic order. For there was a disposition to regard 
 episcopacy as an accident, expedient to preserve, no doubt, 
 and historically justifiable, but by no means essential to the 
 being of the church. Emphasis upon the grace of orders 
 was stigmatized as ' sacerdotalism.' The sacraments were 
 forms to which grace could not be ' tied ' ; belief that they 
 did effect something was 'superstition.' Baptism was an 
 
76 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 ordinance of the Lord, but 'regeneration' was not to be 
 falsely associated with it ; the eucharist was a commemo- 
 rative ceremony. Informal prayer-meetings were greatly 
 favored ; stress was laid on sermons as working conversion, 
 —but the liturgy could be altered or abbreviated at will : 
 strict adhesion to the rubrics was stigmatized as ' formalism.' 
 ' To save a soul,' it was fondly reiterated, ' is more than 
 rubrics and canons,' — but how salvation was forwarded by 
 breaking them was not made clear. Vestments, if not 
 ' rags of popery,' were mere toggery. It is noteworthy that 
 Bishop Moore had repeatedly to plead for the surplice and 
 for conformity to rubrics. It may be questioned whether, 
 if about the time he actually left it that good man had been 
 just coming on the scene, it would not have seemed strange 
 to him. There reigned a truly superstitious dread of ritual, 
 as if there actually was some sorcery about it, — and charity 
 failed at mention of Rome: the abhorrence felt for that 
 church resembled rabies. Personal piety tended to harden 
 into the ungracious, narrowly prohibitory, — denunciation 
 of card-playing, the dance, the theatre, was its shibboleth. 
 
 Somewhat of this aversion to the Romish system and to 
 ritualism, somewhat of this Puritan piety, Cobbs un- 
 doubtedly shared, but through his study of the Anglican 
 divines, above all, through his thorough assimilation of the 
 prayer-book, the spirit of his religion was truly catholic. 
 He accepted all the articles, the nineteenth to the twenty- 
 ninth, the sacramental series, as well as the preceding, the 
 anthropological. He was perhaps not quite up to the ele- 
 vation of the Institution office ; he accepted cordially the 
 doctrine of apostolical succession, believing in ' a divine 
 commission as well as a divine call,' and he wrote of ' the 
 eucharist,'— but the term 'altar' was not wholly agreeable 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 77 
 
 to him. He believed in baptismal regeneration — that ' then 
 the divine spark is kindled ' which after requires constant 
 feeding. There could be little sympathy between him and 
 one who denied, as his bishop did, that grace was ' tied ' to 
 baptism any more than to ordination! Cobbs was filled 
 with the churchly and liturgical idea ; he was loyal ; he 
 heartily loved the service and found it no hardship but a 
 help to obey the rubrics. He was well disposed to those 
 not of his communion — but he used to say, ' Nothing so 
 promotes peace between neighbors as a good fence.' He 
 was convinced that the Oxford movement, all things being 
 considered, was doing more good than harm ; he did not 
 subscribe to all the tracts by any means, but he sympathized 
 with the movement as a whole, believing that its insistence 
 upon ecclesiological principles was greatly needed. He 
 abhorred party strife, most of all within the church; he 
 never used the terms 'high' and 'low,' — was never known 
 to apply a party epithet to a brother. The very symmetry 
 of his character exposed him to misconstruction by one- 
 sided natures ; because he loved the church they suspected 
 his evangelical sincerity. These doubts of his soundness in 
 the faith hurt him, there is no denying it, acutely — but he 
 held his peace, and such was his patience under misrepre- 
 sentation, such the beautiful proportion of his gifts, that the 
 absence of resentment, of any salient idiosyncrasy, caused 
 suspicion of his strength of character among uncongenial 
 minds. They knew not his steadfastness. And so it came 
 to pass that this simple, affectionate, humble and holy man 
 of God felt out of place in his own "Virginia and, sharp as 
 was the wrench at last to his very heartstrings, grew recon- 
 ciled to the thought of a change. 
 
 In 1843 he was deservedly honored with the doctor's 
 
78 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 degree in divinity— Hobart College honoring itself by con- 
 ferring it on him — and accepted a call to St. Paul's Church, 
 Cincinnati. His parting sermon to his congregation at 
 Petersburg was upon the text, ' Jesus wept,' and every heart 
 was touched and every eye moist when in closing he begged 
 his hearers' forgiveness if in the course of his pastorate he 
 had, however inadvertently, injured any. 
 
 On leaving Virginia for a free state he freed his slaves, 
 but they preferred to follow him. 
 
 The same year Thomas Atkinson left Virginia for Balti- 
 more. Clearly, ecclesiastical leadership was departing from 
 the diocese as political from the state. The year was also 
 noteworthy for church progress, bearing upon the course of 
 our history, in other quarters, especially the publication of 
 Bishop Otey's ' Three Sermons.' These ' fell like a bomb- 
 shell among the denominations of the Southwest,' wrote 
 Green, ' and started the church in Mississippi in the right 
 direction.' They were without doubt the first important 
 and characteristic production of the young southern church, 
 and form a landmark in its history. They were apologetic 
 in their nature, as the production of a missionary age is 
 bound to be; their assertion of church principles while 
 temperate was firm and clear. The first sermon treated of 
 the unity of the church, recommending to the Campbellites 
 the Apostles' Creed as a ' concise summary ' of Scripture 
 truth ; the second was on the ministry, and while teaching 
 that ordination confers distinct authority, and appealing to 
 the sacraments as witnessing to the continuity of our orders, 
 the charge of exclusiveness was shown to be equally valid 
 against those who urge it most strongly, namely, the Pres- 
 byterians. The last in the series defended the doctrine of 
 apostolical succession, the three orders, and their God- 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 79 
 
 derived authority to teach, baptize, discipline— remitting 
 and retaining sins— and to do whatever else the Lord 
 commanded. 
 
 Even Polk had testified that he found in the Oxford 
 tracts nothing on the subject of apostolic succession that 
 had not been written before. Something in the constitu- 
 tion of Polk's mind — his love of system and order — made 
 the corporate idea and organization of the church natural 
 and agreeable to him. 
 
 In 1 843° Alexander Gregg became a candidate for orders. 
 Elliott's was presumably the initial influence in that direc- 
 tion, for his father, though upright and benevolent, was, as 
 in so many cases already noticed, not a religious man. At 
 college Gregg had evinced exceptional strength of char- 
 acter, withstanding the common temptations of student life, 
 stemming the current of popular opinion, casting his influ- 
 ence against the prevalent insubordination. After gradua- 
 tion he studied law, was admitted to the bar, and after a 
 brief practice surrendered tempting prospects of worldly 
 success for the service of Christ and his church. He was 
 baptized and confirmed by Bishop Gadsden in St. David's 
 Church, Cheraw, and straightway began his studies for the 
 holy ministry. The step was a severe disappointment to 
 his father, who had other ambitions for him, but he became 
 reconciled to it in the course of time. 
 
 Cobbs meantime completed his short pastorate in Cincin- 
 nati. He could not long be left in a subordinate position ; 
 he was marked for a bishopric. We know how he shrank, 
 by reason of his physical constitution, from extreme cold ; 
 the winter of i843-'44 may have been severe in the Ohio 
 valley, — may have convinced him that he could not stand 
 the climate. Perhaps too he found the ecclesiastical tern- 
 
80 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 perature frigid, and no improvement on that he had left : 
 the bishop of Ohio had lately put forth a bulky and wither- 
 ing review of ' Oxford Divinity,' which in his opinion was 
 ' little else than popery restrained] while popery was the 
 Antichrist — 'that Man of Sin revealed in the Scriptures.' 
 In the Tractarian train he looked to see confession and 
 transubstantiation come, with half-communion, image-wor- 
 ship, purgatory and indulgences. Yet this truly great bishop 
 spoke of Cobbs in no measured terms, as the following 
 noble tribute witnesses. After alluding in his convention 
 address to dimissory letters received, he broke into this 
 eloquent strain : ' I must add, with a deep sense of our loss 
 and of the great gain of another diocese, that the Rev. 
 N. H. Cobbs, D.D., whom I have just before mentioned as 
 having been received into this diocese from Virginia, has 
 left us, after so short a connection with us, to take charge 
 of the diocese of Alabama as its bishop, and is waiting his 
 consecration at the ensuing General Convention. 
 
 ' Greatly beloved and eminently valued in the diocese of 
 Virginia, where he had long labored most profitably, I ex- 
 pected much of him in the important charge to which he 
 removed in Cincinnati. I saw enough of him there during 
 my spring visitation to know that he was the man for that 
 field, and that if kept in it by the good providence of God 
 the church in that very growing city would be greatly 
 blessed. Though truly bereaved in his departure, I can- 
 not but rejoice that by our loss the church in Alabama 
 obtains such a bishop and our house of bishops such a 
 brother.' 
 
 Unqualified praise this, — unwonted, and so all the more 
 impressive, from the lips of Bishop Mcllvaine. 
 
 Cobbs' name had been mooted by the clergy of Indiana, 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 81 
 
 desirous of completing their diocesan organization, and 
 nothing but suspicion that he would decline the call pre- 
 vented the assent of the laity. So it came about that Ala- 
 bama secured the prize. He was elected by the convention 
 that met at Greensboro in that state in May, 1844 — and 
 the unanimity of the election did much to determine his 
 favorable decision. 
 
 On the 20th of October he was consecrated in old Christ 
 Church, Philadelphia, by the presiding bishop, Philander 
 Chase, assisted by Bishops Meade, Mcllvaine, Doane and 
 Otey. 
 
Ill 
 
 EPISCOPATE 
 
 THE house of bishops at the time when Cobbs entered 
 it was largely composed of truly remarkable men, — 
 men whose figures stand out more clearly as they fall into 
 the perspective of history. Its late president, the saintly 
 Griswold — whom of all the northern bishops Cobbs most 
 closely resembled in disposition — had been succeeded by 
 the indomitable Chase, the first example of a fresh and 
 thoroughly American episcopal type, — now, of course, a 
 veteran in the service. There were twenty-one other 
 bishops. Of the Onderdonks, leaders of the high-church 
 party, lately towering in their power and pride of place, 
 one had just been smitten down and murky clouds were 
 gathering about the fair fame of the other. The susceptible 
 Ives was there, the ' lion-hearted ' Doane— with no presen- 
 timent of the pitfall in his path,— the intrepid De Lancey, 
 the versatile Hopkins, — and the high episcopal ranks had 
 lately been reinforced by the fervent Whittingham. Then 
 there were the evangelical stalwarts, Meade, Mcllvaine 
 and Eastburn; the apostle of the northwest, Jackson 
 Kemper; and the great trio of southern bishops, Otey, 
 Polk and Elliott,— Otey, the apostle of the southern church 
 (he had lately returned from prodigious tours through 
 
 82 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 83 
 
 Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas and the 
 Indian Territory) — a man of heroic mould, deep piety, true 
 wisdom. The first and last of these properties might seem 
 to have been embodied more conspicuously in the other 
 two — in Polk the hero and Elliott the scholar of the south- 
 ern church. And now the group was completed and became 
 four-square by the accession of Cobbs, in whom peculiarly 
 that other quality of saintliness was incarnated. Otey in- 
 cluded them all in noble proportion, mental, moral and 
 spiritual qualities, loftiness of character, sanctity of soul, 
 enlightenment of mind — but they were flashed back with 
 more vivid gleam, as from the facets of a prism, by his 
 three compeers. And so they stand, a wondrous group, the 
 apostle, the hero, the saint and the sage : one may look 
 far to find their like. And in their hands, providentially, 
 the future of the southern church reposed. 
 
 In November, immediately after his consecration, the 
 new bishop visited the home of his youth in his beloved 
 Virginia, and then occurred one of the most affecting in- 
 cidents in his life : his aged father bowed his stiff neck to 
 the yoke of the Saviour and received confirmation at his 
 son's hands. It was a scene of a nature to excite heart- 
 felt emotion among all that witnessed it. 
 
 Thereafter the bishop crossed the mountains to Cincin- 
 nati, made the necessary preparations for removal, and 
 bade his congregation at St. Paul's farewell. The boat he 
 took was wrecked near the confluence of the Ohio with the 
 Mississippi ; no lives were lost, and without waiting for the 
 recovery of the goods on board, the passengers took the 
 next boat down the river. In due time his books were 
 forwarded to him, — decidedly the worse for their sojourn 
 beneath the flood. From New Orleans the bishop and his 
 
84 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 family kept on their way by water to Mobile, and before 
 the end of the year were breathing the balmy airs of Ala- 
 bama. 
 
 At the time of Cobbs' birth, and probably even as late 
 as the year 1 800, the number of hundreds of white inhabi- 
 tants in the territory of Alabama, exclusive of Mobile, which 
 was not actually within it, could almost have been counted 
 on the fingers of one hand, but in the years immediately 
 following the purchase of Louisiana immigrants began to 
 pour in at a constantly accelerated rate. They settled, 
 naturally, along the valleys of the rivers Tombigbee and 
 Alabama, and grew exceedingly restive under the continued 
 occupation of Mobile and consequent control of the estuary 
 by a foreign power. The United States laid claim to the 
 city and adjacent territory under the terms of the Louisiana 
 purchase, but the Spaniards refused to admit the claim and 
 persisted in keeping possession until in 181 3 General Wil- 
 kinson took advantage of the exigency of the times to wrest 
 the fort from them and secure for the excited dwellers along 
 the watery avenues of commerce unimpeded access to the 
 Gulf. Thenceforth for many years the growth of popula- 
 tion and the prosperity of the region were uninterrupted 
 and quite extraordinary. When in 181 7 Mississippi be- 
 came a state, Alabama was erected into a separate territory 
 and the city of Montgomery was planned. Only two years 
 after, the new territory was admitted into the Union as the 
 twenty-second state. In 1826 its capital was located at 
 Tuscaloosa, and there the state university was established 
 in 1831. 
 
 The latter year was likewise marked by the organization 
 of the diocese. When it opened, there were in the state 
 only two clergymen of the church, one at Mobile and one 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 85 
 
 at Tuscaloosa. A convention was called, and Bishop 
 Brownell of Connecticut, who had lately made a missionary 
 tour of discovery in the southwest, was invited to take 
 charge of the infant diocese. He visited it in the years 
 1835 and 1837, and thenceforth was relieved by Polk. 
 Brownell took an unfeigned interest in the prosperity of the 
 church in that distant field, one of his best bequests to it 
 being the devoted young Seymour Lewis. 
 
 A few years before, Pope Leo XII had despatched a 
 Frenchman named Michael Portier as the first Roman 
 bishop of Mobile. 
 
 By the beginning of 1837 the financial bubble was 
 distended to the bursting point. Words of to-day would 
 be too tame to depict that era of wild speculation : we 
 gladly fall back upon contemporary records — which prove 
 beside how hard and sterile that field must have been for 
 the Episcopal church. 
 
 Immigrants, chiefly from Virginia and the Carolinas, 
 came streaming in : they filled the river-boats, — the roads 
 across country and by the cane-brakes were dotted with the 
 white tops of the wagons containing their goods, while 
 alongside marched troops of slaves. For * marvellous ac- 
 counts had gone forth of the fertility of those virgin lands, 
 and the productions of the soil were commanding a price 
 remunerating to slave labor as it had never been remuner- 
 ated before. 
 
 ' The proportion of young men, as in all new countries, 
 was great, and the proportion of wild young men was, 
 unfortunately, still greater,' and little wonder, when we 
 consider the demoralizing effect of a ' violent disruption of 
 family ties, a sudden abandonment of the associations and 
 influence of country and of home — of the restraints of old 
 
86 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 authority and opinion, — a sudden plunge into the whirling 
 vortex of a new and seething population in which the ele- 
 ments were curiously and variously mixed with free manners 
 and not over-puritanic conversation.' 
 
 Of a specimen settlement near the Mississippi line we 
 read : ' Gamblers, then a numerous class, included, the vil- 
 lage boasted a population of some five hundred souls, about 
 a third of whom were single gentlemen who had come out 
 on the vague errand of seeking their fortune, or the more 
 definite one of seeking somebody else's. . . . The condi- 
 tion of society may be imagined : vulgarity, ignorance, 
 fussy and arrogant pretension, unmitigated rowdyism, bul- 
 lying insolence, if they did not rule the hour seemed to 
 wield unchecked dominion. The workings of these choice 
 spirits were patent upon the face of -society, and the modest, 
 unobtrusive, retiring men of worth and character (for there 
 were many, perhaps a large majority of such) were almost 
 lost sight of in the hurly-burly of those strange and shifting 
 scenes. . . . Nothing was settled. Chaos had come again, 
 or rather, had never gone away. Order, Heaven's first law, 
 seemed unwilling to remain where there was no other law 
 to keep it company.' 
 
 Southwestward accordingly flocked the cormorants of the 
 law, ' because magnificent accounts came from that sunny 
 land of most cheering and exhilarating prospects of fussing, 
 quarrelling, murdering, violation of contracts — in fine, of a 
 flush tide of litigation in all of its departments, civil and 
 criminal. It was extolled as a legal Utopia.' 
 
 Among the throngs of adventurers — froth on the crest 
 of the turbid wave of civilization as it swept westward — 
 appeared strange characters illustrating each of the deadly 
 sins (and not a few that summed them all up in one), who 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 87 
 
 have been impaled by the pens of clever writers of the day 
 and so preserved for the inspection of after generations. 
 One by one they swim before our vision, — personifications 
 of gluttony, 'chronic thirst,' inordinate abuse of tobacco, 
 gambling and avarice, parasitic laziness, furious temper, 
 sensitive pride. There was ' Cave Burton,' who never ' rose 
 from a table satisfied though he often rose surfeited. . . . 
 He reckoned every calamity by the standard of the stomach. 
 If a man . . . lost his health, so much was discounted 
 from life— that is, from good living : if he died, death had 
 stopped his rations.' There was 'Ovid Bolus,' the fine- 
 artist in lying, in 'promises to pay,'— for whose genius 
 ' truth was too small, fact too dry and commonplace.' But 
 he who o'ertopped all others, who had the good fortune to 
 find in Johnson Hooper a biographer of true Chaucerian 
 grain, in whose work he yet stalks across the stage, a veri- 
 table Quixote of dishonor— was the renowned ' Captain 
 Simon Suggs of Tallapoosa,' whose career of cunning was 
 the working out of ' his favorite aphorism : It is good to be 
 shifty in a new country.' 
 
 It is interesting to know that Bishop Cobbs knew Hooper 
 well, and often laughed heartily over his humorous master- 
 piece. 
 
 In that society ' religion was scarcely heard of except as 
 furnishing the oaths and technics of profanity.' Picture 
 the state of the exchequer of a foreign or diocesan mis- 
 sionary society in the neighborhood of old ' Caesar Kasm,' 
 under whose scornful gaze ' virtue herself looked like some- 
 thing sneaking and contemptible ' and who was ' selfish to 
 that extent that, if by giving up the nutmeg on his noon 
 glass of toddy he could have Christianized the Burmese 
 empire, millennium would never come for him. 
 
88 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 'Public office represented, by its incumbents, the state 
 of public morals. . . . Out of sixty-six receivers of public 
 money in the new states, sixty-two were discovered to be 
 defaulters. . . . And what a criminal docket! What 
 country could boast more largely of its crimes? What 
 more terrific murders? . . . And almost anything made 
 out a case of self-defence : a threat, a quarrel, an insult, 
 going armed (as almost all the wild fellows did), shooting 
 from behind a corner or out of a store door, in front or from 
 behind, — it was all self-defence ! . . . And what magnifi- 
 cent operations in the land offices ! Such superb forays on 
 the treasuries, state and national! . . . And in Indian 
 affairs, — the very mention is suggestive of the poetry of 
 theft, the romance of larceny! Swindling Indians by the 
 nation! Stealing their land by the township ! Conducting 
 the nation to the Mississippi river, stripping them to the 
 flap, and bidding them God-speed as they went howling 
 into the western wilderness to the friendly agency of some 
 sheltering Suggs duly empowered to receive their coming 
 annuities and back rations! What's Hounslow heath to 
 this? ' 
 
 Retribution came in the commercial panic of 1837 and 
 the enforced 'stampede' of the worst characters: for a 
 time the one question was as to ' the nearest and best route 
 to Texas.' But deliverance was not to be bought so easily : 
 the fantastic schemes, the reckless expenditure, the financial 
 dissipation of years involved the wreck of state credit as 
 well as that of individuals ; by a miracle of financiering for 
 which she cannot be too grateful Alabama was saved from 
 Repudiation, — but Mississippi's credit was submerged. 
 
 It was that crisis and the monetary depression that fol- 
 lowed that gave a quietus to Bishop Otey's project of a 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 89 
 
 literary and theological seminary for the southwestern dio- 
 ceses. A diocesan school for girls which he had striven to 
 establish in Tennessee had to be closed almost as soon as 
 it was opened. 
 
 The social condition just sketched, while on the one hand 
 to the amused spectator it appeared truly Chaucerian in 
 its wealth of humor and genuine good nature, its crew of 
 quaint characters, was yet on the other hand, religiously 
 considered, nothing less than a relapse into heathenism. 
 This may seem severe ; it is susceptible of proof. Coarse 
 vices, greed for money, monstrous selfishness, — these are 
 the very definition of heathenism, and they were sufficiently 
 common and pronounced to impress their character upon 
 that unsettled society in the fourth decade of the nineteenth 
 century. And unhappily such ebullitions of heathenism 
 leave their lingering traces, which it takes decades, genera- 
 tions even to work out. Heathenism mitigated — or as 
 some would say, not without justice, aggravated — by re- 
 vivalism (some of the horrors of which formed one of the 
 ' adventures of Simon Suggs ' : to that classic the curious 
 may be referred for certain repulsive phenomena of a sys- 
 tem whose essential, laudable motive was the rescue of 
 souls from heathenism) — could one imagine a more forbid- 
 ding environment for the Episcopal church — one in which 
 it was less wanted and more needed? One fact we may 
 affirm without hesitation or qualification, — that the life-work 
 in such a society of a bishop like Nicholas Hamner Cobbs 
 was of inestimable value merely from the point of view of 
 the political economist and secular historian. 
 
