\% ^ fwms'-'^i^\^^7 1 v^. ;*v wS f * ■4 Baltimore, lid. First Presbyterian Church Two hundredth Anniversary of the Organisation of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America V* L r\ ^/ h^U V ^<-sJ: N. f y ^1^. 7. V\ m BX 8947 .M3 T86 1906 ;^^; Two hundredth anniversary o the organization of the 1706 1906 TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE (i^gant^atton of t!)e 53resb^terian Cfjurcl) IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA jfirsit ^res;tiptetian Cfjutcf) in Baltimore, JEti. WEDNESDAY, MAY SIXTEENTH, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND SIX PUBLISHED BY THE COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL RECORDS OF THE . . PRESBYTERY OF BALTIMORE . . rL.^.cC. ^ ^ vV.*''^ ^^ ft« mwlagiai ^ '*/; PRINCETON, N. J. *« % ,f Presented by \^tri;rturp ffiifBBon The Rev. Robert P. Kerr, D.D. Pastor of the Northniinster Presbyterian Church in Baltimore. l^rautr The Rev. W. H. Woods, D.D. Pastor of the Franklin Square Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Antl;rm. AbllrfBB Early Presbyterianism in Maryland, The Rev. James William McIlvain, D.D. Secretary of the Maryland Tract Society. !]|ymn. No. 116, verses 1-4. (Tune Dundee, No. 87.) A&brfBB, Presbyterianism The Rev. Charles Wood, D.D. Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pa. I^gmn, No. 300. (Tune Shirland.) Srnrbirtian The Rev. Henry Branch, D.D. Pastor of thi State Pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Ellicott City, Md., and Stated Clerk of the Presbytery of Baltimore. (domtnittrr of ArrangEmptita apfiauitrb by 31ie ^rPBbgtprg of SaltimnrP: REV. JOHN P. CAMPBELL, D.D. REV. JAMES E. MOPFATT, D.D. REV. ROBERT P. KERR, D.D. REV. JOHN TIMOTHY STONE. REV. HENRY BRANCH, D.D. REV. JOHN WYNNE JONES, D.D. REV. JAMES WM. McILVAIN, D.D. REV. SAMUEL C. WASSON. ELDER WILLIAM REYNOLDS. ELDER SAMUEL M. RANKIN. ELDER GEORGE R. CAIRNES. ELDER C. S. DAVIS. ELDER JOHN T. HILL. (Cammttter an S^iatortral ScrDrba: REV. JOHN P. CAMPBELL, D.D. REV. HENRY BRANCH, D.D. REV. E. D. NEWBERRY. REV. T. W. PULHAM. Carl^ ^Pfesibpteriantsitn in ;^ar^lanti. Rev. J. W. McILVAIN, D. D. t^* (5* ^* HE purpose of this paper is not to prove that the earliest Presbyterianism in the United States originated in Maryland. There is "a very pretty quarrel" going on just now as to which colony may claim the original Presbyterian Church of the Scotch-Genevan type. It reminds one of the classic story of how many of the cities of Greece contended for the honor of being the birthplace of Homer, the blind bard. As in that case so now there is a great deal of assertion, a great deal of historical imagination, but very little solid documentary evidence. We only claim and we think that we can easily prove that there were Presbyterians in Maryland at a very early date, very possibly from the foundation of the colony. Henry More, the Jesuit father who accompanied the colonists writes, "In leading the colony to Maryland by far the greater part were heretics." He says also of the Assembly of 1638 that it was "composed with few exceptions of heretics." The large part of the early settlers were poor per- sons, who came largely from London, then the stronghold of Pres- byterianism. In 1649 we know there were Presbyterians here, because the famous Act of Toleration forbade calling a person a Presbyterian "as a term of reproach." How could this term of reproach be used, if there were no Presbyterians in the colony? We are glad to note that there is no longer any necessity for such a law in Maryland. I remark also that the engrosser of this law writes the word PresPITerian. But they were very weak in spelling in those days, and moreover the ignorant clerk may have been "an infidel, Papist or other idolator." A word in passing as to this celebrated Act of Toleration, which, like St. Patrick, is claimed both by the Protestants and the Roman Catholics. It is claimed by the Protestants because tliey had a majority of votes in die Assembly which passed the Act, which is true and so far to their credit. It is claimed by the Roman CathoHcs, because Lord Baltimore, who was undoubtedly the author of the law in its main features, was a Roman Catholic. This is true also, but Lord Baltimore was much more than a Roman Catholic, even of a very liberal type. He was a man of affairs and the Lord Proprietary of the colony. What his feelings were is shown by documents of the time and by his own letters. He was sincerely religious, and therefore brought out Jesuit fathers with the first colony. But he soon quarreled with them because, as usual, they interfered with the government and tried to acquire large grants of lands from the Indians without his approval. He was anxious to counterbalance the influence of the Roman Catholics by offsetting a number