« (i; V l\ \ ill ± A JHS^ \v / The ghost of the brute that is walking and haunting us yet, and be free ? In a hundred, a thousand winters ? t/lh ! what will our children be. The men of a hundred thousand, a million summers away ? — Tc nil J son PHILADELPHIA ^be ©ritKtb d IRowlanD ipress 1900 Copyright igoo by the American Baptist Publication Society Sfrom tbc Socfct^'9 own Iprcss H)eDtcateD TO THE %Tzmon1} "temple (Shureh AND ^ongregalfion IVhose Loyal Faith and Liberal Spirit HAVE PROVEN ^n Unfailing Source of Encouragement and Inspiration To Their Devoted Friend and Tastor XLbc Butbor PREFATORY Like Otto Pfleiderer's famous work, ^^ Das Urcliris- tciithum, etc., etc.," which was an elaboration of his *' Hibbert Lectures," deUvered in England (1887), this volume is the outgrowth of the "■ Lowell Lectures," given before the Lowell Institute, in Boston, during the last winter of the nineteenth century. The object of the author is to present Christianity as it has thought and toiled through a hundred eventful years ; and as "all sublunary things are the vassals of vicissitude," to indicate what changes on its human side have taken place in creeds, expositions, rituals, and practical meth- ods of endeavor. It has not been possible to enter the bypaths or to explore the obscure nooks of this history, and consequently only the highways and mountain sum- mits have been surveyed. These, however, are suffi- cient. To have attempted more would have added no special value to the inquiries instituted, and would have substituted wearisome chronological annals for philo- sophical generalizations. This book does not claim to be a picture gallery, where biographical portraits are unveiled for the in- struction and inspiration of the multitude. Here and there on its pages sketches of leaders necessarily occur ; but these are drawn, not for their own sake so much as for the light they may help to throw on momentous movements and far-reaching events. Lord Macaulay vii Vlll PREFATORY was unquestionably right in saying: "A people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote an- cestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remem- bered by remote descendants " ; and the triumphs of contemporaries are equally entitled to grateful homage and appreciation. It is not denied that Christianity during the nineteenth century has been defended, cham^ pioned, and extended by many notable and illustrious men and women ; but it is not the purpose of this volume to discuss their merits nor to eulogize their serv- ices. This were a delightful task to perform ; but it is not contemplated in these lectures. Here we have to do exclusively with Christianity, with its progress, with its success and failures, with its variations and alli- ances, and not primarily with those spiritual chiefs and captains who have marshaled its hosts, and by their genius lent a lustre to its banners, nor with those great, though misguided, intellects that have converted its "faith into faction," have divorced reason from passion, and have flamed like comets broken away from their divinely appointed path in the heavens. It is likewise to be borne in mind by the reader that the author is compelled to deal with Christianity as he finds it in the nineteenth century; not with it as he may suppose it ought to be, but as it is ; not only as it ap- pears in his eyes, but as it is in the eyes of others ; not with it as a theory but as a fact ; and not necessarily with it as revealed in the New Testament but as it is seen in history. And yet let it not be feared that this method — the really scientific method — may endanger truth, and lend itself to erroneous conceptions of the religion w^hich our Lord established in the earth. There PREFATORY IX is in reality no such peril. Rather may we feel sure that this course will open the way for thoughtful dis- crimination, and assist in fixing the terms in which the faith of the Gospels must finally be stated. Throughout his investigations the writer of these pages has been moved by a desire to ascertain how far Jesus Christ rules in the theology and in the social life of the age. It is well known that at the beginning he was not only the source but was the very center of the religion he proclaimed, and that all of its institutions derived their value and significance from him. And there are not lacking signs that he is now being gradu- ally restored to this unique position. His re-enthrone- ment in the doctrine of the church, with the tribute of modern literature to his moral greatness, and the con- stant appeal of the suffering poor and of the struggling proletariat to his compassion and justice, constitute one of the most brilliant chapters in the history of the nine- teenth century. It reads like a romance, this coming of the Lord to his own again. In the present volume all this will be made clear, as well as the effect of this new epiphany,^ like a new transfiguration on the mount, upon the development of Christian thought and brotherhood. While its remarkable results are not to be anticipated in these prefatory sentences, and while they are not wholly without drawbacks, it may with confidence be assumed that they are of the deepest significance and of the highest value. Under the influence of the re- enthroned Christ the church is becoming more and more spiritual, more and more active, more and more catholic ; and while we are not approaching the time ^ Jeremy Taylor. X PREFATORY seen by St. John, when the heavenly world shall dispense with its temple, and never shall until the consummation and the final glory, still the temple is becoming more and more a living organism, whose gates are open wide in welcome to "all peoples who do dwell beneath the sun." This much may be permitted by way of intro- duction, but it is not necessary that this forecast should go any farther. It may, however, be added, that if any reader seeks in these pages, and in the progress they record, the assuring evidences that the night is far spent, that the battle against wrong has already been ended victoriously, that there is little left for the new century to undertake, and that time itself has grown old and moribund, he will be disappointed and will be speedily undeceived. Rather while he reads and reads will he be led to sing with Charles Kingsley : While a slave bewails his fetters ; While an orphan pleads in vain ; While an infant lisps his letters, Heir of all the ages' gain ; While the lip grows ripe for kissing ; W^hile a moan from man is wrung ; Know by every want and blessing, That the world is young. SPECIAL NOTE The acknowledgments of the author are due the Rev. Phihp L. Jones, d. d., for careful supervision of these pages as they passed through the press ; and to Rev. Ph. Vincent, Harriet Tilly (Madame Cadot), and Rev.- H. Andou, of France, and to that noble friend of missions in Germany, Frau H. Alberts, for their assist- ance in gathering statistics, and in making translations from various works not within his reach. To one and all he tenders his hearty thanks. G. C. L. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. The Christian Faith in the Twilight of Two Centuries i II. The Human Element in the Progress of a Di- vine Religion 51 III. The Renaissance of Medieval Roman Catholi- cism 89 IV. The New Prophetism in Modern Literature . . 141 V. The Social Awakening of the Christian Church 187 VI. The Bearing of Recent Research on the Inspira- tion OF Holy Writ 245 VII. The Emancipation and Transformation of Evan- gelical Theology 303 VIII. The Failure of Modern Substitutes for the Ancient Faith 351 IX. The Movement for the Restorarion of Primitive Christian Union 405 X. The Influence of Christianity on a Hundred Years of History 455 XI. The Limitations of Church Success in the Nine- teenth Century 509 XII. The Religious Message of the Nineteenth Cen- tury to the Twentieth 569 Indexes 623 THE DUSK AND DAWN Wild, wild wind, wilt thou never cease thy sighing? Dark, dark night, wilt thou never wear away ? Cold, cold church, in thy death-sleep lying, The Lent is past, thy Passion here, but not thine Easter Day. Peace, faint heart, though the night be dark and sighing ; Rest, fair corpse, where thy Lord himself hath lain ; Weep, dear Lord, above thy bride low lying ; Thy tears shall wake her frozen limbs to life and health again. — Kingsley THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN THE TWILIGHT OF TWO CENTURIES To some people it is not quite clear whether this year, 1900, forms part of the old century or of the new, or whether it is an intercalary year, a kind of *'no man's land," belonging to neither. They have found the problem perplexing, if not fascinating, and possibly, to them at least, as bewildering as the delimi- tation of frontiers between such countries as Alaska and Canada, or Venezuela and Great Britain. But however serious the issue may seem to them, it is not of sufficient interest to detain us, for whatever conclu- sion is reached, one thing is certain — this season marks a culminating period in the march of the ages that serves as a Lookout Mountain, from whose summit the past century may be advantageously surveyed. Mariners have frequently to steer for weary and doubt- ful days by dead reckoning, but they are always re- lieved when the mists disperse and they are able to '' take the sun " and their ''bearings" as well. Genera- tions also, like ships, may pursue their way through haze and fog, ascertaining their whereabouts only by unsatisfactory methods; but when a new century is dawning, then conditions are favorable to secure scien- tific observations, and then the sun should be taken and the position and course of humanity be determined as accurately as possible. This very serviceable task 3 4 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY will undoubtedly be undertaken during the next few months by various social navigators ; and, in harmony with their spirit, it is contemplated, in the studies on which we are now entering, to discover where we are religiously, on what spiritual seas we are sailing, and to what haven of faith we are voyaging. The Rev. Dr. Croly, in a sermon preached at St. Paul's, 1844, termed the Lutheran Reformation ''the third great birth of time," and unless we are inexcus- ably infatuated, the nineteenth century will be described by future historians as the fourth. While in some re- spects its glories may not compare with those of its three brilliant predecessors, — distinguished by the