 The worst, to be sure, was over before he arrived. The 
 sober, industrious, honest and worthy citizens, who may 
 admittedly have been in the majority even during the car- 
 
90 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 nival of speculation, when it was abruptly ended emerged 
 into prominence and took the reins into their hands. A 
 very few years then sufficed to work magical transforma- 
 tions in the outward aspect of things : ' the rude settlement ' 
 became ' the improved neighborhood, with its school-houses 
 and churches ; the log cabin ' gave place ' to the mansion ' 
 (often with imposing, columnar portico), — 'the wilderness, 
 to the garden and the farm.' The best cotton lands were 
 speedily converted into broad plantations. A deleterious 
 consequence attended the rapid and ruthless destruction of 
 mighty forests : the sunbeams playing for the first time upon 
 the freshly cleared soil engendered a plague of malaria. 
 The social life of the new epoch, as is the rule in young 
 societies, was hearty and hospitable, but hardly more favor- 
 able to literature than that it superseded. Pleasures that 
 perish in the enjoyment were the pastime of all classes and 
 ages, — for gentlemen, the deer- and fox-hunt and the horse- 
 race, — for ladies, the drive, the social call and the dance. 
 The all-absorbing and exciting theme was politics; the 
 most characteristic institution of the period a composite 
 entertainment the occasion of which was political discus- 
 sion. A rude platform would be constructed under the 
 shade of a spreading tree; champions of the Whig and 
 Democratic creeds would be brought together upon it ; folk 
 would come from far and wide to enjoy their feats and flights 
 of oratory, in the intervals of which a band would play, 
 while refreshment was provided by a monster barbecue. 
 A horse-race would commonly be an additional attraction, 
 — and the company experienced a sense of incompleteness 
 if the debate and the day did not wind up with a duel. 
 
 The ' miserable passions of the hustings ' awoke the ire 
 of at least one aspirant toward the ideal, one of the first 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 91 
 
 graduates of the University of Alabama, and the literary 
 glory and shame of his state in the generation before the 
 war,— Alexander Beaufort Meek of Tuscaloosa, and later, 
 of Mobile. Meek labored zealously— like his correspondent, 
 William Gilmore Simms — to build up a local literature : ' I 
 am anxious,' he wrote to Simms, ' for the [Southern Quar- 
 terly] Review to go ahead as a southern organ — as a reflex 
 of southern mind, feeling and spirit. ... I am convinced 
 we cannot have home independence of any kind — in com- 
 merce, manufactures, politics or what not, until we have a 
 home independence of Mind. This is the end at which 
 the great southern reformation should begin.' But, he 
 bewails, 'hereabouts our mental atmosphere, like the in- 
 terior of a gin-room, is impregnated almost entirely with 
 cotton.' 
 
 Some forcible utterances that have by no means lost 
 their point occur in an oration of his with the quaint title 
 'Jack Cadeism and the Fine Arts,' which was delivered 
 before the literary societies of La Grange College in the 
 year 1841. He deplores the mercantile spirit of the age, 
 so antagonistic to literature and art, — the 'foul incubus ' of 
 materialism. It is an ' age of utility,' of physical as against 
 intellectual greatness. The southwest is engrossed in 
 monetary concerns. Even college-educated youth become 
 immersed in money-getting to the neglect of letters. As 
 for 'southern literature!' — it is non-existent, save for Gil- 
 more Simms : periodical ventures, all attempts fail ; there is 
 general contempt for ideal interests. He concludes by 
 advocating state encouragement of the fine arts by the 
 erection of public buildings of true architectural quality 
 which should be adorned with statues and paintings. 
 
 In the prosecution of his meritorious ambition to create 
 
92 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 a distinctive, native literature, Meek attempted various 
 kinds of composition, especially poetry and history ; in the 
 latter dealing with romantic passages in the early annals of 
 the southwest, — in the former, of luxuriant, truly Moore-ish 
 sentiment, fancy and verse-flow, treating chiefly of love, 
 with occasional bacchanalian strains, and glowing descrip- 
 tions of southern landscape, with its reaches of sunny water, 
 its rich perfumes and bright-feathered songsters. 
 
 It is apparent that culture had then and there a like 
 struggle for existence with true religion against their com- 
 mon foes, materialism and fanaticism. The relation " is 
 profound ; genuine culture refines, subtilizes and prepares 
 the mind for religious impressions, while religion opens the 
 soul to ideas of beauty. And it is an open secret that the 
 Episcopal church in particular nourishes and seems in its 
 extension to require a considerable degree of culture : hence 
 the vital importance of education in its view. 
 
 If now we put ourselves the practical and engrossing 
 question which the subject of our memoir must often have 
 pondered : What is the explanation of the backwardness of 
 the church in the southern states? — we may find on reflec- 
 tion that it has been answered in the last few pages. One 
 who attentively considers it must be struck by the fact that 
 the century was a third gone before there were bishops 
 west of the Alleghanies and south of the Ohio, and that 
 the states for which they were consecrated — Kentucky and 
 Tennessee — were of forty years' standing. Seven more 
 years had to elapse before there was a diocesan bishop in 
 the vast tract of country, equal in area to western Europe, 
 west of the Savannah river and south of the Tennessee 
 line — in the Gulf states, that is, with Georgia and Arkansas. 
 Then, in 1841, Bishop Polk, resigning his missionary juris- 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 93 
 
 diction, became diocesan of Louisiana, and Stephen Elliott 
 was consecrated for the bishopric of Georgia, at the call of 
 seven clergymen, with whom eight laymen concurred — and 
 these formed, we are told, much the largest convention 
 held since the organization of the diocese! Alabama had 
 to wait three more years, and for years after that the great 
 states of Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas remained 
 missionary jurisdictions. In fact, the church in that whole 
 section was not fully organized until the century was more 
 than half gone, — until the very eve of the civil war. 
 
 Many reasons may be alleged for this backwardness 
 which in a comprehensive view seem sufficient to account 
 for it. They may be distributed for convenience' sake into 
 external and internal, and under the former head geo- 
 graphical, social, temperamental and religious causes may 
 be summarized. It seems as if the time had come for such 
 an analysis, that we may see clearly where and how we 
 stand. 
 
 In the first place, then, the most patent and striking ex- 
 planation, doubtless, is the geographical, both physical and 
 political : the enormous extent of the territory under review, 
 the lack of facilities of travel (the system of railroad com- 
 munication between the Atlantic and the Mississippi was 
 established only a few years before the war), and the lack 
 of centres of population. But these physical considerations 
 are utterly inadequate, for they bore equally upon all de- 
 nominations, and Baptist and Methodist exhorters, in spite 
 of them, had early penetrated everywhere. The absence 
 of flourishing centres of industrial and literary activity is 
 more noteworthy, for it is indubitable that a civic atmo- 
 sphere, with its constituent culture, is congenial to the church, 
 — and the absence of such was signal in that time ; in the 
 
9-1 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 whole vast region there was only one city that could be 
 called great, and there in fact and in the smaller centres, 
 Savannah and Mobile, the church did earliest take vigorous 
 root. At the date of Bishop Elliott's consecration more 
 than half the strength of his diocese was concentrated in 
 Savannah. 
 
 So transition is effected to the social causes, which were 
 of weight. The bishops constantly had occasion to com- 
 plain not only of the scattered condition of the population 
 but even more of its continual change: it was restlessly, 
 ceaselessly shifting, here to-day and gone to-morrow. Its 
 nature must be considered, composed so largely of young 
 adventurers with no ties to bind them to past or future, 
 existing in consequence in the present, the visible and the 
 tangible, — what care had they for the unseen and eternal, 
 — what sense of the need of salvation? Old people and 
 children were relatively few in those raw communities; 
 there was scant respect for age, for ancient institutions. 
 We may instance ' Sam Hele,' who ' had no respect for old 
 things, and not much for old persons ; established institu- 
 tions he looked into as familiarly as into a horse's mouth, 
 and with about as much respect for their age.' In him the 
 faculty of veneration was absolutely wanting, and ' he be- 
 lieved that everything marvellous was a lie.' How could 
 not the church only, with her stable, conservative genius, 
 but Christianity in any form, or religion itself, with its 
 supernatural claims, find any foothold in such neighbor- 
 hoods? 
 
 The wide-spread lack of education must be considered, 
 and most of all the rampant materialism, the unmitigated 
 secularism of which a single entry in Otey's journal affords 
 a mental photograph : ' Rode to Memphis. The town was 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 95 
 
 filled with Indians and the people too busily engaged in 
 traffic to think of their spiritual interests.' Let us adduce 
 further testimony from the bishop's writings ; it will appear 
 conclusively that we are not painting the shadows too dark. 
 
 ' In a vast majority of instances the young who are just 
 rising into manhood are totally ignorant of the nature and 
 extent of their obligations as moral and accountable beings. 
 They can give shrewd and intelligent answers to all questions 
 concerning traffic and trade and the value of various kinds 
 of property, but as to [their religious] obligations . . . they 
 have been taught nothing, they know nothing, and often- 
 times care nothing. The example of their parents has led 
 them to regard money as the chief good, and in its acquisi- 
 tion all advantages are to be taken which the law will allow, 
 or which artful evasions of the law will enable them to 
 compass. The social affections are swept away in this 
 struggle for gain — there is no place for their exercise, and 
 the kindly offices of charity and benevolence are unknown. 
 The children of the country are thus in a measure trained 
 up with feelings almost hostile to their species. The idea 
 they have of public liberty is that they may do as they 
 please, regardless of the comfort and even the rights of 
 others. Reverence for age and character is unfelt, sym- 
 pathy for suffering and distress is destroyed, and respect 
 for law and authority despised as meanness. Effrontery 
 is taken for manliness, rudeness for gentility, and impu- 
 dence for easiness of manners.' 
 
 This extract alone would be sufficient to explain the 
 bishop's zeal for church schools. 
 
 ' The duties of life are so numerous, so frequent in their 
 recurrence, so engrossing in their character and so worldly 
 in their complexion that it is not surprising that men refer 
 
96 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 them to principles more in accordance with their carnal 
 notions than is consistent with the spirituality of the gospel. 
 Under a persuasion that its preaching is designed to bear 
 almost exclusively upon questions about our spiritual nature 
 and that its duties are wholly disconnected from the ordi- 
 nary concerns of life, it is no wonder that they manifest a 
 reluctance to come under its influence. In addition, the 
 infidelity that is abroad will persuade men that Christianity 
 will interfere not only with their enjoyments but with their 
 rights, and abridge their liberty to an unreasonable extent. 
 Hence the indisposition manifested by many to contribute 
 any aid towards the erection of places of worship, and the 
 reluctance with which they give a modicum for the decent 
 support of the ministry. There are those, and it is humili- 
 ating to the feelings with which we cherish the honor of 
 the state to mention the fact, there are those who will spend 
 hundreds of dollars in an electioneering canvass and yet 
 begrudge the pitiful sum of five dollars to keep up the 
 preaching of the gospel for a whole year! Hence too, in 
 combination with the causes before mentioned, that neglect 
 of public worship so manifest in our country.' 
 
 Yet another sentence throws light upon the religious 
 philosophy of affliction : ' Here, as in many other parts of 
 our country, the number and greatness of temporal bless- 
 ings appear to superinduce an indifference to religious 
 privileges.' 
 
 To sum up ; in the case of the majority an absorbing 
 struggle for subsistence, and in that of a large minority, 
 after the satisfaction of physical needs, the waste of super- 
 fluous means and energies in frivolous indulgence — the 
 ambition just to have 'a good time'— such is a picture of 
 the hard conditions, the practical paganism with which the 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 97 
 
 church and all ideal interests as well have had to contend 
 from the beginning and will have to until the millennium. 
 
 When we come to the religious reasons for the church's 
 retardation we encounter that impalpable, pervasive uni- 
 versalism, that genial, boyish American optimism at which 
 one can hardly have the heart to grow indignant — that con- 
 viction that everything is coming out right in the end, that 
 we are all going to the same place — and that, of course, 
 heaven ; that differences of creed and ceremonial are of no 
 importance, for all if sincerely held are equally pleasing to 
 God — and that after all, an honest, benevolent heart is the 
 essential thing and amply sufficient for salvation. 
 
 This species of religious epicureanism, which of course 
 terminates logically in no religion, was widely prevalent 
 from about 1840 on. 
 
 The nature of the popular religion throughout the whole 
 section was a grave, perhaps the gravest obstacle, character- 
 ized as it was by an emotionality repugnant to the church's 
 system. The ground was periodically seared and parched 
 by the prairie-fires of revivalism, and hence became so in- 
 durated that the church could make scarce any impression 
 upon it. The most stubborn soil of all— perhaps in the 
 whole country — was that of Tennessee. 
 
 A revival would subside, leaving in the community a 
 jaded religious appetite that awaited the stimulus of fresh 
 excitement. Thus were engendered alternations of satiety, 
 morbid craving and emotional paroxysm — the latter proving 
 highly detrimental and often fatal to struggling missions of 
 the church. What wonder that to such sensationalism the 
 church's sober ways seemed ' formal ' ? 
 
 That was the grand charge brought against her by popu- 
 lar religionism. Because she did not minister to religious 
 
98 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 intoxication she was condemned as having the form but 
 not the power of godliness. It is hard for one always ac- 
 customed to her mode of worship to realize the impression 
 it would make on a raw novice : to such a one, for example, 
 the surplice seemed excessively queer (some ridiculed it as 
 a night-dress), and the responses were a marvellous sort of 
 hocus-pocus. This was pointedly expressed, and the grade 
 of culture he had to cope with is revealed, by a proposition 
 concerning Otey and his wife (often the only respondent 
 at service) overheard in Tennessee : ' Come, let's go hear 
 that man preach and his wife jaw back at him ! ' 
 
 A political reason that must by no means be omitted was 
 the individualism — designated as 'sturdy' or 'arrant,' as 
 'independence' or 'insubordination,' according to one's 
 prepossession, — the jealousy of personal control that was 
 fostered by the states'-rights principle and was indisputably 
 hostile to the organic character of the catholic church. 
 
 Associated with this is the interesting and memorable 
 fact that the Episcopal was the slaveholders' church, — that 
 it was in fact the church of a class. This followed, it will 
 be observed, from much that has been said, and had in turn 
 important consequences. The centrifugal, manorial idea 
 and principle of settlement was early imported into Virginia 
 and was transplanted by emigrants thence over the cotton 
 states. The stately mansions, separated from each other 
 by leagues of plantation, harbored a high degree of refine- 
 ment, of literary and religious culture ; according to ancient 
 precedent, chapels of ease would sometimes be erected near 
 them, and service would be read and the young people 
 taught by a clerical tutor. But this state of things, attrac- 
 tive as some of its aspects undoubtedly were, was not con- 
 ducive to missionary zeal, to an apprehension of the church 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 99 
 
 in her catholicity both of priesthood and worship. And so 
 we find that we have entered the field of internal causes. 
 
 These may be deduced from the last paragraph. They 
 were chiefly two— lack of missionary spirit and jealousy of 
 priestly and episcopal prerogative. The lattjr,was tradi- 
 tional in the southern church,— our thought is carried back 
 to the long and almost unanimous opposition to the intro- 
 duction of the episcopate in provincial Virginia, and to its 
 late postponement and practical fettering at first in the 
 states of North and South Carolina respectively. There 
 was deep-settled suspicion of anything that looked like 
 centralization, prerogative, episcopal authority. Low- 
 churchmanship in ecclesiastical was the exact homologue 
 of the states'-rights view in civil polity. ' The question of 
 the ordinal, "Will you reverently obey your Bishop? " was 
 distasteful to republican ears. . . . There grew up the 
 theory'that the bishop has no rights of fatherhood inherent 
 in his high commission but is the mere creature of the 
 canon. ... In the fear of episcopal despotism, the office 
 was in danger of being robbed of all its efficiency.' 
 
 Connected with this was a tendency to diocesan isolation 
 and absorption of interest in diocesan or even parochial 
 enterprise, fatal to all enlarged views and enterprises and, 
 in the weak and struggling condition of the dioceses, to 
 steady and healthy progress. It had to be overcome by a 
 social, centripetal tendency, — and the union of the southern 
 dioceses in one great interest was the supreme crisis, the 
 commanding event in their history. 
 
 The most serious and also the best substantiated charge 
 is that of lack of the spirit of sacrifice for the cause of 
 missions. Hence the terrible problem that weighed upon 
 all the bishops, wrung from them repeatedly the most 
 
100 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 pathetic appeals, and shortened their days — the problem of 
 clerical support. People were not willing to give freely of 
 their superfluity, or better, only a tenth part of their neces- 
 saries for the support of the gospel. There was mournful 
 lack of the'tf irit of self-denial, and consequent preclusion 
 of the plenteous reward that follows cheerful and generous 
 giving. Had there been the effective system of diocesan 
 missions that there might have been, we should have a very 
 different story to tell. But what was demanded by the 
 situation, the territory, and the time, was a revival of the 
 old order of itinerant evangelists — the due employment of 
 the talent of those (and there were plenty of them) who 
 were born to lay foundations and pass on. Nothing was 
 as necessary — and nothing so hopelessly out of the ques- 
 tion. 
 
 Finally, that emotional characteristic before touched on 
 operated detrimentally to many enterprises. Bishop Otey 
 is our chief witness to the transient enthusiasm that began 
 church-building and the fatal lack of perseverance that re- 
 sulted in failure to finish what had been so hopefully begun. 
 That was the melancholy history of many promising under- 
 takings, — lack of consecutive, persistent effort, — enthusiasm 
 that flashed in the pan, leaving a disheartening load of 
 debt. 
 
 We have finished our survey of the reasons for the back- 
 wardness of the church in the southern states, — for the 
 backwardness, be it noted : there was progress, and so of 
 course there were zeal, high aspiration, persevering self- 
 sacrifice, loyal devotion to the episcopal office. It would 
 be an illicit inference that the above was the total impres- 
 sion left by its history. Far from it ; the reasons for its 
 growth and progress will appear in the sequel. But the 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 101 
 
 grace of God was not lacking, and the somewhat exhaustive 
 review just completed serves to explain why its operation 
 was not full and free. Such a survey is absolutely neces- 
 sary to a due appreciation of the work of our bishop and 
 his heroic compeers — pioneers of the church in the south. 
 It unfolds their environment ; the discouragements and 
 difficulties they had to overcome ; and the real magnitude 
 of the work they accomplished. 
 
 Led by a sagacious instinct, Bishop Cobbs took up his 
 residence at Tuscaloosa, the state capital and seat of the 
 university — on whose staff of professors Frederic A. P. 
 Barnard was then serving. The bishop's family was large, 
 consisting of nine sons and daughters, and a tenth child 
 was born to him after his settlement in Alabama. His 
 diocese numbered four hundred and fifty communicants, 
 scattered among fifteen parishes, and about fifteen clergy, 
 including teachers and missionaries. The only railroad in 
 the state ran from Montgomery to the Georgia line ; his 
 chief dependence on his visitations was therefore the boats 
 that plied on the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, and after 
 those the stage-coach lines and his own gig. He started 
 out with the heroic determination to break bread in every 
 church household in the state, and it is believed that he 
 succeeded or very nearly succeeded in so doing before he 
 died. No reflection is intended upon the hospitality with 
 which he was entertained — but his success, together with 
 steamboat fare, etc. (steamboat coffee and hot bread! ), did 
 not tend to relieve the dyspepsia to which he was a martyr. 
 
 One of the earliest entries in his journal (January, 1845) 
 is the following : ' It is my intention to pay special atten- 
 tion to the slave population in the diocese and thus to re- 
 move, if possible, one of the grounds of objection to the 
 
102 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 Episcopal church.' In his first address to his convention 
 he spoke of the pressing need of clergy, and regretted that 
 there was only one candidate for orders in the diocese. 
 This was a string on which from first to last his fellow- 
 bishops harped, Leonidas Polk as loudly as any : ' We must,' 
 said he, ' for many reasons raise up clergy from among our- 
 selves, either from those who have come to make their 
 homes among us or from natives of the soil ' ; and again, 
 ' The chief difficulty in the spread of the gospel among us 
 arises from the want of laborers adapted by their knowledge 
 of the usages of our social condition and their habituation 
 and inclination to labor effectually in the southern diocese ' ; 
 and later, ' A native ministry is imperative. The supply is 
 far short of the demand.' In consecutive convention ad- 
 dresses Bishop Otey said : ' In such times as these, ministers 
 and parents should bring fairly and frequently before the 
 consideration of the pious young men of the church, the 
 duty of consecrating themselves to the service of God in 
 the ministry of his church. . . . Herein consists the great 
 obstacle to our progress — the want of active and diligent 
 laborers to cultivate the fields which appear to promise so 
 rich a return. . . . Vacant parishes and unoccupied sta- 
 tions, whence the cry for help reaches us in urgent and 
 earnest appeals, are stronger arguments than any reasonings 
 which I could employ to move us all to united and vigorous 
 exertion for . . . the education and preparation of a na- 
 tive and efficient ministry to labor in the cause of Christ 
 and the church in the Southwest.' And years later Bishop 
 Rutledge declared : ' The smallness of the number of can- 
 didates in proportion to the need there is for them in every 
 part of our wide-spread country is one of the signs of the 
 times calling for the deepest concern of every friend of re- 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 103 
 
 ligion and of the church. All proper steps should be taken 
 by the clergy to induce young men of ability and piety to 
 desire this calling.' 'Oftentimes,' said Cobbs, 'those that 
 would be the most useful in the ministry are timid and re- 
 tiring, and need a word of encouragement to draw them 
 out.' He urged, on the same occasion, the establishment 
 of a school wherein ' education should be connected with 
 religion according to the doctrines and worship of the 
 church.' 
 
 So he began, the chief of missionaries in the diocese, and 
 his clergy's counsellor and friend. His influence may be 
 characterized as cohesive and constructive ; he was to his 
 clergy as a father to a band of brothers ; he early won their 
 confidence, which deeper knowledge riveted. Transpa- 
 rently guileless, he had exquisite tact in putting things so 
 as not to give offence. He was considerate ; he never 
 found fault with his clergy in others' presence but would 
 await occasion to speak to a delinquent privately. In cases 
 that he recognized as matters of opinion he would express 
 his view but felt no resentment if it were not adopted. 
 He continued on a larger scale the pastoral practice of his 
 early years ; in cars and stages and on steamboats he lost 
 no opportunity of spiritual good, and his dealing with all 
 varieties of character was inimitable. So soul by soul, as 
 a bishop may, he built up his diocese, as stone by stone 
 angels reared the tower of Hermas's vision. 
 
 In his convention address of 1846 he referred to some 
 familiar, long-standing obstacles to the progress of the 
 church : ' There is much to discourage us, from the scattered 
 condition of the population ' in the diocese, and the diffi- 
 culty of obtaining clergy, but 'the great difficulty with 
 which we have to contend is the distrust that pervades the 
 
104 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 community as to the evangelical and spiritual character of 
 the church — a greater barrier to her growth than any ob- 
 jection to our ecclesiastical polity or to our liturgical wor- 
 ship.' Then followed an example of success, grounded on 
 his own practice : ' In Montgomery there had been much 
 religious excitement, with which all the different congrega- 
 tions more or less sympathized. To meet this state of things 
 and to keep his congregation from being driven about by 
 every wind of doctrine the rector very judiciously multiplied 
 his services and diligently visited from house to house 
 among his people. In this way he demonstrated that the 
 church, without departing from any of her principles or 
 rules, could furnish an adequate supply of food to the most 
 stimulated appetite, and thus effectually obviated one of 
 the popular objections against her forms and offices. By 
 pursuing this course the rector was enabled to strengthen 
 his communion and to establish his congregation on a per- 
 manent basis.' 
 