of Protestant settlers. Hence, an act of toleration, where both churches were placed on an equality. Moreover, the political and religious situation in England forbade any other policy. The Puritan Parliament had sent Archbishop Laud to the scaffold for attempting to re-estab- lish Popery in England, and had disestablished prelacy and made Presbytery the established church of England. Any thing more than bare toleration for Catholicism was impossible under the circumstances. Lord Baltimore had the worldly wisdom to see this, as none of the churches of his day saw it. "The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." Let him have due credit for this, although he may have been only the unconscious instrument of Providence in asserting a great principle. But let us also remember that he did this not because he was a Roman Catholic, but a shrewd statesman, who saw, from the very beginning, that religious toleration was the only possible policy for his colony. He promised this to the first settlers and he kept his word. Maryland had the honor of receiving and cherishing the first Presbyterian minister who ever came from the British Isles to America. This was Rev. Francis Doughty. His history is a sort of epitome of the religious history of the times. Turned out of the Church of England because he was too much of a Presbyterian, he was also turned out of Taunton, Massachusetts, whither he had fled, because his views did not agree with those of the Inde- pendents. Next he came to New Amsterdam. He is believed to have been the first minister to hold a service in English in what is now New York. But there he got into trouble again, or as a contemporary author puts it, "He had gotten out of the frying pan into the fire." We fear that Doughty was too much of a fighting parson, a genus not unknown in the history of our beloved church. This time it was politics that interfered with his usefulness. So after a taste of prison life under charge of debt he came somewhere about 1656 into the Eastern Shore of Vir- ginia and Maryland. He lived in this colony and found peace here; and not merely peace, but a wife, sister of Governor Stone, and a nice piece of property at Nanjemoy, Charles County. He went about preaching and baptizing. Whether he ever organized a church is uncertain, but if he did he would have done so after the Presbyterian pattern. His sermons and services were at least Presbyterian, and he must have been a great help to Protestantism in Maryland. For, so far as is known, he was not only the first Presbyterian minister, but the first ordained Protestant minister in the colony. The next Presbyterian minister who came to Maryland was Rev. Matthew Hill. He is better known to us than Doughty, be- cause his history is given in Calamy's Non-Conformist's Memorial, and because we have an interesting letter of his written from Charles County to the celebrated Richard Baxter, giving us an account of his work. He was a native of York, England, a gradu- ate of Magdalen College, Cambridge, and a noted Hebrew scholar. He was ejected from his living after the Restoration and was very poor. His relations urged his conformit}-, but nothing could make him violate his conscience. He lost what little he had in the great fire in London, 1666. After that he "embarked for the West Indies," meaning, in this instance, Maryland. Here he arrived about 1669. He writes April 3, 1669, to Baxter, who was evi- dently the means of sending him out, "I am sure that the blessing of him that was ready to perish doth reach you even at this dis- tance ; what you have lost in your purse I hope you will regain in a better place." He speaks of his congregation as "a willing and loving people." He mentions the fact that "under his lordship's government we enjoy a great deal of liberty, and particularly in matters of religion." He speaks of the large number of those of the reformed faith and adds that "they have no fondness for the liturgy or ceremonies," a fact which Lord Baltimore himself states in a letter in 1677 to the Privy Council. He begs for some ministers to be sent out to a people who are "like sheep without a shepherd." He begs also very naturally for some books for him- self, which request Baxter seems to have granted, for in Hill's in- ventory we find that he possessed a library of some seventy vol- umes, a fine colonial library and a good one for a home missionar)- even in those days. He married Edith, daughter of Walter Bayne, a lady who had previously wedded Jonathan Maries in a wonder- ful fashion, somewhat after the manner of the marriage vows of the Quakers. The document is still preserved, and is a strange mixture of love and theology. He had a fine estate also, called Popleton, near Port Tobacco, Charles County. But he had fresh troubles. Theological