na- tivity of cosmos, the nativity of Christ, and the spiritual renaissance, — nevertheless it has achieved unique victo- ries quite its own, for it has mastered not a few of creation's forces, has extended almost to infinity our conception of the universe, and has not only redeemed Christianity from various superstitious accretions, but has applied her healing principles to the wounds of so- ciety in a way at once original and sympathetic. The last hundred years have witnessed the progress of " inventions and discoveries which abridge distance, which annihilate time, which extend commerce, which aid agriculture, which save labor, which transmit speech, which turn the darkness of the night into the brilliancy of the day, which alleviate pain, which destroy disease, and which lighten even the infirmities of age."' We are living in a new world, not meaning by the expres- sion what it usually signifies, this wonderful American continent, but new in a sense applicable to transatlantic 1 MacMaster, "Hist. People of U. S.," Vol. I., p. 3. THE DUSK AND DAWN 5 lands as well as to our own; new in its methods of locomotion, of transportation, of illumination, of com- munication, of exploration, and of production and distri- bution. Instead of the tedious stage-coaches and canal boats of a hundred years ago, we have mighty railways and swift steamers; instead of the weekly or monthly post, penetrating with difficulty rural districts and the borders of the wilderness, we have the telegraph and the telephone, by which thought and speech are trans- mitted through forests and under oceans; instead of the pen, the needle, the hand-press, and the primitive implements of husbandry, we have the typewriter, the sewing-machine, the steam presses, and the marvelous mechanism for harvesting; and instead of flaring oil lamps, linkboys, and uncertain pine torches, we have gas and electricity and such startling power over light that we can illuminate the larynx and the stomach, and through the Rontgen rays can render opaque sub- stances transparent. By geology, we have reconstructed the popular ideas of time; by astronomy, we have gained a magnificent conception of space; by spectrum analy- sis, we have been able to determine even the relative heat and chemical constitution of the heavenly bodies; by anaesthetics, we have been able to give to humanity the benefits of the most delicate surgery ; while by anti- septics, we have rendered comparatively safe the most difficult operations ; by photography, we have been able to bring within the range of telescopic vision stars too distant for the eye to reach ; and by evolution, we have been able to rise to the level of an entrancing view of harmonious and orderly development, which, whatever may be its errors in details, teaches that. 6 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY The world was built in order, And the atoms march in tune, and has imparted to law an awful and unparalleled sanc- tity and awakened the hope that, as all things have moved from the low to the high, so society, at last, sym- pathizing with the upward trend, shall realize in itself the fairest dreams of social renewal and of human hap- piness. As we think over the many transcendent things which have been wrought and try in some degree to comprehend the strangeness of the new world which our children are to inhabit, we can readily understand the pardonable enthusiasm of the poet when, like a weird minstrel, he sings: The old times are dead and gone and rotten ; The old thoughts shall nevermore be thought ; The old faiths have failed and are forgotten ; The old strifes are done, the fight is fought ; And with a clang and roll the new creation Bursts forth, 'mid tears and blood and tribulation. But not all of the old faiths have been forgotten; one, at least, retains its hold on the reverence and con- science of mankind ; and among the many transforming wonders of the century now ending, not the least, but rather ranking with the greatest, must be classed the vitality, the flexibility, the fertility, the extension, the expansion, the self-abnegation, the self-reliance, and the self-emancipation of the Christian religion. It is to the study of Christianity in the nineteenth century that these lectures are devoted, to a review of its vicissitudes and victories, its changes and variations, its successes and failures, its enterprises and aspirations. THE DUSK AND DAWN 7 its alliances and antagonisms, its vagaries and excres- cences ; and, indeed, to everything that can throw light on the significance of its more recent history, and en- able us in some measure to determine the character of its essential genius, to estimate its value and duty to society, and to foreshadow its destiny in the coming age. And I approach this exalted theme, not in the spirit of one who holds a brief for any particular de- nomination, not even as an evangelical Protestant, nor as one bound to make out a case conformable to his per- sonal bias, prejudices, or wishes : I shall speak to you simply as a student, stating the facts, whether they are as I would like them to be or not, and describing the conclusions that have been reached and the present trend and tendency of religious thought and life, whether they accord with my preconceptions or with yours, or whether they are in the main contrary to what we have expected or could have desired. In my opinion, the prime qualification for the task I am entering on is transparent veraciousness, and no one should undertake it unless he is ready, if necessary, to crush his own idols and break with his own traditions. A spirit less can- did, truth -seeking, and generous would fall far below the demands of this occasion, and would rob the treat- ment of the grave subject before us of every claim to the serious attention of thoughtful men and women. Auguste Sabatier, writing the *' Outlines of a Phil- osophy," reminds the world of the perennial interest which attaches to the theme I have chosen. He says : No one nowadays underestimates the social importance of the religious question. Philosophers, moralists, politicians, show themselves to be alive to it ; they see it dominating all others. . . 8 CIIRISTIAMTY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Who, at the close of his secret meditations, on the confines of his knowledge, at the end of his affections, of the joys he has tasted, of the trials he has endured, has not seen rising before him the religious question — I mean the mysterious problem — of his des- tiny ? Of all questions, it is the most vital. . . Has life a mean- ing ? Is it worth living? Our efforts — have they an end? Our works and our thoughts — have they any permanent value to the universe ? This problem, which one generation may evade, re- turns with the next. And emphatically it confronts us with singular impera- tiveness to-day. While there may have been a disposi- tion, and that too, not very long ago, to waive it aside as no longer within the circle of living issues, that time has gone and once more the leaders of thought are earnestly occupied with what Sabatier calls the religious question. But if justice is to be done to this momentous question, it must be examined, not alone in the light of speculative theology, ecclesiastical tradition, and ideal- istic psychology ; it must be carefully studied in the actual field of history, as an operative force in human affairs. And so far as my reading and observation go, there has been no period so rich in material for such investigations since the apostolic age as the one on whose amazing transformations the curtain of time is descending. To understand what Christianity has been and has wrought during the past hundred years demands that we familiarize ourselves with its condition in the twi- light of two centuries — in the evening twilight of the eighteenth and in the morning twilight of the nine- teenth. These closing and opening seasons, this dusk and dawning, are related as prophets to the aftertime. They are as the Isaiahs, the Jeremiahs, and the Malachis THE DUSK AND DAWN 9 of the Bible, foreshadowing and anticipating the march of events. To comprehend their speech is to possess the key which unlocks the mystery of many astounding departures and upheavals. The end, with few excep- tions, can always be seen from the beginning, provided the meaning of the beginning has itself been fathomed. Each generation has at its heart " the potency and the promise" of its successor; and the evening is gener- ally a fair harbinger of the morning, and evening and morning together usually determine the character of the day. Naturally, therefore, we direct our inquiries to the two twilights for the purpose of deciding at the outset certain preliminaries, without which the subse- quent history of Christianity would, at the best, be vague and obscure. The eighteenth century was destitute neither of great men nor of noble deeds ; but somehow its annals and memories do not thrill and arouse us as do those of the fifteenth or sixteenth. Its moral atmosphere during its earlier stages is enervating, its political life ignoble, and its religious spirit cold and selfish. As a distinct period, it is eminently respectable, painfully conventional and commonplace, and when it breaks forth into unexpected intellectual brilliancy, the light is chilly or is rendered dazzling only by its intense profanity, impurity, and skepticism. I am not overlooking exceptions, nor am I unmindful of the evangelical revival which took its rise in the midst of its poison marshes, and of which I shall speak later on. It is to the general character and tem- per of this century, particularly during the first fifty or sixty years, that I direct attention, knowing very well that there is rarely a desert without a refreshing oasis lO CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY somewhere. But though the oases be numerous, it is impossible to escape the impression that the monoto- nous wilderness dominates most of the period. Doctor Clarke says truly : " Human kind never puts forth ex- ceptional energy without paying for it in reaction," as '' the vigor of the first Christian age was followed by the comparative lifelessness of the second." ^ And the eighteenth century was the century of reaction. It comes to us as a state between two worlds, " one dead, the other powerless to be born." The noble heroes of the Commonwealth had passed from the view of men ; the struggle for the succession had