 At the same time a revival in Georgia proved disastrous 
 to the struggling parish at Macon, as Bishop Elliott testified : 
 ' After two or three years of labor, everything was utterly 
 prostrated under the effects of one of those whirlwinds of 
 religious excitement which are brought to bear so syste- 
 matically upon our efforts.' 
 
 ' Experience will always demonstrate,' Cobbs continued, 
 ' that the services of the church are eminently suited to the 
 wants and circumstances of the colored people. They 
 embody the elementary instruction specially needed by that 
 class of people and they seem by constant repetition to 
 fasten truth upon the memory and conscience ' ; and then, 
 speaking of hearing a lady catechize a class of young slaves : 
 'it was impossible to hear their prompt answers and to 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 105 
 
 listen to their excellent singing and chanting without the 
 liveliest sensibility.' 
 
 It is pertinent here to unfold the consensus of testimony 
 concerning the religious instruction enjoyed by the slaves 
 and their owners' sense of responsibility therefor, and thus 
 silence once for all an unjust reproach. The bishops were 
 conscientious in impressing this duty upon the masters, and 
 repeatedly testify to their recognition of it, with the result 
 (in the words of Bishop Elliott's biographer) of 'a larger 
 number of civilized and Christianized people than have 
 ever been directly reclaimed from the barbarian heathen 
 since the early days of Christianity.' It may be that this 
 great work absorbed all the missionary energy of the people. 
 Bishop Polk inculcated, especially upon the laity, moral and 
 religious obligations to the negroes, and when the alterna- 
 tive was offered him of an inheritance of money or slaves 
 he chose the latter, in order that his interests might be 
 identical with those of the planters of his diocese, and that 
 he might exhibit among them his ideal of the relation of 
 master and man. Elliott 'was earnestly devoted to the 
 duty of preaching the gospel to the negroes of his diocese. 
 He summoned his whole people to the work, as the great 
 mission to which they were called, the special field of 
 Christian labor to which they were dedicated. Some of 
 his most eloquent and .impassioned addresses were devoted 
 to this theme. ... He held his people to a strict respon- 
 sibility for the spiritual and eternal, as well as the physical 
 and temporal welfare of those over whom they ruled. He 
 sent missionaries and established missions among the ne- 
 groes wherever he could. He founded St. Stephen's Church 
 for colored people in the city of Savannah, and placed its 
 secular affairs under the charge of a colored vestry.' At- 
 
106 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 kinson was ' always considerate of them, always anxious to 
 secure for them adequate protection against abuse of au- 
 thority, and to promote the patriarchal relation of master 
 and servant which, when duly observed, made the tie of 
 ownership and dependence very graceful.' And Bishop 
 Davis defined this as 'a great field of missionary labor. 
 We owe this people religious instruction. . . . Happily, . . . 
 masters of slaves in South Carolina are solicitous for their 
 religious instruction and improvement.' He and Green 
 both testified to faithful training given them, notably by 
 mistresses of plantations. In South Carolina the question 
 of slaves' marriages was vexing. It was mooted in several 
 conventional sessions, and the prevalent opinion ran that 
 masters should not separate married slaves, and if they did 
 so, would be responsible for the evils that should ensue. 
 
 Cobbs organized a colored congregation in Montgomery, 
 and preached one of his best sermons — one of the few that 
 he allowed to be printed — on the consideration due by 
 masters to their slaves. It is entitled ' Naaman and the 
 Hebrew Maid ' : 
 
 ' From the whole tenor of the narrative we may reason- 
 ably infer that Naaman's wife was an amiable and tender- 
 hearted woman, and that she was a humane and kind 
 mistress to the captive maid who had been introduced into 
 her family. . . . Kindness, even to the poorest and most 
 humble, is never lost ; a good deed never goes unrewarded. 
 Besides the present happiness which we find in the mere 
 performance of the act, kindness will ultimately be repaid, 
 and that too with compound interest. It may not indeed 
 flow back in a direct channel from the parties that have 
 been obliged : they perchance may prove ungrateful ; but 
 it will come incidentally, collaterally, circuitously, remotely, 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 107 
 
 perhaps slowly, but yet most certainly and abundantly. . . . 
 In general it will be found that the humble and dependent 
 are more grateful for favors and more generous in their 
 feelings than those who are prosperous and fortunate in the 
 world ; for this latter class are very apt to be selfish, wilful 
 and exacting in their feelings and purposes. How impor- 
 tant it is, not only as a matter of Christian duty but of in- 
 terest and personal comfort to be kind, obliging, considerate 
 and condescending to the poor, to inferiors and to depen- 
 dents ; to treat them with respect and with all due regard to 
 their feelings and their rights. In this world of changes 
 and chances none should presume to be independent of 
 those around him ; the strong, the great, and the wealthy 
 may often be so situated as to be dependent on the aid and 
 the sympathy of the weakest and the lowest, — nay, like 
 Naaman may be glad and thankful to listen to the timely 
 suggestions of some little servant girl. . . . Let us be care- 
 ful to value the respect, the prayers and benedictions of 
 the poor and the dependent, for we can have no good rea- 
 son to expect the blessing of God to rest upon our souls or 
 upon our churches as long as we are indifferent to the 
 wants and sufferings, the rights, the feelings and the inter- 
 ests of the poor. 
 
 ' We all know how much the peace, comfort and happi- 
 ness of a whole family depend on the tempers and deport- 
 ment of domestics and dependents ; that in times of sickness 
 and suffering especially the care and attention, the nursing 
 and watching of faithful and devoted servants are of incal- 
 culable value ; that at such times they are our best and 
 most reliable friends. ... It is therefore a matter of 
 prudence as well as duty to be kind and considerate to 
 inferiors and domestics ; to be interested in their well-being ; 
 
108 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 and to be ready and prompt to promote not only their 
 temporal comfort but their spiritual welfare. Such a course 
 of kindness and prudence in the exercise of authority and 
 discipline, duly tempered with firmness and decision, though 
 it may sometimes fail, will in general not only secure the 
 fidelity of dependents and domestics, but will always insure 
 the inward peace and comfort of superiors. There is scarce 
 anything more at variance with the character of a Christian 
 man, or more destructive of all domestic peace and happi- 
 ness, or more subversive of all good order and government, 
 than the spirit of constant fault-finding and bitterness ; the 
 habit of reproach and threatening towards those that are 
 under us. Such a course is well calculated to discourage 
 and repulse all the sentiments of respect, fidelity and grati- 
 tude, and to make those that are placed under us careless, 
 hardened and unprincipled. ... In general, the true 
 character of the heart will be shown in the temper and 
 conduct of persons towards dependents and inferiors. 
 What a man may seem to be to those that are under him 
 in his family, such most likely is his character as it appears 
 in the sight of God.' 
 
 Early in 1847 the bishop had the pleasure of receiving 
 into his diocese his young friend Henry Lay, a graduate of 
 the University of Virginia and the Alexandria seminary, and 
 now in deacon's orders. Lay admired, revered, and loved 
 Bishop Cobbs above all men whom he ever met. About 
 that time the diocese enjoyed another accession in Nathan- 
 iel Knapp. In fact, the bishop's corps of clergy justified 
 the grateful pride he took in them. 
 
 In the summer, while on his way to General Convention, 
 he visited his birthplace and his parishioners at Petersburg. 
 'The cordial and affectionate welcome,' he wrote, 'with 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 109 
 
 which I was everywhere greeted by those kind people with 
 whom I had spent my childhood and youth and the better 
 portion of my manhood, and who for years had attended 
 upon my ministry, could not but be grateful to my feelings, 
 and often brought to the eye the tear of gratitude and called 
 from the heart a prayer for the blessing of heaven to rest 
 upon those whose sensibilities and sympathies had not been 
 blunted by time or distance.' 
 
 It is gratifying to note that on this journey he preached 
 the ordination sermon, at Meade's request, before the gradu- 
 ating class at the seminary in Alexandria. 
 
 On his return from New York and the convention — the 
 first that met after the perturbation caused by Newman's 
 secession to the church of Rome — he was happy to re- 
 assure the troubled mind of his diocese as to the ' sound 
 evangelical piety ' of the American church. 
 
 At Otey's request he then made visitations in Mississippi 
 and Florida. 
 
 Exciting scenes were transpiring meanwhile in the state ; 
 these were the years of the Mexican War, and the heated 
 debates that ensued over the admission or prohibition of 
 slavery in the territory thereby acquired. Alabama, and 
 particularly Montgomery, whither the seat of government 
 was removed in 1846, now became a veritable political 
 storm centre, insomuch that the claim has been made, very 
 plausibly, that that city was thenceforth the true seat and 
 pivot of the slavery and secession propaganda and move- 
 ment. Three famous conventions were held there in 
 1847-48, at the last of which the radical southern opinion 
 was definitely formulated, the compromising expedient of 
 ' squatter sovereignty ' was repudiated, and the constitu- 
 tional right to carry slaves into any territory was asserted. 
 
110 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 In drawing this conclusion William Lowndes Yancey was 
 the moving spirit ; and soon thereafter occurred his great 
 debate with the Whig and Unionist, Henry Hilliard. The 
 latter won in the campaign, and thus emerged into clear 
 light the mediatorial function of the state ; geographically 
 Alabama is the bond between the southeast and the south- 
 west, and her political character is accordingly determined ; 
 on this occasion she cast her weight with that of Georgia 
 into the scale of compromise and thus, to Cobbs' delight, 
 ensured ten more years of peace. The nomination in 1852 
 of the bellicose Troup and Quitman by the Southern Rights 
 Association at Montgomery did not shake her pacific reso- 
 lution. 
 
 The year 1849 was a busy one for Cobbs. The diocesan 
 school that from the first he had had at heart opened with 
 six pupils at Tuscaloosa. The enthusiasm, the longing of 
 the four leading southern bishops for Christian education 
 was positively pathetic. ' It is in the early implantation of 
 religious principles in the minds of children,' wrote Otey in 
 his journal, 'that the germ is laid for the development of 
 future piety in the church.' And again, twenty years later : 
 ' In a vast majority of the schools of the country the sub- 
 ject of religion has been virtually ignored. . . . The idea 
 that children may well learn everything at school but the 
 solemn duties which Christianity enjoins has a direct prac- 
 tical tendency to make them infidels, nay, atheists. . . . 
 Must the lamentable result of a failure to teach the young 
 to fear God be witnessed by each succeeding generation in 
 the open profligacy and shameless impiety and daring crime 
 of the adult population, before we can be roused to per- 
 ceive the folly and danger of the system we have been 
 pursuing?' Polk hoped that the Louisiana convention 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 111 
 
 would 'adopt some general plan of education' for the 
 youth of the diocese: 'The mission of the church,' he 
 urged, ' is that of a teacher. The education of our children 
 should be in our own hands. Others may do it well, — we 
 ought not to allow that they can do it better.' In former 
 days Elliott ' yearned ' to make of the South Carolina Col- 
 lege ' a school of high learning, a rich source of truth and 
 refinement, and a centre of generous intellectual citizenship 
 to the state. " Will you let other states breed your schol- 
 ars? " exclaimed he on one occasion to one of the classes.' 
 On another occasion, after watching with a group of stu- 
 dents the arrangement of books on the shelves of the new 
 library, he turned and said: 'Now, young gentlemen, I 
 will expect in after years each one of you who can afford 
 it to bring some work of art, some statue, bust or picture 
 to adorn these alcoves.' And 'in the earlier days of his 
 episcopal administration, he sacrificed his private fortune 
 and reduced himself to poverty and want, in his uncalcu- 
 lating efforts to establish an eminent school for female 
 education at Montpelier, in the centre of his diocese.' 
 
 In his annual address Cobbs referred to familiar, grievous 
 hindrances to the growth of the church, — one, 'the un- 
 settled and changing state of the population,' — another, 
 ' the inadequate support of the clergy. 
 
 ' Few can conceive the anguish of soul suffered by a 
 modest minister when in the withholding of his little stipend 
 he thinks he sees the evidence that his people care nothing 
 for him, that he has forfeited their esteem and that his in- 
 fluence over them has been lost. The clergy are restrained 
 by delicacy from pressing their just claims, and are yet of 
 all men expected to be the most scrupulous and punctual 
 in the payment of their debts.' 
 
112 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 It is a grave question whether the voluntary system of 
 the nineteenth century was an improvement over the ancient 
 one of endowment. Bishop Otey frankly said that Ameri- 
 can churchmen and the American people were on trial: 
 ' We are in the very midst of an experiment, perhaps the 
 most important and interesting that can engage the thoughts 
 and attention of the people of this country. It is to ascertain 
 whether Christianity can be sustained by the unconstrained 
 and voluntary support of the people. . . . The honor of re- 
 ligion as well as the honor of our beloved country is staked 
 upon the experiment now being made of our willingness and 
 of our ability to uphold the public worship of God. Every 
 man therefore has in this subject a personal interest and an 
 individual responsibility from which there is no escape. 
 
 ' It is matter of profound regret, not to say mortifica- 
 tion, that we have no funds provided in the diocese, with 
 its immense resources, to aid aspirants to the holy office of 
 the ministry in securing to themselves the advantages of 
 theological training and associations at our schools of di- 
 vinity. The number of those offering themselves for the 
 clerical profession would encourage us to hope that God is 
 indeed answering the prayers of his church — . . . but 
 how is such a hope shaded in its brightness when we realize 
 the little interest manifested by our people in this work, 
 and how inadequate the means provided by them for the 
 proper education and due preparation of the young men of 
 the church for this holy and responsible calling ! ' And at 
 the same time Rutledge made appeal : ' Let men of influ- 
 ence and wealth encourage this [effort for the increase of 
 the ministry] by consecrating, as the Lord hath blessed and 
 prospered them, a portion to facilitate a work which must 
 redound to his honor and glory.' 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 113 
 
 ' Of all human ills,' Polk wrote to Mcllvaine, ' debt to a 
 clergyman is perhaps as grievous as any.' And he urged 
 upon his convention repeatedly — in fact, this was a domi- 
 nant note in his addresses — an increase in contributions 
 for diocesan missions : ' means of supporting missionaries,' 
 he averred, was the one thing wanting to a great advance, 
 and ' no truer standard of the state of religious feeling in 
 a community can be presented than that which is found in 
 the measure of their contribution to the cause of missions.' 
 Rutledge testified that ' thrilling appeals ' had been lamen- 
 tably neglected by the parishes of Florida. Lay wrote from 
 Arkansas : ' For many years past my spirit has been weighed 
 down by anxiety in behalf of the clergy and their families, 
 so little have they to live on, and nothing to bequeath their 
 families when they die.' And Otey swelled the plaintive 
 chorus with a note of indignation : ' The remedy ... is 
 in the hands of our lay brethren, who are chiefly interested 
 in providing for themselves and families the benefits and 
 blessings of religious services. If they will provide food, 
 raiment and lodging for the clergy, the efforts of their 
 pastors can be more concentrated and, as all observation 
 of the past shows, can be rendered far more effectual. 
 
 ' It is lamentable to think how the instances multiply in 
 which the church is deprived of the services of valuable 
 men in consequence of impaired health. The physical 
 energies which ought to be properly and rightfully employed 
 in advancing the work of the gospel, are too often expended 
 by ministers in sedentary occupations, made necessary to 
 meet the wants of themselves and families ; and this too 
 happens not infrequently when a retrenchment in the mere 
 superfluities of life would enable the people to relieve their 
 spiritual pastors from want and maintain them in ease and 
 
114 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 respectability. Broken health and premature old age are 
 consequences following in the train of personal ills in this 
 account, while the thoughts of anticipated poverty and its 
 attendant anxieties, as the certain portion of wife and chil- 
 dren, embitter life's moments and paralyze the last feeble 
 exertions of many a faithful minister in the cause of truth, 
 virtue, and religion. Such things, in the permissive provi- 
 dence of God, may try the faith of the ministry, but they 
 may also be instrumental, in the dispensations of the same 
 righteous providence, to punish more sorely and signally 
 the unchristian neglect of a people! ' 
 
 It seemed, moreover, that the expectations of a congre- 
 gation — its exacting, critical spirit — increased in proportion 
 to its parsimony. 
 
 ' I want words to express the sense of mortification which 
 I have felt from year to year at seeing the small amounts 
 reported as contributions from the diocese of Tennessee to 
 the missionary operations of the church. . . . Apathy and 
 inaction have characterized several parishes in reference to 
 this subject. It is known that we are poor and weak and 
 cannot give much — but does it therefore follow that" we 
 should not give at all? . . . May not [this want of zeal] 
 be owing to the fact that we have been so liberally dealt 
 with by our church institutions out of the diocese, and thus 
 have learned to rely on others rather than on ourselves? 
 We care little for that which costs us little. May not this 
 be the reason why . . . the great Head of the church 
 withholds his blessing from us, and permits us to be afflicted 
 with spiritual leanness? 
 
 'When I consider the ease with which large sums of 
 money, even hundreds of thousands of dollars, are readily 
 contributed for the construction of railroads, to provide 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 115 
 
 accommodations for stock and visitors at our annual fairs, 
 to erect magnificent hotels, to build theatres, and to con- 
 struct steamboats ; when I hear of the thousands which are 
 given to garnish sepulchres for the dead ; when I witness 
 the profuse expenditures upon mere objects of taste and 
 instruments of luxury by professed Christians, I almost 
 persuade myself that a liberal response will be made to this 
 call. 
 
 ' It is certainly a matter of great importance to the in- 
 terests of the church in this diocese that its episcopate 
 should be endowed. . . . We have all seen the great in- 
 convenience, trouble and difficulty, to say the least, en- 
 countered in the support of the episcopate by our present 
 mode of annual assessments.' This cry might have been 
 wrung from him by dire necessity: the assessment for 
 1847-48 was over a thousand dollars— of which the bishop 
 received only a little over five hundred ; another year his 
 salary amounted to the princely sum of four hundred and 
 fifty dollars. Elliott's receipts were insignificant until his 
 entire fortune was swallowed up in liquidating debts in- 
 curred in behalf of the institute at Montpelier— and then 
 the diocese rallied to his support. Polk received no salary 
 for years, and for long only a pittance, until at length his 
 property was also swept away. Cholera and repeated 
 visitations of yellow fever decimated his slaves ; a tornado 
 destroyed his sugar-house, cabins, and stables ; the ensuing 
 winter, frost nipped the cane ; and to cap these hurrying 
 disasters, a loan that he raised upon his property was lost 
 by defalcation, and he was forced to sell his plantation. 
 Then at last the diocese awoke to its obligations and 
 pledged him an adequate salary. 
 
 From this review it appears conclusively that for the 
 
116 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 sake of justice or mercy or both, for the honor of the church, 
 the principle of endowment, at least to the extent of a living 
 minimum, must be adopted again, to be reinforced by 
 periodical offerings. The first point to secure, of course, 
 would be diocesan endowment, then parochial — if only, in 
 a feeble parish, an ' endowment of the pulpit,' or an assured 
 sum sufficient for the living expenses of an unmarried 
 minister, — and finally, scholarships for students of divinity. 
 Certainly men and women of means could not possibly 
 employ or bequeath them to worthier ends. 
 
 We have glanced long since at Cobbs' relations with the 
 sectarians by whom he was surrounded ; his kindly policy 
 remained unchanged and told with increasing effect upon 
 the wider stage to which he was transferred. All that was 
 evangelical in his spiritual nature revolted against the 
 doctrinal, ceremonial, and hierarchical system of the church 
 of Rome or any mimicry of it, — but he was kindness itself 
 to her members. Bishop Portier was actively engaged in 
 strengthening his communion by the usual institutional 
 methods. He founded asylums for orphan boys and girls, 
 introduced into Mobile the order of nuns of the Visitation, 
 founded a cathedral school, and fostered Spring Hill Col- 
 lege. It would be interesting to know what intercourse if 
 any Cobbs had with him when visiting Mobile. To all 
 that was catholic in Cobbs' nature, — his humility, reverence, 
 sense of propriety, sacramental life, love of order, organiz- 
 ing talent, — the degenerate vagaries due to Geneva were 
 equally distasteful. He warned his clergy against ' pseudo- 
 catholicity ' on the one hand, and on the other against ' low 
 and defective views ' of the ministry and sacraments, on ac- 
 count of which ' multitudes who [were] born in the church 
 have gone away into strange folds or into the dreary com- 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 117 
 
 mon of the world.' The remedy lies in presenting the 
 church as a divine institution, remembering meanwhile that 
 sectarians, though in error, are more to be pitied than 
 condemned. 
 
 His attitude herein represented pretty accurately that of 
 his compeers. Otey held that 'the church has divine 
 power fully but not exclusively.' Elliott preferred Arch- 
 bishop Bramhall's distinction of ' churches perfect or im- 
 perfect' to that of 'church or no church.' And Atkinson, 
 as represented by Lay, ' with all his uncompromising ad- 
 herence to his ideal of the catholic church,' held that 
 ' catholic principles ' are perfectly compatible with ' Chris- 
 tian charity.' ' In every one who loved his Lord ... he 
 recognized a brother. . . . Far from disparaging religious 
 excellence, he recognized it and rejoiced in it wherever 
 found. In those systems and organizations with which he 
 could not personally co-operate, he was the last to deny 
 the merit of their administrative methods, the activity of 
 their zeal, or the beneficial results of their ministrations. . . . 
 It is not illogical to hold,' Lay continued, ' that division is 
 in itself a sin and a disgrace, while we believe that with the 
 many it is a misfortune rather than a fault,— . . . that 
 Almighty God has certain channels for the transmission of 
 his spiritual graces, and that our personal safety and a just 
 regard to the highest interests of humanity require that we 
 should stand in the old paths . . . [while we] believe with 
 Archer Butler that God binds us but not himself by these 
 prescriptions, that there is a merciful accommodation to 
 altered circumstances, however they may have originated 
 in a fault, so that grace is not frustrated by reason of our 
 innovations and irregularities. . . . God forbid that in our 
 zeal for order and authority we should deny that God's 
 
118 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 word is efficacious as spoken by earnest men of other orders 
 or of no orders at all! God forbid that we should deny 
 that grace is conferred to godly people in sacraments minis- 
 tered otherwise than as we would dare to minister them!' 
 And even Green, with his insistence on authority, his dis- 
 trust of ' self-appointed orders,' his inclination — singular 
 among his southern contemporaries — to Ogilby's formula, 
 ' No Priest, no Baptism,' insomuch that misgiving as to his 
 Presbyterian baptism drove him, even after his ordination, 
 to apply for the rite to a church clergyman, — even he re- 
 pudiated any denial of God's grace or the possibility of 
 salvation to any who could not see ' the doctrine of minis- 
 terial authority ' in the light in which he saw it. 
 
 To Cobbs' gentle spirit controversy was repugnant, yet 
 he was no compromiser ; he never acquiesced in the pat- 
 ently deceitful commonplace, ' All roads lead to the same 
 place.' 'Then why leave the old road?' he would reply. 
 ' Our ancient church presents to the humble and honest 
 inquirer after truth a place of quiet and an ark of safety.' 
 Hence his anguish of soul at intestine schism, at the war 
 of high and low — waged with more zeal, more deplorable 
 lack of charity, more disgraceful and scandalous acrimony 
 than ever the mortal struggle with infidelity and iniquity 
 evoked. 
 