controversies were then peculiarly bitter, and he became involved in such with the Quakers who came in large numbers to Maryland on account of its religious freedom, and who thought it their duty to denounce all "hireling ministers," whether Prelatists or Presbyterians. He labored here about ten years, dying in 1679. As he had no successor, it is difficult to esti- mate the amount of his work, but everything we know of him shows him to have been a gentle and scholarly Christian. A blank now occurs in the annals of Maryland Presbyterianism up to the arrival of Makemie and Traill, which is filled in, in part at least, by the elder, Ninian Beall. Wherever there is a Session, there is a church, and Ninian Beall represents such a Session. He is almost certainly the "ancient and comely man, an elder among the Presbyterians" who entertained Thomas Wilson, the famous Quaker preacher in 1692. Beall is an interesting character, a typical American. He was not a Scottish gentleman, as a very unreliable legend would have it, but, as he says himself plainly in a law case, an indentured servant who came to Maryland in 1657. He rose to great wealth, owned iron furnaces and flour mills and died one of the richest men in the province. He and Doughty came to Maryland about the same time. But he long survived him and died in 1717, aged 92. Thus he saw the feeble beginning, and lived to see the single unorganized church grow into a strong synod of three presbyteries. How much we owe to his fostering hand we can only conjecture. He gave generously land to the church at Marlboro and a very handsome communion service still used by the church at Hyattsville. He was the first Presbyterian elder in America of whom we know, and in a way may dispute with Makemie the claim to be the founder of American Presbyter- ianism. And yet it seems to us that it is to Makemie that the honor belongs, because he was the man who organized Presbyterianism in this country and gave it a firm foundation. There can be no Presbyterianism that is not organized that really deserves the name. This Makemie felt, and hence he went to work to accom- plish this great end. Makemie was not the first Presbyterian min- ister in Maryland nor in America. He was not even the first Presbyterian minister on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Doughty had preached there, for we find him as early as 1656 just across the border in Accomac County, Va. There was also a Puritan preacher, whether Presbyterian or not we know not, with the remarkable name which a Dickens would have rejoiced to use, of Ezekiel Fogg. He lived and preached in Dorchester County, near the Great Choptank. He has left us a will which is by no means a dreary legal document, but a witty piece of writing. Of his clerical work we have only a bare record. Makemie, however, though he builded on other men's foundations, did a far greater work than any before him. He saw that Presbyterians must be organized if they were not to lapse on the one hand into Indepen- dency or be swallowed up b}- the Episcopal Church, which was now being established on very liberal terms in most of the colonies. He came from the strictest kind of Presbyterians, the Scotch- Irish. He was born near Rathmelton, County Donegal, Ireland, about 1660. He appears as a student in Glasgow in 1676. He was examined in 1681 and ordained in 1682 by the Presbytery of Laggan, Ireland, to go as a minister to America. Col. William Stevens in Maryland, beside Virginia, had written from Somerset County for a godly minister. Traill, the moderator of the Presby- tery, had fled to Maryland himself during the persecutions under James II. Makemie arrived in Somerset County in 1683. His labors were truly apostolic. He shortly left for Virginia and preached to the Puritans there of Elizabeth River in 1684. He traveled extensively, preaching as far south as the Barbadoes and as far north as New England. He preached in New York, where he was most unjustly tried and fined by Lord Cornbury, the gov- ernor. In order to support himself in these extensive and ex- pensive joumeyings he, like the Apostle Paul, engaged in trade. But wherever he went he labored earnestly and preached con- stantly. He returned to Maryland in i6go and settled near the border line of Maryland and Virginia. He married and became in 1691 the pastor of the church at Rehoboth. He soon left for Philadelphia, and thence went to the Barbadoes, where he lived several years. In 1698 he returned to the Eastern Shore and re- mained there until his death in 1708. Makemie's dream was to organize a Presbytery. To this end he was in correspondence with godly ministers on both sides of the water. It is interesting to note through Makemie's corres- pondence with Increase Mather the interest the Boston ministers took in