INTERNATIONAL CONGREGATIONAL COUNCIL 1920 Advance Report Number Six American Section The Missionary History of Congregationalism’ THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES 289 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK MEMBERS OF THE COMMISSION ON CONGREGATIONALISM AND MISSIONS Sanders, Rev. Frank K., D.D., Chairman, New York City. Director of the Board of Missionary Preparation. Baird, Rev. Lucius O., D.D., Seattle, Wash. Superintendent of the Washington Congregational Conference. Beach, Rev. Harlan P., D.D., New Haven, Conn. Professor of Missions in the Yale Divinity School. Browne, Rev. J. K., San Francisco, Cal. Assistant Secretary of the American Board for the Pacific Coast. Capen, Prof. Edward W., Ph.D., Hartford, Conn. Dean of the Kennedy School of Missions. Choate, Miss Miriam F., New York City. General Secretary of the Congregational Woman's Home Missionary Federation. Emrich, Rev. F. E., D.D., Boston, Mass. Secretary of the Massachusetts Home Missionary Society. Eversz, Rev. Moritz E., D.D., Chicago, Ill. Superintendent of the German Department, Congregational Home Missionary Society. Hume, Rev. Robert E., Ph.D., New York City. Professor of the History of Religions, Union Theological Seminary. Lee, Mrs. Lucius O., Chicago, Ill. Secretary of the Woman’s Board of Missions of the Interior. Miner, Rev. Henry A., D.D., Madison, Wis. Secretary Emeritus of the Wisconsin Congregational Association. Miskovsky, Prof. Louis F., A.M., Oberlin, Ohio. Principal of the Slavic Department of the Oberlin Graduate School of Theology. Phillips, Rev. W. L., D.D., Shelton, Conn. Member of the Executive Committee of the Congregational Home Missionary Society. Richards, Rev. Charles H., D.D., New York City. Church Building Secretary of the Congregational Church Building Society. Smith, Rev. Arthur H., D.D., Tunghsien, Chihli, China. Missionary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Strong, Rev. William E., D.D., Boston, Mass. Editorial Secretary, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Tucker, Rev. John T., B.D., Toronto, Canada. Principal of the Dondi Institute, West Central Africa. Warner, Dr. Lucien C., New York City. Chairman of the Congregational World Movement. THE MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM IN NORTH AMERICA With an Outline of Its Responsibilities and the Policy and Program Needed I Its Historical Roots The missionary spirit is native to Congregationalism. Throughout three centuries of active history our free people have given nobly of their energy and resources that a real gospel might be preached to a world in need. Their emphasis on religious freedom, their obedience to the call of conscience, their sense of Christian fellowship, their confidence in Divine leadership — these have made New England, the first free home of Pilgrims and Puritans, a natural motherland of missionary endeavor. At the very outset of New England history the early settlers gave ex¬ pression to their missionary spirit. John Robinson, the revered pastor in Holland of the Plymouth colonists, having heard of a skirmish between the fiery Standish and a band of Indians, wrote to Governor Bradford, “ Oh, that you had converted some before you had killed any.” The great seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1628, with its emblematic Indian whose extended hands seemed to say “ Come over and help us,” attested a real desire to secure “ the glory of God and the everlasting welfare of the poore naked sonnes of Adam.” 1 Matthew Cradock, the governor of the Massachusetts Company in England, in his instructions to Governor Endicott and the Council in Boston, was careful to declare that they had made “ plentiful provision of godly ministers by whom . . . also the Indians may in God’s appointed time be reduced to the obedience of the Gospel of Christ.” The first three ministers, the Reverends Samuel Skelton, Francis Higginson and Francis Bright, were bound by their written contracts in April, 1629, “ to do their endeavor ” with the Com¬ pany’s people and with the Indians to “ further the main end of the Planta¬ tion . . . the conversion of the savages.” 2 Their idea, at first, was to pre¬ pare the Indians for Christianity by acquainting them with Christian civilization. Squanto and Hobomok are only the best known of many Indians who were encouraged to frequent the settlements. The Pequot uprising of 1637, so summarily repressed, gave colonists and savages alike a greater mutual respect and understanding. Before 1644, responsible leaders began to “ lay to heart ” an active ministry to their red neighbors. The General Court in November of that year, in view of the prevailing comfort and repose, empowered subordinate courts “ to take order to have them (the Indians) instructed in the knowledge and worship of God.” 3 Two years later the General Court formally provided for sending two ministers each year “ to make known the heavenly counsel of God among the Indians.” 3 It thus became the first missionary organization in Prot¬ estant Christendom. But men were not wanting among the Fathers to give an independent response to the call of need. In October, 1646, the Reverend John Eliot, then forty-two years of age, a distinguished graduate in arts of Cambridge, a colonist of outstanding ability and influence, who had been for fourteen years the learned and godly pastor of the church at Roxbury, having pre- 1 Bartlett, Sketches of the Missions of the American Board, p. 1. 2 Young, Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay , 142, 211. 3 Palfrey, History of New England, ii, 188-9. 3 4 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM pared himself to preach in the Indian tongue, delivered a sermon in the wigwam of a neighboring chieftain. For over forty years he eagerly de¬ voted a portion of his time to the evangelization and training of the Indians of his vicinity. He lived a life of trial, self-denial and the brave meeting of opposition from friends and foes alike which gave him a conspicuous place in the missionary history of the first century of occupation. 4 Eliot not only rendered the Scriptures into the dialect of his Indians, but or¬ ganized model communities, set up schools, trained teachers and ministers from among the Indians. He evangelized from Cape Cod to Worcester County and in 1675 could enumerate sixteen “praying towns ” containing some 1,100 Indians. There were others no less devoted. In 1650 the Connecticut Colony made a modest appropriation for the religious instruction of the Indians, and the Reverend Abraham Pierson of Connecticut (father of Rector Pier¬ son of Yale) studied the Indian tongue in order to be able to preach to the tribesmen. Thomas Mayhew of Martha’s Vineyard in 1644 began a work for the aborigines which was carried on for five generations from father to son until 1803, a devotedness unrivalled by even the Jesuit fathers. Thomas Tupper founded a church on Herring River and Richard Bourne a mission at Mashpee, which were continued by their families. More¬ over the very foremost colonists, such as President Dunster of Harvard College and Superintendent Daniel Gookin, who was in official yet friendly charge of the Indians of Massachusetts from 1656 to 1687, and many earnest pastors, such as Thomas Fitch of Norwich or Seaborn and John Cotton, sons of the Rev. John Cotton, the first teaching pastor of the First Church of Boston, were sincerely zealous in the work of encouraging and supporting these leaders. 5 Quaintly titled reports, such as “ New England’s First Fruits ” (1643), “ The Day Breaking if not the Sun Rising of the Gospell with the Indians ” (1647), or “ Strength out of Weakness ” (1652), brought the fruitage of these efforts to the mother country, kindling a sympathetic zeal in the hearts of many. In July, 1649, through the personal influence of Crom¬ well, who had been stirred by the eloquence of Edward Winslow,‘Parlia¬ ment chartered a Corporation for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, authorized to raise money to be expended “ in such manner as shall best and principally conduce to the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ among the natives and for maintaining of schools for the better education of the children of the natives.” Thus was born out of New England the pioneer among all Protestant missionary societies. 6 Through its timely aid many a village pastor was enabled to devote a portion of his time and strength to Indian evangelization, and Eliot’s Indian Bible, printed at Cambridge between 1661 and 1664, was made possible. 7 At the Restoration in 1661, when tempted to declare the corporation illegal and to confiscate its £11,000 of invested funds, Charles II, swayed by Robert Boyle through Lord Clarendon, rechartered the Society as the “ Corporation for the Propagation of the Gospel amongst the Heathen Nations of New England and the Parts Adjacent in North America.” Boyle, for many years its president, maintained a discriminating cor¬ respondence with Eliot and others which exhibits his sanity and zeal. The endowments of this Society, 8 administered by the Church Missionary Society, still maintain a work for North American Indians. 9 4 Moore, Memoir of Eliot. 5 Ellis, The Red Man and the While Man; Mathews, The Expansion of New England. 6 Humphreys, Historical Account of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Quoted in Records of the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others of North America , p. 6. 7 The New Testament appeared in 1661; the Old Testament in 1664. A second edition was issued by 1685. 8 Often referred to as “ The New England Company.” 8 History Church Missionary Society, i, 21. MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 5 For a generation a community evangelization of the Indians was carried on with considerable success. The innate savagery of the Indians, their roving habits and disinclination to habitual activity, most of all their slavery to the intoxicants which seemed normal beverages to their white neighbors, were great hindrances to the development of Christian institu¬ tions among them. Yet in 1675 there is good evidence of the existence of not less than 4,000 “ praying Indians,” who had met.with sincerity every reasonable religious test and were persistently faithful to their principles. Even as late as 1687, President Increase Mather of Harvard declared in a letter to Professor Leusden of Utrecht that there were six churches of bap¬ tized Indians, eighteen assemblies of professing catachumens and twenty- four Indian preachers. From King Philip’s War in 1675 to the peace of Utrecht in 1714, came a period of almost continuous, deadly struggles with bitter experiences of treachery, violence and spoliation, which developed in colonists and Indians alike an unreasoning distrust or a relentless hatred. It naturally made havoc of much of this work of evangelization. Moreover, the solicitude of the colonists regarding their independence and the hardships which they had to bear could not fail to dull their ardor for religious tasks. The technical rigor with which the tests of fitness for church membership were applied had its effect in formalizing and deadening the life of the churches. Although a colony under Rev. Joseph Lord had settled in 1696 at Dorches¬ ter 10 in Carolina, in response to the appeal of fellow Puritans there for help in “ establishing the ordinances of the gospel,” and although Cotton Mather in 1710 had pleaded with his people to “ emulate the Jesuits, Danes and Dutch in propagating the old and glorious religion of Christ,” yet the aggressiveness of the churches declined until there had developed a “ widespread shadow of depression and discouragement.” In all New England in 1700 there were about 120 organized churches; at least 110 were Congregational. 11 In 1701 William III, at the instance of English prelates, had chartered the well-known Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which began a work in 1702 among the negroes and Indians of North America. This Society, however, had little in com¬ mon with the free churches. II The Great Awakening of 1735-1742 The quarter century following the Peace of Utrecht was a time of rapid extension and quickening life for the colonists. The real New England, which set its stamp upon our nation, began to come into being. While Harvard and Yale had shared in the prevailing formalism of the years preceding, they had not failed to develop men of leadership for the hour. For more than fifty years in the frontier parish of Northampton the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, a Harvard graduate, distinguished for his devoutness and ability, had maintained a fruitful ministry. In his pulpit his famous grandson, Jonathan Edwards, a graduate of Yale, one of the most impres¬ sive figures in the religious history of America, preached righteousness with such originality, conviction and power that the winter of 1734-5 initiated in his community a religious revival so real and sweeping that Edwards’ “ Narrative ” regarding it stirred all New England and the colonies and eventually the mother country, giving form to ideas which 10 This colony prospered greatly. It founded a Congregational church, which, on its removal along with the bulk of the Puritan community about half a century later to Sun- bury, Ga., became known as the “ Midway ” Congregational church. This church and the old “ Circular ” Congregational church of Charleston, organized in 1680, reared a strong group of southern Christian leaders.. The Midway church ceased to exist in 1865; the Circular church is still active. 11 Platner, Religious History of New England, p. 55. 6 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM had been stirring in the fertile mind of John Wesley. 12 This revival died down after a year, but was reawakened by the fervidly eloquent and stir¬ ring preaching of Whitefield among the colonies in 1740-41. This great evangelist became, rightly or otherwise, a critic of the New England churches and pastors, and was eventually discredited by them; yet the whole movement had two significant results: it mellowed New England theological thinking and it quickened into new life the moral and spiritual idealism of New England, exalting the moral tone of each community, de¬ veloping a hopeful and inspiring faith in Divine providence, kindling finer human interests, more tolerance and liberty, and arousing afresh that sense of responsibility to God and to humankind which stirs missionary zeal * and sustains it. Among the other natural motives which led to the char¬ tering in 1746 of the College of New Jersey as the third college to minister to the needs of the Northeastern colonies may be reckoned the desire for an atmosphere of greater intellectual and spiritual freedom than the Har¬ vard or the Yale of that day permitted. Early steps toward its organiza¬ tion were taken in the presbytery of Newark, a settlement from Connecticut and virtually Congregational. The sponsors of the ten-year-old college welcomed Edwards to the presidency and the teaching of divinity in 1757. Such an awakening of spiritual life could not fail to arouse the conscience of New England in regard to the few Indians now remaining, long since shorn.of dangerous power, and to the tribes at a distance. In 1743 work was being carried on with some success in Rhode Island under the auspices of the “ New England Company.” Many conversions were reported at Westerly. On Long Island a Mr. Horton, at Stockbridge, Mass., John Sergeant, and at Sharon, Conn, and elsewhere the Moravian missionaries were actively promoting evangelization. From 1743 to 1747, David Brainerd, forced to give up his student career at Yale, gave himself with determined zeal as a missionary of the Honorable Society in Scotland for Promoting Christian Knowledge (founded in 1709) to “ gospellizing the heathen Indians ” of western Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Despite two flattering calls from attractive parishes he persisted in this self-denying task until seized by consumption. He died a member of Edwards’ family in 1747, less than thirty years of age. The story of his devoted life, based upon his journal and interpreted by Edwards, wielded a potent influence over the world of that day. 13 William Carey, Samuel Marsden and Henry Martyn with a host of others in England and the colonies were the direct fruitage of that simple record of self-denying, Christlike heroism. When Jonathan Edwards in 1751 was forced to leave his Northampton parish, he was then ready to give a part of his strength in service for the Stock- bridge Indians as a missionary representing the Massachusetts Commis¬ sioners for Indian Affairs and the Society in London. Meanwhile at Lebanon (now Columbia), Conn., a worthy enterprise had been developing since 1744, under the leadership of Eleazer Wheelock, the local pastor. He had interested himself for ten years in the training for missionary service of a few promising lads, both Indians and white boys, among them Samson Occum, who had been converted in the Awakening in 1745, and Samuel Kirkland, who became a famous missionary to the Oneidas. In 1754, a local associate, Joshua Moor, willed a house and two acres in Lebanon for the uses of the school, which was in consequence called the Moor’s Indian Charity School. The countryside subscribed £500 for the school. Begin¬ ning in 1754 with two pupils, in 1762 there were twenty. Occum became a successful evangelist to the Indians. In 1766 Occum and Nathaniel Whit¬ taker went to England to secure funds for the enlargement of the school. Dr. Wheelock’s friendship with Whitefield led the latter to exert himself on behalf of the two solicitors. They collected some £9000, duly acknowl- 12 Allen, Jonathan Edwards, p. 134. 13 Ibid., p. 247. Allen thinks that Edwards contributed distinctive elements. MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 7 edged in 1768 by the General Assembly of Connecticut “in support of Dr. Wheelock’s Indian Academy for the Promotion of Christianity and Civility among the Savage Indians on this Continent.” Wishing a new location and an incorporation, Dr. Wheelock secured in 1769 the charter of Dart¬ mouth College, named for the Earl of Dartmouth, the active patron of the enterprise in England. The college was established at Hanover, N. H., in association with the school which was moved thither, and with the same purpose of the evangelization of the Indians by the training of missionaries to them and by the education of Indian boys. In 1771 out of fifty stu¬ dents nine were Indians. Thus Dartmouth, like Princeton, was indirectly at least a fruitage of the revival movements. 14 Meanwhile in 1762 a group of gentlemen in Massachusetts had organized a Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge among the Indians of North America, raised a substantial fund, obtained a colonial charter and planned an enterprising work. This organization would have been the first missionary society in New England, had not the Archbishop of Canterbury persuaded His Majesty to negative the act of incorporation, fearing lest the new society should interfere with the established Society in London and become a non-episcopal channel of influence. 