 His life and character were so powerful an argument for 
 the system that he professed and attracted so many to it 
 that he was roundly charged with proselytism. A pam- 
 phlet was actually launched at him with the accusation that 
 he had offered a female Methodist a cow if only she would 
 turn Episcopalian ! ' Ah,' said he when told of it, ' I could 
 tell them worse things about myself than that! In fact, I 
 would gladly give her two cows. Why should people 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 119 
 
 complain of me because I love them so well that I want 
 them to live with me? The greatest harm I wish to 
 Presbyterians and Methodists is to see them good members 
 of the church.' 
 
 On his travels about the diocese he loved to visit natives 
 of his own state, without regard to their religious persua- 
 sion. Once, while stopping with a hospitable family of 
 Baptists whom — or at least whose connections — he had 
 known in Virginia, he found the daughter of his host ex- 
 amining his prayer-book, which by an oversight he had left 
 in the sitting-room, and for which he was looking. ' Give 
 me that book,' he said, ' for I would not hurt your parents' 
 feelings.' ' What do you mean? ' she asked, surprised. ' I 
 mean that if you read that book you will become an Epis- 
 copalian.' The girl laughed and said she was in no danger. 
 ' Give it to me,' he repeated ; ' I wouldn't have your father 
 and mother think that I requited their kindness so.' When 
 next he visited that place the young girl applied for con- 
 firmation, — she had somehow in the meantime become 
 possessed of a prayer-book ; and not long after her family 
 followed her into the church. 
 
 His dislike of the ceremonial of immersion continued 
 unabated. Two young women once urged him to baptize 
 them in that fashion, and he said he would upon two con- 
 ditions : first, that the ceremony should take place very 
 early in the morning, soon after daybreak, and second, that 
 only members of their family should attend. The condi- 
 tions were too much for them, — 'took the glory out of it,' 
 as he remarked, in private. 
 
 There was no Unitarian society in Montgomery, and 
 therefore presumably none in the state. A large, wealthy 
 and influential family of that persuasion took up their 
 
120 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 abode in the city and ere long, through the bishop's influ- 
 ence, became attached to the church. Throughout the 
 south the Unitarian movement was feeble to the vanishing 
 point ; out of Charleston, in fact, it can hardly be called a 
 movement. A society was started in Savannah, and its 
 minister publicly challenged Bishop Elliott to a debate — 
 but the bishop bided his time and ultimately had the satis- 
 faction of purchasing their place of worship for a colored 
 congregation. 
 
 Cobbs' success in making converts was such that the 
 sectarian leaders took alarm, and preferred against the 
 church ever more loudly and persistently the charge of 
 formalism. This drew from him in 1849 his apologetic 
 tract, printed in Tuscaloosa, 'An Answer to Some of the 
 Popular Objections against the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church.' It is to be observed that for obvious reasons the 
 entire literary product of southern churchmen in that age 
 was homiletic and apologetic, that is, purely practical. 
 There existed no incentive to theological reflection, no 
 opportunity for profound historical and critical research. 
 And further : Cobbs' genius perfectly qualified him for the 
 task of defending the church's system against the assaults 
 of the Methodists, as Otey's did for a similar defence 
 against those of the Presbyterians and Campbellites. Both 
 the tract just mentioned and Otey's 'Three Sermons' must 
 be carefully studied by any who would apprehend the con- 
 ditions of those times. 
 
 The first ' popular objection ' to the church was ' That 
 she does not teach spiritual, vital, experimental religion, 
 the religion of the heart.' This charge the apologist re- 
 futed by a catena of passages from her formularies : ' make 
 clean our hearts — deliver from blindness of heart — give a 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 121 
 
 heart to love and fear Thee— cleanse the thoughts of our 
 hearts — incline our hearts to keep this law— may Thy word 
 be grafted inwardly in our hearts— the peace of God keep 
 your hearts] etc. ' We thus see that it is heart-religion all 
 through and through the service of the church, — that in 
 her daily teaching the church begins and ends with the 
 heart.' (The bishop loved to recognize ' in the " Sursum 
 Corda," that most ancient of liturgical exclamations, the 
 testimony of the church catholic to the indispensableness 
 of religious affection.') He appealed further to her use of 
 the psalms ; instead of individual experiences or private 
 confession she introduces us to the experiences and con- 
 fessions, ' exercises, frames and feelings ' of the king of 
 Israel. 
 
 The second objection was 'That she teaches her mem- 
 bers to rely too much on ordinances and sacraments, on 
 morality only and not enough on the merits of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ.' This was repelled in like manner by reference 
 to her standards : in her prayer-book and articles salvation 
 through Christ's merits alone is explicitly set forth. She 
 insists on good works, it is true, as evidences of faith, — on 
 the sacraments as of divine appointment, generally neces- 
 sary to salvation, as means of grace, pointing to Christ, — 
 but she discards the opus operatum view, sacramental justi- 
 fication, and the meritoriousness of works. The third 
 charge, 'That she tolerates too much worldly conformity 
 among her members,' the bishop denied, but with sadness 
 in his mien : it is not so, but such members are unfaithful 
 —for in their baptism they renounced ' the vain pomp and 
 glory of the world.' 
 
 It is strange that the unimpeachable evangelical sound- 
 ness of that group of famous bishops did not shame to 
 
122 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 silence such uncharitable imputations. In the midst of 
 the spiritual confusion of the hour, Bishop Polk, in his 
 large, statesmanlike way, bade his diocese ' adhere to our 
 liturgy, articles and homilies,' whence he deduced the evan- 
 gelical summary : the fall of Adam — consequent impotence 
 of man — sufficiency of the grace of God — bestowed for the 
 sole merit of Christ. ' Our confidence is that as a diocese 
 we may be ever found in the old paths of the Reformation 
 and the early church.' We should show kindness toward 
 all with whom we differ, within our fold or without, "so 
 that it may be seen that our purpose is not so much the 
 establishment of the dogmas of a sect or faction, as to settle 
 and make permanent those great truths indispensable to the 
 perfection of the plan of the common salvation.' Bishop 
 Elliott taught that ' Our whole change [from the world to 
 God] is produced by the Spirit of God.' And Otey was a 
 consistent Protestant ; Latimer, Ridley, and Jewel were his 
 admiration ; he affirmed the necessity of a spiritual re-crea- 
 tion : ' one creation does not serve our turn.' 
 
 We have reached the central year of the century, early 
 in which the subject of this memoir completed his fifty-fifth 
 year. Soon thereafter he journeyed to the capital of Mis- 
 sissippi and, the second Saturday in Lent, assisted in the 
 consecration of a church there, preaching the sermon. The 
 day following he united with Otey, Polk, and Freeman in 
 the consecration of William Mercer Green, who had been 
 called from his professorship of 'belles-lettres' to take 
 charge of the young diocese. Green perpetuated in Mis- 
 sissippi, in sharply accentuated fashion, the traditions and 
 principles of the school of Ravenscroft and Otey, of both 
 of whom he composed memoirs. 
 
 That was the first occasion on which Cobbs exercised his 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 123 
 
 highest ecclesiastical function ; five times in all he partici- 
 pated in episcopal consecrations. After his return from 
 Jackson he could report to his convention that in the past 
 twelve months he had travelled over five thousand miles. 
 There is no indication in his diary that he attended the 
 General Convention this year, but on principle he let noth- 
 ing stand in the way of that duty, and that it met in Cincin- 
 nati must have been, one would think, an added inducement 
 to attend, affording him an opportunity to see his former 
 parishioners there. 
 
 Within a year from its opening, the principal of the dio- 
 cesan school at Tuscaloosa died, and it was suspended,— 
 but undeterred by the failure of Elliott's experiment, the 
 indefatigable bishop had meantime organized a similar 
 school for girls at the same place. 
 
 He had already sounded a note of warning against ritu- 
 alism, which he now reiterated : some undutiful, rebellious 
 children were going ' behind the prayer-book, even to the 
 period of the dark ages.' In his address of 185 1 he quoted 
 that of the English bishops to their respective dioceses upon 
 the subject of ritual, commending ' its weighty and solemn 
 counsels to the profound respect to which a document 
 emanating from such a source is so justly entitled.' (We 
 remark the provincial deference to Canterbury common 
 among American churchmen of that day.) He counselled 
 his clergy against innovations, ' undue elevation or fanciful 
 decoration of the communion table or altar ; shifting of 
 drapery and paraphernalia on the great festivals and fast- 
 days ; overloading the walls with symbols and ornaments 
 of very doubtful propriety and perchance of pagan origin; 
 needless departure from long-established usage in dress, 
 postures, or place where service is performed. . . . Let 
 
124 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 nothing indicate . . . any approximation to the supersti- 
 tious and idolatrous doctrine of transubstantiation.' Otey's 
 sentiment was similar : he objected to intoning as unintel- 
 ligible and mechanical, — ' it reaches neither head nor heart,' 
 he said. And ' error may be taught by material symbols 
 or figures as certainly and effectually as by winged words 
 which are themselves but symbols of thoughts or ideas. . . . 
 To attempt the introduction of symbolism in material forms 
 or figures the meaning or intent of which is not understood 
 or obviously apparent, instead of effecting the objects aimed 
 at, will have exactly the opposite tendency ; will be per- 
 verted in its purposes, misrepresented in its aims, or con- 
 demned without enquiry. Instead of conciliating favor, 
 the results will be in a vast majority of instances suspicion, 
 dislike and aversion.' And he thought that to insist upon 
 a ritual or decorative novelty was ' a lamentable proof of 
 the absence of an instructed faith, an enlightened conscience 
 and a sound mind.' When, accordingly, upon arrival at a 
 church that he had been called to consecrate, 'he beheld 
 over every gate of the yard a cross, three crosses on the 
 roof, and one on the belfry,' and upon entering encountered 
 a font at the south door, and beheld ' under the chancel 
 window an altar which might properly be called high, — 
 with five crosses painted on its front, a movable cross on 
 a super-altar, and a cross in the window above, — and beside 
 all this two large candlesticks of turned wood, placed there 
 not for the purpose of giving light in the house but avowedly 
 to enlighten the inner man — the mind and soul — by the 
 mysterious power of symbolism, — it was too much,' says 
 his biographer, 'for the uninstructed taste of the good 
 bishop,' and he refused to proceed to the consecration until 
 the candlesticks and movable cross were taken away. 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 125 
 
 His action gave great offence ; Bishop Green admitted 
 that he could not ' wholly approve ' it, while explaining 
 that Otey ' was tempted to look with suspicion and alarm 
 upon any act or object . . . that might symbolize the 
 heresies of Rome.' No service was held thenceforth in 
 the little church, and it was left to lapse into ruin. 
 
 Atkinson deprecated any assimilation ' of our worship to 
 the meretricious ceremonial of the Church of Rome.' Of 
 Whittingham he said : ' It is not pretended that he liked 
 ritualistic ceremonial ; his mind was, as some suppose, not 
 sufficiently aesthetic, or as I should say, too masculine for 
 that.' Herein Lay frankly differed from him, as he tells 
 us, 'both as to the fact and the explanation. Bishop 
 Whittingham had aesthetic taste, . . . Bishop Atkinson 
 was neither musical nor aesthetic. . . . But I cannot think 
 that the masculine mind necessarily revolts from the aes- 
 thetic in religion. . . . Glory and beauty must characterize 
 the adornments of the sanctuary and the sacred services 
 therein.' Polk does not seem to have been disturbed by 
 the ritual movement ; very likely it had not reached his 
 diocese. Of the whole group, Davis was most averse to 
 the beautiful in public worship. Elliott ' declared himself 
 opposed to "ritualism,"— yet something in the movement 
 would, perhaps, commend itself to his love of the comely 
 and appropriate, as worthy of God's worship and useful to 
 the worshipper.' 
 
 The question presses, Why this practical unanimity of 
 opinion? — and the sufficient answer is to be found in ob- 
 jection to the unaccustomed, lack of culture, evangelical 
 prejudice, abhorrence of Rome. A serious obstacle, said 
 Cobbs, 'is the very prevalent belief that the church is' 
 Romish in her sympathies and tendencies. It therefore 
 
126 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 becomes our duty ... to abstain from the introduction 
 of all novelties.' He himself had done what he could to 
 replace the black gown with the surplice throughout his 
 diocese— but when certain of his clergy showed a disposi- 
 tion to go further, he drew back, and when one of them 
 added altar-cloths and a cross, he pleaded with him against 
 their use, especially against a material, movable cross : he 
 would not object if the sign were merely painted on the 
 wall back of the communion table! The good priest 
 yielded, and stowed the precious embroideries away under 
 the altar — whence they were drawn years after, mildewed 
 and moth-eaten. 
 
 Why could the worthy bishop, who had accepted the 
 Tractarian premise, not accept its ritual conclusion? It 
 may be that ten more years had effected in his nature a 
 crystallization against further progress. It is certain that 
 he lacked the culture, acquired through study, travel, sight 
 of objects of art, that would have enabled him to expand 
 sufficiently to include the late aesthetic development in re- 
 ligion. It is worth noting that Elliott and Lay, who pos- 
 sessed, without doubt, riper culture than their brethren, had 
 less — the latter indeed no — antipathy to ritual. But we 
 must look deeper, to find the ultimately satisfactory answer 
 in a 'beggarly element ' that commonly inheres in evangeli- 
 calism, — a Montanistic, puritanic strain, not to be dignified 
 with the name of spirituality but with that merely of im- 
 materiality : a dread of the beautiful as such, of the sensuous, 
 however innocent : an ascetic, at bottom, Manichean pre- 
 judice that is not masculine but is narrow and weak, and 
 needs to be eliminated by that grace of which the beautiful 
 is the expression. For there is perfect harmony between 
 the sincerest evangelicalism, unadulterated by that ungra- 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 127 
 
 cious element, and the utmost beauty and glory of the 
 sanctuary and its worship. 
 
 In this respect, then, Cobbs was inconsistent. He re- 
 fused to admit the logic of his position — and was not alone 
 in so doing. We find, accordingly, contrarieties in his na- 
 ture,— plain traces of that Montanistic leaven, and indica- 
 tions equally plain that it lacked but a little of being purged 
 away. He did not object to decoration of a church at 
 Christmas and Easter. Such decoration, to be sure, was 
 in his day simple enough : at Christmas, sprigs of evergreen 
 stuck in gimlet-holes in the ends of the pews, with perhaps 
 a light festoon, and a few flowers, possibly a floral cross on 
 the altar at Easter. These he never suggested or recom- 
 mended, but also never discouraged if others wished them. 
 He merely stipulated that the ladies who arranged them 
 should keep their bonnets on! He objected decidedly to 
 having the responses to the commandments sung, for he 
 believed in hearty congregational response and song ; for 
 this and other reasons he disliked a quartette choir: he 
 used to say, ' Put four of the saintliest archbishops to sing 
 in such a choir and it would corrupt them ! ' He loved the 
 old, familiar chants and hymns that all could join in, and 
 sedulously excluded from divine service ' fantastic ' music 
 — as he termed any that approached the operatic. 
 
 While guarding against an error of excess, as he deemed 
 it, on the one hand, he had to put away with the other an 
 error of defect that touched him deeply. A controversy in 
 the English church over baptismal regeneration issued this 
 year in the Gorham judgment, favorable to the low-church 
 view. Cobbs was moved to publish in Tuscaloosa a homi- 
 letic apology ' On the Baptismal Covenant,' according to 
 which ' we are not left to our natural state of weakness and 
 
128 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 selfishness ; for, if left to our own natural will and inclina- 
 tion, we should never turn away from the evil of our sins, 
 nor would we have strength to contend against our sins 
 even if we had the will ; we therefore need something 
 superadded, we need the awakening, sanctifying and sus- 
 taining grace of the Holy Spirit to work in us to will and 
 to do.' 
 
 He accepted an invitation to preach in Tuscaloosa on 
 the subject of temperance,— the more willingly because 
 that subject ' has been too much given up by the church to 
 other societies.' 
 
 In the fall of the year he travelled to Augusta, to take 
 part with Bishops Gadsden and Elliott in the consecration 
 of Francis Huger Rutledge as first bishop of Florida. 
 Some years before, Rutledge had removed from St. Augus- 
 tine to assume the rectorship of St. John's Church, Talla- 
 hassee. He received his degree in divinity from the same 
 institution (Hobart) that had conferred it on Cobbs. 
 
 Early in the next year, Cobbs permitted the printing, at 
 Greensboro, of a sermon of his upon the deadly sin of 
 Avarice, which, he conceived, was growing more and more 
 prevalent in society. ' Covetousness is a malignant and 
 cancerous disease that penetrates and corrupts the whole 
 moral system ; it dries up and kills all the kindly feelings 
 and sympathies of our natures.' The preacher dilated upon 
 the evils of great inheritance, especially disputes over it 
 between relatives, and on the folly of parents in heaping 
 up property, not seldom by mean and unjust methods, 
 thereby entailing a curse, and even when their gains were 
 honestly gotten, depriving themselves of lawful satisfaction 
 in benevolent outlay during their lifetime, in order that they 
 might leave larger sums to be dissipated by extravagant 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 129 
 
 and profligate heirs or to be the subject of strife and feud 
 between families. ' Of all the weaknesses common to our 
 countrymen, there is none more universal and more glaring 
 than an infatuation, a monomania regarding the value and 
 importance of property, of money. ... A very little 
 knowledge of the world will teach us that happiness de- 
 pends not so much on the property we possess or on the 
 sphere in which we move, as on active employment under 
 the sanctions of an approving conscience, with the humble 
 hope of God's favor and benediction.' 
 
 The subject was evidently weighing upon his mind, for 
 he enlarged upon it in a pastoral letter to one of his clergy : 
 ' Take the rubric in the Visitation of the Sick—" the minis- 
 ter shall not omit earnestly to move such sick persons as 
 are of ability, to be liberal to the poor." Here you can 
 urge a practical duty that is fearfully neglected. How often 
 does it happen that men have spent all their lives in the 
 service of mammon, and when about to die, they offer up 
 a few prayers, are told to believe in Christ, and thus leave 
 the world with the confident hope of heaven, without any 
 chance of bringing forth fruits meet for repentance, and 
 without giving anything in the way of alms and charitable 
 deeds. ... It is an awful thing to be teaching men that 
 they can go to heaven, although they die with their coffers 
 filled with unjust and unlawful gain ! ' 
 
 The letter contained other excellent advice, much of 
 which helps to define his own practice and position. ' One 
 sermon on Sunday is as much as you ought to undertake, 
 and let the afternoon be devoted to easy, familiar talks 
 about the prayer-book. In this way you can say a great 
 many things, doctrinal, practical, experimental, historical 
 and ecclesiastical,— things which people ought to know 
 
130 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 and which cannot well be brought out in a systematic 
 sermon. 
 
 ' Take the rubric in the communion office and . . . show 
 the true notion of the sacrament, that it is a feast upon a 
 sacrifice, or a commemorative sacrifice. Thus again, a 
 "white linen cloth" must be used, by which the church 
 guards against the idea of an altar in the strict sense of the 
 word. 
 
 ' "Then shall follow the sermon." 
 
 ' Here again is a fruitful theme for a lecture : show that 
 while the church places a very high estimate on sacraments, 
 she does not underrate preaching, always requiring a ser- 
 mon before the eucharist.' 
 
 (Sufficient evidence, that, that celebrations at daybreak 
 were undreamt of in that day.) 
 
 1 Again in the Marriage Service, explain how the father 
 is called upon to give his personal consent, to show that 
 the parties have not run away nor forged a license. 
 
 ' Again in the preface to the Ordinal, observe the wisdom 
 of the church in recognizing the Scriptures interpreted by 
 ancient authors as the rule of faith. How she avoids the 
 error of the Romanist in the matter of tradition and of the 
 ultra- Protestant in that of private judgment!' 
 
 Later in the year the bishop moved with his family to 
 Montgomery — following the capital, it will be observed — 
 and took possession of the pleasant old house, still occupied 
 by his descendants, on rising ground then somewhat out of 
 the city. Not long after, Bishop Polk settled in New Or- 
 leans, where, says his biographer, ' he ought always to have 
 lived ' ; his social influence was henceforth powerful, and 
 the church and her missions were strengthened by the 
 change. 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 131 
 
 Cobbs added to his episcopal duties those of the rector- 
 ship of St. John's Church, Montgomery, his income thence 
 eking out an otherwise deficient salary. He opened the 
 first church for colored people in the city, and instituted a 
 free school for poor white children wherein some young 
 ladies of his parish served in weekly rotation as teachers. 
 One of his sound pastoral principles was to find plenty of 
 charitable and religious work for his parishioners to do, 
 and thereby to ensure their interest. 
 
 At the end of the year, the apostasy of Ives was felt by 
 his southern peers almost as a personal mortification : ' he 
 has gained the unenviable notoriety,' wrote Otey, ' of being 
 the first of his order in our church to make a formal sub- 
 mission to the Roman pontiff.' (Did the bishop mean to 
 refer only to the American church, or had he forgotten or 
 never heard of Godfrey Goodman?) 
 
 Levi Silliman Ives was born in Meriden, Connecticut, 
 at the close of the eighteenth century. He started out in 
 life with the intention of studying for the Presbyterian 
 ministry, but changing his mind and his religious connection, 
 sought the orders of the church. Bishop Hobart directed 
 his studies, and ordered him deacon in the year 1822. 
 Columbia College conferred on him the doctorate in di- 
 vinity, and after he had served for some years as a priest 
 in New York and Pennsylvania, he succeeded Ravenscroft 
 as bishop of North Carolina. He was of an impressionable, 
 emotional, even excitable temperament, and his conduct 
 had begun to excite apprehension, but few were prepared 
 for the news that, while travelling for his health, he had 
 been received at Rome into the papal obedience. 
 
 His diocese remained apparently unaffected by his ac- 
 tion ; only one member, a lady, followed him to his new 
 
132 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 communion ; and the low-church reaction that might have 
 been expected did not ensue. 
 
 He did not enjoy much distinction or influence in the 
 Roman church. He was invested with a professorship in 
 its seminary at Fordham, lectured on literature in the Con- 
 vent of the Sacred Heart, and became president of the order 
 of St. Vincent de Paul. In due course of time he pub- 
 lished, doubtless under the direction of his superiors, an 
 account of his change of faith entitled ' Trials of a Mind 
 in its Progress to Catholicism.' It simply repeats the fa- 
 miliar story; appetite for infallibility drove him thither. 
 Nothing will satisfy 'the yearning of the heart,' he said, 
 but certainty. We see around us multitudinous sects, and 
 when we turn to the brethren find ' confusion and mutual 
 strife.' Where is infallibility ? The Anglican church does 
 not even claim it. So he will go where it is claimed. 
 There must be a Head of the church : such the pope has 
 been from the begnining — and submission to him is peace. 
 