Presbyterianism. In the summer of 1704 he went abroad to obtain aid from the Presbyterians of England and Scotland. The Presbyterian ministers of London raised funds to aid him, and two years later he sailed for America with two young men, John Hampton, an Irishman, and George McNish, a Scotchman. These he sent to labor in his old field in Somerset County. In the spring of 1706 occurred the event which we are now celebrating, the organization of the first Presbytery in America, the Presbytery of Philadelphia. It is of interest to us to note that of the seven men who formed the first Presbytery, five were then, or had been, laboring in Maryland — Makemie, Hampton, McNish, Nathaniel Taylor, who was the pastor at Patuxent or Upper Marlboro, and Davis, who had been the pastor at Snow Hill. If Makemie is called the father of American Presbyterianism, surely Maryland was its cradle. This will appear more evident if we give the list of the Presby- terian ministers who were Makemie"s fellow-laborers. This sur- vey must be hasty and we can only give a few dates and facts. First comes William Traill, a Scotchman, who was thrown in prison for preaching in Ireland. Upon his release in 1682 he came at once to Maryland, invited by Col. William Stevens. He settled near Rehoboth, and was probably the first pastor of that church. After the revolutions of 1688 he returned in 1690 to Scotland, and was minister at Borthwick, near Edinboro. He was the moderator of the Presbytery which sent Makemie to America. Next comes Thomas Wilson, who came hither from County Donegal, Ireland. We find him here as early as 1681, when Col. William Stevens gave him a grant of land. He was the founder and first pastor of the Manokin Church, Princess Anne. He lived here about twenty years, but we know little of that life outside of certain legal documents of the time and an address to King Wil- liam III, congratulating him on his escape from assassination. His brother, Ephraim K. Wilson, sheriff of Somerset County, left many descendants, among whom is Ephraim K. Wilson, late U. S. Senator. The next name is that of Samuel Davis, one of the first mem- bers of Presbytery. His record is, in some respects, more amusing than edifying, but the historian must give facts as he finds them. Davis was an Irishman. He came to Maryland as early as 1684, or possibly 1678. He lived on St. Martin's Creek, southeast side of Pocomoke River. He was the pastor, probably also founder, of the church at Snow Hill. He and a Church of England minister. Brechan got themselves into a sad pickle on one occasion. Squire Layfield gave a grand Christmas entertainment in 1697. He had re- cently become a widower, and one of the guests proposed that he should be remarried by a mock ceremony. The ceremony was accordingly then performed with more jesting than delicacy. Unfortunately, the lady chosen for the mock bride was a niece of the deceased wife, and both the clergymen were haled before the court for breaking the marriage laws of England. Then both got off on the substantial but not very creditable plea that "several of the company were overtaken with drink." This will sound better in a temperance lecture than in a history of the early Presbyterian heroes. But we have sworn testimony to the facts and it is only too true a picture of times when drunkenness was considered a very venial fault even in a minister. Davis afterwards was pastor at Lewes, Del. He was one of the ministers set apart to form the Presbytery of Snow Hill, which, however, never materialized. The last of these early Maryland pastors whom we shall men- tion is Rev. Nathaniel Taylor, pastor at Upper Marlboro, Prince George's County. This was Ninian Beall's church, and a very flourishing church in its day. We know little of Taylor besides his being pastor there and the occurrence of his name in several of the documents of the time. The most interesting thing, perhaps, about him, is the catalogue of his library, found by the writer in an old inventory. There are five hundred volumes of these, a splendid library even for a minister of the present day. It is full of the Westminister divines and full also of the philosophical and scien- tific works of the period, showing Taylor to have been a very scholarly man. It contains also a number of Tate and Brady's hymn books, showing that our ancestors there did not sing Rouse's version, but the one common in England. Taylor came about 1703. His ministry was not a long one, for he died suddenly in 17 10. One interesting relic of his mini.stry is a splendid silver communion service, now used at Hyattsville, the successor of the old church at Upper Marlboro. From this imperfect sketch we find that at the time of the first Presbytery at Philadelphia there were at least four flourishing Presbyterian churches