15 This interest taken in New England in the Indians was paralleled by a concern for African slaves, who had for upwards of a century been found among the colonists. Dr. Samuel Hopkins of Newport was not only a great theolo¬ gian but a brave opponent of slavery, converting his own church about 1772, and the whole state of Rhode Island by 1784, to a policy of manu¬ mission. He planned with Dr. Ezra Stiles (later president of Yale) to educate two promising Africans and to send them back to their native land as missionaries. The Revolutionary War drove Dr. Hopkins and his church from their homes and the negroes from their studies. Nor was this missionary interest confined to those regarded as heathen. From 1714, when Massachusetts in a friendly rectification of boundaries gave Connecticut 60,000 acres of her “ western lands,” a tract lying north of the Berkshires, until Vermont attained statehood in 1777, that region was peopled by settlers who came principally from Connecticut. Just as Cotton Mather, about 1720, led the Boston churches to send out preachers to care for the “ shepherdless ” people of the “ wilderness ” [Worcester Co.], so the General Association of Connecticut was not unmindful of its responsibilities. In June, 1774, it voted to raise funds to send missionaries to “ Ye settlements now forming in the wilderness to the westward and northwestward [New York and Vermont], who are mostly destitute of the preached gospel, many of which are our brethren, emigrants from this colony.” 16 Yet the political turmoil of the era forced a postponement of these plans, while the wave of unbelief which accompanied the growing intellectual influence of France contributed to a slackening of energy in all religious undertakings. Ill The Dawn of a Wider Home Missionary Interest in New England (1783-1795) Up to the withdrawal of French influence in North America in 1763, the continent west of the Hudson River valley and of the Alleghenies was with few exceptions inhabited by none but Indian tribes. In 1780 the “ utmost west ” of the colonies went only a little way beyond those boundaries. The movement of population was rather northward into Vermont and Maine or southward. 14 Wheelock, Eleazer, A Narrative of the Origin, Design, Rise, Progress and Present State of the Moor's Indian Charity School in Lebanon, Ct., 1762. 14 Records of the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others of North America, 1787-1887. w Records of the General Association, 1738-1799. 8 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM The opening by act of Congress in 1787 of the Northwest Territory, — a vast area including Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, — gave a continental turn to New England thinking. It was a Massachusetts clergyman, the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, a forceful hero of the Revolution, who drafted that part of the Ordinance of 1787 which guaranteed to the new territory complete religious liberty, the public support of a school system and the prohibition of slavery. Former soldiers of the Revolu¬ tion, at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern in Boston on March 1, 1786, had organized the Ohio Company of Associates. Led by General Rufus Put¬ nam forty-eight members of this Company made the first settlement in the new territory at Marietta on the Ohio River, April 7, 1788. In Novem¬ ber of that year Dr. Cutler wrote Putnam announcing contributions amounting to $200 “ for the support of preachers and schoolmasters for the present.” This may have been the first home missionary money ex¬ pended in Ohio. Religious services were held at Marietta from July 20, 1788. Daniel Story, the first pastor, paid in part by the Company, began work in March, 1789. At about this same time a few gentlemen in Massachusetts had received a commission from the Scottish Society for Promoting Christian Knowl¬ edge to act on its behalf in the wise use of funds raised to help instruct and evangelize the aborigines of North America. Stung by a sense of their own negligence these men procured from the legislature of Massachusetts in November, 1787, a charter for “ The Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others in North America.” This society assisted in 1790 in the support of Rev. Zechariah Mayhew of Martha’s Vineyard and of Rev. John Sergeant of New Stockbridge, N. Y. 17 Up to 1843, its funds were mainly expended in New England and New York to support instruction to the Indians, later in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Canada; later still in recent years they have been used for work among Indians and colored people. 18 The early nineties witnessed a rising interest in all directions. The Connecticut General Association in 1793, in revival of the policy initiated nearly twenty years earlier, appointed eight of the settled pastors, among them such leaders as Rev. Ammi R. Robbins of Norfolk, Rev. Samuel J. Mills of Torringford and Rev. Cotton Mather Smith of Sharon, to go out for a period of four months each to preach in the Vermont and New York settlements. They were allowed $4.50 a week as salary and $4.00 for a pulpit supply. 19 In that same year the indefatigable missionary to the Oneida Indians, Rev. Samuel Kirkland, whose influence had kept them neutral in the Revolutionary struggle, laid the foundations of the Academy which became in 1812 Hamilton College; while at Williamstown, Mass., was organized the sixth New England institution of higher learning, Williams College. 20 The ministry of the Connecticut clergy to the growing settlements was steadily maintained. By 1798 a total of twenty-one pas¬ tors, released for the purpose by their parishes, had given a term of active service. Their experience quickened the convictions which led to the founding of the vigorous Missionary Society of Connecticut in 1798. Pioneering distresses had delayed the development of the Ohio project, but in 1790 a body of settlers from Connecticut, through the Connecticut Land Company, entered the northeastern portion .of Ohio, known as the Western Reserve, establishing their homes near Cleveland. The first home missionary to New Connecticut, was David Bacon (1800). In 1801 Joseph Badger brought along the college idea and established the in- 17 The son of the Sergeant of Stockbridge, Mass., who followed the Stockbridge Indians to their New York home. 18 Records of the Society to 1887. 19 Records of the General Association. 20 The University of Vermont was chartered but not active. MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 9 stitution which in 1826 became Western Reserve College. 21 Massachusetts also contributed other settlers to Marietta, where in 1796 the First Con¬ gregational Church was properly organized, and in 1797 Muskingum Academy, which developed in 1835 into Marietta College. These groups of hardy pioneers represented the westernmost outpost of Congregation¬ alism at the beginning of the nineteenth century. IV The Second Awakening and Its Missionary Aftermath (1795-1807) “ The new century came in,” says Clark, “ with a momentum of spiri¬ tual power. Church membership increased thrice as fast as the popula¬ tion.” New England Congregationalism had almost a new birth in the revival spirit which, notwithstanding the acute Unitarian controversies^ began to be felt by 1791, when the long period of political distraction had come to an inspiring close. All Anglo-Saxon Christendom was manifesting a new interest in the extension of Christ’s kingdom. 22 In 1792 the Baptist Missionary Society was organized in England to support William Carey, who started in that year on his forty-two years of devoted service in India. In 1795 the London Missionary Society began its world-ranging work, the Edinburgh Missionary Society in 1796 and in 1799 the Church Missionary Society. In New England religious interest reached a climax in 1799 but continued as late as 1805. It was not a time of undue excitement, but of the steady promotion of spiritual strength. Between 1798 and 1800 one hundred and fifty revivals were reported in western Massachusetts and Connecticut. No one great preacher dominated the period. 23 Yet south¬ ern New England was deeply stirred by the lofty personality and impas¬ sioned preaching of Timothy Dwight, who, in 1795, in the prime of his years, coming to Yale as its president, had routed the French skepticism which had become an intellectual fad among the students. Through him and many others there was aroused an apostolic spirit of self-denial, generosity and genuine missionary zeal which inaugurated a “great missionary dec¬ ade.” In 1796 the New York Missionary Society was organized, in 1797 the Berkshire and Columbia Missionary Society, in 1798 the Missionary Society of Connecticut, “ to Christianize the heathen in North America and to support and promote Christian knowledge in the new settlements in the United States,” and, in the following year, the Massachusetts Mission¬ ary Society, “ to carry the Gospel to the heathen in America and across the seas.” Between 1801 and 1807 domestic missionary societies were organized in each New England state. At about the same time the women of New England began to organize for missionary giving. Fourteen Bap¬ tist and Congregational women organized in 1800 the Boston Female Society for Missionary Purposes. In 1802 Mrs. Simpkins, the wife of the treasurer of the Massachusetts Society, organized the Female Cent In¬ stitution, to provide means for the distribution of religious literature. In 1804 Mrs. Elizabeth McFarland of Concord, N. H., started the New Hamp¬ shire Female Cent Institution, to which local Female Cent Societies be¬ came auxiliary. This latter organization has maintained a continuous existence until today, and may rightly be termed the oldest existing so¬ ciety of women for any purpose in North America. During its first year it collected $5; during its history, $276,635. In 1800 the New York Missionary Magazine and the Connecticut Evangelical Magazine were founded, in 1803 the Massachusetts Missionary Magazine, in 1805 the Panoplist, while missionaries from England on their way to their fields in the West Indies or North America and missionary publications from 21 Dunning, Congregationalists in America , p. 429 f. 22 History of Connecticut. 23 Walker, History of the Congregational Chtirches in the United States, pp. 319, 320. 10 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM over the sea were not infrequent means of missionary uplift in New Eng¬ land homes. The Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge was founded in 1803, 24 the Connecticut Religious Tract Society in 1807. Thus by 1807 all New England was fairly ready for missionary service in the pioneer settlements and on behalf of the Indian tribes. In that same year the sum of $6,000 was contributed and sent to England by American churches of all denominations for Carey’s work in India. 25 The spirit of the age in New England was fairly catholic. The churches were not interested in spreading Congregationalism, but Christianity. Under the “ Plan of Union,” adopted in 1801 by the General Association of Con¬ necticut and the Presbyterian General Assembly, providing for combined effort in founding new churches in central New York and northern Ohio, the religious foundations of the central West were largely laid, to the im¬ mense and permanent advantage of Presbyterianism. For the next thirty years the funds raised by the many societies in New England were mainly utilized outside of New England in new settlements and in foreign lands with the unselfish purpose of planting Christian institutions wherever needed. V The Student Uprising at Williams College and Andover Theolog¬ ical Seminary (1806-1810) The greatest asset of this age of revival was the body of broad-minded, fine-spirited leadership it brought to the front, alike among the clergy, the older laity and the youth. In 1805 such men as President Timothy Dwight, Dr. Nathaniel Emmons and Governor John Treadwell of Connecticut, Rev. Joseph Lyman and Dr. Samuel Spring of Massachusetts were promi¬ nent among the older ministers and laymen, while Lyman Beecher, Leon¬ ard Woods, Edward D. Griffin and Samuel Worcester were in their early thirties. By that year twelve institutions of higher learning had been founded within New England, eastern New York and New Jersey, Middle- bury being the most recent one in 1800. In the ten active colleges there were approximately 1,230 students. A fair proportion of them were young men whose hearts had been deeply stirred during their boyhood days by the religious spirit of the times and who were not unmindful of God’s claims upon them. Two young men of this sort were Samuel J. Mills, Jr., and Harvey Loomis, who, fresh from a great revival in western Connecti¬ cut, went together to Williams College in 1806. Mills, encouraged by his father, who had himself served the pioneer settlements, and supported by the prayers of his godly mother, cherished a definite purpose to prepare for missionary service. He was not an exceptional student, not even physi¬ cally strong, but his magnetic enthusiasm gave him a marked power of leadership. 26 A college revival in the preceding winter had resulted in a group of men who were in the habit of holding regular meetings together for prayer. It was natural for Mills and Loomis to join this group. One day in August, 1806, five young men, Green, Loomis, Mills, Richards and Robbins, met for prayer, and with unusual seriousness discussed their obligation to take the gospel to the heathen. The apparent folly of the project, as viewed by one or two, was overborne by Mills’ convincing appeal, “ We can do it if we will.” An approaching storm forced them to take refuge under a haystack, where was made the famous compact to look forward to lives of missionary service wherever God should send them. That very year Dr. Samuel Spring of Newburyport was laying his plans 24 It disbanded in 1870, donating its trust funds to the care of the C. S. S. and P. S.. 25 Richards, Samuel J. Mills, p. 70. ™ Ibid., passim. MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM II for an institution at Andover for the proper training of a learned and in¬ fluential clergy. The missionary impulse was an important factor in his thinking and pleading. One of the Andover Associates, a Mr. John Norris of Salem, who with his wife gave ten thousand dollars to the enterprise, declared, “ We must raise ministers, if we would have men to go as mis¬ sionaries." On this basis of loyal service the two “ schools ” of orthodox Congregationalism reunited in the step which created immediately a notable center of missionary zeal. The purpose of the Haystack group did not flag. In 1808 in old East College was organized the Society of Brethren “ to effect in the persons of its members a mission or missions to the heathen.” No one could become a member unpledged. The first five signers to the constitution were Samuel J. Mills, Ezra Fisk, James Richards, John Seward and Luther Rice. Five others were admitted at Williams, of whom two died while at college. The Brethren was a secret society devoted to self-improvement, mutual support and the missionary enlistment of others. It was made secret be¬ cause of the general attitude of students and people toward missions. Early in 1810, after their graduation, Mills, Rice and Richards with Gordon Hall went to Andover Theological Seminary, organized two years before, to receive the training needed for missionary efficiency. There they met and quickly challenged by their own flaming zeal three other outstanding men, Adoniram Judson, Jr., from Brown University, Samuel Newell from Harvard and Samuel Nott, Jr., from Union College, who joined the “Breth¬ ren.” For sixty years this Society maintained its organization at Andover, almost the last three members to be admitted in 1870-72 being Joseph Neesima of Japan, Robert A. Hume of India and John P. Sanderson of North America. It furnished during these years a splendid succession of outstanding missionary leaders, representing the capacity, the energy and the heroic faith of Congregationalism at its best. For the first ten years all who were sent out by the American Board, except one, were educated at Andover. VI The Organization of the American Board in Response to the Appeal of the “ Brethren ” (1810) Without delay the notable group at Andover appealed to the churches to open a way for their despatch to a foreign mission field. On June 28, 1810, Judson, Mills, Newell and Nott made a strong plea to the Massa¬ chusetts General Association at Bradford. Their proposal was indeed a challenge. The Association was only seven years old; its membership was cautious and conservative. Two young men, probably Richards and Rice, who were ready to join with the four, did not present themselves lest the Association be alarmed by so large a number of candidates. Only too many in the churches were inclined to characterize devotedness like theirs as “ overheated zeal.” Fortunately, however, the Association and the real leadership of the churches of Massachusetts and Connecticut included a remarkable group of men. When Moses Stuart left New Haven in 1810 for his new professorship at Andover, his young deacon, Jeremiah Evarts, left on the same coach for Boston to take charge of the Panoplist and to be, like Doctors Samuel Worcester, Samuel Spring, Edward D. Griffin and Jedediah Morse, profoundly interested in every educational, theological, reformatory or missionary enterprise of the time, giving it momentum and shaping its trend. 27 After a long debate, swayed, we are told, by the energetic faith of Dr. Worcester, it was voted with due solemnity to take steps to form an or¬ ganization under the joint auspices of the churches of Massachusetts and 7 Paper by Secretary Alden, Report of the American Board, 1882, p. xxxiii. 12 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM Connecticut. Of its nine members five represented the Massachusetts Association; four were from Connecticut. These were to elect their successors. On September 5, 1810, at Farmington, Ct., the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions came into being. Six men were present, Governor John Treadwell of Farmington, who was chosen president, Dr. Samuel Worcester of Salem, who became the secretary, Dr. Samuel Spring of Newburyport, Dr. Joseph Lyman of Hatfield, and Dr. Calvin Chapin of Wethersfield, with Rev. Noah Porter of Farmington, 28 invited as their host to take a place in the company. Deacon Noah Porter, his aged father, was so interested in the report of the proceedings that he gave the Board $500 soon after this meeting, one-fifth of his property. The newly constituted Board elected a Prudential Committee of three, which it instructed to make a careful survey of unevangelized peoples and to report at the next meeting. At Worcester in September, 1811, the Committee suggested two desirable fields, the Burman empire and the North American Indian territory. The Board needed the period which its candidates required for training that it might raise the funds essential for their outfit and steady support. The response to its appeal was at first disappointing. It had sent Judson over to England in Jan., 1811, to propose to the London Missionary Society a joint undertaking. When that Society declined this proposal the cor¬ poration hesitated to take the great risks involved in the enterprise, until at last Judson declared that he and his associates would brook no further delay. If they could not go out under the American Board, they declared that they would accept the appointments already tendered to them by the London Missionary Society. By a fresh appeal to the churches sufficient funds were secured for the initiation of the enterprise; and on February 6, 1812, — the very year of Henry Martyn’s death at Tokat in Asia, — five young men, Hall, Judson, Newell, Nott and Rice, were ordained at the Tabernacle Church, Salem, Mass., by five clergymen, Worcester, Spring, Griffin, Morse and Professor Woods, to the work they longed to undertake. With them went three noble young women, Ann Haseltine Judson, Harriet Newell and Roxana Peck Nott, pioneers of a long procession of gifted American women who have given themselves cheerfully to the hardships and problems of missionary service. As speedily as possible the devoted band of eight set out in two groups for Calcutta and the long and splendid history of the American Board began. The organizers of the Board were strongly evangelical in temper yet catholic in spirit. They were Congregationalists, but lost no time in open¬ ing the way for the friendly cooperation of the Presbyterian churches, after discovering that the General Assembly was not ready to organize a Pres¬ byterian Board of Foreign Missions. Presbyterians were represented on the corporation by 1812. One member was added from the Associate Re¬ formed Church in 1814, one more from the Reformed (Dutch) Church in 1816, and one, still later, from the Reformed German Church. 