 The event elicited some fervent passages in the episcopal 
 addresses of 1853, a catena of which may prove interesting 
 and valuable. ' The secession of the late bishop of North 
 Carolina,' Cobbs averred, had inflicted a deep wound upon 
 the church ; it was perhaps a divine chastisement for de- 
 parture too far ' from the Protestant principle of the church 
 as established at the Reformation, — too much tampering 
 with Romish books, doctrines and usages.' 'Any man is 
 in danger,' said Elliott, 'who becomes discontented with 
 the Scriptural principles on which our Reformation was 
 planted and sighs after practices and usages of which he 
 thinks Protestantism has unjustly deprived him.' And 
 Polk : ' North Carolina has been deprived of episcopal 
 oversight from a cause . . . which can only be explained 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 133 
 
 upon the hypothesis of either mental or moral insanity on 
 the part of the unhappy man who until recently presided 
 over and directed its spiritual interests.' Otey reported 
 that Ives had ' fallen at the feet of him who opposeth and 
 exalteth himself above all that is called God. . . . While 
 we deplore his treachery, let us pray God to recover him 
 from the snare in which he has been taken.' And Green 
 was the severest of all : ' The corrupt church of Rome has 
 received to her embrace one who was once among the fore- 
 most in the cause of gospel truth, and who had upon his 
 soul the three-fold vows of the priesthood. . . . [He] has 
 betrayed the most solemn trust ever committed to man, by 
 renouncing his apostolic commission and throwing himself 
 into the arms of Antichrist . . . — has foresworn his al- 
 legiance to Him who had called him to the office of a 
 bishop in the church, and has subjugated both body and 
 soul to the will of a fallible worm like himself. At such 
 desertion of the highest and holiest of trusts we might well 
 feel indignant.' 
 
 The deeper feeling, resembling resentment, of the last 
 three speakers, is accounted for by their peculiar interest 
 in the afflicted diocese, of which two of them were natives. 
 
 That defection, in connection with another yet more 
 mortifying, suggests that more emphasis should be laid on 
 church parentage in considering a man's qualifications for 
 the episcopal office. We owe, of course, many exemplary 
 priests to the various Protestant bodies, — men who have 
 found in the church what they were in search of, and who 
 often prove strong, even narrow ecclesiastics, — but experi- 
 ence shows that such may sometimes spend half a lifetime 
 in the church without having fully and truly assimilated her 
 genius. 
 
134 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 On the promulgation of the dogma of the immaculate 
 conception, Lay wrote : ' The question concerning the seat 
 of infallibility is no longer open as before. The pope may 
 at any time impose a new article of faith, under penalty of 
 anathema.' 
 
 If there was one thing that came near exhausting Bishop 
 Cobbs' vast store of patience, it was any imitation of 
 Romish peculiarities. Hence, as in the case of his proto- 
 type Griswold, the perversities of ritualism put the sorest 
 strain upon his charity, came nearest to making him lose 
 his temper. Upon this point it is interesting to find him 
 appealing already to American tradition : ' in conducting 
 the worship of the church, there has been established a 
 common law of custom sanctioned by the authority of such 
 men as Bishops White, Seabury, Hobart, Ravenscroft, 
 Dehon, Griswold and Moore, and from such a law I should 
 think it inexpedient to depart. . . . Follow the customs and 
 usages of the Fathers of the American church.' 
 
 A better list it would be impossible to frame : the memoirs 
 of those seven bishops are all that is necessary — but every 
 one of them is necessary — to a sufficient knowledge of the 
 history of the American church in the first half-century of 
 the republic. And as many more would serve as well for 
 its second half-century. 
 
 At the General Convention that year, Ives was formally 
 deposed as having ' renounced the communion of the church 
 and made his submission to the bishop of Rome as uni- 
 versal bishop of the Church of God and vicar of Christ 
 upon earth, thus acknowledging these impious pretensions 
 of that bishop . . . and binding himself under anathema 
 to the antichristian doctrines and practices imposed by the 
 council of Trent.' Thomas Atkinson was consecrated in 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 135 
 
 his room,— 'an old and intimate and much-loved friend,' 
 wrote Cobbs, ' with whom I had oft taken sweet counsel 
 when laboring in parishes side by side in Virginia. It was 
 truly gratifying to see him placed in a position in which I 
 cannot but believe the great blessing of God will rest upon 
 his labors.' ' How goodly a presence was his ! ' said Lay : 
 ' a manly form, a noble head, a countenance in which in- 
 tellectual power, strength of will and sweetness of temper 
 were harmoniously combined, and were the more lovely for 
 the singular absence of self-consciousness.' 
 
 On the same occasion, Thomas Frederick Davis was 
 consecrated for the bishopric of South Carolina, in place 
 of Gadsden, lately deceased. In consequence of a sore 
 bereavement, it is believed, Davis had been converted to 
 Christianity, and had surrendered the practice of the law. 
 He was ordained by Bishop Ives, and after serving in 
 several parishes in his native state he removed to Camden, 
 South Carolina, to take charge of the parish there. 
 
 It was in that convention of 1853 that Dr. Muhlenberg 
 introduced his famous Memorial. A committee, of which 
 Bishop Otey was chairman, was appointed to consider it. 
 
 Bishop Cobbs returned thence by sea to Charleston, and 
 so home. He loved rice (so he used to say), but not Caro- 
 lina politics. Once, having invited a South Carolinian to 
 dine with him, he bade his wife 'be sure to have rice on 
 the table, cooked just right, — every grain standing out like 
 a nullifier! ' Of another he inquired if, when she died, she 
 was going to Charleston? 
 
 In the month of January, 1854, he returned upon his 
 steps as far as Savannah, to unite with Elliott and Davis in 
 the consecration of Thomas Fielding Scott— a native of 
 North Carolina, for many years a Presbyterian minister — 
 
133 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 as first missionary bishop of the territories of Oregon and 
 Washington. ' It was an occasion of deep interest,' he re- 
 ported, ' and many earnest prayers were offered up in be- 
 half of that worthy brother, about to go forth to that far 
 distant and arduous field of labor.' 
 
 At that very time a letter of his to a clerical friend in 
 Virginia betrays a little home-sickness, a little depression 
 of health and spirits : ' I can never love any people as much 
 as those early friends in the hills and mountains of Virginia. 
 
 ' I have nothing very encouraging to write in reference 
 to my diocese : the church is growing slowly, but is suffer- 
 ing much for the want of ministers ; and even when we get 
 ministers they are often restless and unsettled amid the dis- 
 couragements and trials of a new country. ... It is not 
 to be wondered at that they get out of heart and change 
 their places. I have myself often felt how different a new 
 country is from an old one.' 
 
 His spirits had lately been overwhelmed and his health 
 affected by the death of a beloved and devoted daughter. 
 He needed imperatively the physical and mental renovation 
 that comes from change of air and scene, and the streaming 
 in through the senses upon the mind of manifold new im- 
 pressions. Funds were provided, accordingly, to enable 
 him to make a voyage to Europe. Before he left, his por- 
 trait was painted by Heade— presumably Martin Johnson 
 Heade, a Pennsylvanian, who began his career as a por- 
 traitist, visited Brazil to make studies of its birds, and 
 thereafter turned to landscape-painting. His likeness of 
 the bishop in his robes is pleasing, and of undeniable 
 artistic merit : a little low in tone and color, like his subject, 
 but excellently composed and handled with evident sym- 
 pathy. It is a seated half-length and three-quarter view ; 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 137 
 
 the eyes are mild, the lips eloquent, the whole air and ex- 
 pression bland, gentle and attractive ; and it is pronounced 
 by competent judges an admirable likeness. It is well 
 known through reproductions; the original hangs beside 
 the altar in St. Luke's Oratory, Sewanee. 
 
 In the summer of 1856 the bishop sailed for England, — 
 a land that he had always loved. Mystery hangs over that 
 journey; we know next to nothing about the places he 
 visited or the people he met; he returned abruptly, and 
 said little of his experience. Yet in those days a trip 
 abroad was the event of a lifetime and a patent of distinc- 
 tion. It is believed that he spent most of the time in 
 London. He saw the Queen review in Hyde Park the 
 troops just back from the Crimea. He dined with Lady 
 Franklin, but it is not known whom he met on that occa- 
 sion. He is remembered to have spoken with admiration 
 of the Abbey and the Temple Church. Did he see Mau- 
 rice? Dr. Muhlenberg had visited him a year before, and 
 attended his Bible-class of workingmen. Bishop Wilmer's 
 testimony is that Cobbs would have sympathized far more 
 with Maurice, for his churchly views, than with Frederick 
 Robertson. Did he visit Oxford? These questions, ap- 
 parently, can never be answered. We know that in spite 
 of his general sympathy with the Oxford movement, he did 
 not take much to Pusey's writings : when one of his pres- 
 byters sought to interest him in them and praised them 
 excessively, he replied, ' I'll take your word for it.' He 
 met Dean Burgon, and received from him at parting a 
 fitting gift— the saintly Andrewes' ' Devotions,' in their 
 Greek original. He was in England only for a very few 
 weeks — not more than three or four : why did he return so 
 soon? It cannot have been that his funds gave out. The 
 
138 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 only reference to the trip in his journal reads : ' June, July 
 and August. Absent from home on a voyage to England.' 
 The only reason he would ever give his family was that 
 letters from home miscarried, and he grew anxious. He 
 does not seem to have been disappointed in the trip ; it is 
 certain that he returned with enlarged ideas of church and 
 education, and with yet more ardent love and admiration 
 of England. He longed ' to bring back the olden times of 
 English learning,— scholarship and piety,' said Elliott— 
 who was surprised at the unwonted degree of enthusiasm 
 and power with which he entered into and promoted the 
 project of a southern university. Of the English language 
 he believed that it would be a means of converting the 
 world to Christ, and he admired the elastic conservatism of 
 the British government : he ' would be willing to live under 
 a queen,' he said, half in jest and all in earnest, ' if our 
 government should fail.' 
 
 It must indeed have seemed to him as if that were break- 
 ing up. He returned to find that he had fallen upon evil 
 times ; the few remaining years of his life were the dreariest 
 period in American annals. There were bloodshed in 
 Kansas, filibustering in the Caribbean, and threats of a 
 re-opening of the slave-trade, — and in consequence of these 
 the free-soil and anti-slavery elements rapidly coalesced in 
 a new party, the Republican, which showed its strength in 
 the presidential election immediately after the bishop's re- 
 turn. Two parties were ready and desirous to break up the 
 Union, — the abolitionists and the secessionists : those on the 
 one hand who would identify the state and national govern- 
 ments with freedom, and on the other, with slavery. Be- 
 tween was what was still the vast majority of those who 
 would maintain the Union; those on the one hand who 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 139 
 
 would recognize slavery as a state but not as a national 
 institution, who would not touch it where it was established 
 but would exclude it from the territories (the Republican 
 party) ; those on the other hand who would leave the ques- 
 tion to be decided by popular sovereignty in the several 
 territories (the Douglas Democrats) ; and finally those of 
 whom there are always a good number who in troublous 
 times adopt the feeble policy of simply ignoring the burning 
 question of the hour (represented by Bell of Tennessee). 
 But that hour was given to the forces of disunion ; Yancey's 
 star was in the ascendant. The legislative, administrative 
 and judicial departments of the general government went 
 down one by one before the slave power : in 1857 the Dred 
 Scott decision committed the constitution, the government, 
 the nation to slavery. What more could Yancey want? 
 The Carolinian, and Mississippian view was now fast be- 
 coming the Alabamian and paramount : Washington, 
 Jefferson, Monroe and the Virginians of old time were 
 irreverently dubbed ' old fogies ' by Yancey, and were 
 pronounced ' unsound on the slavery question.' He sneered 
 at ' Union-loving fogies,' (of whom Bishop Cobbs was one of 
 the heartiest! ) and in 1858 fulminated his fittingly addressed 
 Slaughter Letter, recommending ' committees of safety to 
 fire the southern heart, instruct the southern mind, . . . 
 and precipitate the cotton states into a revolution.' Yet 
 even in Montgomery there were unionists enough to form 
 in their alarm a coalition that proved strong enough to 
 keep the gory and ramping lion in his cage for three more 
 mortal years. 
 
 In his address of 1857, the bishop touched on his trip to 
 England — 'that noble land from which we have derived 
 our language, our laws, our domestic and social habits, our 
 
140 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 religion and our church.' Only a few years before Bishop 
 Otey too had sought recuperation in foreign travel, and had 
 borne witness to the 'friendly interest toward the United 
 States and the Protestant Episcopal Church in every part 
 of England that he had visited,' to the ' warm reciprocation 
 of the feeling by American churchmen,' and his own ' ear- 
 nest conviction and hope that this regard will strengthen the 
 ties of amity between the two nations, and knit the members 
 of the communion closer.' From that visit he derived fresh 
 interest and hope in the cause of church education in 
 America. 
 
 Cobbs next introduced to his convention a 'plan for a 
 southern university. The object of the proposed university 
 is to afford a thorough education under the sanctions of 
 the church in a locality convenient of access to our southern 
 youth.' 
 
 It will be remembered that twenty years before Bishop 
 Otey had projected a literary and theological seminary for 
 the southwestern dioceses, Tennessee, Mississippi and 
 Louisiana — for the lower Mississippi valley, in a word, — 
 and that the project had been nipped in the bud by the 
 financial blight of 1837. Then ensued a period of separate 
 diocesan efforts, almost invariably ending in disheartening 
 failure, for the education of youth of either sex. The time 
 was now ripe for an institution on a grand scale, a univer- 
 sity in support of which the southeastern as well as the 
 southwestern dioceses should co-operate, — and this larger 
 idea, educationally and geographically, sprang from the 
 brain of Bishop Polk. Family traditions, early training 
 and experience, travel and culture contributed to mould an 
 idea that was altogether consonant with his genius. When 
 we inquire into the relation between the two thoughts, Otey's 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 141 
 
 and Polk's, we see that the former was at the base of the 
 latter, that the latter included the former, that essential ele- 
 ments were common to both, that there was in fact a 
 common idea to which various minds and various experience 
 contributed, and which had an organic growth within the 
 limitations of the environment. Yet it is also undoubtedly 
 true that if Otey had never lived Polk would have matured 
 his design. 
 
 It will be remembered also that for a generation there 
 had been extraordinary activity in denominational educa- 
 tion. 'Under the educational systems of the day,' said 
 Otey, 'the momentous truth has been often disregarded 
 that intellectual power, unregulated and unrestrained by 
 sound moral and religious principles, tends only to mischief 
 and to misery. Influenced doubtless by these considera- 
 tions so obvious to religious thought, most Christian de- 
 nominations have lately sought to found seminaries of 
 learning under their own exclusive control.' And the in- 
 terest of churchmen in the cause was not exhausted by the 
 early efforts before noted, as is proved by the seminaries, 
 colleges and schools that sprang up at this very time at 
 Nashotah, Racine, Davenport, Annandale and Concord. 
 And of all this activity the grandest phenomenon was the 
 conception of the University of the South. Prefix the term 
 ' Church,' which some suggested, and the title is perfectly 
 descriptive of the basal ideas of the institution. It was to 
 be a university, an institution of the highest and most com- 
 prehensive learning, where (in the words of Bishop Cobbs) 
 ' Education should be connected with religion according to 
 the doctrines and worship of the Church,' — and it was to 
 be for southern youth, for southern dioceses and states, for 
 the South. Upon this latter point the prime movers were 
 
142 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 explicit : Polk pointed out that almost all the school-teachers 
 and tutors of the region were from the North, and that for 
 higher education young men had to go thither — and ' we 
 are afraid of the influence of northern seminaries and col- 
 leges on the mind of southern youths. We have done our 
 share of receiving,' he added, and the time for action has 
 come. »'The youth of the southwest,' said Otey, 'for the 
 most part seek the advantages of education by a resort to 
 some of our northern colleges. This they do confessedly 
 at an additional expense arising from the distance they have 
 to travel, at the hazard of injury to the physical constitution 
 arising from differences of climate and habits of living which 
 render their sojourn there and their return to a southern 
 home alike dangerous ; and above all at the risk of weaken- 
 ing those domestic ties and early associations connected 
 with the parental domicile which are seldom severed but at 
 the expense of virtue and happiness.' 
 
 The interest of New Orleans in the proposed university 
 was strong from the outset. The conviction was general 
 that it was best for the young people of the city and the 
 state to pass their school terms in a cooler climate. As 
 early as the year 1849 Bishop Polk began privately to dis- 
 cuss the matter, and in 1852 began to gather information 
 concerning the educational systems of England, France 
 and Prussia. The very loss of his fortune now afforded 
 him more leisure for the elaboration of the design. He 
 aspired to found ' a church university,' as he wrote to 
 Elliott, that should ' rival Harvard or Yale ' ; his ideal grew 
 larger : only a little later we hear him refer to his ' scheme 
 for founding an Oxford, a Gottingen or a Bonn, or all three 
 combined.' Of the mass of documents he collected, Eng- 
 lish, French and German, he sensibly wrote : ' I trust that 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 143 
 
 we shall deal with them neither in the spirit of servile 
 copyists nor yet with that ridiculous modern conceit which 
 affects superiority to the lessons of experience, but that, 
 with an eye to the peculiarities of our national and local 
 circumstances and necessities, we will give to everything its 
 appropriate value, take what meets our own case and leave 
 the rest alone.' 
 
 As a matter of fact, Oxford furnished the controlling 
 model. 
 
 Tributary schools in the different dioceses were a feature 
 of the design, which was certainly the grandest yet in the 
 history of education in America. The university was to 
 comprise nearly two-score schools, academic and profes- 
 sional, which should furnish about all the instruction that 
 any one could seek in the ancient and modern languages 
 and literatures, history, the fine arts, 'including sacred 
 music,' natural, political and moral science, metaphysics 
 and the evidences of Christianity, theology, law and medi- 
 cine. A broad domain was to be secured, buildings that 
 should be architectural exemplars were to be erected, and 
 distinguished professors to be invited from all parts of the 
 learned world. From early experience at West Point, Polk 
 had conceived a strong aversion to the system of herding 
 students together in dormitories, instead of which he would 
 introduce a domestic plan : families of refinement, of ele- 
 gant social and mental polish and culture, were to be in- 
 duced to take up their residence at the university and keep 
 houses for the students, of whom not more than a dozen 
 were to live in any one hall. He desired for them the 
 utmost possible degree of domestic life ; hence in part the 
 long vacation was to occur in winter, that then they might 
 return to their more southerly homes, while in the summer 
 
144 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH. 
 
 months he hoped that their parents would more and more 
 make the university their home. He expected and desired 
 that it would become a favorite place of resort in the hot 
 season, and believed that thus much benefit would accrue 
 to southern society and civilization. For men of letters 
 were to be attracted thither by special and highly remunera- 
 tive lectureships ; a press was to be established, whence 
 might issue scholastic publications, a literary magazine, etc. ; 
 and so at length a vigorous and creditable southern litera- 
 ture might be reared up. Equally elevated was his con- 
 ception of the spiritual benefits that would ensue : a native 
 ministry, so imperatively demanded by ' the peculiar civili- 
 zation,' of the South ; an ecclesiastical capital, a focus of 
 church activity, devotional, intellectual, practical, a com- 
 mon centre whereat all narrow and segregative local and 
 diocesan tendencies and prejudices should be transcended 
 — 'we must rise above diocesan considerations,' he wrote 
 to Elliott ; finally and further, a point of religious union— 
 for even so far did his vision extend : a common interest 
 for all Christians all over the South, especially, of course 
 and of necessity, for those of evangelic persuasion, between 
 whom and the church he thought there was much in com- 
 mon. Nor were his aspirations bounded even here ; in his 
 view there was not a class that would not receive benefit 
 from the Christianizing and civilizing influences and agen- 
 cies of the institution — and most of all the subject race. 
 It will have been observed that the institution was projected 
 first from the latitude of New Orleans, then for all the 
 Gulf, cotton and plantation states ; he believed that labor 
 in the border states would ultimately become free. He 
 trusted that the ideals to be maintained by the university 
 would prove a corrective to the materialistic tendencies of 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 145 
 
 the day, would inspire, enlarge and ennoble the views of 
 southern politicians, would cherish a sound and enlightened 
 conservatism, and would thus and every way indirectly but 
 powerfully contribute to the welfare of the whole country 
 — for the good of a part is the good of the whole. 
 
 In July, 1856, he broached the project in a circular letter 
 to the bishops of the Gulf states, Georgia, the Carolinas, 
 Tennessee and Arkansas — the ten plantation states. He 
 pointed to the inadequacy and ill-success of state, denomi- 
 national and diocesan institutions of learning, showed that 
 while none of the dioceses singly was equal to the task of 
 supporting a college, they could if combined create and 
 maintain an institution on a grand scale, and concluded 
 with the suggestion that the railroad system already in 
 operation indicated East Tennessee as its site. In reply 
 he received from Atkinson, Davis, Rutledge and Otey 
 letters 'expressing satisfaction with the plan,' from Green 
 and Freeman (of Arkansas and Texas) verbal assent, while 
 " several of Cobbs' clergy ' assured him of his co-operation. 
 Elliott had been his confidant from the first. So began an 
 overwhelming correspondence. 
 
 All the journals of New Orleans were loud in favor of 
 the plan, and from the city and the state came the first and 
 largest promises of financial aid. For three millions of 
 dollars were estimated as necessary for the splendid design 
 — but the bishop had only begun solicitation of funds ere 
 he received pledges amounting to half a million. All over 
 the South the utmost enthusiasm was evinced, as at a dec- 
 laration of mental independence. ' A movement has been 
 made,' Otey notified his convention, ' in which the bishop 
 of Louisiana, whom we all know and honor for his enlarged 
 and enlightened views, has taken the lead, which looks to 
 
146 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 the establishment and endowment of an institution on the 
 most liberal scale . . . which shall furnish the young men 
 of this vast and important region with ample facilities for 
 enlarged literary and professional education. There can- 
 not be conceived a sound reason, we apprehend, for com- 
 pelling the rising generation to go abroad in search of these 
 advantages when it is in our power to supply them at home.' 
 On Independence Day, 1857, the bishops of seven dio- 
 ceses, clerical and lay representatives from as many, and a 
 throng of visitors numbering several hundred, met on the 
 summit of Lookout Mountain, commanding a glorious pros- 
 pect of height and plain, its base washed by a fine, serpen- 
 tine curve of the Tennessee river, that rounds in the near 
 distance the hill about whose base lies the town of Chatta- 
 nooga. The day was chosen as a ' witness to loyalty,' for 
 the scheme had excited suspicion at the North ; the Ameri- 
 can flag was borne before the procession by one of the last 
 surviving soldiers of the Revolution, and a band played 
 patriotic airs. Thus, among rocks and trees, upon the top- 
 most ledges of the hill, was consummated the long desired 
 and much needed union of the southern church, in a com- 
 mon educational interest. There was Otey, the senior in 
 consecration, the appointed preacher of the day, soon to 
 be chosen, on Cobbs' motion, president of the board of 
 trustees, and first chancellor of the university ; there were 
 the brothers in heart and aim, Polk and Elliott ; Green of 
 Mississippi, destined to succeed the last as third chancellor ; 
 Rutledge of Florida, Davis of South Carolina, — and Cobbs, 
 the senior of all in years, and the gentlest and wisest of 
 them all. These were the seven bishops ; among as many 
 clerical delegates the most conspicuous were Gregg of South 
 Carolina and Lay of Alabama. 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 147 
 
 The religious exercises were opened with the hundredth 
 psalm, after which Bishop Green read for the lesson the 
 twenty-second chapter of the book of Joshua. Then fol- 
 lowed the Te Deum, and prayers by Bishop Cobbs; and 
 after a reading of the Declaration of Independence, the 
 sermon was delivered by Bishop Otey. It set forth the 
 leading principles of the founders in a thoroughly patriotic 
 strain, repelling 'the unfounded suspicion . . . of section- 
 alism. . . . Our aim is eminently national and patriotic, and 
 as such should commend itself to every lover of his coun- 
 try. We rear this day an altar, not of political schism, but 
 an " altar of witness " that we are of one faith and house- 
 hold. We contemplate no strife, save a generous rivalry 
 with our brethren as to who shall furnish to this great Re- 
 public the truest men, the truest Christians and the truest 
 patriots.' 
 