in Maryland — Upper Marlboro, on the Western Shore, anfl Snow Hill., Manokin and Rehoboth, in Som- erset and Worcester Counties, on the Eastern Shore. There were numerous Presbyterians in Baltimore, Prince George's and Cecil counties, and these were shortly afterwards organized into churches at West Nottingham, Bladensburg and at Soldier's Delight. It seemed at that time as if Maryland was destined to be a great Presbyterian center. Why was it otherwise? I. Because the churches were organized in oiit-of-the-way places, chiefly at the extreme end of the Eastern Shore, and none in any center of influence. There were no towns of any size in Maryland. Plantation life prevailed. Makemie was struck with this, and he had a scheme which was to improve the colony in this respect called "A plain and friendly persuasive to the inhabitants of Maryland and Virginia for promoting towns and cohabitation." But then no gentleman, according to the ideas then prevalent in those colonies, lived anywhere except on his estate, and none could engage in trade. So the Presbyterian churches of Maryland were left largely to "waste their sweetness on the desert air." II. But a far more important reason for the decline of Presby- terianism was the establishment of the Church of England in the colony. This was done in the most thorough manner. The Prot- estants, even the leading Presbyterians were so afraid of the R. C. influence that they thought that only an establishment could counteract it. So they gave up their freedom of worship and sub- mitted to an onerous establishment where everybody paid heavy tithes to the parsons. Of course these were well provided for, their salaries in some instances amounting to nearly £2000 a year. The Presbyterian ministers were supported only by voluntary con- tributions and only the strongest in the faith would pay heavy tithes and generous subscriptions at the same time. Another cause perhaps was the moderatism or broad churchism of the eighteenth century in the Presbyterian churches abroad. When Whitefield preached in Southern Maryland at Upper Marlboro he made this sad record: "These parts are sunk into a deep sleep." So it was when the Methodists came with their earnest evangelical preaching they swept the state from end to end, gathering in Presbyterian and Anglican alike into the new fold. Yet Presbyterianism was far from dead here. Witness the conspicuous part taken by Maryland Presbyterians in the American Revolution. Many of the founders of Baltimore, to whom it owed its wonderful growth, were Presbyterians. Witness this beautiful church in which we are assembled. Witness the strong churches of our city and Presbytery. Witness the new deaconess move- ment and many other signs, which tell us that if Makemie and his friends were to come back they would be both surprised and de- lighted over the wonderful growth of their beloved Presbyterian Church in Maryland. Rev. CHARLES WOOD, D. D. 1^% fl^* ^* ^{^ RESBYTERIANISM is the oldest and most natural J ^ form of church government," says a sympathetic "Tj^ historian, himself a member of another church. If not as old as sin, Presbyterianism may be said to be as old as salvation. When God was about to save Israel from the slavery of Egypt, Moses re- ceived Divine authority for the establishment of Presbyterianism. Elders were associated with him in the govern- ment of Israel, and the government for three hundred years was altogether Presbyterian in the largest sense till the misguided Elders demitted their office by Divine permission, but without Divine command, in favor of a Pope-King. In the Christian Church the word Elder no longer suggests age, but is a term signifying official position only. A man like Timothy, with an old head on young shoulders, was the ideal Elder of the Apostolic Church. The Bishop and Presbyter were identical. Bishops like Lightfoot and Ellicott ; Deans like Alford and Stanley ; Historians like Mosheim, Neander and Hatch ; Commentators like Lange and Meyer are all agreed as to this. The two terms were interchangeable till the beginning of the Third Century. The word Elder or Presbyter retained its primitive meaning some centuries longer in parts of Europe where the Papal authority was recognized only in a modified degree. "The primate of the Church of Scotland for the first three hundred years was not a Bishop but a Presbyter. First the Abbott of lona, then Dunkeld," Bede says, "consecrated the Bishops they sent to England." "They crowned kings, the prerogative for which Becket shed his blood rather than concede to his brother primate of York," so says Dean Stanley in his lectures on "The Church of Scotland." In the fastness of the Italian mountains there were deep pools where the face of Apostolic Christianity was alwa)'s reflected. Many of the