29 VII Fifteen Fruitful Years of Exploration and Organization (1812— 1826) The next fifteen years were required for the process of bringing the churches up to the level of the new missionary impulse. The Board was a spiritual venture. Its legal charter was secured only after two exciting sessions of the Massachusetts legislature. Its continuance and growth, no less than the group of associated enterprises which followed it, owed much to the devotion, foresight and zeal of the very one who had led in its 28 The father of President Noah Porter of Yale. 29 Bliss, Encyclopedia of Missions, 2d edit., p. 27. MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 13 founding, Samuel J. Mills. By genius a promoter rather than a builder, Mills had been deliberately set apart by the Brethren for the work of arousing college and theological students and the churches. 30 Yet not even did this great task set limits to his energy. Soon after the missionaries had set sail for India, Mills, under the commission of the Missionary Societies of Connecticut and Massachusetts and of the Society for Prop¬ agating the Gospel among the Indians, began a remarkable tour of explora¬ tion throughout the inhabited West. Only nine years before, in April, 1803, the Louisiana Purchase had been consummated. Settlers lined the lakes and rivers. Mills spent a whole year, at a net cost of $338, in traversing the newly settled portions of New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louis¬ iana, Mississippi and Georgia, investigating religious conditions, founding Bible societies and preaching the gospel. His report on the Indians of the southern states was an important factor in encouraging the Board about six years later to begin its work for the Indians of Tennessee and Mississippi. After a year spent largely in appeals to theological students and in the organization of local missionary and Bible societies in New England, Mills made a second tour of nine months over much the same territory. His challenging reports deeply stirred the churches. The year 1816 was noteworthy. A new theological seminary was or¬ ganized at Bangor, Maine. In May the Bible societies of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York, four of the one hundred and thirty-two Bible societies instituted during the years following the organ¬ ization of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804, were persuaded by the persistency and genius of Mills to extend and coordinate their activities through the American Bible Society of New York. In October the Society for the Moral and Religious Instruction of the Poor was organ¬ ized in Boston to sustain Sunday-school work. 31 In December, largely because of the appeals of Mills and other young men for trained Christian leaders for home and foreign service, there was organized in Boston the American Society for the Education of Pious Youth for the Gospel Min¬ istry, which later became the American Education Society. In May, 1814, the persuasive pleading of Professor Porter of Andover had led to the form¬ ing of the New England Tract Society, which in 1825 developed with other local societies into the American Tract Society. These four societies represented distinctly Congregational initiative, but were conceived on so high-minded and unselfish a plan that they served from the beginning all churches which did not prefer so to serve themselves. Under the Plan of Union the Connecticut Missionary Society was cheerfully contributing its representatives and its resources to promote a Christian civilization in the Mississippi valley without questioning the presumption that the churches formed should be Presbyterian in organization. So real was the spirit of fraternity that Mills had much to do with the organization in July, 1817, of the United Foreign Missionary Society, which enlisted the Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed and Associate Reformed churches, under the official control of the General Assembly and the General Synods, to push specif¬ ically the evangelization of Mexico, of South America and of the Indians of North America. He was also active in the establishment in 1816 of the African School of New Jersey, controlled by the Synod of New York and New Jersey. The last enterprise of this zealous, self-forgetful, tolerant apostle was the exploration of the west coast of Africa, as an agent of the American Colonization Society organized in 1817. On the return voyage, June 15, 1818, his great soul passed away. More than any one man he had pioneered the way for a missionary century. Meanwhile the American Board had developed active missions at Bom¬ bay in India, at Jaffna in Ceylon and among the Cherokees of Tennessee 30 Richards. Samuel J. Mills, p. 79. 31 This Society eventually became the Boston City Missionary Society, which is still active. Its Sunday-school work was taken over by the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society. 14 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM and the Choctaws of Mississippi. Judson and Rice on reaching Calcutta in June, 1811, announced their change of views regarding baptism, were immersed and withdrew from the control of the Board. This apparent disaster led in 1814 to the organization of the Baptist General Convention, 32 a great sister Society. The three remaining missionaries were forced to leave Calcutta. On February 11, 1813, Mall and Nott reached Bombay; Newell, after the death of his wife in the Isle of France, reached Ceylon. The next January he joined his brethren at Bombay, having first satisfied himself that Ceylon was a practicable field. They were allowed to remain at Bombay under sufferance. They spent the time in such tactful cor¬ respondence with the authorities in Bombay and in England, and em¬ ployed themselves so wisely and discreetly, that they won from parlia¬ ment the permission to labor among the peoples of India as translators, teachers and evangelists. In 1815 five more men, Bardwell, Meigs, Poor, Richards and Warren, were appointed by the Board to India. Bardwell, who was a printer, went to Bombay; the others made their way to Jaffna, in northern Ceylon, where in October, 1816, they began the second mission of the Board. In the next two years the two Indian missions were founded and the Foreign School at Cornwall, Conn., for the training of promising youths from mission areas for home evangelization, was opened with twelve students, five of them from the Sandwich Islands and two from India. The latter enterprise was generously conceived but proved futile. The grad¬ uates almost without exception proved unfitted for useful evangelization among their own people. In 1827 the school was abandoned. During the next three years, 1818-1820, the Missionary Herald , successor of a group of missionary magazines, was made the official organ of the Board; and three new missions were undertaken. Pliny Fiske and Levi Parsons went to Palestine in 1819 to spy out the land, while Hiram Bing¬ ham and Asa Thurston with their wives and a group of unordained associates started around Cape Horn for the Sandwich Islands. At this early date the Board had begun to conceive of its task as the development of a Christian civilization along with the conversion of individuals. It had commissioned farmers, mechanics and printers as well as ordained missionaries. In 1819 Dr. John Scudder, the first physician sent out by the American Board, and in 1820 Myron Winslow and Levi Spaulding re¬ ported at Ceylon and a new mission to the southwestern Cherokees was begun. The American Board itself in 1826 absorbed the United Foreign Missionary Society and the mission of the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, thus adding eight missions, mainly to the Indians, and fifty-five missionaries to its roster. This gave the Board a total of sixteen missions with forty-six stations and two hundred and twenty-three American mis¬ sionary laborers of all types. West Africa, South Africa, Greece and South China were by that time under consideration. Of the missionaries of 1812 none were left in 1826 in the service of the Board, 33 but many heroic and noble men were at their work. The development of native workers was still in the future. Within these years were established the American Sunday School Union (1824), the National Temperance Society (1826), and the American Tract Society (1825), organizations in which Congregationalists were strongly represented. Through such organizations not only were Christian forces given the leadership they craved, but the literature and method of pioneer¬ ing began to be worked out. Amherst College in 1821 34 and the Yale 82 The General Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the U. S. A. for Foreign Mis¬ sions. In 1846 it was incorporated as The American Baptist Missionary Union. It is now known as The American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. 33 Because of ignorance of proper sanitary precautions and for other similar reasons the early missionary mortality was very great. There were more deaths than converts in the first ten years. 34 In 1880, eighty per cent of the missionaries of the American Board had come from New England, half of them from Amherst and Williams. MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 15 Divinity School in 1822 added to the institutions which furnished a steady stream of leaders for Christian service. The year 1826 was noteworthy for another important reason. In January, 1825, a few Andover men, Rev. Nathaniel Bouton, a recent gradu¬ ate, with Aaron Foster and Hiram Chamberlain of the Senior class, be¬ came impressed, during an historic trip from Andover to Newburyport and back, by the urgent need for domestic missions in the new West and South and by the specific demand for ministers in the new communities so rapidly developing. A committee of eight was appointed by the “ Society of Inquiry,” to bring the matter to the attention of the churches. It had the invaluable counsel and encouragement of Professor Ebenezer Porter, who gave dignity and steadiness to the project. Six seniors pledged themselves to home mission service, the two initiators, with Lucius Alden, Luther Bingham, John M. Ellis and Augustus Pomeroy. They were commissioned by three different societies and ordained in Boston, September 29, 1825. The next day Professor Porter called a small group of leaders together to consider the desirability of forming a national society. This gathering requested Professors Porter and Edwards and Dr. Nathaniel Taylor to make a thoughtful study of the proposition. The outcome was that on May 10, 1826, one hundred and twenty-six ministers and laymen of four denominations and from thirteen states and territories gathered at the Brick Church, New York, endorsed the favorable report of this committee and approved a constitution. The new organization, known as the Ameri¬ can Home Missionary Society, absorbed the work of the United Domestic Missionary Society of New York, which had been formed in 1822 by dele¬ gates from ten small local societies of New York State. It represented the interests of the New England societies, of the Board of Domestic Missions of the General Assembly and of those of the Reformed Synods. Thus was laid a basis for united, aggressive national service. In its first year this Society commissioned one hundred and sixty-nine missionaries at an aver¬ age cost for a year of labor of $127. VIII Rapid Foreign Missionary Expansion (1827-1852) The next decade witnessed a rather steady advance of foreign missionary activity, supported by a corporate membership unmatched for “ learning, wealth, character and leadership.” 35 Dr. Rufus Anderson nobly main¬ tained as Secretary the traditions of Dr. Samuel Worcester and of Jeremiah Evarts. In 1836 he outlined on the basis of a comprehensive survey of the world as then known a scheme for the evangelization of the world, which called for a missionary force of 3,780. Many features of that daring plan have since been followed. In this decade the Board undertook sixteen new enterprises in the Near East, China, India, Siam, Africa and North America. When William Goodell entered Constantinople in 1831 that city became the starting point of extensive explorations eastward which convinced Eli Smith and Harrison Dwight of the attractiveness and opportunity of the Armenian and Nes- torian fields. Smyrna, Trebizond, Brousa and Urumia were occupied, while the older mission to Syria was reenforced by Eli Smith, William M. Thomson and Cornelius V. A. Van Dyck.. Meanwhile a work had been started in South China at the appeal of Robert Morrison. Elijah C. Bridgman and David Abeel reached Canton in 1830. Within four years S. Wells Williams had joined as director of press work and Peter Parker had inaugurated a distinctive medical mis¬ sionary service. His hospital and training school were the forerunners 35 Strong, The Story of the American Board, p. 154. 16 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM of the vast ministry of relief of today. Even with this aid the progress of the mission was infinitely slow. In striking contrast was the work in the Sandwich Islands and in India. In 1832 the mid-Pacific islanders, led by their queen, seemed to be rapidly becoming a Christian people. In Jaffna and Bombay there were revivals and a great extension of all kinds of mission work, while at Ahmednagar in 1831, at Madura in 1834 and in Madras in 1836, new missions were be¬ gun. R. W. Hume, Samuel Fairbank, James Herrick and Joseph Noyes were some of the recruits, together with Cynthia Farrar (1827), who was the first single woman to receive appointment. In North America the work among the Indians had begun to show great promise, when the national policy of transferring them to distant reserva¬ tions threw it into confusion and made it unstable. The Board followed the tribes to their new homes and opened missions among the trans-Missis¬ sippi tribes. In 1836 the intrepid Dr. Marcus Whitman and Rev. H. H. Spalding, accompanied by their wives, forced their way over the Oregon trail between February and September and settled among the tribes of eastern Oregon, near what is now the city of Walla Walla. In September, 1842, Whitman undertook the daring ride back across the continent to urge the Prudential Committee to reconsider its avowed intention of abolishing the mission and to appeal to the Government at Washington to secure Oregon to the United States. Heartened by the permission of the Board to continue his work for the Indians and encouraged by the attitude of the Government he hastened back to Oregon in 1843, assisting the first group of hardy pioneers to get through. In four short years the mission force at Walla Walla was massacred, but the great Northwest had been given an enduring impulse. The year 1837 was one of widespread financial disaster, causing sharp retrenchment of mission work, particularly in the successful areas. In Ceylon, where fourteen schools were left out of one hundred and eighty- seven, the advance was checked for a generation. Among the American Indian missions disheartening cuts had to be made. This disaster affected the work of the Board for years. Not until 1852 did another bold advance begin. The years between were not, of course, years of absolute barren¬ ness. The Sandwich Islands had been too far away in 1837 to be affected by the depression. A great revival, which culminated in 1838-39, was under full headway. Titus Coan in July, 1838, baptized 1,705 per¬ sons on one Sunday. Despite all kinds of difficulties the next decade saw the Hawaiian nation formally recognized as civilized and predominantly Christian. The decade between 1840 and 1850 witnessed many changes. The stations at Singapore and in Borneo were given up and Siam was trans¬ ferred in 1849 to the American Missionary Association. Asia Minor, Syria, India, Ceylon and South Africa settled down into the missions of today. In China the ending of the Opium War in 1842 opened five treaty ports, three of which, Amoy, Foochow and Shanghai, were occupied by 1847. Everywhere it was the policy of the Board to emphasize education. Groups of efficient educational institutions developed, which attracted the choicest young men of each missionary area. By 1850 the Board was directing twenty-four active missions, distributed over ten great world areas, in each of which it had a legal standing and relative freedom. In each of these missions, along with evangelization, translation and publi¬ cation, education, medical relief, and vocational training in various tentative forms were developing. In 1833, with the division of the Presby¬ terian Church into Old School and New School, the New School congrega¬ tions continued their foreign missionary work through the American Board, the Old School Presbyterians working through the Western Foreign Missionary Society, which had been established by the Synod of Pitts¬ burgh. Out of this Society grew in 1837 the Presbyterian Board of Foreign MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 1 7 Missions. The Presbyterians under the leadership of Dr. Elisha P. Swift were in favor of organizing their missionary work as a part of the regular work of the Church rather than under an independent society. It is interesting to note that the gradual development of a denominational con¬ sciousness has led Congregationalists to the same position. IX The Union Home Missionary Movement (1826-1852) The organization of the American Home Missionary Society (1826) was the response of statesmanlike leaders to three appeals, that of an extend¬ ing frontier with its religious desolateness, that of a sense of the responsibil¬ ity of religiously strong New England to the whole nation, and that of the demand in the newly settled regions for settled pastors rather than for itinerant preachers. Mills, in 1812, had called attention to the ignorance and intense sectarianism of the uneducated preachers of these areas. Both those at home and those who pioneered were anxious to