 ' Thus far,' wrote Gregg in his account of the ceremony, 
 ' the flag [under which the bishop stood] hung idly from its 
 staff ; but when [he] began to speak of our country and the 
 love all good men bear it, a breeze came to stir the stars 
 and stripes; and still, as he proceeded to denounce the 
 thought that we would come with holy words upon our lips 
 to plot mischief against our brethren, the flag waved more 
 proudly than before, seeking the person of the speaker and 
 causing his words to come as it were from the midst of its 
 folds.' 
 
 The next day was Sunday, and Bishop Cobbs preached 
 on the need of sympathy by even the wisest and strongest, 
 and the misery of selfishness and indifference to others' 
 needs and sorrows. His spirit, the spirit of brotherly- 
 kindness, ' pervaded the assembled company to a singular 
 degree.' 
 
148 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 In November the trustees met at Montgomery, to decide 
 upon a situation and a name. For the former, Atlanta and 
 Sewanee were leading rivals, and Cobbs was exceedingly 
 urgent that the university should be located in Alabama, 
 preferably near Huntsville : he believed that the Tennessee 
 mountains would prove too cold an elevation; — but the 
 grandeur of its site, a princely donation of land, timber, 
 coal, facility of transportation and other qualifications fixed 
 the choice of the majority upon Sewanee. Titles were next 
 proposed — 'The Church University,' 'The University of 
 Sewanee,' — but the name proposed by Bishop Green satis- 
 fied the largest number. 
 
 Upon all this enthusiasm the financial crisis of 1857 
 smote with chilling, depressing effect. It is rather remark- 
 able that as Otey's early hopes were extinguished by the 
 panic of 1837, so, just twenty years after, Polk's larger 
 design suffered serious retardation. The proportions, how- 
 ever, were reversed ; the later panic was by no means as 
 severe as the earlier one, — the design was far greater, fully 
 able to weather that gale, though suffering a setback. 
 Bishop Atkinson had not attended the university inaugural. 
 He seems to have felt a kindly but not very enthusiastic 
 interest in the plan. ' This university,' he told his conven- 
 tion, * promises not only to be of great benefit to the South 
 but to all those high interests of learning, morality and re- 
 ligion, throughout our entire country, which the church is 
 bound especially to have at heart,' and he believed it would 
 help to remove 'the crying evil now pressing upon us, — an 
 undisciplined, irreligious and consequently immoral youth.' 
 But, he added, 'the extreme pecuniary embarrassment, 
 under which our whole country has been suffering, has de- 
 ferred the canvass for an endowment.' But for that check 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 149 
 
 the corner-stone might have been laid in 1858, building 
 pushed and professors engaged through 18^-60, so that 
 by the autumn of the latter year (when the stone was actu- 
 ally laid), some halls might have been ready for lectures 
 and occupancy, and tuition have been begun. 
 
 Cobbs' diocesan treasury reflected the monetary shrink- 
 age, — for people's charities seem first to suffer retrenchment 
 in hard times. ' It will be a sad day for the church,' the 
 bishop truly said, ' when she ceases to feel an interest and 
 to put forth efforts in behalf of foreign missions. ... I 
 would rejoice to see a ten-fold increase of the amount given 
 by this diocese to that cause. It is a great mistake to sup- 
 pose that domestic missions are weakened by contributions 
 to foreign, for it will be found that those congregations 
 most interested in foreign are most liberal in supporting 
 domestic missions.' He lamented that he had only four 
 names on his list of candidates for holy orders: 'The real 
 difficulty,' he said, ' is the indifference and worldliness of 
 parents.' He had also to complain afresh of the inade- 
 quate support of the clergy. 
 
 A characteristic sermon of his entitled ' Christian Kind- 
 ness,' on the thirty-second verse of the fourth chapter of 
 St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, was published at this 
 time, by request, in Mobile. ' To be kind one to another,' 
 ran its familiar strain, ' is one of the evidences that we are 
 under the influence of the gospel of Christ. It is all idle 
 to call ourselves Christians when we are wilful and selfish, 
 harsh and ill-natured, bitter and malignant, reckless of the 
 feelings, the rights and the comforts of others. How com- 
 monly and how greatly Christians fail here ! What a want 
 there is of kindness not only in their acts and deeds but in 
 their words, in their tone and temper and spirit, in their 
 
150 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 whole bearing and deportment. Ah, how unamiable do 
 they often appear and what painful and mortifying reflec- 
 tions do they often suggest in the minds of those around 
 them! A large portion of the happiness of life depends 
 not on great deeds and efforts but upon little acts of atten- 
 tion and courtesy.' 
 
 July 3rd, 4th and 5th, 1858, he 'attended the meeting 
 of the trustees of the University of the South at Beersheba 
 Springs in Tennessee and whilst there preached once. 
 After a full and free conference with the members of the 
 boards, the trustees from Alabama determined to waive the 
 question of reconsideration as to the location of the univer- 
 sity and to acquiesce with the majority in the selection of 
 Sewanee.' 'There are three primary and indispensable 
 conditions [of location],' said Otey, ' which take precedence 
 of all other considerations and to which all others are sec- 
 ondary, and these are : first, health, subsidiary to which are 
 pure air and an ample supply of pure free-stone water; 
 second, accessibility : the site must be within reach of the 
 countries represented in the board in three or four days' 
 travel by the ordinary means of conveyance ; third, facility 
 of obtaining supplies, including besides provisions, materials 
 for building, fuel, etc' These conditions, according to the 
 best scientific advice, were most fully met by Sewanee. 
 
 'I would therefore,' Cobbs continued in his address of 
 1859, 'earnestly commend the claims of the university to 
 the friends and members of the church in the diocese. 
 The establishment of such a university is a matter of the 
 gravest importance to the friends of the church in the 
 south ; and I trust that when the call is made for funds 
 there will be on the part of this diocese a prompt, hearty, 
 zealous and liberal response. I shall be sadly disappointed 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 151 
 
 if Alabama does not contribute two hundred and fifty 
 thousand dollars to this most laudable object.' In similar 
 strain Otey urged ' the people of Tennessee to imitate and 
 emulate the liberality' of those of Louisiana, especially 
 since the site of the university was ' within the bounds of 
 their own state sovereignty. Language can scarcely mag- 
 nify beyond due bounds,' he continued, 'the value and 
 importance of this enterpr'se, if successfully accomplished, 
 to the citizens of the ten states confederated for the pro- 
 jected work.' 
 
 Davis on the contrary referred quite formally to the 
 meeting of 1857 in his ensuing address: apparently he 
 could not follow Polk's advice to 'rise above diocesan 
 considerations.' A projected theological school at Cam- 
 den seems to have absorbed all his interest and energy ; in 
 1859 he professed himself convinced of the need of theo- 
 logical tuition within the state and urged it upon the diocese. 
 
 The Alabama convention that year was 'the most nu- 
 merously attended yet ' in the diocesan history, and to it the 
 bishop poured forth his controversy with his people over 
 their worldliness, their worldly conformity ; much was given 
 to Fashion that was due to God. That, beside irreverence, 
 seemed to him ' the great evil of the day, the great beset- 
 ting sin. On all sides I find an eager and ravenous appe- 
 tite for light, gay and worldly amusements.' He spoke, we 
 are told, ' more sorrowfully than his wont,' and his charge 
 was corroborated by the committee on the state of the 
 church, which reported a general laxity of religious morals : 
 the ball-room, the theatre, the ' drinking usages of society, 
 the well-known implements of the gamester,' avarice, ex- 
 travagance, self-indulgence — wereperils besettingthe church 
 and Christian people on every side. The contributions 
 
152 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 for the year were scanty though the times were no longer 
 hard but on the contrary highly prosperous. The bishop's 
 spirits were indeed so much depressed that he said he felt 
 like climbing a mountain to escape the deluge of worldli- 
 ness. 
 
 That this was not a mere subjective impression, or a 
 local malady, is proved by the concurrence of his contem- 
 poraries. Otey was no rigorist; he enjoyed a game of 
 chess as well as any one, and played without concealment : 
 ' Whatever God sees,' he was wont to say, ' I am willing 
 any man should see.' But he felt it incumbent upon him 
 to issue a pastoral letter to his diocese upon 'Christian 
 Manners,' reprobating a license that almost obliterated if it 
 did not 'quite efface the line of distinction between the 
 follower of Christ and the man of the world. Parties of 
 pleasure involving a very considerable expense and a great 
 waste of time, — objections the least considerable, contrasted 
 with their acknowledged tendency to erase serious religious 
 impressions, blunt pious sensibilities and introduce in their 
 stead levity, frivolous manners and a gay, dissipating turn 
 of mind, — are, I am sorry to say, of frequent recurrence 
 among the families belonging to the communion of our 
 church. ... I would call upon these ... to consider 
 seriously with themselves whether they can reconcile it with 
 any proper sense of Christian propriety thus to indulge 
 themselves, when many of the ministers of that church 
 which they profess to love and honor are struggling to live 
 upon the scant allowance of one or two hundred dollars a 
 year. I speak not of those laboring in heathen lands, in 
 Asia's sickly clime or on Afric's burning sands, but of men 
 in your midst.' And later he lifted up a louder note of 
 expostulation and entreaty : ' Ignorance, irreligion and 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 153 
 
 fanaticism prevail around us,— and connected with these is 
 that restless search for amusement which seeks for gratifi- 
 cation in games of hazard, theatrical entertainments, public 
 balls and other assemblages for social hilarity ' whose ten- 
 dency is 'to stifle watchfulness' and whose influence is 
 fatal to ' the cultivation of holy desires and the growth of 
 gracious affections. Yet they appear to be alarmingly on 
 the increase throughout the land.' Elliott said that because 
 we have no state religion ' it almost seems as if we con- 
 sidered ourselves as a nation without any religion at all.' 
 But Atkinson's was the severest indictment: 'A troubled 
 spirit, which doubts everything, which sees no certainty but 
 what the senses teach . . . may be found in all ages and 
 states of society, but particularly in an age which is on the 
 one hand sensual and luxurious and on the other, inquisi- 
 tive and enlightened. Such was the Augustan age in Rome ; 
 such was the eighteenth century in France ; such, I cannot 
 but believe, is the existing era in our own country. . . . 
 Our age is a vicious age, if murder, adultery, burglary, 
 robbery, peculation, fraud, theft and imposture constitute 
 vice.' And so the people went dancing and sinning over 
 the brink of civil war. 
 
 Meantime upon the mind's eye of the confiding bishop 
 of Alabama there had dawned since his visit to England a 
 vision far in advance of the age, as great in its way and as 
 essential to the full health and vigor of his or any diocese 
 as Polk's conception was to the prosperity of the whole 
 province, and like that a unifying, organic idea, — the vision 
 of an American cathedral. ' To see a female seminary of 
 a high character,' so he told his convention in his last ad- 
 dress but one, ' permanently established in the diocese 
 under the auspices of the church, has been the great desire 
 
154 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 of my episcopate,' — but now, at its close, he projected a 
 mighty work, hoping to lay the foundations upon which 
 his successor might build. As we have seen, he had an 
 idea of a see city ; he believed that a bishop should be a 
 true metropolitan, that his place was at the capital, where 
 his influence would prove most potent and beneficent, and 
 whence it might radiate to the farthest bounds of the state. 
 And now he would have a great metropolitan church, to be 
 the centre and focus of diocesan life and light, devotional, 
 educational, missionary, philanthropic. But let us listen to 
 his own account of the plan, given in detail in a letter to 
 one of his sons in orders : 
 
 ' I am sometimes tempted to have you come and begin 
 with me my great plan which I wish my successor to carry 
 out, and for which I design to collect materials: a plan 
 which my successor could consummate, and thus enable a 
 bishop to be not simply a chairman of the convention but 
 the heart, the motive power and the controlling agent of 
 his diocese, and thus let him be — what has never been in 
 our church in the United Sta es — a real Bishop in the gos- 
 pel sense of the word. The plan is this : to have a large 
 church in the centre of a quadrangle, to be forever under 
 the control of the bishop, with free seats, to be opened 
 every morning at sunrise with an air on the chime of bells 
 and closed at sunset in the same way : double daily service : 
 every Sunday and saint's day a sermon and the Holy 
 Communion, with the offertory as a means of revenue ; the 
 church to cost about seventy-five thousand dollars and to 
 be called All Souls. On the line of the quadrangle around 
 the church a number of neat Gothick buildings correspond- 
 ing with the style of the church, to be used as follows : 
 
 ' i, for a diocesan library and the office of the bishop ; 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 155 
 
 ' 2, the house for sexton and bell-ringer, etc. ; 
 
 '3, for the priest and his family, — the vice-rector of the 
 church ; 
 
 '4, for an infirmary and house of mercy, to be under 
 the control of the deaconesses ; 
 
 ' s, for a deaconess and four sub-deaconesses ; 
 
 ' 6, the steward's house, for boarding the deacons, the 
 candidates for orders, and the students at the classical 
 school ; 
 
 ' 7, house for candidates for orders ; 
 
 ' 8, house for a high classical school, — the teacher being 
 bound to speak only in the Latin language ; 
 
 ' 9, house for six or eight deacons, who should go in and 
 out doing missionary work on plantations and the surround- 
 ing country. 
 
 ' The deaconesses to board themselves in their own house 
 and of course to marry when they pleased. 
 
 ' The bishop could thus infuse his own mind and spirit 
 into his diocese ; he could train up his clergy to know and 
 to carry out the mind of the church ; with the aid of the 
 deacons, the candidates for orders, and the deaconesses, he 
 could teach schools, — Sunday schools, charity schools, etc. ; 
 could gather in the poor and visit the sick and thus cause 
 the church to be seen in her beauty and felt in her power. 
 
 'What would you think of coming down and starting 
 this work with me? Tell Mr. Lay that after Convention I 
 shall begin to collect materials for this great work, and that 
 if he is my successor he must carry out my plan in ten 
 years' time. He could do it with all ease in that time, and 
 then he would have an instrumentality for good that no 
 bishop has had in the United States. The whole would 
 cost about one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, 
 
156 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 and this sum may easily be raised in ten years with the 
 help of what I can collect and deposit in my lifetime. If 
 I were ten years younger I would start the work at once 
 and would teach the classical school myself. — 
 
 ' P. S. As David felt himself unworthy to build the tem- 
 ple, but contented himself with collecting materials, I am 
 restrained from beginning the work not only by my age but 
 by a feeling similar to that of David.' 
 
 Though that great and good and truly catholic plan 
 1 miscarried at that time,' it could not perish utterly. In 
 fact, it more than sketched out the ecclesiastical advance 
 of the remainder of the century, and remains a command- 
 ing ideal for ensuing generations. 
 
 The eleventh and twelfth days of August, the bishop 
 reported, he ' attended the meeting of the board of trustees 
 of the University of the South. This important institution 
 has every prospect of being most successfully established.' 
 On his return, he preached and confirmed at Winchester, 
 at Otey's request. 
 
 In October he went to what proved to be one of the 
 most interesting and memorable in the long roll of general 
 conventions. It met for the first time as far south as Rich- 
 mond. During its sessions five bishops were consecrated 
 and a sixth was elected, and the church became at last 
 conterminous with the nation. Bishop Cobbs joined Bish- 
 ops Kemper, De Lancey and others in the imposition of 
 hands upon Henry Benjamin Whipple, consecrated for the 
 new state of Minnesota, and ten days later united with 
 Bishops Meade, Mcllvaine, Polk, Elliott and Atkinson in 
 the consecration (the fifth and last in which he took part) 
 of his faithful young disciple of former days, later his de- 
 voted friend, like-minded in all high designs, and now at 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 157 
 
 last his brother in the episcopate — Henry Champlin Lay, 
 fourth missionary bishop of Arkansas. Of that trio of 
 sympathetic natures, Cobbs, Atkinson and Lay, the latter 
 (who had lately received his doctorate, like the first, from 
 Hobart College) was destined to compose a touching and 
 beautiful memoir of the first and to deliver a nobly appre- 
 ciative memorial sermon upon the second. Of the other 
 new bishops there was one whose acquaintance we have 
 already made— Alexander Gregg. 
 
 Thirteen years had passed since Gregg's ordination to 
 the diaconate by Bishop Gadsden, — thirteen years of pas- 
 toral labor in his native place in the course of which those 
 sterling qualities of his nature were exercised and exhibited 
 that were to fit him for higher responsibilities in an inimi- 
 tably vaster sphere. He possessed moral qualities of a high 
 order, steadfastness of purpose and untiring energy, and 
 beside, a kindliness of heart, humility of mind and spiritu- 
 ality that remind one forcibly of Bishop Cobbs. He 
 walked in a perpetual consciousness of the enveloping 
 presence of the world of spirits. He was a churchman of 
 the type of Dehon, Gadsden and Rutledge. He was an 
 ideal pastor; sickness, want, bereavement, troubles of 
 every kind, found unfailing response in his sympathy, coun- 
 sel and assistance, as we are told by one who knew him 
 well in those early days, without respect of class or religious 
 connection ; and ' he made the poor feel that there was a 
 place for them in the house of God.' As a citizen he kept 
 constantly in view the true interests of the community, and 
 led in all benevolent enterprise, and in the uplifting of its 
 mental and moral life. He was loyal to high ideals ; we 
 have marked the chastened fervor of his style in describing 
 the inauguration of the University of the South ; in after 
 
158 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 years he declared that language failed him fully to express 
 the enthusiasm inspired in his breast at the inception of 
 the university, and his hopes when its foundations were 
 laid. During his pastorate he was more than once called 
 to other fields — notably by his friend Bishop Green to a 
 highly eligible position at Natchez— but he hearkened to 
 none till finally there came a constraining call to the bish- 
 opric of Texas, vacant through the death of Bishop Free- 
 man. He now received the doctorate from his alma mater, 
 and was consecrated in the Monumental Church at Rich- 
 mond during the session of the convention. Otey, Polk, 
 Elliott, Green, Davis and Atkinson— almost all the southern 
 bishops and episcopal trustees of the university— assisted in 
 the laying on of hands : it is to be regretted that Cobbs and 
 Rutledge were not of the number. As soon thereafter as 
 he was able he made a visit of investigation to his huge 
 diocese that occupied him for one wonderful month. He 
 went by boat from New Orleans to Galveston, and thence 
 proceeded to Houston, Austin and San Antonio, everywhere 
 confirming, and in the latter place laying the corner-stone 
 of a church. Next he visited Seguin and Gonzales, where 
 he spent Christmas, holding service in a Baptist meeting- 
 house, and the day after left for Columbus, ' seats in an 
 ambulance having been provided.' He then returned by 
 way of Richmond and Houston to Galveston, and so 
 homeward in the new year of i860, greatly gratified by 
 the 'cordial welcome' he had everywhere received and by 
 the ' earnest attention ' of the congregations gathered to 
 hear him in court-houses, school-houses, Masonic halls and 
 Presbyterian, Methodist and other meeting-houses very 
 'kindly offered.' A month later, he removed with his 
 family to Galveston, and in the course of three visitations 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 159 
 
 during his first year confirmed a hundred and thirty persons 
 — in addition to a hundred on his preliminary visit, — con- 
 secrated three churches, and travelled, by every imaginable 
 conveyance, much over three thousand miles. At the out- 
 set he issued an invitation (that resulted in large corre- 
 spondence) through the principal journals of the state to 
 every member of the church therein to send him his name 
 and address ; and year by year he persisted until at length 
 he had visited every place whence an answer to that invi- 
 tation had come. 
 
 Cobbs availed himself of his journey to Richmond to 
 pay a visit to his old friends at Petersburg : ' It was a great 
 comfort to me,' he declared, 'to mingle again with my 
 former parishioners, and to find that they had the same 
 kind and loving hearts as when I resided amongst them.' 
 And now, before we bid him farewell in time, let us confirm 
 our acquaintance by some of those familiar touches that 
 are the woof of human life, and seek to complete our men- 
 tal picture of him, weaving together (without too much 
 repetition) sentiments, opinions, traits and tastes until we 
 see him in his daily walk. 
 
 In religion he was evangelical to the end. Lay tells us 
 that he positively loved the doctrine of ' justification by the 
 sole merits of Christ,' and that in one of his last letters he 
 wrote, ' Throw out the true evangelical flag of the church.' 
 He loved the hymn, ' Rock of Ages,' and was wont to say 
 that two lines in it expressed the sum and substance of his 
 religion : 
 
 In my hand no price I bring, 
 Simply to Thy cross I cling. 
 
 The Montanistic alloy in his religion, however, was never 
 completely eliminated. Of course we must bear in mind 
 
160 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 the character of the times as it has been already depicted, 
 —but nothing can justify an indiscriminating reprobation 
 of pleasures in their nature innocent. That is, in fact, the 
 short, sure and easy method of thrusting active souls into 
 guilty pleasures. There are of course good and bad dances 
 and dancing-masters, good and bad plays and actors,— but 
 Bishop Cobbs condemned them all without distinction. He 
 would rather see a rattlesnake on his table, so he often de- 
 clared, than a pack of cards. He could not distinguish 
 between a classic game like whist — between card-playing — 
 and gambling. There is something pathetic, something a 
 little too tremulous in that attitude ; vulgar gambling was 
 no doubt a vice universally prevalent, and sickening to a 
 soul like his, — but yet it savors of superstition to believe 
 that some baleful sorcery inheres in bits of figured card- 
 board. He declared that he would never confirm a danc- 
 ing-master, and that when in company he had never stayed 
 to witness a couple waltz. ' They will dance the church to 
 death,' he said mournfully of some of his people, and he 
 was poignantly distressed when a vestryman of St. John's 
 Church built a theatre in Montgomery. He made no allu- 
 sion to these matters, however, in the pulpit. 
 