so-called heretics who were exterminated with fire and sword, like the Albigenses of Languedoc, were Presbyterians who refused to submit to the Papal yoke. At the Reformation, Presbyterianism leaped into prominence and for a time seemed destined to become the dominant type of Reformed Christianity. The story of her triumphs and defeats is enough to stir the most sluggish blood. As history "unrolls her long annals," few more thrilling pages appear than those which recount the sufferings and heroism of the Presbyterians of France — Vaudois or Huguenot. As we read we become spectators of a great court Tragedy. Francis I and many of the proudest nobles of France were attracted to the Presbyterian form almost to the point of acceptance. The Presbyterian party fought wars, held cities against the seige of royal armies, and made treaties with the throne. Heroic figures like Conde, Coligny and Mont- morency, Constable of France, move across the stage towards the awful massacre of St. Bartholomew's Da}'. When Louis XIV, in 1685, revoked the Edict of Nantes, Protestants fled for their lives whenever it was possible to escape the cordon of soldiers guarding the frontier. So France by her bigoted folly skimmed the cream from the milk and scattered it to the four winds. The tyranny of 1685 made possible, perhaps made inevitable, the Revo- lution and the anarchy of 1793. In England Presbyterian history is in part a court Drama. Henry VIII, keen for money, wives and pleasure, had nothing to hope for from Presbyterian Protestantism. Romanism, with its rich monasteries and Cathedral foundations, was to Henry unendurable, but Presbyterianism, with its rigid morality forbid- ding pillage, groundless divorce and gross pleasures of every sort, was to Henry altogether detestable. Elizabeth felt like her father, that Presbyterianism was too independent for her purpose. The clergy who refused to wear Romish vestments, "Idolatrous gear," they called them, excited her contemptuous anger. James I was convinced that the stability of his throne depended on the establishment and maintenance of Episcopacy. "No bishop, no King," he said. Charles I looked upon Presbyterianism as the most dangerous of his foes, and tried every conceivable plan for its extermination. He felt with Dryden, "Presbytery in its pestilential zeal, Can flourish only in a common weal." In both Scotland and England the Presbyterian Clergy were deprived of their churches. The people were imprisoned and persuaded with the thumb-screw and the rack to give up their foolish Presbyterian prejudices. The act of uniformity in 1549 required consent "To all and everything prescribed in and by the Book of Common Prayer." Two thousand clerg\'men, led by Baxter and Calamy, were ejected from their pastorates as Crom- well ejected the members of the House of Commons from West- minster Hall, with a "Get you gone." But in 1642 the long Parlia- ment abolished Episcopacy. An assembly was called at West- minster in 1643, composed of ten Lords, twenty Commoners, one hundred and twenty-one ministers, and a Confession and Cate- chism were issued by Parliamentary authority. Upon the return of Charles K by the invitation of the deluded Presbyterians, the Presbyterian Church had been established in England for seventeen years. Charles immediately set to work to undermine the church he hated, in part it may be because of his obligation to it. His efforts, with those of his successor, were sadly suc- cessful. In Scotland Presbyterian history is an Epic of the people. The men and women who move with stately and dignified step across the stage might have stepped out an hour ago from the XI Chapter of Hebrews. We hear, as we listen, the roar of muskets, the sharp crack of pistols, the fierce clashing of swords, as Cavalier and Covenanter meet on the battlefield. On the great canvas of Scottish history moves a medley of figures which, once seen, can never be forgotten. A beautiful Queen weeps and wrings her white hands in which she is deliberately and cunningly crushing the religious liberties of a people that in her French eyes are half fantastic, half barbarian. A preacher who "never feared the face of man" makes his pulpit and his monarch tremble, as he thunders out the righteousness and wrath of God. A stool goes flying through the air, flung by the hand of a fearless servant girl, which misses the head of the Dean of Edinburgh, but fatally wounds the system he represents. In the church yard of Gray Friars a solemn league and covenant is signed in blood, and sealed before many weeks have passed, by the martyrdom of the signers. Those who had refused to make the responses to Archbishop Lord's printed prayers, heard the responses to their own petitions in the roar of Claverhouse's muskets. Eighteen thousand men and women laid