transfer to the frontier the characteristic love of civil and religious order and zeal for church and school that dominated the East. It was still taken for granted that Congregationalism was ill adapted to pioneering conditions and that New England should cheerfully support expanding Presbyterianism. The rapid development of western New York and of the Northwest Territory threw a heavy burden upon the Society. In 1827 three-fourths of its one hundred and sixty-nine missionaries labored in the state of New York, twenty-five in the Northwest Territory, thirteen in the South. In 1831, out of four hundred and sixty-three missionaries in twenty-two states and territories, one hundred and eighty-five ministered to parishes in New England and the East, one hundred and twelve were in central and western New York, one hundred and twenty-nine were in the Northwest and thirty-one in the South. At the tenth annual meeting in May, 1836, out of seven hundred and fifty-six missionaries and agents one hundred and fifty-four were reported in the Northwest and thirty-three in the South. Thus there was a steady pushing out into the pioneer country. The situation in the rapidly developing West made a strong appeal to earnest-minded students. In 1828, Theron Baldwin, a theological stu¬ dent at Yale, read before the Society of Inquiry a paper on “ Individual Effort in the Cause of Christ,” which led Mason Grosvenor, his classmate, to propose a grouping of service in some new territory. Seven men, these two with John F. Brooks, Elisha Jenney, William Kirby, John M. Sturte- vant and Asa Turner, formed an “ Illinois Association.” Their correspon¬ dence with Rev. John M. Ellis, who had been at work in the new territory several years, led them to unite their efforts, while still at Yale, with his for the founding of Illinois College. They raised $10,000 on its behalf. During 1829 five others joined them, Romulus Barnes, Flavel Bascom, William Carter, Albert Hale and Lucien Farnham. Nine were Yale men, Jenney from Dartmouth, Brooks from Hamilton and Farnham from Am¬ herst. In 1829 Illinois was true frontier. In 1825 Michigan had just one Protestant preacher, while Wisconsin was a wilderness until 1834. Under those pioneer conditions, meeting at the outset prejudice as well as hard¬ ship, these devoted men and their brave wives worked in friendly concert. Sturtevant opened Illinois College in January, 1830. Baldwin, Bascom and Turner with him made a quartet who rank among the historic charac¬ ters of the commonwealth of Illinois. These missionaries laid foundations which have made the central West a stronghold of the Congregational order. Their enterprising energy so quickened a zeal for home missions at Yale that the Divinity School became for decades a dependable source of i8 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM Christian leadership in the growing West. Their successful work also in¬ spired the organization of a second group. In 1843, when the new territory of Iowa was in process of settlement, an “ Iowa Band ” of eleven men, Harvey Adams, Edwin B. Turner, Daniel Love, Erastus Ripley, James J. Hill, Benjamin A. Spaulding, Alden B. Robbins, Horace Hutchinson, Ephraim Adams, Ebenezer Alden, Jr., and William Salter, was organized at Andover to Christianize that trans- Mississippi area. As forerunners they had a small group of unusual men, such as Asa Turner of the Illinois Band, Reuben Gaylord and Julius A. Reed. The soil was ready; the sowers were competent as well as self- sacrificing. In fifteen years Congregationalism, backed by its college Grinnell (1847), had taken deep root in Iowa. Thus these two groups of young leaders and their associates, persistently loyal to their ancestral ideals, settled for all time the legitimacy and value of Congregationalism in the Middle West. In 1832, the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society was organized, under auspices definitely Congregational, to take the place of the Massachusetts Sabbath School Union of 1825, which had been shared with the Baptists. Each denomination wished to be free to minister to its own constituency. The new Society despite its name had nation-wide plans. Within two years Asa Bullard began his noteworthy forty years of service. For seven years the Society was an auxiliary of the American Sunday School Union, but in 1839 it became independent and in 1841 was chartered with provision for departments of missionary extension, education and publication. Such leaders as Horace Bushnell, Lyman Beecher and Calvin Stowe were its enthusiastic supporters, speaking often on its behalf. In 1846-8 the other state Sunday School Unions of New England recognized the Society as their agency in national service. By 1849 it served twenty areas in North America. Two other important developments of this quarter century of home missionary pioneering deserve mention because of their significance for the missionary history of Congregationalism. In 1833 Oberlin was founded as a distinctively educational Christian center, unhampered by any type of ecclesiasticism or social theory. It drew no lines of sex or color. Its students, trained by Finney, Morgan and Mahan, were foremost in the discussions and the self-denying enterprises of anti-slavery days. Of similar importance was the founding in rapid succession of Western Reserve, Illinois, Marietta, Knox, Beloit and Iowa Colleges by men who desired an adequate supply of competent ministers and teachers. From such in¬ stitutions as these have come the missionary leadership of today. They could hardly have developed into strength had not Theron Baldwin, keenly aware of the strategic value of Christian education in national growth, taken counsel with Leonard Bacon and the two Beechers and organized, in 1843, a Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Educa¬ tion at the West to assist colleges and theological schools. The American Education Society at that time declined to undertake the support of institu¬ tions lest its work of educating ministers be endangered. The former society in its first year helped Illinois, Wabash, Western Reserve and Marietta, besides Lane and Western Reserve Theological Seminaries. Up to 1850 its field covered Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin. It won for Baldwin the well-deserved title, “ Father of Western Colleges,” and helped to found a series of institutions in which Congregationalists will ever take justifiable pride. MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 19 X The Rise of the American Missionary Association (1842-1861) Meanwhile another great Society was in process of incubation. Ever since the founding in 1790 of the Connecticut Anti-slavery Society by President Stiles to repatriate negro slaves, and of the National Temperance Society in 1826, the Puritan conscience had been growing tender with reference to moral issues. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 shocked the country into a quarter century of deepening interest to which such men as Lyman Beecher and Leonard Bacon largely contributed. In 1832 Garrison began to publish the Liberator. In 1833 the American Anti- Slavery Society was founded. By 1837 it had 1,200 auxiliaries and 125,- 000 members. Not alone in such a free community as the Oberlin of that day, but all over Congregational territory, unending debates went to the very roots of Christian principles and practice. There were men and women, here and there, like John G. Fee of Kentucky or Oliver Emer¬ son of Iowa, who began to question the legitimacy of drawing salaries paid by any of the great missionary or associated Boards, since none of them was ready to take a position of unequivocal opposition to slavery. In 1833 the New Haven Anti-Slavery Society declared for immediate abolition. A strong minority demanded that the parent Society take the same posi¬ tion. Hence in 1840 the milder group organized The American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Congregational clergymen and laymen were quite consistently hostile to slavery, but they were slow to identify their two great missionary organizations or the other national societies with that particu¬ lar issue. In 1839 a group of negroes was kidnapped from the Mendi coast and sold into Cuban slavery. Some of them escaped in a sloop which was wrecked on the coast of Long Island. Forty-four were captured and confined in the New Haven jail, where Professor Gibbs of Yale succeeded in identifying their place of origin and in getting their story. A committee, known, from the name of the sloop, as the Amistad Committee, was formed to care for these hapless people, to afford them protection and to repa¬ triate them when practicable. In 1841 the United States Supreme Court set them free, whereupon they were committed to the instruction of Rev. (afterwards Professor) George E. Day, then of Farmington, Conn., and placed under the responsible care of the newly organized Union Missionary .Society of Hartford. The Committee asked the American Board to add a Mendi Mission to its two African missions already under way, making it an anti-slavery mission, but without success. Hence, in 1842, the Com¬ mittee merged with the Union Missionary Society, which founded the mission by sending two white missionaries, James Steele and William Ray¬ mond of Oberlin, with the thirty-nine remaining repatriates. By 1848 fifteen missionaries had joined the mission, all from Oberlin; eight had died. The action of the Board aroused many protests and led in 1844 and 1845 to extended debates at the annual meetings. It was the judgment of such men as Noah Porter, Mark Hopkins, Calvin E. Stowe, Leonard Woods and Leonard Bacon that the work of the Board could not be subordinated to or jeopardized by any particular moral issue, however important. Yet the feeling of other good and godly men grew beyond repression. At Albany, in September, 1846, “ friends of Bible missions ” met and organized the American Missionary Association “ for the propagation of a pure and free Christianity from which the sins of caste, polygamy, slave¬ holding and the like shall be excluded.” The Association absorbed or affiliated along with their missions three active organizations, the Union Missionary Society, a recently organized Committee for West Indian Missions at work in Jamaica, and the Western Evangelical Missionary Society, founded in 1843 by the Western Reserve Association to support 20 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM a group of Oberlin students in work among the Ojibway Indians. The Association was not a Congregational organization, but from the outset Congregational influence was predominant in its management. Professor George Whipple of Oberlin was made Corresponding Secretary in 1847, and remained an honored leader for thirty years. In 1850 the Association could report twelve missionaries and'five missions, the Mendi Mission in West Africa, the encouragement of a self-supporting missionary family in the Sandwich Islands, a well supported work in Jamaica, a mission in Siam, transferred by the American Board because the two missionaries, one of whom was Rev. Dr. D. B. Bradley, were in full sympathy with the posi¬ tion of the Association, and a mission to the Ojibway Indians of Minnesota. Moreover the needs of colored refugees in Canada were being met. In 1853 a work was begun in California for the “ Chinese and other foreign¬ ers,” and in 1854 for the Copts of Egypt. At the same time a “ Home De¬ partment ” had been established from the outset to work for home mis¬ sions through those missionaries, like John G. Fee, who wished “ to bear clear testimony against slavery and caste.” Berea College, which began its life in 1858, embodied the ideals of this remarkable man. In 1860 the Association had over a hundred home missionaries on its roll, fifteen of them in the slave states or in Kansas. Thus the young Association had developed a limited but widespread and thoroughly useful work. It gave a positive Christian expression to the moral earnestness of many. Those who were dissatisfied with the older organizations were able to use it as the channel of their benevolences. For many years Oberlin furnished most of its missionaries. In 1857 the Avery legacy of $100,000 as a “ perpetual fund to disseminate Christianity among the black and colored races of Africa ” seemed to set a seal of public approval on what it had achieved. XI The Development of Foreign Missionary Principles and Policies (1851-1880) The quarter century beginning about 1851 was one of constant discussion and bold experiment along lines of foreign missionary policy. By the end of the period the essential principles of mission management as practiced today had been debated and adopted. The meetings of the American Board became great inspirational assemblies which mightily stirred its constituency, which, by 1880, had become rather distinctively Congrega¬ tional. During these decades the Board steadily enlarged its borders. In 1851 the Arcot district in India was entered as the fifth enterprise in that great area. The opportunities afforded by the opening Chinese Empire were rapidly seized. Shanghai was occupied in 1854, Tientsin entered by Dr. Blodget in 1860, Peking in 1862, Kalgan in 1865, Tungchow in 1867, Paotingfu in 1873 and Shaowu in 1877. Chauncey Goodrich, Henry Porter and Arthur H. Smith began their many decades of leadership during these years. An advance from the Sandwich Islands to Micronesia was made in 1852. At Salonica a mission for Jews, begun in 1849, was maintained for seven years but found impracticable. In the Turkish Empire not only was a new mission for Syrians founded at Mosul, but also the whole missionary program was reorganized and extended, the territorial organization of today being practically established. Two noteworthy forward movements took place, the entrance into Japan in 1869, when Daniel Crosby Greene landed at the newly opened village-port of Kobe, and the initiation of work in Papal lands, in Spain, Austria and Mexico in 1872, with an ineffectual attempt in Italy in 1873. This latter enterprise was due to the direct appeal of many Congregational churches: MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 21 which had been contributing for many years to the work of the American and Foreign Christian Union, but were dissatisfied with its policy. Mission enterprises were dropped or transferred as well as begun. Siam had been transferred to the American Missionary Association in 1850. In 1857, when the Reformed churches withdrew to organize a Board of their own, it was given the Amoy and Arcot missions, which had been virtually manned for some years by its people. In 1870, when the new school Presbyterians determined to work for foreign missions through the Pres¬ byterian Board of Foreign Missions, it was assigned the work for the Seneca and Ojibway Indians, the Nestorian mission, the Gaboon mission and the Syrian mission. The Sandwich Islands mission was given up in 1870; the Canton mission had been closed and its property sold by 1868, and, for various reasons, all Indian missions except that to the Sioux were abandoned. Thus about 1880 the Board was left with missions to India, Ceylon, China, Japan, the Turkish Empire, South Africa, Micronesia, Japan, Papal lands and Mexico. The problems and policies of these missions were grappled by a remark¬ able group of missionary statesmen. At the home base were Rufus Ander¬ son, Selah B. Treat, Nathaniel G. Clark, Pres. Hopkins, Dr. A. C. Thomp¬ son, Elbridge Torrey and Alpheus Hardy. On the field were such men as Cyrus Hamlin, Daniel Bliss, C. H. Wheeler, T. C. Trowbridge and J. K. Greene in Turkey, Hiram Bingham and E. T. Doane in Micronesia, Henry Blodget and Charles Hartwell in China, O. H. Gulick, Daniel C. Greene and * J. D. Davis in Japan, Eurotas P. Hastings and Thomas Smith in Ceylon, John E. Chandler and William Tracy in Madura, Samuel B. Fairbank, Lemuel Bissell and Allen Hazen among the Mahrattas. In 1854-55 Secretary Anderson and Dr. A. C. Thompson constituted a deputation to India and Ceylon to discuss and determine fundamental questions of future mission policy. The Prudential Committee had become alarmed because the missionary institutions in India for the training of students in Western learning seemed to be producing scholars and national leaders in abundance, but comparatively few candidates for Christian service. This seemed a misuse of consecrated money. As matters were working the natural village leaders were apparently being educated out of village service. The Committee was also concerned over the slow develop¬ ment of native churches. The deputation brought about a thorough educational reorganization, which affected policies in the Turkish Empire as well as in India and Ceylon. It dropped or altered the institutions for higher learning so that provision was made for the education of those only who were training for Christian service, and that mainly through the vernacular. At the same time it did provide for a village school system and it unified and organized the evangelistic attack. This withdrawal from educational leadership was bitterly deplored by many on the field and at home. At the Annual Meeting of 1856, however, the new policies were established by general concurrence. From the perspective of today it is evident that a middle ground should have been taken. The deputation took away from its missions a leadership and a means of influence which they never regained. The wonderful group of influential institutions of higher learning on the field in which Congregationalists take just pride today was inaugurated under the pressure of Christian constituencies and not in pursuance of the Board’s stated policy. The deputation’s other principle established Secretary Anderson’s place as a missionary statesman of the first rank, — original, bold, constructive. He shared with Henry Venn of the Church Missionary Society the honor of formulating the slogan “ a self-supporting, self-propagating, self-governed church.” He disbelieved in missionary paternalism. He insisted upon the wisdom of a policy which encouraged the assumption of self-support by mission congregations, the use of nationals as pastors and the under¬ taking of responsibility for the further spread of Christianity. Such a 22 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM statesmanlike policy, however, meant trained leaders of nation-wide stand¬ ing and of real culture and schools capable of producing them; hence it eventually forced a reconsideration of the educational scheme, and a return to the early policy which Dr. Anderson had repudiated. The colleges which began to appear on mission soil under independent yet friendly auspices were encouraged. In 1863 Robert College was founded at Constantinople, under the leadership of Cyrus Hamlin, and, one year later, Syrian Protestant College at Beirut. In the next decade a group of institutions was established with a close relation to the Board yet in¬ dependently endowed, such as Jaffna College in Ceylon (1872), Central Turkey College at Aintab (1874), the Doshisha in Japan (1875) and Eu¬ phrates College at Harpoot in Turkey (1878). These colleges by their quick success settled forever the question of the legitimacy of such institu¬ tions and of the whole organized attack through first-rate education on the superstition, ignorance and entrenched leadership of oriental lands. Another