ended with the tri- umph of William and Mary; the fierce religious con- flicts, often reaching to the grandeur of tragedy, had subsided with the enactment of toleration ; and the tre- mendous strain under which Europe had labored, and which had been felt in America also, had at last re- laxed, and there ensued on the continent as well as in England a condition of things approximating to lethargy and exhaustion. Writing of this period, a recent author gives this depressing illustration of its weariness and dullness : <' From the time of Algernon Sidney to that of Burke, it holds not a breath of that larger inspiration and pas- sion which can make a local controversy of the moment a treasure for all time." ^ And this was only too true of its religious life. " In the eighteenth century . . . the Anglican Church had conquered Romanism ; Puri- tanism had sunk out of sight deep into the hearts of the ignored people. . . The church had won the day and held the field. And the first thing it did was to ' "Christianity," p. io6, ^ Scudder, "Social Ideals," p. 92. THE DUSK AND DAWN I I repudiate its old relationships. It sought no wedlock with poverty, such as Francis sought and Giotto painted in his great fresco. . . The church had become a vast machine for the patronage of morality and the promo- tion of her own officers. How admirable an invest- ment is religion ! Such is the burden of their plead- ing. Sure gauge of respectability here and comfort hereafter." ^ The author we are quoting furnishes an instructive example of the preaching most highly esteemed during these melancholy days, in which one seems to feel *' the Sermon on the Mount receding into infinite space." These are some of the edifying excerpts : The principal point of wisdom in the conduct of human Hfe is so to use the enjoyments of this present world as that they may not themselves shorten the period wherein ' tis allowed us to enjoy them. . . We are not obliged to seek the kingdom of God ivholly or only in a total and absolute exclusion of all other desires (as some melancholy, well-disposed persons may be apt to imagine), but only that we are to seek it chiefly and in the first place. . . We are required only to retrench our vain and foolish expenses ; not to sell all and give to the poor, but to be charitable out of the superfluity of our plenty ; not to lay down our lives or even the comfortable enjoyments of life, but to forsake the unreasonable and unfruitful pleasures of sin.^ A sleek, comfortable, prudent kind of piety this, such as had not been baptized in the sacrificial spirit of the Cross, and which would have given a very poor account of itself if it had been exposed to the fires of martyr- dom. Christianity had indeed fallen on days of deplorable Scudder, " vSocial Ideals," p. 93. '^ Clarke's "Sermons," Ser. XVII. 12 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY degradation. Of the godless condition of the nation, even Oliver Goldsmith writes. His testimony is sad enough : No person who has traveled will contradict me when I aver that the lower orders of mankind in other countries testify on every occasion the profoundest awe of religion, while in England they are scarcely awakened to a sense of its duties, even in circum- stances of the greatest distress. This dissolute and fearless con- duct foreigners are apt to attribute to climate and constitution. May not the vulgar, being pretty much neglected in our exhorta- tions from the pulpit, be a conspiring cause ? Our divines seldom stoop to their mean capacities ; and they who want instruction most find least in our religious assemblies.^ That is, the shepherds were indifferent to the needs of the flock, and would scarcely condescend to provide pas- ture lands for the sheep of inferior stock, whose wool was too scant to be worth the shearing. Nor is this surprising when it is remembered that, as late as 1797, professors of religion in high places contemplated with apprehension the enlightenment of the people through the agency of the Sabbath-school. One of this class wrote in the "Gentleman's Magazine" that the Sunday- school " is subversive of that order, that industry, that peace and tranquillity which constitute the happiness of society"; and that "so far from deserving encourage- ment and applause, it merits our contempt and ought to be exploded as the vain, chimerical institution of a vis- ionary projector." And in the last year of the eigh- teenth century, the Bishop of Rochester, while profess- ing to favor these schools, yet inconsistently enough warns his clergy against them, because in them " the Sinclair, "Leaders of Thought," p. 174. THE DUSK AND DAWN 1 3 minds of the children of the very lowest order are en- lightened— that is to say, taught to despise religion and the laws and all subordination." He also denominates them " schools of rebellion and Jacobinical politics, that is to say, schools of atheism and disloyalty." If such sentiments as these could find utterance at a time when the era of spiritual stagnation was drawing to a close, we can very readily credit Goldsmith's pic- ture of an earlier day, when immorality and profaneness were so notorious that England was regarded as having apostatized from the Christian faith. ^ Every church or nation, whatever its professions, if it neglects the relig- ious training of the masses, has unquestionably departed from the service of that Master whom the common peo- ple heard gladly, and who was anointed to preach good tidings to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, and to set at liberty them that are bound. ^ Bishop Butler more than once comments on this wretched apostasy. In the preface to his "Analogy," he declared that in his time '' it had come to be taken for granted that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious." When delivering a charge to the clergy, he says: '' The general decay of religion in this nation is now observed by every one, and has been for some time the complaint of all serious persons. . . As different ages have been distinguished by different sorts of par- ticular errors and vices, the deplorable distinction of ours is an avowed scorn of religion in some and a grow- ing disregard of it in the generality." Others concur with the bishop in his disheartening statements. Ac- 1 Tyermau's " V^esley, " p. 174. ^ Luke 4 : 18, 19. 14 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cording to Lecky, " Addison pronounced it an unques- tionable truth that there was less appearance of religion in England than in any neighboring State or kingdom, and that Montesquieu summed up his observations on English life by declaring, no doubt with great exaggera- tion, that there was no religion in England ; that the subject, if mentioned in society, excited nothing but laughter ; and that not more than four or five members of the House of Commons were regular attendants at church." ^ A fair estimate of the widespread laxity of belief may be inferred from the popularity of the deists and skeptics whose writings for a season were hailed with every token of approval. Bolingbroke, Shaftes- bury, Woolston, Chubb, Collins, Tindal, and Toland — men of very unequal gifts and endowments — were eagerly listened to as they argued against the proba- bility of a religion designed to be universal being founded on a perplexing series of historical evidences, or as they set forth the moral difficulties in the way of inspiration, or as they eloquently contended for the sufficiency of natural religion. But a yet deeper im- pression may be gained of the extent of this '* falling away" from the prevailing corruption and black infamy of the social life which disgraced a country where the cross of Christ had been the symbol of its faith for centuries. Every now and then some chronic pessimist obtrudes himself on the public with his harsh, strident philosophy of a world made for misery and becoming necessarily more wicked and miserable as it grows older. Of course, there are evils and enormities enough at the present 1 Lecky, "England in Eighteenth Century," Vol. II., p. 579. THE DUSK AND DAWN 15 hour to afford some foundation for this doctrine of horror and despair. These, we admit, are terrible, and in view of our light and resources, are, in the main, in- excusable. But when they are placed side by side with ^the brutalities, cruelties, animalism, and heartless sav- agery of the eighteenth century, they are but specks of blackness on the surface of a golden sun. The Sabbath Day, considering the difference in the demands of the two civilizations, was then outrageously neglected in England, especially in the cities, and particularly among the upper classes of society. " People of fashion," ac- cording to Archbishop Seeker, '' especially of that sex which ascribes to itself most knowledge, have nearly thrown off all observation of the Lord's Day ; . . and if to avoid scandal they sometimes vouchsafe their attendance on divine worship in the country, they sel- dom or never do it in town." Irreverence in the house of God was a common fault ; and on the Lord's Day cabinet councils were frequently held and cabinet din- ners sometimes given, and Sunday concerts — though they were not then called "sacred" — were enjoyed by the aristocracy, and even card parties were not unknown among its members. But the flagrant desecration of this holy day was only symptomatic of the very general desecration of nearly everything virtuous and of good report. The realm was a sink of all vices, and a sewer for all the baser passions. What shall be said of the moral tone of a community where one hundred and sixty different crimes were punishable with death, and where capital punishment was inflicted as plays are presented at theatres, publicly and for money ? Tickets could be purchased for the exquisite privilege of seeing huzzies l6 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY whipped in the Bridewell, and women were often ex- posed in the pillory to the jeers and coarse insults of the brutal mob. Last century the impecunious inmates of debtors' prisons in England were generally dependent for bare subsistence upon the charity of the generous, who dropped their dole into baskets let down from the gaol windows, and not a few died from starvation. '' In 1759, Doctor Johnson computed the number of these debtors at not less than twenty thousand, and asserted that one out of every four died every year from the treatment they received." ♦* Prisoners rarely could es- cape, even if they broke loose, for mastiffs were kept to pursue them ; and of a thousand sent in one assignment to Botany Bay of both sexes, four-fifths perished before land was reached."