 Dancing and acting are akin to fine arts, and herein one 
 little touch betrays the worthy bishop's whole attitude : he 
 would not go to see Powers' Greek Slave— for it was in the 
 nude. Though opposed to church embroidery and the 
 sequence of ecclesiastical colors, he yet had an eye for 
 color, red being his favorite. Hence he loved roses, and 
 noted with peculiar pleasure the exquisite pink of the crape 
 myrtle. So marked was his preference that his friends used 
 to rally him upon it, maintaining that it betrayed his British 
 sympathies, and that he would have been with the redcoats 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 161 
 
 (though that he would never admit) in 1776. Except the 
 above, he did not often notice flowers or, singularly enough, 
 the tints of the sunset heavens unless his attention was 
 called to them. He had an eye like any sensible man for 
 female beauty and for ladies' dress, and here his taste was 
 for simple elegance : he would have been scandalized by 
 Parisian evening costume had he ever beheld it — but he 
 never attended fashionable evening parties. Much jewelry 
 and especially the cross as an ornament were deeply dis- 
 tasteful to him. He had little ear for music, and never 
 tried to sing save when delirious, as in attacks of malarial 
 fever: then only he would try to strike up a hymn, — and 
 in this respect also it were to be wished that many would 
 follow the good bishop's example. 
 
 His literary tastes were contracted by his Montanistic 
 strain. He did not care for Shakespeare. This was in- 
 evitable, for Shakespeare was a playwright and the supreme 
 poet of the world and of nature, often sadly unsanctified. 
 The great poet was at a discount in Alabama in those 
 days ; for some unexplained reason Alexander Meek did 
 not admire him. The bishop liked George Herbert's and 
 Cowper's poetry, and named his sons for Hooker and 
 Leighton. He was fond of languages. Bishop Atkinson 
 testified to his ill-recognized mental ability : Cobbs' mind, 
 he declared, was the most original and suggestive that he 
 had ever encountered, and from none had he derived more 
 new thoughts, but, he added, 'his powers of mind were not 
 duly estimated because of his modest and retiring charac- 
 ter.' So amiable and trustful was he, so reluctant to impute 
 wrong motives, that few could suspect at first sight what a 
 keen judge and reader of character he was. It is true ; 
 the eye of the mind is cleared by piety so that it beholds 
 
162 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 persons and objects in their proper light, piercing the veils 
 of pretence, false sentiment and flattery : the good are not 
 without a guard in this present world. The bishop's clear- 
 sightedness was only dimmed by his sympathies; these 
 were so tender that he was often imposed on. After many 
 years he felt compunction at the thought of an impatient 
 answer he had once made to a stranger who had inquired 
 the way at some cross-roads. Sympathy was the key-note 
 of his character and the source of his influence ; it summed 
 up for him the Saviour's life and work, and he thought that 
 his ministers should always exhibit it. ' Preach what you 
 can throw your feelings into,' he always answered when 
 any of his clergy asked him what to preach. His style was 
 accordant with this advice ; he was fond of stringing adjec- 
 tives together — ' devoted and faithful and useful and emi- 
 nent men ' — and of emphasizing favorite words like 
 'Christian ' or ' church,' repeating them half a dozen 
 times in as many clauses. 
 
 Let us follow him across the threshold of his home. ' I 
 dare not intrude,' wrote Elliott, ' into the sacred sanctuary 
 of his home. Private loves and private griefs belong not 
 to the public eye.' In a sermon (as on that occasion), in 
 such a place and at such a time, that was a correct senti- 
 ment. There is a reserve, certainly, that should not be 
 violated, and generally it may be inexpedient to reveal a 
 man's domestic life : only too often it will not bear expo- 
 sure ; but to ignore it in the present case and circumstances 
 would be not only inexpedient but wrong, — at this date 
 there remains absolutely no reason for reticence. It has 
 been well said that although the public is ' not entitled to 
 know everything about distinguished men, it has its rights 
 in the matter, and among these is the right to know how 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 163 
 
 nearly any man's private life has harmonized with his pub- 
 lic professions,' — in a word, whether inner in his case cor- 
 responded to outer, the kernel to the covering ; and whether 
 we will or no, that is going to be the imperative demand 
 in the future, and without such knowledge none will rest 
 content. ' The man who receives the suffrages of his fel- 
 low-men becomes in no small degree responsible to them. 
 He professes to lead and instruct them, and for that reason 
 they are entitled to know such of the facts of his private 
 life as will enable them thoroughly to understand his char- 
 acter. " His worst he kept," says Tennyson. If he kept 
 this worst entirely to himself, all honor to his noble self- 
 control. If he kept it to wreak upon the private circle of 
 those who knew him best and loved him most, then it is 
 right that the fact be made known.' In the home life of 
 Nicholas Hamner Cobbs there is nothing to make known 
 save a course of consistent kindness. Unlike many men 
 of genial but impulsive natures, who yield to occasional 
 violent antipathies and gusts of temper, with him sympathy 
 was not an impulse but a principle. Therein, we take it, 
 is pure moral perfection : true sympathy as a principle. It 
 is a satisfaction to behold a character in which exterior 
 and interior, show and substance, so perfectly corresponded, 
 — a pleasure to lift the veil upon a home so peaceful, 
 happy, pure and fair. 
 
 How far that little candle throws its beams! 
 So shines a true home in a sinful world. 
 
 Not to speak of the bishop's domestic life would be to 
 leave out of the picture his most characteristic feature. 
 He was intensely domestic. When off on a visitation he 
 let not a day pass without writing to his wife, if it were 
 
164 A SAIXT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 only a line. We recall that failure of communication with 
 his family brought him back from England in a hurry. 
 Mrs. Cobbs was a person of strong character, and her 
 object in life was to make home pleasant and free of care 
 to her husband. A single fact forcibly illustrates both 
 points ; she once suffered the excision of a painful tumor 
 without taking anaesthetics and, because she knew the 
 fruitless distress that knowledge of it would cause him, 
 without giving him an inkling as to the operation until it 
 was over. They were a most united and unselfish pair; 
 their relations were never ruffled. The one point on which 
 they agreed to differ was the subject of marriage, espe- 
 cially second marriages, of which she disapproved. The 
 bishop did not believe in the celibacy of the clergy, and 
 when told that two of his had announced their intention of 
 remaining celibates he replied, ' Give them time and they 
 will come to their senses! ' (One of them, however, never 
 came to his.) He believed that every one should marry; 
 Mrs. Cobbs on the contrary used to say that she had the 
 highest admiration for a Christian old maid. When he 
 told her once, in answer to a question, to whom he was 
 writing, she exclaimed, ' Now, Bishop, the last time you 
 wrote to the Judge it was to condole with him on the loss 
 of his wife, and now you are writing to congratulate him 
 on getting married ! ' The bishop could only laugh, for it 
 was too true. 
 
 He was wholly above the parental, more commonly, to 
 be sure, maternal weakness of wishing to be loved best by 
 his children ; he used to tell them that he would have them 
 love their mother more than they did him. She undertook 
 their discipline ; he disliked exceedingly to inflict punish- 
 ment, and in fact scarcely ever did so. He once came 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 165 
 
 into the house looking very much dejected, and when asked 
 what was the matter, replied that he had had to give one of 
 the children ' a severe whipping.' One of them coming 
 in soon after said, ' Oh, mother, you ought to have seen 
 the twig he used: it couldn't have hurt a fly!' As his 
 daughters grew up, he treated them with deferential cour- 
 tesy. 
 
 Mrs. Cobbs took also the oversight and discipline of the 
 slaves, of whom there were six or so about the house — a 
 father and son and several women. These were an inheri- 
 tance of the bishop's, and had followed him, as we have 
 seen, of their own free will to Cincinnati, and thence to 
 Alabama. They stood in awe of Mrs. Cobbs but were 
 not in the least afraid of him, so indulgent was he. The 
 elder man, who was too fond of liquor, used to get the 
 young people of the house to intercede for him with their 
 mother, — for as for their father the bishop, he said, he 
 could always manage him. 
 
 Bishop Cobbs believed in and practised self-help. He 
 was entirely above all vulgar contempt for manual labor. 
 He never liked to cause trouble or to be waited on when 
 he could serve himself. In this his friend Atkinson resem- 
 bled him, who, we are told, in sickness as in health, even 
 in suffering and helplessness, would if possible help himself 
 and try to lessen others' pains. Bishop Meade tells us 
 that when on a visit to Bishop Gris wold,— that true servant 
 of God, — having as a matter of course put his shoes with- 
 out his bed-room door to be blacked, looking for them in 
 the morning he discovered his host cleaning them with his 
 own hands. Nor was that the only occasion when the 
 holy Griswold exercised such humility ; being remonstrated 
 with he replied that that was the only way we had now of 
 
166 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 washing the disciples' feet. Cobbs referred to the incident 
 and the sentiment with admiration, and certainly thought 
 nothing of blacking his own shoes upon occasion. St. 
 Clement of Alexandria says that the Christian may prop- 
 erly do anything for himself and may without derogation 
 perform any loving, reciprocal service for another. The 
 bishop was simple and exceedingly neat in his habits and 
 attire. We have observed his distaste for jewelry : he him- 
 self never wore even a ring. We have followed him inta 
 his dressing-room — and why not? Since Bishop White's 
 biographer tells us that he buttered his mince-pies, it would 
 appear that no fact can be too inconsequential to mention. 
 One of Cobbs' favorite precepts, to inculcate habits of 
 neatness in his children and to save others and even a slave 
 unnecessary trouble, was, Always empty the basin after wash- 
 ing! He always shaved himself and cut his own hair — thus 
 effectually precluding the unmentionable contagion of bar- 
 ber-shops and their implements of promiscuous use. So 
 he kept a head of hair, latterly growing thin and gray but 
 still without baldness, to the end. He rose at six in the 
 morning, and opened the day with family prayer, reading 
 a psalm or a chapter of the Bible, which he followed with 
 a few collects and part, not usually all, of the order of 
 Family Prayer. Breakfast was at seven, dinner at one 
 o'clock. He never had wine upon his table, but would 
 not refuse a little of it at another's. He was fond of 
 sweets, but was in fact by no means fastidious in the mat- 
 ter of food — as it was well that one in his situation were 
 not. He was fully endued with the episcopal grace of 
 hospitality ; generous to a fault, no vice was more repug- 
 nant to his nature than meanness and penuriousness. Yet 
 he possessed business ability and insight to an unusual 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 167 
 
 degree. It is truly remarkable how perfectly he realized 
 the pattern of an apostolic bishop as outlined by St. Paul. 
 He never gave a ' party ' save at the marriage of a daugh- 
 ter, but kept open house, entertaining a constant succession 
 of guests and visitors at meals. He delighted in society, in 
 the pleasures of conversation ; he had a pleasant voice, a 
 store of anecdote, but was not given to monologue, and 
 never interrupted others save for good cause, and then with 
 profuse apologies. He never enjoyed to repeat anything 
 to another's discredit, and sometimes would gently interpose 
 restraint upon his wife's talk and that of a neighbor who 
 kept them posted upon the progress of society,— a lady 
 whose company the bishop greatly enjoyed, for she talked 
 uncommonly well and he had a keen sense of humor,— but 
 not rarely he would have to check her, laughingly but 
 effectually, in her caustic career. 
 
 After an early tea, the family knelt in prayer around the 
 supper-table, and the latest went to their nightly rest as 
 early as nine o'clock : every Christian, the bishop used to 
 say, ought to be in bed by that time. So he continued 
 throughout his episcopal course the simple habits of his 
 pastorate and earliest years. 
 
 A lady assured the writer of these lines that he never 
 smoked. It is true that she never saw him do so, as no 
 lady outside his family probably ever did see him smoke ; his 
 daily consumption of tobacco was limited to a single cigar, 
 in his study, just before retiring. 
 
 In that home Sunday was observed strictly but not sanc- 
 timoniously. Attendance upon both morning and evening 
 prayer was a matter of course, and at other hours the 
 family rested, read religious books or papers,— notably the 
 ' Southern Churchman '—and the bishop did not object to 
 
168 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 a pleasure walk, though he did seriously to driving on that 
 day or to paying merely social calls ; he approved of visit- 
 ing the sick or the poor. 
 
 He was not addicted to a surfeit of daily newspapers,— 
 and that suggests an indication of his attitude toward a lit- 
 tle-discussed but profoundly and vitally important problem. 
 He could no more be satisfied with the existing divorce of 
 religion and politics than with that of the former and edu- 
 cation. Early in his episcopate he put his conviction on 
 record : ' I think it of vast importance that God should be 
 recognized formally and officially by the nation at large.' 
 He admired, with reservations, the English constitution, 
 and could not think that disunion of church and state was 
 either in theory or practice a more admirable thing than 
 their union, and he looked for a time when a well-considered 
 and salutary harmony — something better, healthier and 
 stabler than their present scrupulous and jealous separation 
 — a species of armed neutrality — should characterize their 
 relations in this country. 
 
 His was a tropical nature. He luxuriated in the heat of 
 summer, remarking that his idea of the height of felicity 
 was to lie like a lizard on a log in a July sun. He was 
 never heard to complain of the heat : would that his exam- 
 ple were of universal currency! — but he did complain em- 
 phatically of cold, and even in weather comparatively mild 
 believed that it was wholesome to have a fire in one's room. 
 We are reminded of his objection to the Cumberland pla- 
 teau as a site for the University of the South. 
 
 He coincided absolutely with Polk in his estimate of the 
 value of refined feminine influence, purifying, sweetening 
 and humanizing, upon young men. He would have it a 
 regulation at Sewanee that no student should sit at a table 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 169 
 
 at the head of which there was not a lady to pour out the 
 coffee ! ' I like to travel with ladies,' he often said, ' they 
 are such a protection to a man.' There was pathos in that 
 remark : it cast a melancholy light upon the profanity and 
 coarseness that assaulted his ears and sickened his sense as 
 he travelled about upon his duties. 
 
 Those travels and labors resulted, with God's grace, in 
 doubling the number of diocesan clergy, more than doubling 
 that of parishes, and quadrupling that of communicants 
 in an episcopate of fifteen years; at the convention of 
 i860, thirty-two clergy were reported, thirty-eight parishes, 
 one thousand, six hundred and fifty white and two hundred 
 and fourteen colored communicants. 
 
 The second week in October the bishop spent at Sewa- 
 nee, assisting ' in the ceremony at the laying of the corner- 
 stone.' It was an impressive occasion. All the bishops 
 interested were present except Davis and the newly-conse- 
 crated bishops of Texas and Arkansas, who were presum- 
 ably detained by diocesan duties. Bishop Smith of Ken- 
 tucky was there, a welcome visitor. Otey opened the 
 exercises with the hundredth psalm, and after Rutledge 
 had read a few sentences of Scripture, Atkinson called 
 to prayer, and Cobbs put up some appropriate petitions. 
 Then when Elliott had described the books and documents 
 deposited in it, Polk, the founder, laid the corner-stone, 
 explaining that it signified ' strength and stability, the union 
 of the intellectual and spiritual natures of man,' and was 
 an emblem of Christ, the wisdom and the power of God. 
 The orator of the day then well expressed the literary and 
 religious enthusiasm that characterized the inception of the 
 undertaking. Green followed with prayer, and Otey closed 
 the ceremony with the benediction. 
 
170 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 At the banquet that ensued, Matthew Fontaine Maury 
 spoke of the harmony of science and religion, Dr. Barnard 
 — who had recently exchanged his professorship at Tusca- 
 loosa for the presidency of the University of Mississippi — 
 put in a plea for pedagogic science, and Bishop Smith 
 pointed out the picturesque contrast between the time, so 
 recent, when the wild Indian roamed over that spot, and 
 the existing occasion, which had filled what was shortly 
 before a solitude with a multitude of people who represented 
 the highest civilization of the hour. He spoke well of 
 church and education, of the ' diffusion of knowledge sanc- 
 tified by religion,' and concluded with a patriotic senti- 
 ment : his last word was of union. And so closed the first 
 chapter of the history of the University of the South,— a 
 project in which the claims of religion and education were 
 never more happily combined, as against a rigid separation 
 or alternate depression, — combined in no spirit of narrow 
 ecclesiasticism but in a large and statesmanlike manner, 
 according to the only finally feasible plan, by which religion 
 itself becomes the paramount exercise of the mind and its 
 records the chief subject-matter of study. And to this 
 hour not only southern churchmen but the whole southern 
 people are on trial as to whether they will let that golden 
 ideal, the most beneficent, doubtless, that was ever offered 
 them, decline and vanish from their horizon. 
 
 It was about the last public function in which Bishop 
 Cobbs participated. The presidential election of the ensu- 
 ing dark November made him sick at heart and no doubt 
 shortened his days ; he divined the dissolution of the Union 
 and was ready to die. In that election, amid confused and 
 jarring cries and the loud 'Hush, hush!' of those who 
 would ignore the consuming question, a plain and simple 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 171 
 
 issue was drawn, — that of the extension or limitation of 
 slavery. For American slavery had attained its period. 
 It had blazed over an immense amount of territory and so 
 prepared it for rapid settlement, but the term of its use and 
 beneficence, industrial, social or other, to the dominant and 
 subject races was at hand. The political balance had 
 turned; the free states Iowa, Wisconsin, California, Min- 
 nesota and Oregon had entered the Union one after the 
 other and others were ready for admission while no new 
 slave states could be prepared. The era of filibustering 
 was over, and the likelihood of an extension of territory 
 southward was remote. Yet at that juncture, strange to 
 say, instead of letting the institution die a slow and natural 
 death, desperate efforts were made to perpetuate it. It is 
 as though it were in the designs of Providence that it 
 should die suddenly and violently. Despite the disapproval 
 of the better southern sentiment, the slave-trade was surrep- 
 titiously revived and rapidly increased : it is stated that in 
 a brief period just before the war over sixty cargoes of 
 negroes were successfully landed. Meantime splenetic 
 criticism and John Brown's seizure of the arsenal at Har- 
 per's Ferry stirred up indignation and alarm throughout 
 Virginia and the other slave states, and the appearance of 
 a startling book, Hinton Helper's ' Impending Crisis in the 
 South,' seemed to portend a mutinous spirit amid the long 
 quiescent middle class. It was felt that then or never was 
 the time to strike. 
 
 Bishop Cobbs loved the Union fondly. He loved the 
 flag, and believed in claiming it and fighting under it if 
 necessary, but he deprecated, with all the force of his gen- 
 tle spirit, the thought of bloodshed. Herein he was abso- 
 lutely at one with his fellow Virginian, Otey ; they may be 
 
172 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 said to have co-ordinated state and country in this order ; 
 the Carolinians on the other hand, Polk and Elliott, were 
 more decidedly and consistently men of their section, and 
 subordinated country to state. Polk hoped for peaceable 
 secession : Cobbs had truer insight, and saw that that was 
 impossible, — for, he pointed out, there was no natural 
 boundary. Perhaps he took a leaf from the early history 
 of his own Alabama, and applied its lesson on a grand 
 scale to the Mississippi river, perceiving that the flourishing 
 commonwealths, rapidly increasing in number in the upper 
 part of its valley, would never be at rest as long as its 
 mouth was under the control of a foreign and generally 
 hostile power. 
 
 In December he took finally to his bed. His complaint 
 was jaundice. Knowing what its effect upon his spirits 
 would be, the family agreed to keep from him news of the 
 secession of South Carolina on the twentieth of the month, 
 and it is believed that he never heard or knew of it. On 
 the twenty-ninth a circular was issued, recommending 
 omission from public worship of the prayer for Congress 
 and of the clause for the President of the United States in 
 that for the civil authority, in the event of the secession of 
 Alabama ; the entry was made in his journal in a strange 
 hand. 
 
 From his death-bed he dictated a farewell message, his 
 testament to his clergy : 
 
 ' First of all, give to each and every one of them, indi- 
 vidually, my love and my blessing; and tell them that as 
 during my whole episcopate it has been my earnest purpose 
 and constant endeavor to be and to show myself to be the 
 personal friend and helper of every clergyman in my dio- 
 cese, so now I have them all still in my heart. 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 173 
 
 ' As to my religious belief : tell them that by God's grace 
 I shall die in the faith in which I have lived and which I 
 have endeavored to preach. 
 
 ' Tell them I dislike party names and loathe party lines 
 in the church of Christ : but next to christ, who is the 
 
 HEAD, I LOVE THE CHURCH, WHICH IS HIS BODY, WITH 
 MY WHOLE HEART. 
 
 ' I look only unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our 
 faith, and say — 
 
 ' " In my hand no price I bring, 
 Simply to Thy cross I cling. " 
 
 ' And with my farewell blessing upon them, upon their 
 families, upon their parishes, and upon my whole diocese, 
 tell them that their dying bishop exhorts them to strive to 
 be men of god, — men of peace, men of brotherly-kind- 
 ness, men of charity ; self-denying men, men of purity, men 
 of prayer; men striving to perfect holiness in the fear of 
 God, and laboring and preaching with an eye single to his 
 glory and the salvation of souls.' 
 
 Presbyterian and Methodist ministers and a Roman 
 priest were at his death-bedside. Among his last distin- 
 guishable words were the lines from the hymn above. He 
 had prayed that he might not live to see the dissolution of the 
 Union, and he died on the eleventh of January, 1 86 1, a very 
 few minutes before the meridian gun boomed out the news 
 of the passage of the ordinance of secession of Alabama. 
 
 Bishop Elliott conducted the funeral service at St. John's 
 Church, Montgomery. Many clergy attended,— and it 
 was remarked as a singularity by many that the deacons 
 (according to ancient use) wore their stoles over the left 
 shoulder only. Elliott's sermon, and particularly the above- 
 
174 A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH 
 
 quoted parting message, read by him at the close, ' opened 
 the sluices of sorrow.' A sympathetic rain fell fast as the 
 body was borne to the grave, yet a multitude followed it 
 thither from the city. 
 
 So died ' the wisest and best man, the most earnest 
 preacher, the gentlest pastor, the meekest prelate, the 
 soundest churchman of these latter days. Alas for us!' 
 cried Lay, ' that so much wisdom and goodness are with- 
 drawn from our midst! Great is the responsibility of us 
 who have walked with him by the way. In his own dis- 
 tresses and in ours we have seen his face as it were the 
 face of an angel,' and, he added, ' we are still near to him 
 in the communion of saints.' 
 
 Certainly if the definition of holiness holds good, that it 
 does not consist in doing extraordinary things, but in doing 
 customary things extraordinarily well, Nicholas Hamner 
 Cobbs was a saint beyond the possibility of demur. ' All 
 his life through,' said Elliott, ' he was kept unspotted from 
 the world.' As of the sainted Griswold, it was said that 
 ' it was difficult to tell in him where nature ended and where 
 grace began.' His was the heavenly, Johannine frame 
 that drew out the best in all he met, — and such shall pos- 
 sess the kingdom. 
 