important advance in home base and field organization was made in this quarter century against much opposition and misunderstand- ng through the splendid leadership of Mrs. Albert Bowker and her gifted associates all over the country. Encouraged by the success of the Woman’s Union Missionary Society of America, organized in 1860, they argued that the women of the churches should organize in order to work for the women and the children of mission areas through the enlistment and support of young women untrammelled by home duties. Very few such women had been commissioned by the Board, and most of these for the’ organization of colleges like Mount Holyoke abroad. In January, 1868, The Woman’s Board of Missions was organized, followed in October by the Board of the Interior, and, six years later, by the Board of the Pacific. These Boards, by a system of “ Branches,” each grouping a number of related churches with their complement of women’s missionary societies, young people’s organizations and mission bands, developed a remarkably efficient scheme of organization. They have sent to the foreign field a group of women who have nobly maintained the traditions of Maria Ogden in Hawaii, Eliza Agnew in Ceylon, Myra Proctor at Aintab and Fidelia Fiske at Urumia. To the genius and insight of these leaders, many constructive advances have been due. The full significance of these organizations in making articulate the proper share of women in the missionary program was slowly recognized, but they have become indis¬ pensable factors in wise administration and effective progress. A testing of the strength of the Board came with the withdrawal from federation in 1857 of the Reformed churches and the uniting in 1870 of the New School Presbyterian churches with the Foreign Board of the Presbyterian Church. These withdrawals were deplored at first, since they diminished by a third the Board’s resources. In the end they constituted a challenge to each group of churches which was nobly met. Between 1870 and 1878 the missionaries of the American Board increased from two hundred and forty-seven to three hundred and forty-nine. About one hundred new places were occupied, with a great gain of churches. The American Board thus became essentially a Congregational organiza¬ tion. This generation, virtually spanned by the sane, dignified presidency of Dr. Mark Hopkins, commanding of presence and wise in counsel, and the constructive leadership of Rufus Anderson, Selah B. Treat and Nathan¬ iel G. Clark, was concluding in 1879 with a necessity of disheartening re¬ trenchment because of conditions at home. Then the unanticipated re¬ ceipt of the great Otis legacy opened the way for educational advance, for substantial reenforcement of all mission service, and for fresh pioneering, affording the Board and its devoted missionaries a fresh opportunity and a renewing of zeal. MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 23 XII The Expansion of Home Missionary Agencies (1852-1865) The Albany convention of 1852, the first really representative gathering of Congregationalists since the Cambridge Synod two centuries earlier, abolished the Plan of Union and cleared the way for a free denominational advance. Two decades of experience had shown that the flexibleness and catholicity of Congregationalism made it an admirable and frictionless religious agency among the varying creeds and races of the home frontier. This convention was profoundly stirred by the appeal of pioneer minis¬ ters in the Middle West who asked aid in completing their houses of wor¬ ship. The best way of meeting this need was a topic of general discussion. Challenged by an offer of $10,000, the convention authorized the raising of a church building fund. Sixty-two thousand dollars came from the churches in response, a sum which assisted in completing two hundred and thirty churches. On May 11, 1853, the society, now known as The Con¬ gregational Church Building Society, was organized in the Broadway Tabernacle in New York, under the name of the American Congregational Union. Its purpose was to promote spiritual unity, fellowship and under¬ standing among Congregationalists, as well as to cooperate with weaker churches in building meeting-houses and parsonages. In good Congrega¬ tional fashion some objected to this last proposal as interfering with Congregational freedom. But the influence of Leonard Bacon, Richard Salter Storrs and others overcame such objections. The work developed slowly. In the third year the receipts from the churches were but $560.26. In the fifteenth year only five hundred and eleven churches contributed to the treasury of this Society. But under the leadership of such men as Ray Palmer and L. H. Cobb it gradually justified its place as a welcome and indispensable ally of the Home Missionary Society. In 1892, that its name might more clearly indicate its work, the Union became the Church Building Society. The splendid legacy of J. H. Stickney enabled it to develop a large loan fund to be used with its grants. In sixty-seven years it has used more than nine million dollars in completing more than five thou¬ sand churches. The Massachusetts Sabbath School Society was encouraged by the Albany convention to put workers into the western field to promote Sunday-school development and the use of good literature. In 1853 it appointed four field workers, the forerunners of its large, active and com¬ petent staff of subsequent years. With the virtual federation of these three home organizations for the splendid task of multiplying the churches of the Pilgrim order threefold in half a century, Congregationalism was reborn in the newer states of the central West and of the Coast. Dr. G. H. Atkinson in 1848 had reached Oregon after an 18,000 miles journey via Cape Horn and Honolulu only to hear of the tragic Whitman massacre. He found four Congregational ministers and two little churches, but began a service of forty years as pastor and as general missionary, as founder of churches, schools, acade¬ mies and pre-collegiate institutions, as promoter of social, commercial, educational and religious development, which, measured by the loftiest standards of true citizenship, gave him a recognition at his death as “ Ore¬ gon’s most eminent citizen.” From 1849 for a generation two devoted men, Dr. S. H. Willey and Dr. J. H. Warren, were the leaders of the slower development in California. In the central West, Ohio, Michigan and Il¬ linois were at the maximum of activity, while Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Kansas were pressing hard after them. Dr. Truman M. Post organized the first Congregational church in Missouri in 1852. To him and to Dr. Henry Hopkins after him southwestern Congregationalism is deeply in¬ debted. Chicago Seminary was founded in 1855 by a delegated convention M MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM of the churches of the central area to give their territory the trained leaders needed. They made themselves responsible for the Seminary, organizing the Chicago Theological Seminary Triennial Convention. The new enter¬ prise was thus in a new and striking sense the child of the churches. Under President F. W. Fisk and Dr. G. S. F. Savage it quickly made its place. Pacific Seminary followed in 1869, as soon as a trainable constituency began to exist. To meet the exigencies of the time with greater efficiency the Home Missionary Society gradually organized its work in the West into well-defined districts, often the limits of a state, under the expert superintendence of selected leaders. In 1856 the Society definitely declared against the tolerating of slave¬ holders in missionary churches and began a withdrawal of its workers from southern territory, which left only one representative by 1857 and virtually none for the next decade. Notwithstanding this curtailment there was a growth in free-state territory which amply balanced the loss. One of the stirring events of this period was the organization at the Yale Divinity School and the departure in .1857 of the third of the heroic pioneering “ bands ” which have shed such luster upon our Congregational name. It numbered four men, Sylvester S. Storrs, Grosvenor C. Morse, Roswell D. Parker and Richard Cordley. They cast their lot in with the New England, Illinois and Ohio pioneers, who had been aided by the Emi¬ gration Society to enter the new territory of Kansas and had settled near Lawrence and Topeka. These choice pioneers were anxious to keep the territory loyal to free principles. Each one of the band became a leader, Storrs as a missionary superintendent, Parker as a preacher, Morse as an educator, Cordley as a pastor. For a generation they were the moving spirits of every great religious advance in the state and helped to give its eastern half a distinctively “ Pilgrim ” stamp. XIII The New Tasks of the American Missionary Association (1861-1883) The American Missionary Association was founded as a general mis¬ sionary agency for home and foreign service, to be utilized by those who were uncompromisingly anti-slavery in conviction and practice. Atten¬ tion has already been called to its limited yet useful and varied program for its first fifteen years of existence. Candor compels the statement that during this early period the Association was not in cordial relations with the older organizations, due, no doubt, in good part, to their unfriendly attitude. The Civil War, however, gave the Association a new field of missionary service for which its heritage, principles and policy gave it a special aptitude. In 1861 the freedmen became in a moment a Northern responsibility. The Association was quick in grasping the new need and supplying the Christian response. On September 17th of that year it established the first day school among these destitute negroes, uncon¬ sciously laying the foundation of the great Hampton of today. In 1867 General Armstrong, then at Hampton in charge of the refugees, wrote to the Association recommending a certain estate nearby as a suitable site for a permanent educational project for freedmen. Given timely aid by the Avery trustees, the Association purchased the plantation, planned for a school and persuaded Armstrong to become its principal. His early knowledge of the Hilo Manual Labor School for Hawaiians gave him the idea of the type of education which is most generally needed by an un¬ developed race. The Association followed in the track of the Union armies, setting up schools. In 1865 at Boston the Congregational Council gave a hearty recognition of this service of evangelization and education. It promoted MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 25 the raising of a fund of $250,000 for the work among freedmen and desig¬ nated the Association as providentially prepared to administer it. Within seven years came a remarkable development, including seven chartered in¬ stitutions for professional training, twenty graded schools, sixty-nine common schools and at least one school of theology. Despite the Ku- Klux Clans the three hundred and twenty teachers of 1865 became five hundred and thirty-three in 1870. During the same period churches were planted among the negroes and churches and schools among the mountain whites. Hampton soon became independent of direct aid from the As¬ sociation, and Tuskegee, the child of Hampton, was never its ward; but the general plan of cultural, professional and vocational training which has proven such a success in affording undeveloped peoples their rightful chance of growth has been due in no small degree to the experience gained by Association leaders during the fifteen years which followed the war. The emphasis of the Association has been laid upon cultural and pro¬ fessional education, partly because of the need of leaders for the colored race, partly because thorough vocational instruction requires vast ex¬ penditures. Fisk, Atlanta, Talladega, Tougaloo, Straight and Tillotson have justified this policy. Howard University deserves mention as the virtual child of the First Congregational Church of Washington, D. C. Founded in 1867 by General O. O. Howard, long its president, and with a series of distinguished executives who have been drawn from Congrega¬ tional ranks, it has become the largest and best equipped institution for the higher education of the negro in North America or the world. The pressure of the Association’s expanding work for the colored race caused it to withdraw gradually from foreign missionary service. In 1873 its work in the Sandwich Islands was given up; in Jamaica its schools were soon after transferred to the government and its churches to the Baptists. In 1874 the mission to Siam was ended. In 1883 the Mendi mission was transferred to the United Brethren, while the mission to the Sioux Indians was taken over from the American Board. These measures gave the Association a constituency of negroes, mainly in the Southland, of Orientals on the Pacific coast and of North American Indians, to which in 1884 was added the mountain people of the Southland. It thus became a specialized agency of the churches for dealing with the backward popula¬ tions under the American flag and for those Orientals or Latin Americans temporarily living in the United States, whose disabilities made them de¬ pendent on Christian sympathy and aid. XIV Home Missions after the Civil War (1865-1880) The close of the Civil War initiated a wave of western migration due in part to the liberal homesteading legislation of Congress, in part to the rapid building of railways and in part to a great increase of immigration. Con¬ gregational missionary agencies followed hard upon the heels of these pioneers to Kansas, Nebraska, California, Colorado and some parts of the Northwest. Joseph Ward entered Yankton in 1868; Col. J. D. Davis (later of Japan) and Josiah Strong were at Cheyenne soon after. The first churches of our order at Denver and at Boulder were organized in 1864, that at Colorado Springs in 1874. These were years of college planting, Washburn in Kansas (1865), Carleton in Minnesota (1866), Doane in Ne¬ braska (1872), Drury in Missouri (1873) and Colorado College (1874), each with the missionary motive. The New West Education Commission was organized in 1879 at Chicago, because the American College and Education Society at Boston, which had absorbed in 1874 the College Society of 1843, though national in scope, interpreted its charter as forbid- 26 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM ding it to use its funds for the support of other than college or theological education. It also declined to hold itself responsible for developing the educational policy of the denomination. This decision seems today an error of judgment. An aggressive society would have found a way to shape a definite national policy of educational advance through Christian academies and colleges. President Tenney of Colorado College and Rev. Charles R. Bliss, who had seen the urgent need of planting a true Christian civilization in Utah and the adjacent states through Christian academies, which were the only available means of coping with the menace of Mormon- ism and of Jesuit power, would not be denied. They vainly approached the Home Missionary Society for favorable support and at last organized the Commission with Dr. Frederick A. Noble as its president and Mr. Bliss as its secretary. During these years the Home Missionary Society was very aggressive, both in New England, where it maintained three hundred and twenty- seven missionaries, and in the West, notably in Kansas, Nebraska, Minne¬ sota and California, where it had six hundred and twenty-two. In 1880 it had four negro missionaries and held regular services for immigrants of Welsh, German, French and Swiss extraction. The territory of Dakota was a prize worth working for in the period from 1866 to statehood in 1889. The heroic services of Joseph Ward-, the virtual founder of South Dakota, and of Stewart Sheldon, its general mis¬ sionary, may not soon be forgotten. Their leadership inspired the fourth historic “ band ” to volunteer for service in 1880. A group of nine Yale Divinity School graduates, aroused by the stirring call of one of their number who had spent a summer on the Dakota field, offered themselves for home mission work in that rapidly settling region. Seven of these came from states which had been home missionary fields a generation before. Three of them are still valued Congregational leaders. The New South, created by the outcome of the war, provided a host of fresh missionary problems for the two societies undertaking home mis¬ sionary responsibility. The aftermath of racial conflicts drew a line of demarcation between work among the whites and that among the negroes, which led to a tacit division along racial lines, unfortunate and un-Congre- gational but apparently justified by sheer necessity. The share of the Home Missionary Society in the new Southland was slowly assumed. With the development of manufacturing, the building of railways and the rush of immigration from the North and West there were educational and religious needs to be met which challenged our churches. This growth in Florida, Texas, Georgia and Alabama began in the seventies. Its moderate extension throughout the southern belt has been the work of decades. This period witnessed some Sunday-school experimenting. The Ameri¬ can Doctrinal Tract Society of 1832 36 became in 1854 the Congregational Board of Publication. In 1868 this Board united with the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, which had had so honorable a history, to form the Congregational Sabbath School and Publishing Society, giving to the new organization a clear denominational standing and a national field. In 1870 its name was shortened to the Congregational Publishing Society. In 1874, under the influence of a temporary demand for unification, the missionary work of the Society was transferred to the American Home Missionary Society. This proved to be a disastrous step, almost drying up denominational support of Sunday-school extension and badly crippling its organization. In 1882 the National Council approved a restoration of the missionary service to the renamed Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society, which it declared to have “ a field peculiarly its own.” For the days of active pioneering which yet remained this judgment met the general approval of the Congregational churches. 