down their lives for the cause to which they had pledged them. .It was not till the Revolution of 1688 in England had driven a Romanist from the throne and had replaced him with a Dutch Puritan, that Scotland was at last free. "If the Revolu- tion had produced no other effect than that of freeing the Scots from the yoke of an establishment they detested and giving them one to which they were attached, it would have been one of the happiest event in our history," says Lord Macaulay. In America, Presbyterian history is for the most part plain prose. Presbyterians came here because they were not wanted at home, and there was nowhere else for them to go. "The history of American colonization is a history of the crimes of Europe," and the history of American evangelization is of the same sort. The Presbyterians who came to the New World in the 17th and i8th Centuries were the living witnesses of crimes against liberty and humanity in the Old World. Germans from the Palatinate, devastated by the armies of Louis XIV, Huguenots from tortured and heart-broken France; English, Scotch and Irish from be- wildered and distressed Great Britain left their homes under a pro- pulsion they could not resist. Every ship that crossed the sea brought such colonists to our shores. In the first Presb\'tery organized in Philadelphia in 1706 the first name is that of Francis Makemie, a Scotch-Irishman. Of the seven members of which that Presbytery was composed, all except one were from the Old World. Jedediah Andrews, a Har- vard graduate and pastor of the First Church of Philadelphia, was the only native-born American of them all. From the outstart American Presbyterians were restless under all yokes, whether ecclesiastical or political. The Mechlenburg declaration of 1775, "We do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people," was the voice of which the Declaration of Independence was the echo. Through the long, and often times hopeless struggle to achieve that independence which had been so stoutly claimed, the Presbyterian clergy and laity never wavered in their allegiance to the cause of liberty. While Presbyterian history in our own land is far less dramatic and thrilling than in France, England or Scotland, here the greatest gains have been made, and here, per- haps, is to be the largest field of usefulness. The history of the Presbyterian Church in both the Old World and New should be an unceasing inspiration. The Cathedrals of Europe — St. Paul's, the Abbey, Notre Dame, Cologne, Milan, Florence, must always be an inspiration to the architect. There genius told its dreams in poems of stone. The masterpieces of Angelo, Raphael, Angelico, Di Vinci are an unceasing inspiration to the artist. What splendid powers belong to the men who could mix common colors, and with a simple brush create half-Divine figures to look down with glowing eyes on a dull world ! To feel the electric discharge from Dante's poem and Shakespeare's plays and Milton's word picture of Paradise Lost is an inspiration to every man who is conscious of creative power in his own soul, or who is capable of appreciating the creative power in other souls. Such poems and plays make it certain that in the past there were Prometheans who knew how to bring fire from heaven, and so to compound it with human thoughts and words that the centuries are powerless to dim its glow or chill its heat. But to recall the lives, struggles, torments, persecutions, tri- umphs of Waldensees and Huguenots, of Covenanters and Puri- tans, remembering that their faith is ours, that their blood courses through our veins, is to feel that to be weak and pusillanimous, supine or dull, timid and subservient to the false and untrue, though wrong be enthroned and ensceptered, is to be traitors to the past, is to prove ourselves base sons of heroic sires. "When all else has failed, when patriotism has covered its face, and human courage has broken down, and intellect has yielded with a smile or a sigh, content to philosophize in the closet, the slavish form of faith called Calvinism has borne ever an inflexible front to illusion and mendacity, and has preferred rather to be ground to powder like flint than to bend before violence or to melt under enervating temptation," are the words of James Anthony Froude, a historian by no means prejudiced in favor of Presbyterianism. Our history is a pledge as well as an inspiration. We are pledged by our origin and growth to Catholicity, Universality, Comprehensiveness. A church compounded of so many elements as is ours, must necessarily be non-partisan and non-sectarian. All international animosities between the Irish and the English must disappear in the close fellowship of our ecclesiastical unity. Sectarian narrowness, too, must be impossible when such diverse phases