^ So much of callous indifference to suffering and shamelessness prevailed that some parents would compel their children to walk to school with fourteen pounds' weight tied to their legs to keep them from running away. Drunkenness, profanity, gambling, and general profligacy reigned throughout the realm. Gentlemen high in position, representatives of government, like Oxford and Bolingbroke, were not ashamed to be intoxicated in the presence of their sov- ereign ; while retailers of gin enticed the poorer classes to their ruin by the announcement that they could be made drunk for a penny and dead drunk for twopence.^ The streets of the cities were insecure, Horace Walpole declaring, in 1751, that ''One is forced to travel, even at noon, as if he were going to battle." Literature was to an unparalleled degree coarse, debasing, licentious, Mlarris, "Robert Raikes," p. io6. "^ Lecky. "England in Eighteenth Century," Vol. I., p. 519. THE DUSK AND DAWN 1 7 as the pages of Smollett, Defoe, Fielding, and Coventry illustrate. Kings ''lived publicly with mistresses"; the theatre was beginning to struggle out of the mire into which it was plunged at the Restoration, but it was still indescribably filthy ; and while the loyal Commons were debating marriage bills, the real sanctity of the marriage tie had seriously declined among the more exclusive classes of the realm. Thus, from every point of view, the state of England, during a large portion of the eighteenth century, presents the appearance of an ominous, overhanging cloud, which, notwithstanding the flashes of genius — the genius of great writers, great preachers, great statesmen, and great soldiers — which frequently illuminated its darkness and for the moment made it look brilliant as sunrise, was charged with muttering thunders and heavy with possible wide-sweep- ing inundations and devastation. It is usually assumed that at this time England was the darkest spot within the territories of civilized na- tions. This very nice point in comparative corruption and decay I do not feel called on to discuss. The capitals of Europe were all bad enough ; and even if it could be proven that Great Britain was primate in the hierarchy of degeneracy, as many suspect, but which may be challenged, she was not alone in her sin, and certainly had many close competitors if she had no superiors. She may, therefore, be taken as a type, even though an exaggerated one, of the darkness, mental and moral, religious and social, which enswathed the most highly favored parts of the world over a hundred years ago. If we turn to Germany, we find petty States, and with B 1 8 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY them a small and meagre intellectual life. The glitter- ing, high-heeled, periwigged style of the gnuid ino- narque had not yet lost its hold on the Teuton ; the Olympus of Versailles still fascinated, and the liberator, Lessing, though born, had hardly yet appeared in the wilderness, exposing the vapidness and ridiculousness of the French stage and of French letters, and prepar- ing the way for a new era in German thought, art, and religion. If we direct our eyes toward France itself, the one nation that, more than any other, influenced the culture, convictions, and conduct of continental peoples throughout the century, we are confronted by the Re- gent and Louis XV., with their erotic and putrid civil- izations. There Holbach, Helvetius, and Diderot ex- tolled atheism ; and there cultivated men like Voltaire and Rousseau, who still professed to believe in natural religion, and ecclesiastics, such as Talleyrand, the Abbe Raynal, the Abbe Sieyes, and the Abbe Deschamps, had lost confidence in the dominant church, and while ridi- culing its assumptions, fiercely attacked the supernatural claims of Christianity.^ And yet, with the growth and advance of such opinions and sentiments, freedom of conscience was not permitted to multitudes of the people. Under Fleury, in 1728, to print anything contrary to papal bulls incurred a sentence to prison or the galleys. Protestants were condemned to incarceration for their faith. Children were separated from their parents, and women were flogged on account of heresy; and even in 1770, the bishops drew up a document to the king *'on the dangerous consequences of liberty of thinking and printing." But it should be observed that those who ^ Taine's '■'■ Ancien Regime,'''' pp. 381-384. THE DUSK AND DAWN 1 9 were prominent in repudiating tlie authority of the church were not particularly concerned for the rights of their fellow-citizens suffering from persecution. As Hobbes and Bolingbroke in England were on the side of kings, so in France, Bayle denounced the democracy of the Huguenots; and Voltaire himself, with all his avowed liberalism, sympathized with royalty and all that it signifies, and could not approve of that universal suf- frage which gives to a man who possesses neither house nor land a voice in the affairs of society. His spirit finds expression in such declarations as these : '* The true public is always a minority. The rest is the vul- gar." ''What the populace requires is guidance, not instruction; it is not worthy of the latter." '*We have never pretended to be enlightened shoemakers and servants." ^ Without going any further, a fair idea may be gained of the empires and kingdoms of the con- tinent from these brief allusions. Unquestionably if the storm center, black and oppressive, was, during many gloomy years, in England, it was widely extended and overspread the most refined and cultured communities on earth. Its borders even overshadowed the colonial settlers in North America. Dr. Leonard Woolsey Bacon says : The closing years of the eighteenth century show the lowest low-water mark of the lowest ebb-tide of spiritual life in the his- tory of the American church. The demoralization of army life, the fury of political factions, the catch-penny materialist moral- ity of Franklin, the philosophic deism of men like Jefferson, and the popular ribaldry of Tom Paine, had wrought together, with the other outward influences, to bring about a condition of things which to the eye of faith seemed almost desperate. Woltaire's " QLzivres,'^ Vol, LI., p. 103, etc. 20 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY He quotes from Lyman Beecher's account of Yale College at the accession of President Dvvight, 1795, this striking passage : Before he came, the college was in a most ungodly state. The college church was almost extinct. Most of the students were skeptical and rowdies were plenty. Wine and liquors were kept in many rooms ; intemperance, profanity, gambling, and licentious- ness were common. . . That was the day of the infidelity of the Tom Paine school. Boys that dressed flax in the barn, as I used to, read Tom Paine and believed him ; I read him and fought him all the way. But most of the class before me were infidels and called each other Voltaire, Rousseau, D' Alembert, etc. We are also reminded that there were only two among the students of Princeton College who professed belief in Christianity in 1782, and that the General Assem- bly, 1798, thus portrays the prevailing impiety: ''The profligacy and corruption of the public morals have ad- vanced with a progress proportionate to our declension in religion. Profaneness, pride, luxury, injustice, in- temperance, lewdness, and every species of debauch- ery and loose indulgence greatly abound." Theodore Parker, in one of his addresses, said : It is easy to praise the fathers of New England, easier to praise them for virtues they did not possess than to discriminate and fairly judge those remarkable men. . . Let me mention a fact or two. It is recorded in the probate office that, in 1678, at the fu- neral of Mrs. Mary Norton . . . fifty-one gallons and a half of the best Malaga wine were consumed by the mourners. . . Towns pro- vided intoxicating drink at the funeral of their paupers. . . Affairs had come to such a pass that, in 1742, the General Court forbid the use of wine and rum at funerals. 1 Bacon, "Hist. Am. Christianity," pp. 230, 231. THE DUSK AND DAWN 21 Edwards testifies regarding his own town, Northamp- ton : " There was more degeneracy among the young than ever before." ''Licentiousness, for some years, greatly prevailed among the youth." ''The Sabbath was extensively profaned and the decorum of the sanc- tuary not unfrequently disturbed." And Jefferson wit- nesses to the degradation of the press : " Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that pol- luted vehicle." ^ It is not necessary to quote from the " Autobiography " of Peter Cartwright, or from the " Charges " and others writings of Bishop Meade, for confirmation of this gloomy picture of atheism, infidel- ity, coarseness, profanity, drunkenness, and general dis- soluteness. The colors are black enough and need no deepening. But we may, in passing, be permitted to inquire whether we have not, in the deplorable immoralities of communities founded by scrupulously conscientious Christians, an illustration of what is likely to follow when their descendants carry the principles of righteous restraint into unreasoning asceticism. The Puritan colonists for some years prior to the Revolution were noted for the most singular inconsistencies in conduct and for a casuistry at once artificial and misleading, and which can only be accounted for on the supposition that, however deeply versed they may have been in the doctrines of grace, they had never given much sober thought to the doctrines of ethics. MacMaster presents a portrait of the grim religionist of those times which is well worth reproducing : 1 Dorchester, ''Problem of Relig. Progress," pp. 195, 196. 22 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY He held it to be an abomination to read a novel, to see a play, to go to a dance, to make a jest, to sing a comic song, to eat a dinner cooked on Sunday, or to give a present on Christmas Day. Yet he would, at times, so far forget his austerity as to play a game of draughts with his wife, or have a romp of fox and geese with his children. His conscience did not smite him when he drank palm tea at a quilting, or listened to the achievements of his better half at the spinning match. He drank ale and cider at the apple- paring bees ; he laughed as loudly as any one when, at the corn- husking, the lucky finder of the red ear kissed his favorite daugh- ter. But the moment the fiddles were produced, he went home to his pipe and sermons, or to a long talk with the schoolmaster.