36 Organized in 1829 as the Doctrinal Tract and Book Society. MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 27 XV Two Stirring Decades Closing the Century (1880-1900) In 1881 there was organized at Portland, Maine, by a Congregational pastor, Francis E. Clark, who gleaned his idea from Horace Bushnell’s “ Christian Nurture,” a contributory agency to missions of very great value, the Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor, which has been for four decades all over the Christian world a potent means of developing Christian volunteers. Only five years later at Northfield, Mass., the Student Volunteer Movement sprang into being as a perpetual challenger of student life for missionary service. This latter organization and its corollary, the World’s Student Christian Federation of 1895, have been loyally fostered by Congregationalists, but they cannot claim them as their own. With the year 1880 the American Board began a new era of expansion. The great Otis legacy of 1879, together with the Swett legacy of 1884, making a joint fund of $1,500,000, used until 1897 to supplement the regu¬ lar contributions of the churches, opened the way for strengthening, standardizing and enlarging the whole range of foreign activity. In 1880 the West Central Africa mission was founded in Angola after costing the death of two eminent leaders, Edward P. Smith, formerly Indian Com¬ missioner, sent to explore the field by the American Missionary Associa¬ tion, and Rev. John O. Means, sent later by the American Board, — both dying on the Coast. In the support and development of this mission Cana¬ dian Congregationalists who organized the Canadian Foreign Missionary Society in 1881 and furnished one of the three pioneer missionaries, have generously shared. In 1883 the Shansi mission in China was begun by Oberlin graduates. In 1883 Kwangtung province was reoccupied in China and Northern Mexico entered at Chihuahua; in 1883 East Central Africa was entered at Inhambane and North Japan at Niigata; six new enter¬ prises within four years. New vigor stirred the older missions. Japan, after ten years of experi¬ ment and preparation, had a period of remarkable growth under the leadership of an unusual group of missionaries, including such men as D. C. Greene, Jerome D. Davis, John H. De Forest and M. L. Gordon. The year 1888 was the banner year. The next decade developed a nationalistic spirit in the empire which brought about a decided reaction. After Nee- sima’s death in 1890 the Doshisha was temporarily placed on a non-Chris¬ tian basis, but in 1898 full cooperation was resumed, assisted by the firm yet friendly attitude of a deputation which went to Japan in 1896. In China the first decade was characterized by laying foundations; the Shansi mission, planned at Oberlin in 1880, and wholly manned by Oberlin students, had a steady growth; the second decade witnessed an expansion all over the empire. In 1898, for the first time in sixty-eight years — a fact by no means creditable to our administration of foreign mission interests — a deputation headed by Secretary Judson Smith visited China, affording not a little encouragement. In Turkey a deputation in 1883 allayed a growing source of disunion and promoted an unusual growth, which was retarded but slightly by bitter persecution and martyrdom in 1893-5. This calamity forced the missionaries to undertake a work of general relief and of the care of orphans that has developed into a permanent missionary agency. In Micronesia in 1887 the Spanish showed hostility to our long- established work, but were displaced after the close of the Spanish-American War (1899). In India a steady growth took place, while in Africa, after some vicissitudes, an unusual advance was registered. These years were noteworthy for the alteration of the rigid practice of the Prudential Committee of the Board regarding the religious convictions of its missionaries. The “ Andover Controversy ” raged very strenuously 28 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM in the early eighties throughout the Board’s constituency. The Prudential Committee had acted as an ecclesiastical court, not alone rejecting candi¬ dates who were uncertain regarding probation after death, but also de¬ clining to return to their fields such missionaries as were affected. The issue, personalized in the case of one missionary whose spirituality and usefulness could not be gainsaid, was fought out at annual meetings be¬ tween 1886 and 1893. Three honored administrators, when no longer upheld, retired in 1893 from connection with the Board, but the principle became established for all time that missionaries on the field have the same freedom of thought as their ministerial brethren at home. The forceful personality and catholic temper of President Richard S. Storrs, together with the keen yet irenic statesmanship of Professor George P. Fisher, went far in assuring this happy issue of a divisive controversy. Various constitutional betterments were made by the Board when it added the president and vice-president of the Board to the Prudential Committee ex-officiis (1889), placed the enlarged Committee on a basis of limited terms of service (1888), and gave state and district Associations of Congregational churches the right of nominating a majority of the greatly enlarged corporate membership (1893). In 1894 Dr. E. E. Strong was made Editorial Secretary and Dr. James L. Barton a Corresponding Secre¬ tary. In 1896 “ cooperating committees ” were appointed to assist in raising the large annual budget. In 1899 the “ Forward Movement ” initiated the policy, which has proved so valuable, of the support of mis¬ sionaries by individuals and churches. These decades made havoc of some of the great leaders of earlier years. In 1887 Dr. Mark Hopkins, for thirty years the impartial, benignant president of the Board, and Alpheus Hardy, a diligent and competent member of the Prudential Committee, passed away, followed in 1901 by Dr. A. C. Thompson, for years the unquestioned authority on Prudential Committee transactions and on the history of missions. In 1896 two famous secretaries, the great-hearted, intrepid Clark and the scholarly and brilliant Alden, ceased from their labors, followed in 1900 by the eloquent, fair-minded Storrs, who for ten troubled years had kept the constituency of the Board together. In 1899 the noteworthy administration of Presi¬ dent Samuel B. Capen began. The two decades were equally eventful for home missions. Between 1880 and 1893-97 the missionary force of the Home Missionary Society was doubled. The banner year was 1896, when 2,038 missionaries were on the roll of the Society, 22 per cent in New England, now with many weak country churches, 7 per cent in the Middle States, 5 per cent in the South, 6 per cent in the Southwest, 50 per cent in the West and 10 per cent on the Coast, a proportion fairly well maintained for a long period of years. West of the Missouri the Dakotas, Colorado, Southern California, Oregon and Washington were given especial attention. Between 1880 and 1900 Washington absorbed twice as much missionary money as any other sec¬ tion. Its wonderful appeal enlisted at Yale one more home missionary “ band ” of six men who in 1890 set their faces toward the growing state. They planned a close fellowship in service and wrought an important work together under many hindrances. All are still active. A similar develop¬ ment was going on in the New South, especially in Florida, Georgia and Alabama, where in the later eighties, under the leadership of Superintendent Sullivan F. Gale, Congregationalism again began to get a foothold. He helped to discover the Congregational Methodists of Alabama and Georgia, and added many of their congregations to our constituency. The year 1893 was notable because the Society became in name as well as in fact the Congregational Home Missionary Society, and because the Society estab¬ lished more satisfactory relations with its growing brood of self-supporting state societies. From a little group of half a dozen states with organiza¬ tions, responsibilities and a budget of their own, there had come to be MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 2g more than twenty. The period closed with the entrance into Alaska and Cuba. One of the outstanding home missionary developments in this era was in connection with the flood of immigration. Its rapidity and volume up to 1870 had been surprising but not alarming. Those who came over the sea were quickly Americanized. But by 1900 one-third of the population of the United States was of foreign parentage. In many great cities and in several states they held the balance of power. In the later eighties the type of immigrant lowered. To some extent this fact altered the home missionary impact. The Society’s task was not only to keep up with the tide of settlement, planting the seeds of a Christian society, but also to stem this tide of ignorance and superstition. In 1883 the Society organized three foreign departments — German, Scandinavian and Slavic — under expert superintendents. The Chicago Theological Seminary had already begun the special training of leaders for such work. By 1900 the gospel was being regularly preached by its missionaries in thirteen different tongues. Meanwhile Congregational women who since earliest times had been the source of numberless choice “ barrels ” or boxes, and who in New Eng¬ land had been pioneers in missionary organization among women, began to organize themselves more definitely for home missionary service. The Minnesota Woman’s Home Missionary Union was formed in 1872. This was followed in 1880 by the formation in Boston of the Woman’s Home Missionary Association of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In succeed¬ ing years, in rapid succession, under the inspiring leadership of Mrs. H. C. Caswell, other states were also organized. In 1883 both the Congregational Home Missionary Society and the American Missionary Association established Women’s Departments, to serve as a clearing agency for the activity of these Unions. The process of state organization, thus begun, has continued until there are now thirty-seven state unions. Unlike the Woman’s Boards, the Woman’s Home Missionary Unions established no distinct work of their own, but contributed directly to the work of the na¬ tional homeland societies, maintaining close cooperative relationships with them and raising a definite part of each annual budget. Under the direc¬ tion of these unions, through their district and local organizations, im¬ portant work has been done in reaching and training the children and young people of our churches in missionary knowledge and service. Nor has their “ labor of love ” in the preparation of barrels ever ceased. The rapid expansion of this work made necessary the establishment of a central body to represent the unions in all matters of common interest, both denomina¬ tionally and interdenominationally. Accordingly in 1905 the Congrega¬ tional Woman’s Home Missionary Federation was organized, to be the national body through which this wide range of home missionary activity among our women should find common expression, and by which it should be stimulated to increased efficiency and service. In 1883 the Church Building Society undertook to raise a parsonage fund of $25,000 to assist small churches in erecting parsonages. Dr. William M. Taylor, the pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle Church, who was at this time the president of the Society, was deeply interested, secur¬ ing the first $5,000 from his own congregation. With Secretary L. H. Cobb, he made a tour of the leading churches, securing the whole fund in a short time. This fund now amounts to $260,957. It has assisted in erecting about fourteen hundred parsonages. In 1881 a new era in Sunday-school development began with the elec¬ tion of Rev. Albert E. Dunning as General Secretary of the Publication Society, which was reestablished in 1883 as the Sunday School and Pub¬ lishing Society, the Sunday-school missionary work having been retrans¬ ferred to it by the Home Missionary Society. With a strong force of super¬ intendents and missionaries, the work of the Society was rapidly extended 30 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM throughout the whole country. At the same time it began to publish Christian literature of a high order. From 1880 to 1893 the New West Education Commission did heroic work, chiefly in Utah and New Mexico. It built up such important insti¬ tutions as Salt Lake College and Provo and Albuquerque academies, which had an important share in shaping the educational life and in lifting the educational and spiritual ideals of states and communities in process of formation. Its fourth report in 1884 exhibited thirty-eight schools, sixty- two teachers and two thousand nine hundred and twenty-five pupils. Above all it demonstrated the value of the Christian academy as a home missionary agency. Eventually in 1893, after the American College and Education Society had obtained a broader charter and a new and shorter name, and the growth of the public school system had narrowed the sphere of the Christian academy, the Commission was consolidated with the Society under one management. Between 1882 and 1897 ten new col¬ leges and several Christian academies were established. 37 The American Missionary Association pursued an undisturbed course of steady development, in the guidance of which Dr. M. E. Strieby, Dr. J. E. Roy and Dr. E. C. Cravath won permanent distinction. In 1884 the Association came to a definite understanding with the American Home Missionary Society regarding the scope of each home society. In that same year it began schools for mountaineers. The Daniel Hand legacy of more than a million dollars, given in 1888, to afford opportunity to the colored race, by a man who had made his fortune in the South, so provided for the work in the South as to enable the Association in 1890 to extend its work to the Eskimos of Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska. After Porto Rico, with its problems of illiteracy and poverty inherited from centuries of Spanish misrule and neglect, had come under the American flag, a mis¬ sion for both educational and church work was founded in that island in 1899. All other phases of its work were strengthened. In 1898 in com¬ mon with the other societies it adopted the policy of rotation in office for its Executive Committee, of which a majority were to be laymen. The one undeveloped objective of Congregational missionary states¬ manship was reached in 1886, when the National Council organized the Congregational Board of Ministerial Relief for the proper care of those whose lives have been spent in heroic missionary service or in country parish work at a mere living salary. From a very modest beginning this work of providing for the veterans of the cross in their declining years has steadily grown, until last year more than $100,000 was distributed. The bequest of Mrs. D. Willis James made the endowment fund more than a million dollars. The closing decade of the century so strongly emphasized the denomina¬ tional consciousness that in 1902, half a century after the Albany Con¬ vention and seventy years after Congregationalism really began to stretch its wings, several of the home missionary organizations altered the term “ American ” in their corporate names to “ Congregational.” In 1886 also the national societies established a new organ, Congregational Work, intended to circulate widely throughout the denomination as a medium of fresh and attractive news regarding each society. It continued for twenty- three years. 37 During the century of the existence of the various organizations represented today by the Congregational Education Society, sixty-two colleges, academies and schools for training have been founded or aided and 10,250 students have been aided for the ministry, all at an expenditure of approximately $6,500,000. MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 31 XVI A Decade of Experimentation (1900-1910) The new century developed much unrest among the churches in regard to their relations with the seven societies which had come to be recognized as Congregational. Six of these organizations were in reality self-per¬ petuating; two of the six even regarded their constituencies as somewhat broader than the Congregational churches. There was no unwillingness to permit real constituents to assist in shaping missionary policy, but a natural hesitancy about surrendering a freedom characteristic of Congre¬ gational institutions and sanctioned by splendid achievement. The churches, however, steadily pressed the idea that in their organized capac¬ ity they should assume responsibility for their own missionary work. In 1901 the National Council at Portland endorsed the ideas of a cor¬ porate body for each society, elected mainly by the churches, and of an annual meeting in common, a joint magazine and fewer treasuries. In 1902 the Home Missionary Society arranged to have its controlling mem¬ bership elected through the State organizations. In 1904 the American Board voted to secure a majority of its corporate membership in the same way. In that same year at Des Moines the seven benevolent societies held their annual meetings ‘in connection with the Council. Two years later the Home Missionary Society adopted a new constitution completely reorganizing its relations with the state bodies and their home missionary interests. It created a responsible directorate chosen mainly by the recognized State Conferences, subject to the review of the Society at its annual meeting, provided for an annual apportionment and policy meeting in January, placed the Executive Committee under the control of the directorate, classified the participating states as constituent and cooperat¬ ing on the basis of complete or partial self-support of all home missionary work, and included city missionary organizations as an affiliated interest. Thus in its eightieth year the .Society discovered how to function success¬ fully for the nation while giving full play to local responsibility and initia¬ tive and made a definite forward step in home missionary administration. In 1909 the home societies established The American Missionary as a joint magazine. In that same year in a “ Together Campaign ” the three largest societies were freed from indebtedness. During the decade the Reserve Legacy plan for the stabilizing of legacy receipts, begun by the American Board in 1900 under the name of the Twentieth Century Fund, and the plan of annuity endowments, both initiated or at least emphasized under the businesslike leadership of President Samuel B. Capen, became gen¬ erally adopted by the societies. Dr. Capen brought to the presidency of the Board and to many other directorates a business judgment and a friendly but forceful and strongly spiritual leadership which had un¬ measured value for the missionary interests of Congregationalism. For the American Board the decade opened with the Boxer uprising in China, compelling a sacrificial outpouring of Christian blood, missionary and national alike, that proved indeed to be the seed of the church. Before the decade had closed there was a great religious advance in China, shaped and stimulated by the great Centenary Conference of 1907 at Shanghai. In 1901 a deputation was sent to India, one in 1903 to Africa and one in 1907 to China. Their reports were very clarifying and productive. The death of Dr. Elias Riggs after nearly half a century’s service in Turkey, the capture by Bulgarian bandits of Miss Ellen M. Stone, and the founding of the International College at Smyrna were occurrences of 1901. In 1902 the Philippines mission in Mindanao was begun. The interesting work of the Yale Foreign Missionary Society at Changsha, China was be¬ gun in 1903 by Rev. and Mrs. Laurence Thurston, who were followed by Warren Seabury and Brownell Gage. While not linked, like the Oberlin- 32 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM Shansi movement, to the American Board, the Yale-in-China project grew out of the earnest plans of a group of Congregational students and received much assistance from the Board at the start. It has always been managed and maintained independently. In 1905 the Forward Movement, initiated in 1898, was absorbed into the Home