of thought and experience as are represented in the Presby- terian Church of America. To be eflfective as a persecuting church an ecclesiastical organization must be homogeneous. Its clergy and laity must have the same blood in their veins, and must be inheritors of the same traditions, any divergence from which will strike those who hold tightly to them as an offence, inexcusable and unendurable, deserving censure and excommunication. With the mixed nationalities of which our communion is composed, with the conditions varying through every phase of Protestantism, we i can never be anything but inclusive and comprehensive. Not only may we say with Tennyson in welcoming Queen Alexandra, "Saxon and Norman and Dane are we," but we may add, "Ger- man and French, English, Irish and Scotch are we." "God hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth." "Little children, love one another." Our history pledges us to loyalty as well as to catholicity. We are pledged to loyalty to our country. "He prostrated himself in the dust before his maker, but he set his foot on the neck of his king," was said of the Puritan. Neither he nor his Presbyterian brother was ever charged with setting his foot on his country's claims. He who set his foot on the neck of kings in the Old World was the first to bow his head to the justly constituted authority of the people in the New World. This is a part of his creed. It is in his blood. He can never be a partisan, but he must always be a patriot. The Presbyterian will be loyal as well to the Home, the Sabbath, and the Scriptures, which must always be for him the final test of every theological system, confession of faith and creed. Our history pledges us also to liberty, the most perfect liberty ever goes hand in hand with the most perfect loyalty. The Pres- byterian Church is liberal in the terms it offers its own members. It asks of them assent to no theory of inspiration, to no creed or confession. "The Presbyterian Church must never demand more for admission to her membership than is demanded for admission to Heaven. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved," insisted Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton. The Presby- terian Church is also liberal in its treatment of other denomina- tions. It unfrocks no clergy, it unchurches no communion. It is liberal, too, in its forms of worships. It permits the use of all, but commands the use of none. To every church Session the power is committed to decide the form of service for that particu- lar church. Our church clasps in her wide arms Cathedrals like those of Glasgow and Edinburgh and summer tents like those of New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. The most elaborate and the most simple services are equally Presbyterian if the Session so decides. The Presbyterian Church should be the church of joyous confidence in God. With clear eyes the church sees her little bark often tempest - tossed, but borne ever onward in the great gulf stream of God's immutable purpose. That stream sweeps forward through the ages, toward the far-off Divine event, "when He shall gather together in one all things in Christ, which are in heaven and which are in earth, even in Him." Often our efforts seem unavailing : often the tide ebbs, but the onward move- ment is unimpeded. The hosts of heaven are already singing the song of triumph. Who that believes in that hour can be timid? Who that sees the gleam of that coming glory can be sad? Whether ours is to be the church of the future, the church of America or not, does not depend on the validity of our orders, or the valor and splendid heroism of our Presbyterian ancestors, nor on the clear logic of our Confession or Creed. Neither does it de- pend on our catholicity or liberality, but on the spirit of our ministers and members. "The church which to-day effectually denounces intemperance, and the licentiousness of social life, the cruelty or the indifference of the rich to the poor, and the prosti- tution of political office, will become the real church of America," said the late eloquent Bishop of Massachusetts. The church that goes further still, and not only denounces vice and error, but incul- cates virtue and truth, the church, the teaching of whose ministers, and the lives of whose pastors and people alike, remind the world less of the Puritan, the Huguenot, or the Lutheran, than of the Nazarene, whose touch heals the wounds that others have made, whose voice comforts the hearts that others have hurt, and whose hand raises from the dust and mire those whom others have thrust aside and thrown down — will be the Church of Christ in this land, chosen of God to be the peacemaker and the almoner among the nations of the earth. 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