^ The shreds and tatters of this kind of casuistry I have frequently met with during the earher years of my ministry in remote rural communities. I have known young girls to be excluded from the church on ac- count of dancing, while their accusers were retained in membership, although they were whisky distillers and whisky drinkers and even worse. Professors of relig- ion who held slaves in some parishes would not hold fel- lowship with those brethren who visited the theatre ; and in others, men might chew tobacco in church, but they must not presume to smile. Now, it is worth noticing that this crude and contradictory asceticism has always had a fatal tendency toward irreligion and infidelity. And in this, as in so many other things, extremes meet. What illegitimate self-indulgence leads to, unreasonable self-mortification sometimes leads to as well. In France, on the one hand, excessive laxity in religious opinions and unrestrained enjoyments promoted atheism, lawless- ness, and public corruption ; and in New England, on the other, the suppression of natural gladness, the in- ^ MacMaster, "People of the United States," p. 20. THE DUSK AND DAWN 23 sistence on irrational distinctions between various means of recreation and tlie persistent endeavor to array hu- manity in the strait-jacket of an incoherent asceticism resulted in hypocrisy, viciousness, and derisive infidelity. Heinrich Heine relates the tradition of the clerics and the nightingale, which conveys a moral not inappropriate to this particular folly. During the council of Basel, 1433, a company of clerics were walking in a wood near the town and were arguing about annates, expectatives, and reservations, when they were saluted by the carol- ing and sobbing notes of the nightingale. They were at first charmed, they felt in a blessed mood, and their sympathies were quickened beneath the bleak snows of their icy scholarship. But at last one among them, more pious than the rest, concluded that the bird could be none other than an emissary of the devil, seeking to divert them from their Christian converse by its sedu- cing strains. He straightway began to exorcise the evil spirit, and it is recorded that the nightingale imme- diately rose laughingly from his perch in a blossoming lime tree, and, as he flew away, replied : "Yes, I am an evil spirit." They, however, who had been entranced by the song sickened that very day and died shortly thereafter.^ And from their dolorous fortune the monkish chronicler would have us learn that to yield even to innocent earthly delights carries with it a fatal ending. But I interpret the legend differently. When we re- ject the music that God sends, and count that evil which refreshes and delights, we are abandoned to our illusion as the nightingale abandoned the prelates and the doc- 1 Heine, "Religion and Philosophy in Germany," p. 26. 24 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY tors ; and then speedily the spiritual life pines and sick- ens, while not far off waits the tomb, ready to swallow up our poor dead faith. And thus the colonists of the eighteenth century in their protest against the world, the flesh, and the devil, came in their blind zeal to in- clude things which in themselves and of themselves were not vicious, and certainly were not more vicious than some things which they allowed, and in a little while the church gave signs of declining spiritual health and even of approaching death. But she was not doomed to waste away and perish, either in New England or in the great countries beyond the sea. Even when her condition was most alarming, when her pulse was lowest, and when the vital spark seemed but to glimmer, even then refreshing and re- newing agencies were being called into activity. We have been groping our way through the night of the eighteenth century, and the painful journey has been indispensable to an appreciation of its evening twilight, a twilight blending with the dawning of the nineteenth and having in its bosom the promise of Christian reju- venescence and advancement ; and we are now ready to consider the character of this twilight, to observe its beginnings deep in the heart of night, and to trace its slow and steady progress toward the morning. Its first gray sign of hope appeared where least it could have been expected^in the religious firmament. A spiritual quickening of the most extraordinary scope and sweep preceded the other mighty movements which were destined to revolutionize society. At a time when the educated world regarded the victory of deism as complete ; and when orthodoxy was dumb on the doc- THE DUSK AND DAWN 2 5 trines of its creed and was content to skirmish along the outposts of the faith ; and at the time when Eng- glishmen were being enriched by slavery and the uni- versities were being degraded by the learned ignorance and inane indifference described by Gibbon, suddenly the morning began to peep through the night. The natal place of the new revival was none other than the famous Oxford, from whose classic halls Wycliffe's re- forming company of poor priests had gone forth in the fourteenth century and in whose bosom a very different agitation was to originate in the nineteenth. Lincoln College, the special seat of the gracious quickening, was founded by Bishop Fleming, who entertained the great- est horror of everything approaching the heresy of Wycliffe, and whose successor. Bishop Rotherham, en- joined the expulsion of any Fellow convicted of depar- ture from the Anglican establishment ; and their amaze- ment and indignation can readily be imagined could they have foreseen that Methodism would be born and cradled within its walls. What a shock they would have experienced had they been able with prophetic vision to anticipate the " Godly Club " and the work of John Wesley, a work which attained not only great im- portance in England, but also in North America and on the continent of Europe, and whose animating prin- ciple has been thus defined by the German, Schnecken- burger, as ''the subjectivity of direct feeling and of in- ward experience," in contradistinction " to the sub- jectivity of the practical intellect " as accentuated by Arminianism and Socinianism. The story of Wesley's life has been often told, and need not here be repeated ; but the genesis of his spir- 26 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY itual devotion may well claim our attention. In 1727, he read Law's " Serious Call and Christian Perfection," and it wrought a great change in his feelings. ** I was convinced more than ever," he says, *' of the impossi- bility of being half a Christian, and determined to be all-devoted to God, and to give him all my soul, my body, and my substance." And a biographical writer adds : ''The light flowed in so mightily on his soul that everything appeared in a new view." ^ " His philoso- phy and theology were permanently elevated and en- riched through the familiarity which he had gained with some at the least of the writers to whom Law had introduced him, as well as through the direct influence of Law himself." But there was another influence which was destined to determine in no small degree his religious devel- opment, and one that brings into relief the solidarity as well as the indestructibility of spiritual forces. It was in 1735, that John and his brother Charles accom- panied General Oglethorpe to Georgia, and while on the outward voyage were strangely impressed by the deep piety, fidelity, courage, and singleness of heart of some Moravian emigrants, headed by their bishop, Nitschmann. On his return to England a year or so later, he sought out Peter Bohler, one of this broth- erhood, whose intercourse was of so decisive a char- acter that it added to Wesley's spiritual fervor, and in effect seemed to produce something like a second and more real conversion. Not satisfied, however, with his attainments in the divine life, he determined to visit Herrnhut, the chief seat of Moravianism, and hold con- ^ Riggs, "Wesley," p. 22. THE DUSK AND DAWN 2/ verse with its most godly and brilliant representative. This fellowship with Count Zinzendorf brought with it soul refreshing ; and though afterward, in 1 740, Wesley broke with the Moravians, and in some respects changed his views of both Bohler and Zinzendorf, there can be no doubt of his indebtedness to them for much that rendered his own character blameless and beautiful. It is interesting, in this connection, to observe the intimate relations between the spiritual experiences of various periods and of all lands. The Moravians were the remnants of the Hussites and the VValdenses, the survival under a different name of the heroic orders of Christians who, throughout the dark ages, never per- mitted the vital spark of piety to perish, and never aban- doned the rights of conscience at the mandate of arrogant intolerance. By sanctity and spiritual simplicity they were allied with the earliest martyrs and the latest ; and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the holy fire of faith burned on their altar, from whose flame, before its close, there should be kindled a new spirit of devotion in England and America. What effect the '* pietism" of Germany may have had upon them, and how far Spener, Schade, Francke, Breithaupt, who added lustre to the earlier days of the University at Halle, may have modified their opinions, I am not called on to decide ; but unquestionably the whole school, through Zinzendorf, became a determining factor in the religious revival of the century. But the revival itself, whatever its origin, was won- derful, alike in its extent and in its power. What the mechanical morals of sleepy churchmen could not do, this gracious quickening, ablaze with love and zeal, 28 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY accomplished. Poor, neglected miners heard for the first time that this world is the outcome of divine love, and that they themselves were not forgotten in the Father's compassion. All this was as much a revela- tion to them as the preaching of the apostles was to the slaves of Rome. They began to feel a new dignity and to breathe a new hope. Vast multitudes gathered on heath and common to listen to the words of