Department as an established method of procedure. In that same year the first annual conference for newly appointed missionaries was held by the Board. The year 1906 witnessed the centennial of the Haystack prayer-meeting. It gave the occasion for a notable review of the century’s missionary progress. More than that, it witnessed the genesis of the Laymen’s Mis¬ sionary Movement, so blessed of God since then in the enlistment of men and money for missions. The idea was born in the mind of John B. Sleman, an energetic Congregational layman of Washington, D. C. Dr. Capen warmly seconded his suggestion and acted as the chairman of the Movement until his death. In 1906 Dr. Judson Smith, for twenty-two years a secretary of the Board, ended his scholarly, dignified career. In 1908 the United Church of South India, composed of the converts of three great communions, including the American Board, was organized, an epochal forward step on mission soil. In home missionary organization the decade has already been reviewed. Worthy of special notice, however, because of Congregational leadership and cooperation, are the development of the Missionary Education Move¬ ment in 1907 out of the Young People’s Missionary Movement of 1902, the organization of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in Amer¬ ica in 1908 and of the Home Missions Council in that same year, each of significance to mission efficiency at home and abroad. In 1905 the Woman’s Home Missionary Federation, previously referred to, was organ¬ ized. In 1910 Rev. William Salter of Iowa passed away, the last survivor of that sturdy and heroic band who planted Congregationalism firmly beyond the Mississippi in 1843. The American Missionary Association held in 1903 its first convention of colored Congregational workers in the Southland, a gathering that quickly proved its strategic value and the general principle that a race which is on the way upward can be used with wisdom to speak for itself in the formulation of wise policies. In 1906 an educational director was given the task of reorganizing the educational service of the Association. In 1907 a beginning was made in the organization of distinctively agricul¬ tural high schools, one for each Southern state, which resulted in eight such institutions by 1910. In general a process of intensification of the whole work was instituted. A partnership with the Hawaiian Evangelical Association was begun by the American Missionary Association in 1904. During the decade the work for mountain whites and for orientals on the Pacific Coast reached marked efficiency. The Atlanta Theological Semi¬ nary was opened for instruction in 1901. A notable fact of the decade was the installation in charge of each of the societies of forward-looking, able executives in complete sympathy with the slowly formulating plans of denominational reorganization. XVII A Decade of Reorganization and Realization (1910-1920) At no stage of world development can anyone dare to hope that per¬ fection has been attained. It is true, however, beyond a doubt that the second decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a remarkable mis¬ sionary advance all over the world in federation, comity, efficiency and the intensive application of ideals and principles to mission work. All this began in 1910 with the great missionary conference at Edin- MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 33 burgh, Scotland, which led the way to a federated unity never before realizable in the history of the Church catholic. Its work was supple¬ mented and forwarded by the Congress on Christian Work in Latin America, held at Panama in February, 1916, which dealt particularly with Latin American interests not fully represented at Edinburgh. These great ecumenical gatherings developed a spirit of cooperation which has revolu¬ tionized missionary policies and prepared the way for rapidly increasing efficiency in years to come. Congregationalists participated gladly with all other communions in furthering these gatherings and their related con¬ ferences in missionary areas. In North America fresh life was given to the Foreign Missions Conference, organized informally in 1893 with the hearty support of Secretaries Nathaniel G. Clark and Judson Smith and given official standing in 1905, so that it became, under its new constitution of 1911, an organization truly representative of the foreign missionary interests of North America and contributory toward the scientific develop¬ ment of missionary policies. In that same year in December the Board of Missionary Preparation held its first annual meeting and initiated its career of serviceableness. In 1912-13 were held the eighteen sectional confer¬ ences in Asia by Dr. Mott and his associates, and in 1916 the seven regional conferences in Latin America which succeeded so admirably in developing and accelerating the process of federated cooperation in missions in each great area. To them Congregationalists everywhere lent hearty support. The decade has witnessed the steady development of interdenominational organization, of union enterprises, of friendly adjustments of fields and of a spirit of cooperation which rejoices the heart of every true follower of the Pilgrims. Congregationalists at home have been preparing to do their share in the new era. On the one hand a remarkable group of institutions for the training of missionaries is being developed at Hartford, New Haven, New York, Chicago, Oberlin and Berkeley, which will be prepared to answer all reasonable demands made upon them in the future. On the other hand in 1913 the National Council, by its adoption at Kansas City of a new constitution which made it truly representative of the Congrega¬ tional churches of the United States and gave it a continuous existence, assumed a definite responsibility for all the denominational tasks. It appointed a permanent Commission on Missions which during the years ensuing has drawn the seven national societies into a direct responsibility to the churches through the Council, has arranged a realignment of tasks that gives each society a well defined responsibility, draws them into natural affiliations and promotes efficiency and economy of management, and has endorsed an Apportionment Plan, developed out of twenty years of experimenting, which distributes as evenly as possible the cost of mis¬ sions among all the churches. Experience will doubtless indicate other wholesome adjustments, but the Congregational churches of North America will now be able to work them out without friction or unnecessary delay. Thus has been reached by a genuinely Congregational procedure, covering half a century or so, a missionary administration promising a rich fruitage in the future. Characteristic of the decade has been a rapid change in stress from the individual to his environment. Our mission enterprise is thinking socially of the new community and of the new nation as well as of the new indi¬ vidual. This has accompanied and been encouraged by the steady growth in democratic sentiment around the world because of the recent war. Equally characteristic has been the rapid growth of the demand for schools of vocational training, industrial and social alike, not merely among unde¬ veloped peoples but everywhere. The Great War of 1914-18 affected seriously missionary work in all the world. It forced large unproductive expenditures upon the American Board and upon our home societies. It caused many readjustments of 34 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM work. On the whole, however, it has opened the way to an energetic extension work in the third decade of this century. The American Board began the decade by passing the million dollar mark in annual receipts and by commissioning seventy-three missionaries, the greatest number in any one year. Its centenary was impressively celebrated at Boston, Andover and Bradford, a stirring expression of the affectionate devotion of the Pilgrim churches to their world-wide task. In 1911 the wife and son of the late D. Willis James, a life-long friend of missions, gave $1,000,000 as a permanent fund to be expended in the promotion of higher education on our mission fields. In 1913 the Board sent a deputation, headed by its president, Dr. Capen, to attend the cen¬ tenary of the Marathi mission, the first to b,e organized under its auspices. From that journey he did not return, but his thirteen years of zealous service during the decade of transition will ever be memorable among forward-looking Congregationalists. The war with its readjustments of influence let loose a fiendish attack upon unhappy Armenia, which pros¬ trated but could not destroy our missionary service. On the contrary so generally have the missionaries been used in relief operations that a new field of influence and service has opened to them among those hitherto inaccessible. During the same period a deputation went to India, and another visited Japan. Grinnell College with the consent of the Board set on foot the Grinnell-in-China educational program, which gives to the students and alumni of that college a definite task of educational de¬ velopment in North Shantung. Other colleges have since followed the lead of Oberlin, Yale and Grinnell, but not as yet with a similar breadth of plan. In 1918 the first missionary to Africa representing our colored Congregational churches was commissioned for service in the West Central Africa mission. The “Forward Movement” among the Canadian Con¬ gregational churches, just completed, has raised $75,000 for the equipment of Currie Institute at Dondi. The Canadian staff has been doubled in two years and plans to take charge of three stations. In home missions the decade has been one of great progress. The “ heroic Christian surgery ” of the Commission on Missions of the National Council resulted in much readjustment of home responsibilities, but also in a condition of excellent healthfulness. In 1911-13 a survey of the neg¬ lected fields in the United States was carried through by a group of de¬ nominations, materially forwarding denominational comity on the active frontiers. During those same years a number of State Associations be¬ came incorporated Conferences, assuming steadily larger responsibilities for meeting their own missionary needs. The American Missionary Association in 1916 transferred its white church work in the South to other organizations and took over the mission work of the Education Society for Spanish-speaking people in the South¬ west and Florida. In that same year the veteran missionary, Rev. Alfred L. Riggs, passed away after thirty-four years of powerful service among the Sioux Indians. In 1917 Dr. Ryder, whose great heart beat for all de¬ pendent races, ended his thirty-two years of continuous service to the Association. The Sunday School Society began the decade by adopting the Pilgrim Standards. These as revised in 1917 have worked wonders in raising the efficiency of our Sunday Schools everywhere. In 1916 the religious educa¬ tion work of the Sunday School Society was given to the Education So¬ ciety; the field work was transferred to the newly organized Sunday-school Extension Society, which is one of the Church Extension Boards. Two new departments were added by the Education Society, a department of Student Religious Life and one of Social Service, the latter taken over from the National Council. In 1918 an annual Every Member Canvass of the Churches was instituted in the effort to rise to the heights of the Tercentenary appeal. MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 35 In 1917 the Board of Ministerial Relief reported to the National Council a well-conceived plan for an annuity system which would greatly increase the benefits of the Fund. This report was enthusiastically adopted by the Council. The Pilgrim Memorial Fund is the generous contribution of the denomination to assure the efficient and lasting execution of this project. The decade has closed with a munificent gift, the full value of which is as yet unknown, the Charles M. Hall bequest to Oberlin, to the American Missionary Association, to Berea and to educational missions in the Orient, which will greatly contribute to missionary extension. Simultaneously has developed our own Tercentenary Movement with its fivefold pro¬ gram and the pan-denominational Interchurch World Movement with its comprehensive survey of world conditions and its astonishing develop¬ ment of missionary giving. In 1920 there appeared also the conclusions regarding the Missionary Outlook in the Light of the War prepared by the Federal Council’s Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook, a symposium of the highest practical value. In April at Honolulu was celebrated by suitable pageantry and addresses the centennial of the Hawaiian Mission of the American Board. The concluding year of the second decade of this century thus finds the Congregational churches of North America singularly well organized for the task before them. Their 800,000 members are directly related to their missionary responsibilities. They may review a hundred years and more of rich, instructive, stirring experience; they are now a working unity; they control the policies of the seven societies which are the channels of their generosity and faith; these societies have as many distinctive fields of effort covering all objectives without overlapping; there is a compre¬ hension of our denominational task and an intelligence regarding its de¬ tails quite unknown in earlier years except among the leaders. Our people stand in well-ordered relations of cooperation with the vast majority of the organizations of other communions; they look forward with the brethren of other names to a great advance movement in the years just ahead; the burden of responsibility has been laid squarely upon them as a great fellowship in service. The great question of today is, “ What next? ” XVIII The By-products of this Missionary History The impetus of a great missionary devotedness extending over genera¬ tions has given rise to many incidental achievements which are worthy of mention. Foremost among these is a growing missionary tradition. The descen¬ dants of the heroic pioneers of an earlier day are among the readiest volunteers of today. The names of Bridgman, Wilder, Peet, Riggs, Bal- lantine, Bissell, Hume, Fairbank, Gates, Chandler, Herrick, Hastings, Howland, Sanders, Hartwell, Porter, Cary and DeForest among our foreign staff, and of an impressive number of the leaders of our church life at home who are children or grandchildren of the pioneers in our home development, testify to the persistence from generation to generation of the missionary purpose, creating a sacred treasury on which without fear of depletion our churches may perpetually draw. Of equal value is a gradually attained organization of the Congregational churches as a missionary constituency. Our churches henceforth will share collectively in the task of Christianizing America and the world. Without repressing individual initiative or opportunity they have adopted a mis¬ sionary program representatively directed. To this result, recently at¬ tained, decades of organization for giving, for education and for service have contributed. In this process of organization by states, districts, 36 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM communities and churches Congregational women have tirelessly and re¬ sourcefully cooperated. Meanwhile on the foreign mission field an educational program has de¬ veloped which fairly rivals in scope and significance the educational service at home which Congregationalists regard as indispensable and for which they make generous provision. A chain of institutions for all types of education stretches from the Levant through British India and the Far East to the Philippines and South Africa, sharing with the union universi¬ ties and theological schools of China and India and Mexico in the inspiring tasks of creating an intelligent Christian constituency and of providing it with a trained, indigenous leadership for the future. Through its great missionary societies Congregationalism has been influential in guiding the formulation of mission policies at home and abroad. In foreign mission interests this influence was due in part to a priority of organization with its accompanying prestige and leadership during the first half of the nineteenth century; but even more has it been due to the splendid capacity of the administrative group brought together by the meetings of the Prudential Committee. The American Board was a pioneer in field organization; it commissioned the first missionary whose task was to be distinctively medical; it was the first society to occupy North China; it was one of the earliest to promote the idea of an independent, self- propagating native church in each mission area. In a parallel way Con¬ gregationalism can claim to have contributed through its home societies to the growth of a sane, brotherly, nation-wide policy in meeting the needs of the United States. In the half century since the Civil War our home administrators and their advisory committees by their fairness and friendli¬ ness have led the way to that definite cooperation between different com¬ munions in dealing with matters of national and local need which is becom¬ ing an accepted policy. The execution of a wide-ranging missionary program has developed many outstanding personalities , who have led the way in many types of achievement. We have contributed our full share of explorers with pioneering capacity, of great evangelists, of administrators, of language makers, of translators, of missionary educators and physicians, of states¬ men who were truly makers of a people, of historians, scholars and investi¬ gators of every type. Such men are still at the forefront of our great enter¬ prises. Through them we have been able to solve the perplexities of the last two decades with the efficiency and certainty of our historic past. To these impressive by-products of Congregational advance may be added the promotion of cooperative Christian enterprises. Congregationalists were foremost in the work of the Christian Commission of the Civil War, and have always reacted promptly to legitimate appeals for aid from with¬ out in times of famine or destitution by organizing a nation-wide response. The denomination has always generously supported enterprises naturally cooperative in character, such as the Bible, Tract, Temperance, or Sea¬ man’s Friend Societies and the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Chris¬ tian Associations. In truth the Year-Book for 1918 reports that the gifts of our churches during the previous year to undenominational interests were only a little less than the grand total of gifts to our eight standard denominational societies. Whether wise or not, this generosity is an index of the favor with which Congregationalists look upon friendly schemes of federation and of the readiness with which they share in the support and management of movements looking toward the minimizing of denomina¬ tional advantage and the extension of cooperative enterprises. The combined attack of the whole American Church, Protestant and Catholic alike, upon the problems raised by the late war was exactly in line with Congregational desire. Its members did their full share, and more, in sup¬ porting the War Work Council and the Red