 ' In his character,' said Atkinson, ' wisdom and goodness 
 were more remarkably combined than in any man I ever 
 knew.' ' I know not which one of the beatitudes he did 
 not have a share in,' writes his successor in the bishopric 
 of Alabama: 'he was pure in heart, a peacemaker, and 
 hungered and thirsted after righteousness, — and was the 
 meekest man I ever knew.' And Green said, ' I was un- 
 worthy to tie his shoe's latchet here, and my highest hope 
 is that I may sit at his feet hereafter.' 
 
BISHOP COBBS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 175 
 
 Would that a portion of his spirit might rest forever on 
 the institutions that he loved! 
 
 Were a star quenched on high, 
 
 For ages would its light, 
 Still travelling downward through the sky, 
 
 Beam on our mortal sight. 
 
 So when a good man dies, 
 
 For years beyond our ken, 
 The light he leaves behind him lies 
 
 Upon the paths of men. 
 
 And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the 
 firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the 
 stars for ever and ever. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Alabama, early history of, 84; Baptismal Covenant, Cobbs on, 
 
 diocese of, 84, 101, '69; era of 127. 
 
 speculation in, 8j-'9; later so- Baptists, in Va., 15; Cobhs' opin- 
 
 cial conditions, 90 ; political ion of, 39 ; colleges, 54. 
 
 conventions in, 109; political Barnard, F. A. P., 101, '70. 
 
 position of, in 1852, no; agi- Bell, (John), 139. 
 
 tation in, 1857-58, 139; dioce- Biographer, duty of a, 162. 
 
 san convention of, 1859, 151. Bishops, house of, 1829, 48 ; 1844, 
 
 Alexandria, seminary at, 30. 82; consecrations of, 1859, 156. 
 
 American cathedral, Cobbs' plan Brownell, Bp., in Ala., 85. 
 
 of an, 153-6; catholic tradition, Burgon, Dean, 137. 
 
 an, 134. 
 
 Amusements condemned, 28, 151- ' Caesar Kasm,' 87. 
 
 '3. Campbell, Alexander, 20, 62; 
 
 'Answer to Popular Objections college, 54. 
 
 against the Church,' Cobbs', Candidates for orders, lack of ed- 
 
 120; to prayer, 72. ucational support of, 112; need 
 
 Articles, the thirty-nine, 26, 76. of endowments for, 116; cause 
 
 Asbury, (Francis), 20. of paucity in number of, 149. 
 
 Atkinson, Thomas, birth of, 22 ; Capers, William, 53. 
 
 to Lynchburg, 64 ; to Balti- Cathedral, Cobbs' plan of a, 153— 
 
 more, 78 ; on duty to slaves, '6. 
 
 106; relation to sectarians, 117; Catholic spirit, Cobbs', 76. 
 
 on ritual, 125 ; consecration of, ' Cave Burton,' 87. 
 
 134; and the U. of the S., 148, Chase, Bp., 81, 82. 
 
 '69 ; on the wickedness of the Church, and state, in provincial 
 
 age, 153; on Cobbs, 161, '74; Va., 14; the, andthesects, 117; 
 
 point of character, 165. colleges, etc., 14, 53, 54, 141. 
 
 Authority, jealousy of episcopal, Clay, Henry, 35. 
 
 etc., 99. Clement of Alexandria, St., on 
 
 Avarice, Cobbs on, 128. personal service, 166. 
 
 Clergy, Virginian, 13, 14; prob- 
 
 Backwardness of church in lem of support of, 38, 100, '11- 
 
 South, causes of, 92-101. '6. 
 177 
 
178 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Cobbs, Nicholas Hamner, birth 
 of, 17; parentage, maternal in- 
 fluence, baptism, points of char- 
 acter, 18; brothers, 19; child- 
 hood and education : begins to 
 teach, 24 ; formative years, 27 ; 
 religious experience, 30, 31 ; 
 study for ministry, 32 ; mar- 
 riage and ordination, 34; first 
 service, 35 ; parish work, 
 Meade's testimony, advance- 
 ment to priesthood, outward 
 aspect,36 ; character and habits : 
 at New London Acad., 37; re- 
 lations with sectarians, conduct 
 of services, 39 ; sermon : ' Mes- 
 sage to Peter,' 40-'2 ; addresses 
 to children, 42; missionary 
 zeal, success as pastor, 43 ; ex- 
 tempore prayer, 44; letter to 
 one in affliction, 44-'6; com- 
 munion with God, official du- 
 ties, report for 1827, 46; 
 Moore's tribute, report for 
 1828, 47; for 1829, and Gen- 
 eral Convention, 48 ; report for 
 1830, Meade's tribute, meets 
 Polk, 49 ; reports for 1832, '33, 
 50; chaplain, U. of Va., 51, 58; 
 report, 59; division of parish, 
 Scheie De Vere's testimony, 
 60; a Whig, 61 ; to Petersburg, 
 method during revival, 65 (cf. 
 104) ; large confirmation class, 
 growth of parish, 66 ; ' Doubt- 
 ing Christian Encouraged, ' 66- 
 72; answer to prayer, 72; 
 proposed as bishop for Tex., 
 as assistant for Va. , 73 ; his 
 catholic spirit, 76 ; opinion of 
 Oxford movement, 77; doc- 
 torate: to Cincinnati, 78; Mc- 
 Ilvaine's tribute, 80; election 
 as bishop of Ala. and consecra- 
 tion, 81 ; visit home, Cincinnati 
 to Mobile, 83; to Tuscaloosa, 
 101 ; relation to his clergy, ad- 
 dress of 1846, 103; religious 
 
 instruction of slaves, 104 ; ' Naa- 
 man and Hebrew Maid,' 106- 
 '8; to Petersburg, 108; Alex- 
 andria, New York, Miss, and 
 Fla., 109 ; diocesan school, 1 10 ; 
 clerical support, ill; relation 
 to sectarians, 116, 'i8-'2o; 
 'Answer to Popular Objec- 
 tions against the Church,' 120; 
 at Green's consecration, J22; 
 diocesan school, charge against 
 ritualism, 123, '25 ; church 
 decoration and music, sermon 
 on Baptismal Covenant, 127; 
 at Rutledge's consecration, ser- 
 mon on Avarice, 128; pastoral 
 advice to one of his clergy, 129 ; 
 to Montgomery, 130; on Ives' 
 defection, 132 ; appeal to Amer- 
 ican tradition, 134; on Atkin- 
 son : to Charleston and Savan- 
 nah : consecration of Scott, 135 ; 
 letter to friend in Va., portrait 
 by Heade, 136 ; voyage to Eng- 
 land, 137, '39; and U. of the 
 S., 140, '41, '45-'8, '50, '56; 
 on foreign missions, sermon on 
 Christian Kindness, 149; con- 
 ventions of 1859, last visit to 
 Petersburg, 151, '56, '59; plan 
 of a cathedral, 153— '6 ; word- 
 picture of, — character, tastes, 
 etc., lS9-'6g; his wife's char- 
 acter, 164, '65 ; the diocese in 
 i860, 169 ; at laying of corner- 
 stone, Sewanee, 169 ; a Union- 
 ist, 171 ; last sickness, Farewell 
 Message, 1 72 ; death and burial, 
 J 73i '74 i memorial tributes, 
 174. 
 
 College of S. C, 52 ; William and 
 Mary, 14, 16, 27, 29. 
 
 Colleges, denominational, 54. 
 
 Convention, General, of 1829, 48 ; 
 of 1853, i34-'5; of 1859, 156. 
 
 Cooper, Thomas, 51, 52. 
 
 Crisis, financial, of 1794, 17; of 
 1837, 85, 88; of 1857, 148. 
 
INDEX 
 
 179 
 
 Culture and religion, 92. 
 Cumberland Presbyterians, 21 ; 
 univ., 54. 
 
 Davis, Thomas Frederick, birth 
 of, 22; to U. of N. C, 33; on 
 religious instruction of slaves, 
 106; dislike of ritual, 125 ; con- 
 secration of, 135; and U. of 
 theS., 151, '69. 
 
 Dehon, Bp., 64, 134, '57. 
 
 De Lancey, Bp., 82, 156. 
 
 Depression of church and religion, 
 19, 20. 
 
 De Vere, Prof., on Gobbs, 60. 
 
 Discipline of laity, evangelical, 
 28. 
 
 Disendowment of Virginian 
 church, 19, 23. 
 
 Disestablishment of same, 15. 
 
 Doane, Bp. G. W., 81, 82, 54, 
 
 57- 
 'Doubting Christian Encouraged,' 
 
 66. 
 'Douglas Democrats,' position 
 
 of, 139- 
 
 Education, see Religion and. 
 
 Elliott, Stephen, birth of, 22 ; at 
 College of S. C, 34; conver- 
 sion, 53 ; chaplain, 53 j bishop, 
 93, 94; on revivals, 104; reli- 
 gious instruction of slaves, 105 ; 
 efforts for Christian education, 
 in; salary, 115; view of 
 church and sects, 117; evan- 
 gelical doctrine, 122; attitude 
 toward ritual, 125, '26; on 
 Ives, 132 ; on Cobbs, 138, '74 ; 
 on irreligion of age, 153; con- 
 ducted Cobbs' funeral, 173. 
 
 Endowment, principle of, 1 16. 
 
 England, Cobbs' and Otey's sen- 
 timent toward, 138-40. 
 
 Episcopal salaries, 115. 
 
 Equality, religious, 15. 
 
 •Era of Good Feeling,' 35; of 
 speculation, 85— 'g. 
 
 Eucharist, Cobbs' definition of, 
 130. 
 
 Evangelical movement in Va., 23, 
 25, 26; partisan decadence of, 
 73 ; doctrine of southern bish- 
 ops, 121. 
 
 Extempore prayer, 44. 
 
 Federal influence in Va., 17. 
 Financial crises, see Crisis. 
 First southern bishops, 92. 
 Freeman, Bp. G. W., 33, 122, 
 '45. '58- 
 
 Gadsden, Bp., 135, '57. 
 
 Girard College, 53. 
 
 Gorham judgment, the, 127. 
 
 Green, William Mercer, birth of, 
 22; at U. of N. C, 33; dele- 
 gate to General Convention, 
 1829, 48; professor, U. of 
 N. C., 63; on Otey's 'Three 
 Sermons,' 78; view of church 
 and sects, 1 17 ; consecration of, 
 122; on Otey and ritual, 125; 
 on Ives, 133 ; and U. of the S., 
 i46-'8, '69; on Cobbs, 174. 
 
 Gregg, Alexander, birth of, 34 ; 
 at S. C. College, 53 ; candidate 
 for orders, 79; and U. of the 
 S., 146, '47, '57; consecration 
 of, 157 ; pastoral career and first 
 year of his episcopate, 157— '9. 
 
 Griswold, Bp., 23, 49, 82, 134, 
 '65. '74- 
 
 Heade, Martin Johnson, 136. 
 ' Heart-religion,' 121. 
 Heathenism, relapse into, 89. 
 Helper, Hinton, 171. 
 Henry, Patrick, 13. 
 Hervey, James, 22. 
 Billiard, Henry, no. 
 Hobart, Bp., 49, 64, 131, '34; 
 
 College, 53, 78, 157. 
 Hooper, Johnson, 87. 
 Hopkins, Bp., 82. 
 Humanism, era of American, 35. 
 
180 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Immorality consequent on war, 
 
 17- 
 
 Incorporation of church as * Prot. 
 Episc,' 16. 
 
 Individualism, 98. 
 
 Infidelity in Va., 15, 17. 
 
 Inspiration asserted, 26. 
 
 Intemperance, 26. 
 
 Isolation, diocesan, 99. 
 
 Ives, Bp., 57, 82; defection of, 
 131; 'Trials of a Mind . . .,' 
 132 ; judgments of his course, 
 I3 2 . '33 > deposition of, 134. 
 
 ' Jack Cadeism and the Fine Arts, ' 
 91. 
 
 Jarratt, Devereux, 14, 23. 
 
 Jefferson on religions uniformity, 
 17; and U. of Va., Ji; reac- 
 tion against his ideas, 52. 
 
 Kemper, Bp., 48, 82, 156. 
 Kindness, Christian, Cobbs on, 
 
 149. 
 Knapp, Nathaniel, 108. 
 
 Latitudinarian spirit, 14 ; reac- 
 tion against, 26. 
 
 Lay, Henry Champlin, birth of, 34 ; 
 to Ala. , 108 ; on lack of clerical 
 support, 113; on church and 
 sects, 117; and ritual, 125, '26; 
 on question of infallibility, 
 134 ; on Atkinson, 125, '35 ; 
 consecration of, l56-'7; on 
 Cobbs, 174. 
 
 Laying of the corner-stone, U. of 
 the S., 169. 
 
 Lee, Henry, 17. 
 
 Leo XII, Pope, 85. 
 
 Lewis, Seymour, 85. 
 
 Life, Christian: evangelical view 
 of, 26, 28. 
 
 Lookout Mountain, meeting on, 
 T46. 
 
 Low-church party, crystallization 
 of, in Va., 73-6. 
 
 Madison, James, 17, 
 
 , Bp., 20, 25. 
 
 Maury, M. F., 170. 
 
 Mcllvaine, Bp. : chaplain at West 
 Point, 54; on 'Oxford Divin- 
 ity, ' 80 ; one of Polk's consecra- 
 tors, 63,— Cobbs', 81,— Lay's, 
 156; tribute to Cobbs, 80. 
 
 Meade, Bp. ; ordination of, 23 ; 
 first impression of Cobbs, and 
 later testimony to his efficiency, 
 36, 49 ; consecration of, 49 ; at 
 U. of Va., 52; in Tenn., 57; 
 on Oxford movement, 74; one 
 of Cobbs' consecrators, 81, — 
 Lay's, 156. 
 
 Meek, A. B., 91, 161. 
 
 ' Message to Peter, The,' 40. 
 
 Methodists, 20 ; colleges, 54. 
 
 Milnor, James, 23, 48. 
 
 Missionary spirit, lack of, in pro- 
 vincial church of Va., 14, and 
 in other southern dioceses, 99, 
 113, '14; evangelical revival 
 and, 26; society, diocesan, of 
 Va., 48; Cobbs', 43, 149. 
 
 Montanistic prejudice, 31, 126, 
 
 '59- 
 
 Montgomery, Ala., 84, 109, '39; 
 trustees of U. of the S. at, 148. 
 
 Moore, Bp. : consecration of, 25 ; 
 first episcopal acts, 27; appeal 
 for clerical support, 38 ; tribute 
 to Cobbs, 47 ; on ' Southern 
 Churchman,' 60; mention of, 
 
 73. 76. 134- 
 Muhlenberg, Dr., 48, 54, 135 '37. 
 
 'Naaman and Hebrew Maid,' 
 
 io6-'8. 
 National consciousness, rise of, 
 
 61. 
 Native ministry, need of, 29, 102, 
 
 '44. 
 
 Objections to the church, com- 
 mon, 97, 103, '20. 
 Onderdonk, Bps., 48, 57, 82. 
 
INDEX 
 
 181 
 
 Optimistic religious indifference, 
 
 97- 
 
 Otey, James Hervey, birth of, 22 ; 
 at U. of N. C, marriage, visit to 
 Tenn., 33 ; baptism, 34; in con- 
 vention, 1832 : consecration of, 
 57; visit to Miss., ideal of 
 Christian education, 58 ; ' Three 
 Sermons,' 78; apostle of south- 
 ern church, 82 ; failure of ed- 
 ucational project, 88, 140 ; traf- 
 fic vs. religion, 94 ; on need of 
 native ministry, 102 ; Christian 
 education, no, '41; support of 
 clergy, H2-'4; episcopal en- 
 dowment, 115; church and 
 sects, 117; evangelic doctrine, 
 122; opposed to ritual, 124; 
 on Ives, 131, '33; on 'Me- 
 morial' committee, 135 ; in Eng- 
 land, 140; and U. of the S., 
 i40-'2, '45-'7, '50, '51, '69; 
 worldliness of Christians, 152 ; 
 a Unionist, 171. 
 
 •Ovid Bolus,' 87. 
 
 Oxford, Polk at, 57; 'Tracts 'in 
 Va., 74; opinions of movement, 
 75. 79- 
 
 Pastoral method, Cobbs', 43. 
 
 Pius VII, Pope, 20. 
 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, 52. 
 
 Political crisis in Va., 62 ; in Ala., 
 I0 9> '39; situation in 1856, 
 138, — in i860, 170. 
 
 Politics, zest for, 90. 
 
 Polk, Leonidas, birth of, 22; at 
 U. of N. C, 33; West Point, 
 34, 54; conversion, 55; ordina- 
 tion, 56; meets Cobbs, 49; to 
 Europe, 56; at Oxford, 57; to 
 Tenn., 57, 58 ; consecration, 63 ; 
 missionary tour, 64 ; opinion of 
 Oxford tracts, 79; character, 
 83 ; in Ala., 85 ; bishop of La., 
 92 ; on need of native min- 
 istry, 102, '44; religions in- 
 struction of slaves, 105 ; church 
 
 education, no; support of mis- 
 sions, 1 13 ; loss of fortune, 115 ; 
 evangelic doctrine, 122 ; to New 
 Orleans, 130; on Ives, 132; 
 conception of U. of the S. : 
 relation to Otey's, 140; devel- 
 opment of idea, i4i-'8; lays 
 corner-stone, 169; and seces- 
 sion, 172. 1 
 
 Portier, Michael, 85, 116. | 
 
 Prayer, extempore, 44; answer 
 to, 72. 
 
 Prayer-book society, 27. 
 
 Preaching, latitudinarian, 14 ; 
 evangelical, 26. 
 
 Presbyterians, 1 5 ; secessions 
 from, 20; Cumberland, 21,— ■ 
 univ., 54. 
 
 Profanity, 26, 169. 
 
 'Protestant Episcopal,' title, 16. 
 
 Qualification for episcopal of- 
 fice, a, 133. 
 Quitman, (J. A.), no. 
 
 Railways, 93, 101. 
 Randolph, John, 61. 
 Ravenscroft, Bp., 23, 49, 57, 
 
 134- 
 
 Relation of church and sects, 117. 
 
 Religion and education : latter de- 
 pressed, 15; former, 16, 54; 
 excluded, 51, 53; both com- 
 bined, 27, 53 ; reaction against 
 Jefferson's view of, 51, 52, 58; 
 resolution of Tenn. convention, 
 57; Otey on, 58, no, '41; cul- 
 ture and, 92; Polk on, no; 
 Cobbs on, 103, '38; the U. of 
 the S., i40-'9, '50, '69, '70. 
 
 and the nation, 168. 
 
 Religious equality, 15 ; awakening, 
 20, 23, 25, 26 ; optimistic indif- 
 ference, 97 ; melancholy, 66. 
 
 Republican party, rise of, 138, 
 
 '39- 
 Repudiation, 88. 
 Revival system, 97 ; Ccbbs' prae- 
 
182 
 
 INDEX 
 
 tice under, at Petersburg, 65, 
 Montgomery, 104. 
 
 Revolution, effect of American, on 
 church and religion, 15-7. 
 
 Riches, Cobbs on, i28-'9. 
 
 Ritual, question of, 123-7. 
 
 Roman church in America, 20; 
 seminaries, 54; views of, 76, 
 125, 's}~4- 
 
 Romanizing tendency, secret of, 
 132. 
 
 Russell parish, 17, 36, 47, 50; 
 division of, 60. 
 
 Rutledge, Francis Huger, birth 
 of, 22 ; ordination of, 34 ; to 
 Fla., 64; on need of ministry, 
 102 ; support of candidates for 
 orders, 112, and missionaries, 
 113; consecration of, 128; and 
 U. of the S., 145, '46, '69. 
 
 ' Sacra Privata,' 46. 
 
 Salaries, question of, in provin- 
 cial church, 13, 15,— and later, 
 37, 38, 100, 'n-'6. 
 
 ' Sam Hele,' 94. 
 
 Scepticism, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 
 
 Si. 52- 
 Scott, Bp., 135. 
 Sects and church, 117. 
 Seminary, Gen. Theol., 29; a 
 
 southern, needed: founded at 
 
 Alexandria, 30 j Otey's project, 
 
 58. 
 Sermons, colonial style of, 14; 
 
 evangelical, 26 ; Cobbs', 39, 40, 
 
 66, 106, '27, '28, '49; Otey's 
 
 Three, 78. 
 Service, conduct of, 14, 26, 27, 
 
 39- 
 
 Sexes, oblique temperamental in- 
 heritance of, 18. 
 
 Shakespeare in Ala., 161. 
 
 Simms, \V. G., 91. 
 
 ' Simon Suggs,' 87. 
 
 ' Slaughter Letter,' Yancey's, 
 
 139- 
 Slavery, Va. convention on, and 
 
 Colonization Society, 28; Polk 
 on, 56; view of, in Va., 62, — 
 in S. C, 63 ; situation in 1856, 
 138,— in 1857, 139,— in i860, 
 171. 
 
 Slaves, religious instruction of, 
 104-6. 
 
 Smith, Bp., 63, 169, '70. 
 
 Social life, Ala., 90, 94. 
 
 Song, church, 26. 
 
 South Carolina College, 52. 
 
 'Southern Churchman,' 60, 167. 
 
 Sparrow, William, 75. 
 
 Speculation, era of, in Ala., 
 
 8s-'9- 
 Sunday observance, 14, 26, 167. 
 Support of clergy, problem of, 
 
 38, 100, 'n-'6. 
 
 Temperance, 26, 128. 
 Theatre, prejudice against the, 
 
 28, 153, '60, '61. 
 Thorpe, on river-boat, 64. 
 Troup, (G. M.), no. 
 
 Unitarians, in Montgomery, 
 119; in Savannah, 120. 
 
 Univ. of Va., 51, 58-60; of the 
 South, l40-'9, '50, '69, '70. 
 
 Virginia, provincial church of, 
 13-5, — after Revolution, 16, 
 19, 23; evangelical movement 
 in, 23, 25, 26; convention of, 
 on slavery, 28; seminary of, 
 30; low-church party in, 73, 
 
 75- 
 , H. Lee, Federal gov. of, 
 
 17; political crisis in, and 
 
 growth of Whig party, 61 ; 
 
 view of slavery, 62. 
 
 , see also Univ. of. 
 
 Visitation of Sick, rubric in, 129. 
 
 West Point Acad., 
 Whig party, 61. 
 Whipple, Bp., 156. 
 
 54- 
 
INDEX 
 
 183 
 
 Whittingham, Bp., 54, 82, 125. 
 
 Wilkinson, Gen., 84. 
 
 William and Mary College, 14, 
 
 16, 27, 29. 
 Wilmer, William, 46. 
 , Bp. R. H., on Cobbs, 137, 
 
 '74- 
 
 Worldliness among Christians 
 
 condemned, 26, 151, '52. 
 Worship, public, in Va., 14, 27, 
 
 39. 7°- 
 Wytheville parish, 43. 
 
 Yancey, W. L., no, '39.