Wesley or of Whitefield, and everywhere striking conversions occurred and reprobates were moved to repentance. Not a few of the clergy, particularly of those who had no sympathy with evangelical doctrine, looked with sus- picion on the unusual excitement, for then, as now, a gospel that agitates the conscience and shakes the soul out of its indifference, and does anything more than conduce to the self-complacency of the hearer, was re- garded in many quarters as a species of ignorant and fanatical rhetoric. Many persons, more gifted than the Duchess of Buckingham, shared with her grace in the opinions she expressed to Lady Huntington concerning the teachings of Whitefield and his companions. <' I think, your ladyship," she wrote, "their doctrines are most repulsive and strongly tinctured with impertinence and disrespect toward their superiors, in perpetually en- deavoring to level all ranks and do away with all dis- tinctions. It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting, and I cannot but wonder that your ladyship should relish sen- timents so much at variance with high rank and good breeding." Nevertheless, and notwithstanding adverse criticisms, the good work went on, of course with vary- THE DUSK AND DAWN 29 ing fortunes and with seasons of ebb and flow. But its effect on society became more and more manifest. It became the source and spring of social reforms ; and writers of approved abihty have declared that it averted from England the horrors of the French Revolution, as it accomplished by peaceable means what in France, not at the time sharing these spiritual experiences, could only be brought about by convulsion and violence. Contemporaneous with the Wesleyan movement, the " Great Awakening," as it is called, began under Jonathan Edwards in New England. These simultaneous quick- enings, occurring in various parts of the world, seem to bear evidence of a common origin in the Divine Spirit. They are heavenly fires kindled by the same gracious hand on widely separated mountain peaks, having no direct, visible connection with each other. Thus when the flame began to shed its light on the mother-land it flashed out over the colonies as well. The human means employed in the New World seems to have been a series of sermons on the funda- mental doctrines of grace, from which we may again learn that, whether these doctrines as then preached are longer credible to reason, there must be something more and something deeper than the inculcation of moral precepts to effect any marked transformation in the spiritual life. In his '' Narrative of Surprising Con- versions," Edwards thus writes of this work of God : As it was carried on and the number of new saints multiplied, it soon made a glorious alteration in the town, so that in the spring and summer, A. d. 1735, the town seemed to be full of the presence of God. It was never so full of love, nor so full of joy, and yet so full of distress as then. There were remarkable tokens 30 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY of God's presence in almost every house. It was a time of joy in families on the account of salvation being brought to them ; parents rejoicing over their children as being new-born, and hus- bands over their wives, and wives over their husbands. Nor were these blessed experiences confined to Northampton, for they were participated in by many communities of the New World. The wave of religious power swept over the Connecticut Valley, beat on the shores of New Jersey, and was felt in far-away Virginia. Alas ! this season of refreshing was followed by de- cline, apathy, and unbelief, which even the apostolic labors of Whitefield, ending in Newburyport, September 30, 1770, could not arrest. The relapse was painful and appalling. But the revival spirit was not dead. It reasserted its power in England, principally through the philanthropic labors of William Wilberforce, who dis- cerned the vital connection between evangelistic feeling and social regeneration ; and it reappeared in this land with the beginnings of the American Republic, and breathed anew on the people the life from God, without which liberty has never endured and flourished. And with the renewal of its victories, the old century ended and the new commenced. As it were, just as the in- auguration of Christianity itself was distinguished by the baptism of the Spirit, another Pentecost with its refreshing showers was vouchsafed to the infant re- public as a preparation for its experiment in the art of self-government. Revivals were enjoyed from 1796, and through the ever-memorable year 1800, in Ken- tucky, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and elsewhere, and were frequent in all parts of the country during the first two decades of the present century. THE DUSK AND DAWN 3l That these special seasons of grace were of inestima- ble value to the nation ought to be candidly admitted, even though we censure the peculiar nervous manifesta- tions which at times and in certain localities compro- mised to some extent their genuine character. But we should be considerate in our judgment. Much may be said in extenuation of these damaging frenzies. The people among whom they usually occurred were gener- ally poor and illiterate, and had been for years accus- tomed to the monotonous life of the wilderness or of sparsely settled communities. What more natural, then, than for them to be excited by the extraordinary con- ditions under which they were brought by the intense fervor of the aroused evangelists, and having no com- mand of language wherewith to express their over- whelming emotions, to manifest the inner turmoil by hysterical twitchings, jerkings, and swooning.? Such phenomena we are bound to deplore; but the question may well be brought home to those critics who are dis- posed to magnify them out of all proportion, whether these incidental physical excesses were not as the mere automatic action of the eyelids in comparison with the more appalling moral and spiritual blindness of the age.? Was it not infinitely better to incur the possibility of such momentary exhibitions of nervousness than to have continued permanently in the blank, heartless atheism which was blighting and blasting every human hope ? Better that people should lose their wits for a season than that they should lose their souls. The choice seems to have been between the revolutionary methods of the French and the revival methods of the Saxon, and a dispassionate view of the extremes in- 32 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY volved in each, and of the results attained by either, must always lead to the conclusion that the advantages were immeasurably with the latter.^ But the twilight of the two centuries was not only distinguished by religious elevation, it was likewise re- markable for its intellectual resuscitation. Prof. Otto Pfleiderer, however, recognizes no intimate relation between the two movements. He believes that the "evangelical" party was so much cut off from any living connection with the thought of the age that its influence on its quickening must have been exceedingly slight. "The ultimate and profoundest source of this mental revolution," he argues, "which at the beginning of this century s|7i'ead through all cultured nations, must be sought in the nature of man. After the cold understanding had in the eighteenth century exercised despotic sway, starving the emotions and fettering the phantasy, these wronged sides of our nature once more claimed their rights and rebelled against the despotism of the understanding." "'A return to nature and to natural emotions' was now everywhere the watchword, and Rousseau became the prophet of the new age. The cry found its echo in the * storm and stress' spirit of belles-lettres : Herder and Goethe were its heralds in Germany, Wordsworth and Shelley in English poetry." " From the ' Gospel of Nature ' of Rousseau sprang the philosophical idealism of Kant and of Fichte, and the 'On this section, see Goldwin Sniitli's "Oxford," p. 39; Dorner, "History Protestant Theology," Vol. II., pp. 92, 246; Hagenljach, "History of the Church in the Nineteenth Century," Vol. I., Chap. XVIII.; Lecky, "England in the Eighteenth Century," Vol. II., Chap. IX. THE DUSK AND DAWN 33 religious pantheism of Herder and Novalis."^ But our author might have called attention to the fact, which would have strengthened his position, that the intellect- ual awakening in France, symbolized by such names as Buffon, Diderot, D'Alembert, Duclos, Condillac, Helve- tius, Rynal, Condorcet, Mably, and Voltaire, was decid- edly anti-Christian, acknowledged no indebtedness to religion, and tended toward the apotheosis of nature; for whether materialistic or idealistic, the end apparently was the same — to exalt nature to the supreme seat of authority ivitJiiii man as well as over man. While I have no doubt that this awakening was in the main due to causes lying outside the domain of or- ganized Christianity, it is hardly fair to exclude alto- gether the revival spirit from its origins. An accom- plished writer in the London ''Spectator," July 15, 1899, insists that : Wesley and his co-workers produced not only a great moral, but also a great intellectual change in England. We doubt if what the Germans call the Weltanschauung of a nation was exer so rapidly transformed as was that of England in the last century. Think of the change from the aridity of the deistic controversy and the hollow brilliancy of Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, to the green pastures and still waters of the " Lyrical Ballads," and ask yourself what could have wrought such a marvelous resur- rection from the dead. We cannot, perhaps, explain this, for the spirit, in the last analysis, moveth where it listeth ; but we do see that the new literature and thought sprang from a new soil watered by a new faith which once more saw the world to be divine and men to be vitally related in social bonds forged by God himself. Of this, we have evidence in the tone and quality of what may be termed distinctively the evangelical litera- 1 Pfleiderer, "Development of Theology," p. 304. C 34 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ture of the period, such as the graceful and tender poems of Cowper, the gloomy verse of Young, the " Fool of Quality " of Henry Brooke, and in the writ- ings of Hervey, Hannah More, Newton, Romaine, Scott, Venn, not forgetting the hymns of the Wesleys, of Newton, Beveridge,' Shirley, Rowland Hill, and Toplady. But beyond this circle, there appears a higher order of genius whose works witness to the influence of the new religious life of the land, even though they may have been in some measure affected by foreign authors. Wordsworth imparted to religion as well as to nature a deeper significance. The '* Solitary among the Moun- tains " is as much of a prophet-teacher as a minstrel ; and in his verse he reveals the hold that faith has on humanity when uncontaminated by conceit and arti- ficiality. It is true that Thomas Carlyle gives a dis- couraging account of things in Scotland, telling us how little spiritual food could be found in the university. " There was much talk about progress of the species, dark ages, and the like, but the hungry young looked up to their spiritual nurses, and for food were bidden to eat the east wind." *' Dr. Thomas Brown, eloquent and full of enthusiasm about simple suggestion, relative, etc., was found utterly unprofitable." And yet at this time Coleridge was reviving the Alexandrian school of philos- ophy, and was setting forth revolutionary theological opinions in the church, whose influence would be felt in biblical criticism and biblical interpretation for many years after. And even then Burns had sung his songs of love and nature, through which, ever and anon, the old Scotch notes of piety resound, and had announced in almost martial strains man's true dignity to be in THE DUSK AND DAWN 35 himself and not in his tinsel ornaments. Sir Walter Scott had also appeared, beginning his poetical career in 1805, and speedily electrifying society by the phe- nomenal brilliancy of his genius for romance. Nor should we forget that the first number of the *' Edin- burgh Review " was published in 1802, and that within a few years George Combe, with his new philosophy of life, and Thomas Erskine, Macleod Campbell, and Edward Irving were startling their contemporaries and were sowing seeds of thought whose fruit was destined to be transformed into new opinions, but not entirely to perish. Now, admitting the manifest revolt in some of these great teachers from dominant orthodoxy, it cannot be denied that they seem to be seeking truth in such a way as must always suggest their indebtedness to the re- ligious spirit. Consequently, without claiming every- thing: for the evano^elical revival, we believe we are war- ranted in affirming that the quickened soul of the world was a most potent force in arousing its slumbering in- tellect. And certainly, in America we had no native literature worth the name until after the Revolutionary War and the gracious outpouring of the Holy Spirit which crowned it with blessing and glory. '' Our intellectual patriarchs " belong, without exception, to the genera- tion which followed the Revolution. " Irving was not a year old when peace was declared. Cooper was born in the same year that Washington went into office ; Halleck, one year later ; Prescott, in the year Washing- ton came out of office. The Constitution was five years old when Bryant was born. The first year of the 36 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY present century witnessed the birth of Bancroft, and, before another decade has gone, Emerson was born, and WilHs, and Longfellow, and Whittier, and Holmes, and Hawthorne, and Poe." ^ But MacMaster, in his explana- tion of this extraordinary birth of genius, is likewise inclined to be partial and exclusive. He likens it to the literary eras of ** the age of Pericles, of Augustus, of Leo, of Elizabeth, and of Louis Ouatorze," and con- tends that the brilliancy of these periods followed seasons of national commotion, disorder, and contention. And his elucidation of the phenomenon is contained in a single sentence : ''Whatever can turn the minds of men from the channels in which they have long been running, and stir them to their inmost depths, has never yet failed to produce most salutary and lasting results."^ This may be admitted without controversy. But what so rouses man, thrills him, startles and agitates and stimulates his every faculty, as the power of religion ? Goethe regards the ages of faith as the ages of the greatest intellectual activity. And we are, therefore, obliged to conclude that while the revolutionary move- ment had much to do with the quickening of national thought and with the production of our early literature, the revival of religion was also a potent agent, stirring the soul to its deepest depths. If the one was the father, the other was the mother, and without the union of both, there would have been no birth of resplendent literary genius. There is another characteristic feature of the two twilights that remains to be considered — the political. The convulsions and upheavals in civil governments > MacMaster, " Hist. People of U. S.," Vol. II., p. 77. ^ /^/^/^ p y^^ THE DUSK AND DAWN 37 were as remarkable in their way as were those which brought to an end the lethargy of the mind and the apathy of the heart, and gave to the world a new era in letters and faith. The War of Independence had wrought momentous changes, not only to the colonists, but to Englishmen everywhere. It had compelled a recognition of the rights of British subjects under Magna Charta and the Constitution, and it had effected per- manently a restriction of the royal prerogative in the affairs of the people. But in addition to this, it had aroused everywhere a longing for freedom, a longing that found its earliest expression in France, and which was destined to continue its agitations throughout the century, notably in 1838, in 1848, in i860, in 1870, and which would have kindled its fires more promptly all over Europe but for the excesses of the Reign of Terror. The entire continent needed the revolutionary cataclysm almost as fully as France ; but certain causes precipitated it there and hindered it elsewhere. France then became the storm-center of liberty ; and terrible and destructive though the tempest was, it was indispensable to the progress of humanity and the rise of the new civiliza- tion. The rotten and rotting forests had to be cleared away, the poison growth of gleaming flowers had to be rooted up, the malaria of social swamps had to be dis- persed, and the treacherous vipers and gnawing vermin that rendered unhabitable the social State had to be ex- terminated before there could be any garden of the Lord, and before the people could rear the sanctuary dedicated to universal freedom and happiness. The French Revo- lution was an object-lesson. It warned rulers not to go too far ; it demonstrated that there will always be 38 CIIRISTIANITV IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY violent reaction against persistent injustice; and it re- vealed to the people the danger to which they were exposed by the intensity of their indignation, and ad- monished them not to substitute v/ild fury for justice, lest, like Samson, they pull down the house about them, and retard the final victory of the cause they have at heart as did the terrorists in 1793. The French Revolution was likewise the termination of an epoch. It was a day of doom, a time of judgment. In its turn it anathematized a church that had long cursed the nation, that had corrupted conscience, pol- luted purity and enslaved thought ; it suppressed a throne that had oppressed those whom it should have protected, that had existed for its own splendor and not for its own honor, and that had increased its luxury at the expense of the impoverished ; and it repudiated and guillotined the upper classes, who by their laxity, their immoralities, their cruelties, and their glittering and sickening depravities, had sunk themselves lower than the lowest ; for none are so fallen as the angels, crea- tures of most exalted privilege, who kept not their first estate. What Camille Desmoulins in his wild exultation, wrote immediately on the fall of the Bastille, may be taken as fairly indicative of the kind of world the con- vulsive throes of this political earthquake precipitated into the bottomless abyss. " Hccc nox est,'" he triumphantly exclaims. "This night we have escaped from our miserable Egyptian bondage. This night has exterminated the wild boars, the rabbits, and all the vermin which devour our crops. This night has abolished the tithes and perquisites of the clergy. This night has abolished the annates and dispensations ; has taken the keys of heaven from an Alex- THE DUSK AND DAWN 39 ander VI. and given them to a good conscience. O night, dis- astrous to the great chamber, the registrars, the bailiffs, the attor- neys, the secretaries, the solicitous beauties, porters, valets, advo- cates, people of the royal household, all the tribes of rapine ! Night, disastrous to all the bloodsuckers of the State, the finan- ciers, the courtiers, the cardinals, archbishops, abbes, canonesses, abbesses, priors, and subpriors ! ' ' Yes, night indeed, black and profound, swallowing up the enormities, atrocities, infamies, as well as the puer- ilities and artificialities of a day which, measured by the tears of the innocent and the sufferings of the just, had already reached the duration of an eternity. The Revolution, in one sense, had its rise in the degradation and unmatched wretchedness of the masses. These are graphically portrayed by Carlyle : They — the peasant class and lowly — are sent to do statute labour, to pay statute taxes, to fatten battlefields — named "beds of honor " — with their bodies, in quarrels which are not theirs ; their hand and toil is in every possession of man, but for themselves they have little or no possession ; untaught, uncomforted, unfed, to pine stagnant in thick obscuration, in squalid destitution, and obstruction, this is the lot of the millions, pcuplc taillable ct corv cable a mcrci et miscricordcy^ And when this heap of seething wretchedness was becoming vocal, and with strident cries was clamoring for bread, and the thunders of contending factions ech- oed over Europe, Schleiermacher, discerning the true significance of the hour, wrote his famous discourses on ''Religion," in which he taught that Christianity was essentially social and the church the brotherhood of man- kind. Unquestionably, stripped of its religious nomen- ^ "French Revolution," Vol. I., p. 2. 40 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY clature, this is the message of the Revolution to the world. It was written clearly in the idyllic dreams of Rousseau, it was revealed in Condorcet's ** Progress of the Spirit of Man," it was involved in the political schemes of the Rolands, and found, at last, the fullest expression in the system of Comte, where the individual is lost in the species and each man is merely a part of the collective Great Being existing solely for that Great ]3eing, by the philosopher identified with the totality of humanity. Yes, the hope of a new order of society — In which hberty, equahty, and fraternity should reign ; in which tyrants should no more oppress and judges no more frown down the poor ; in which hungry eyes and gaunt faces would no longer appeal to heaven in vain for bread ; in which jealousy, suspi- cion, and rivalry would be banished by the sentiment of brother- hood ; in which war should be impossible and crime unknown ; in which the good and beautiful gifts of God should be every man' s possession by birthright and life should become gay and glad again, crowned with plenty and bright with song — these were the dreams with which men in the early days of the Revolution, before the tiger had tasted blood, kept their feasts of fraternity, clasping each others' necks in the streets of Paris and proclaiming a millennium These visions were born, not of hell, but of heaven ; they were part of the neglected teachings of the Chiistian faith, and destined to exert an immediate and future influence on Christian history and development. Such, then, was the twilight of the two centuries, and under its leaden and storm-streaked sky, but breathing the exhilarating atmosphere of a new age, Christianity gave signs of aggressive action. She began to reor- ganize herself. She commenced to learn how little in ^Baldwin Brown, "First Principles," p. 261. THE DUSK AND DAWN 41 reality she was dependent on earthly governments for her support and dignity. Clearer conceptions of her divine character and mission began to prevail. She be- came conscious of a fullness of life she had not realized before for many decades, and, sharing in the unrest, the agitation, the very uncertainty, and yet the expectancy of the times, she addressed herself to the problems of the future — problems that involved her own welfare as well as the destiny of mankind. Missions of various kinds, Bible societies, and evangelizing agencies were called in swift succession into existence, and it soon became apparent that Christianity was mobilizing her forces and that she was about to take the field as never in the past, not even in the apostolic age. While as early as 1698 The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge was formed in England, and a few other enterprises of a kindred spirit, it was not until the close of the last century that these movements multi- plied in a remarkable degree. King William III. was <' graciously pleased" June i6th, 1701, to erect and settle a corporation with the name, The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts ; and Fred- erick IV., of Denmark, 1705, sanctioned a similar scheme among his subjects; and in 1732 the Moravian Mis- sions commenced. But these admirable combinations were only the advance guard of what was to follow. A Naval and Military Bible Society was founded in 1 780 ; the Methodist missions were begun in 1784; the Sun- day School Society, in 1785 ; the Baptist Missionary Society, in 1792; the London Missionary Society, in 1795 ; and then, before the century closed, the Scottish Missionary Society, and associations for the evangeliza- 42 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY tion of luigland (1796), for Baptist Home work (1797), and the Religious Tract Society (1799). Still greater activity distinguished the dawning of the nineteenth century. In 1800 the Church Missionary Society was formed ; in 1803 the Sunday School Union ; in 1804 the British and Foreign Bible Society; in 1805 the British and Foreign School Society ; and these were rapidly followed by societies for evangelizing Ireland (1806), for converting the Jews (1808), for distributing prayer-books (18 12), for the triumph of Protestantism on the continent (18 18), for the promotion of the relig- ious principles of the Reformation (1828), and others for the advancement along particular lines of the holy gospel in faith and practice throughout the globe. The same tendency was manifest in America apparently as the result of the religious quickening and the political upheaval. Under the haystacks on the borders of the Hoosac, some students of Williams College, Wills, Hall, and Richards, converted in the revivals of 1800, ''prayed into existence the embryo of foreign missions." In February, 181 2, the first American missionaries to heathen lands. Rice, Judson, Newell, Nott, and Hall, with their wives, set out for Calcutta. This year wit- nessed the organization of the American Board of For- eign Missions, and in 18 14 the General Missionary Con- vention of the Baptists came into operation. The Bap- tist Home Mission Society hardly belongs to this period, as it was not founded until 1832 ; but in 18 19 the Epis- copalians of this country sent forces to help on the good work in foreign lands; and in 1826 the American Home Missionary Society was formed ; in 1825 the Tract So- ciety; in 181 5 the American Education Society; in 1824 THE DUSK AND DAWN 43 the American Baptist Publication Society and the Sun- day School Union; in 1826 the American Seaman's Friend Society; in 1817 the Colonization Society, con- templating the settlement of Liberia; and in 1826 the Temperance Society. These, numerous though they are, do not exhaust the list of corporate bodies sum- moned into being by the spirit of the age to promote the eternal principles of Christ's kingdom. Nor should we overlook the fact that among them appeared one of the greatest significance in American history — the first society for the abolition of slavery, formed among the Friends in Pennsylvania in 1774. But while to them pertains the honor of priority, to the Methodists belongs the distinction of having organized the strongest and greatest of such societies ; and in their Conference, this denomination, in 1780, publicly de- clared that *' slavery is contrary to the laws of God and man and nature, and hurtful to society; contrary to the dictates of conscience and pure religion, and doing that which we would not that others should do to us and ours." A noble protest, this, and one in which they were joined by the Baptists of Virginia, who, in 1789, '' Resolved, That slavery is a violent deprivation of the rights of nature and inconsistent with a republican gov- ernment, and we therefore recommend it to our breth- ren to make use of every legal means to extirpate this horrid evil from the land." Now, taking all these enterprises together, these new orders and institutions, does it not seem as though Christianity, with the fading of the old century and the beginning of the new, was preparing herself for an on- ward movement ; was anticipating, as with prophetic 44 CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY foresight, the needs and developments of the coming hundred years ; and was proclaiming a revolutionary programme of her own, instinct with the hope of brother- hood and the victory of faith ? This is the impression her extraordinary activity is calculated to make, and as we proceed we shall meet with abundant evidence that it has been justified by the facts of history. But, more than this, it would seem that, when the two twilights were blending, there were not lacking signs that Christianity, in the future, would have to depend on her own resources for the success of her projected undertakings and come to rely less and less on the support of the State and the official patronage of princes. In the United States, the old-time partner- ship, such as it was, between the civil government and the church, practically came to an end with the Revolu- tion. While in certain commonwealths, like Massa- chusetts, there were many conservatives who were re- luctant to abandon the union of the secular and spiritual, they were unable to resist the more general and persist- ent demand for its abrogation. Let it, however, be understood that these demands did not proceed primarily and necessarily from those who were disaffected toward religion, but principally from Christians themselves, particularly from Quakers and Baptists, who had always taught that the religion of Christ ought to maintain itself and pursue its work without entering into en- tangling alliances with the sovereignties of this world. In France, the same, or, more accurately speaking, a similar disruption occurred during the throes and agonies of the revolutionary period. The Convention abolished tithes, acting on a vague impression that religion should THE DUSK AND DAWN 45 be supported in some other way. Then the landed estates of the church were confiscated to reUeve the financial distress of the nation. But the climax was reached when the Bishop of Paris publicly renounced Christianity in the Convention, November, 1793. Chau- mette, so strangely extolled by Michelet, the product of •'the holy mud of Paris," illustrates the significance of this crisis in his speech wherein he declared that the priests were capable of all crimes, and that Paris had decided to acknowledge no other worship than that of reason. This declamation led to a series of resolutions, the first of which is sufficient to tell the whole story : '' All the churches or temples of all religions and wor- ships which have existed in Paris shall be immediately closed." Excesses of various kinds ensued. Churches were desecrated and plundered ; the Goddess of Reason was installed at Notre Dame, and the tenth day of rest was substituted for the seventh ; while it was being openly asserted that the Parisians were without faith and had exalted Marat to the throne of Jesus. Danton perceived that these scenes of abjuration were ominous, and pronounced this remarkable sentence : " If we have not honored the priest of error and fanaticism, neither will we honor the priest of infidelity." Even Robes- pierre, in his manifesto to Europe, seeks to abate the odium which had attached to the authorities for their atheistic decrees, by declaring that, " The P'rench people and its representatives respect the liberty of all wor- ships, and proscribe none of them." To some such solution of the problem, the Convention laboriously struggled, as is shown by the singularly pitiable decree : '' The Convention invites all