Cross, and in carrying to the front our flag, where not a few of them won the croix de guerre. MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 37 XIX The Allotted Responsibilities of Congregationalism Notwithstanding the readiness of Congregational forces to enter into cooperative enterprises there are well defined responsibilities in the line of Christian aggression which must be assumed by distinct denominations as convenient units of energy, zeal and reserve power. The Congrega- tionalists of North America and the churches affiliated with them have been allotted certain tasks, the development of which rests upon them. In general the American Congregational churches have accepted re¬ sponsibility for the evangelization of about one-tenth of the unevangelized world. The greater part of the vast island of Mindanao in the Philip¬ pines, second in size in the archipelago, a territory in Mexico as large as the northeastern United States from Maine to Virginia, Albania in the Balkans, the Turkish and Armenian speaking portions of Asiatic Turkey and choice sections of China, India, Africa, Alaska and Porto Rico are dependent for their Christian development upon the loyalty and devoted¬ ness of our churches. In these countries our Congregational representa¬ tives have undertaken and must carry to completion important tasks of educational, social and religious development. Each country is in need of the program of Christian service which has wrought such miracles in past decades on every mission area. There is a parallel duty of real importance. In the new Czecho-Slovakia, in Japan, India, China and the Hawaiian Islands indigenous Protestant churches are organized to assume various degrees of a real and growing responsibility for their own life and growth. Our part for years to come will be the hearty giving of aid and counsel to such church groups in their worthy tasks, seeking their strength, not our own. By such helpfulness we shall continue the generous sympathies of our fathers without repeating their errors. XX The Missionary Policy of Congregationalism This survey of the three hundred years of Congregational growth has developed a sane, forward-looking, efficient policy which may be stated as follows: Congregationalism does not recognize itself as provincial under any cir¬ cumstances. While it has always been generous to the verge of prodigality to undenominational enterprises, Congregationalism has gradually dis¬ covered its own values. No keen and honest observer of today will de¬ clare that its usefulness is limited to certain areas or colors or social classes. It has a message everywhere for those of any social scale who like inde¬ pendence and will assume responsibility. It holds to a broad comprehensive, progressive and social gospel at home and abroad. There is abundant room in Congregationalism for freedom of thought and of speech; it favors the historical viewpoint which recognizes the element of good in history; it has repeatedly refused to be bound by the theological formulas of the past, although believing in their essential truth. It does not impose either upon its missionaries or upon the churches which they organize a rigid creed or form of service. It seeks to develop the social implications of the gospel, and through many of its trusted lead¬ ers is aiding to establish the applications of the principles of Jesus to social situations. Congregationalists have been ready in their support of social movements which, though not avowedly Christian, were Christlike in spirit and action. It believes in high standards of service and in trained leadership. The Pilgrim leaders were not prompter in founding Harvard College than were 38 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM our Congregational leaders in the “ newest West ” in taking steps for institutions of higher learning, or Joseph Neesima in pleading for the Doshisha, or General Armstrong in setting up a Hampton. The whole splendid series of colleges and academies which have thrown a luster on Congregational ideals were founded for the sake of producing an adequate, cultured Christian leadership. A great task still awaits our churches of making good this history by developing it to the end. That end will not have been reached until every strategic institution in which we have a historic interest in equipped for first-rate service. It accepts cooperative responsibility with evangelical believers of all shades of opinion. Congregationalists believe in the Church Universal. They are ready to go as far toward organic church unity as is consistent with local autonomy and free individualism. They believe in doing much of the missionary work of the world cooperatively, notably the work of higher education, of medical service and of social uplift in areas occupied by more than one Christian communion. It believes in the promotion to the utmost of the independence and self- direction of the churches which it has helped into life. From the days of Dr. Anderson Congregationalists have been prominent in the development of this policy. To that end the denomination has spent great sums for the training of national leaders in missionary areas and then has let them lead. Not only in Japan and in the Turkish Empire, but more recently in China, India and South Africa this policy has borne fruit. It has granted also a reasonable autonomy to each mission group on the foreign field. Very early in the history of the American Board, it consti¬ tuted its missions as communities. As soon as there were three male members in a mission, it was expected to organize with stated meetings and exact records. The mission thus organized has gradually been ac¬ corded ample self-directing powers, subject, of course, to the revision and counsel of the Prudential Committee. It has encouraged individual initiative and responsibility. On the whole Congregationalism has trusted its own agents and products. It has picked its representatives with care and then given them relative freedom; it has founded its institutions and rejoiced over their attainment of inde¬ pendence; it has exercised no such superintendence over its own agents as to develop an ecclesiastical machine. Such a policy leads to loss as well as profit; but on the whole we may regard it as justified by its outcome. It believes in a true Christian unity. Congregationalists fellowship with all sincere Protestant Christians and stand ready to enter into the closest practicable relations with them, refraining from pushing into fields already sufficiently churched and welcoming the reduction of churches in many communities through a mutual exchange of fields. Organic unity it may debate; cooperative unity it supports unhesitatingly. XXI The Future Missionary Program of North American Congregationalism It is idle for any organism to project itself for a generation, but a fore¬ cast for the third decade of this century may be less daring and more excusable. The missionary program of the next ten years should be a united Society program in the sense that every one of our recognized organizations will be one member of a well-organized team, each having its definite responsibility and doing its share of the work. Our National Council through its Commission on Missions may be held responsible for the adop- MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 39 tion of a well considered policy for each and all, and through its voting control it has now become able to insure a related program without con¬ flict, jealousies or lost motion. It will be more and more a whole church program. During the last half century the women of the churches and the young people have been gradu¬ ally finding their place in the missionary program and contributing def¬ initely and wisely to its efficiency. It may be time to raise the question whether the splendid enthusiasm and ripened judgment of the women and the broadening range of the tasks allotted to juniors may be more effec¬ tively utilized in the execution of a program for the whole church, without sacrificing the initiative, efficiency or responsibility of natural groupings of workers. It will be a program addressed to an educated and wisely organized church. Congregationalism should promote the education of its whole constituency on missionary matters. The Student Volunteer Movement was the pioneer, about 1894, in developing a literature of missionary education in this country, but its output was for students and had little effect upon the churches. Two Congregationalists in 1900, Miss Abbie Child and Dr. Harlan P. Beach, began to formulate a workable plan for increasing the intelligence of the churches regarding missions. This scheme since 1902 has occasioned volume after volume of missionary literature, studied by rapidly increasing numbers. The progress of educational science has gradually led the churches of America to adopt a classification for all purposes of instruction that recog¬ nizes natural intellectual grades and groupings, each lending itself to a suitable type of instruction, anticipating certain definite impressions and resulting in specific tasks. Our churches are fortunate in the scientific leadership along these lines for which the Education Society is equipped. It will call for a vigorous policy of recruiting for Christian service. No graver problem faces Congregationalism than the maintenance of the Pil¬ grim tradition which consecrated the choicest son of a family to Christian leadership. Its solution will not be reached merely by furnishing our Christian colleges with adequate endowments. It involves the standardiz¬ ing of the departments of Biblical Literature and of Religious Education in our colleges and their first-rate equipment and the encouragement at each institution of some provision for the sane interpretation of religion. A true solution, however, goes back into the secondary schools and, even farther, to our Christian pulpits and homes. More aggressive leadership and organized attention must be given to the enlistment of the finest young men and women of our churches and schools for lives of service. This administrative advance should be supported by the organization by our Boards of candidate departments to give continuous, individual attention to the task of recruiting and training candidates for appointment. Our choice young people are not unready to respond to a summons to service. They must, however, be hand-picked. It will involve the intelligent promotion of a wise scheme of missionary preparation and training for these recruits. Good missionaries require arduous and extended preparation. Congregationalism has been foremost in furnishing the institutions required for their adequate preparation at home and in supporting those required for their further training on mission areas. Their wise promotion will be a prominent feature of the missionary statesmanship of the immediate future. It will be sympathetic with the progress on the field of plans for mission devolution. During the next ten years there must be a very marked ad¬ vance in the transfer of authority from our missions to the churches in certain mission areas with an accompanying assumption on their part of self-support and of responsibility for the evangelizing of their respective 40 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM areas. American Congregationalists have looked with approval upon the formation of “ United Churches ” in India, China and elsewhere. It will develop and then trust a broadly conceived , indigenous leadership for these areas. In several areas Christians of the third generation are becom¬ ing available for responsible tasks with a heritage of Christian culture which should qualify them for real leadership. Such promising youth must be enabled by scholarship, fellowship or loans to secure a first-rate training. Generally they belong to families whose revenues are meager, the pastors and teachers of the mission area. The completion of the $2,000,000 fund for higher education on the mission field, already more than half paid in, will enable the Board to go forward with this important task. The leaders needed will not be pastors only, but competent literary, professional and social workers of every type. It will contribute heartily toward the current movements in the direction of a greater unification of missionary activity. There is no longer any disposi¬ tion to question the wisdom of union institutions on the foreign field for higher education, for medical service and for various forms of social service much approved. How far the administrative functions of securing and training recruits, of securing funds and of educating the churches may be advantageously performed in a similar manner is a matter of discussion and experiment today. Congregationalists have “ played the game ” in comity matters throughout their history. Apparently the world is just on the threshold of a great interdenominational advance. It will include a more adequate effort to reach the representative classes of each occupied area. Our missions have won their place, their prestige and their influence quite generally, as in India, by what they have done for depressed and lower classes. Christianity has a message, however, for the strong, the self-reliant and the influential, no less than for the weak. The approach to the cultured classes and their Christianization must be a real feature of the next decade without at all diminishing our sympathy or our program of helpfulness for those who need an uplift. It will face bravely , frankly and in friendly fashion the social conditions of the day at home and on the foreign field. Our home churches face this task and are organizing under the leadership of the Education Society and the National Council’s Commission on Social Service and in cooperation with the Federal Council and the Interchurch Movement to meet it adequately. The whole problem is one of the Christianization of society. Hence the need of emphasizing the broadest training for Christian leadership. Even more essential is it that our Christian program in foreign fields should include a constant contact with the social interests of the day. There is danger that a mission church, like many at home, will settle down to the mere cultivation of its own life, the maintenance of its services and the pressing of its religious program without aiming to impress very def¬ initely the teeming life which surrounds it. Since the non-Christian faiths make so little contribution through their temples and services to the social welfare of their communities, it is all the more incumbent upon Christian¬ ity to show how it deals with every phase of human need. No reform movement in India or elsewhere should make a deeper appeal to the sacrifi¬ cial spirit of the race than does aggressive Christianity. It will share with sister denominations in furnishing a real ministry for the newly formed communities of the nation, for the growing cities with their manifold problems and for those who have come from foreign shores to the United States and are yet unassimilated, also for the weak yet strategically important churches of the rural communities. This is an urgent national task. Connecticut and Massachusetts, the generous foster-parents of every missionary advance since 1793, contributors of millions to home missionary work alone, require today one-third of the MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 41 workers of the Home Missionary Society for the maintenance of their Pil¬ grim integrity. Congregationalists have happily promoted relations of federation and comity with other communions and will do all in their power to further such relationships in the years to come. It will set its face against race antagonisms and unbrotherliness, helping all depressed races to self-reliance, patriotism, literacy and serviceableness, training the needed leaders. This great task will, as in the past, be pushed chiefly through the American Missionary Association. It will provide generously, as a part of its missionary program, not only for the current efficiency but for the old age of those whose lives are spent in mis¬ sionary service. The Pilgrim Memorial Fund and the other funds will not be considered as a means of granting a dole to destitute ministers, but of making a deserved recognition of faithful and heroic service. Nor is that service, at home or abroad, to be one of heart-breaking penury. Congrega¬ tionalism proposes to enable its representatives to do their work with zeal, efficiency and repute. It will, with the zeal and persistence of early years, promote nation-wide efforts for evangelization, for social rehabilitation and denominational effi¬ ciency. These years have shown that freedom of thinking, speech and action are wholly consistent with corporate unity, so long as that remains representative. In our mission work, as in political affairs, we face the future on a federated, organized basis. Vitalized by the religious motive and by a spirit of real fraternalism, Congregationalism will be able to do its full share for the world. It will seek to support all types of missionary work with a liberality that expresses the conviction that the church which is interested only in its local needs is dead already. XXII In Conclusion Facing the new decade of opportunity with all this unity and variety of organized life, what Congregationalism most needs is a fresh spiritual empowering on Boards, churches, pastors, teachers, laity and missionaries alike. It was that power which quickened the first great mission enterprise, when a hundred men “ who had trod the banks of the Cam with John Milton and Jeremy Taylor ” came across the sea to make a Christian country with Christian institutions. Only the lessening of that zeal can account for the indifference and the occasional hostility among our church members to the missionary enterprise. Congregationalism more than most of our sister communions requires an incessant propelling force. We must rely upon a constant renewal of the factors which during these three centuries have shown us the way ahead. The real secret of Congregational efficiency has been its leadership. Other denominations may go far by thorough organization and able supervi¬ sion. These factors will never assure the best that is in Congregationalism. They have great value, but we are not dependent upon them. Leaders, who embody our ideals, are indispensable. With them in sight we can mold our history as it comes, preserving both our cherished liberty and our efficiency. The story of the Pilgrims and their successors is a trumpet-call to further service as high and heroic in its character as any already recorded. The heart beats faster and the blood runs warmer as we think through the thrilling record of these three centuries. The vision of the fathers abides to challenge their children of to-day. 42 MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM APPENDIX The Commission desires to remind our churches of a few of the books relating to the theme of this report with which all Congregationalists should be acquainted. I Congregational Missionary Biography 1 Barrows, J. O. In the Land of Ararat; a Sketch of the Life of Mrs. Elizabeth F. B. Ussher. New York, Revell, 1917. 2 Bingham, Hiram. Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands. 3d edition, New York, S. Converse, 1849. 3 Chandler, J. S. Seventy-five Years in the Madura Mission. Madras, Mumford, 1912. 4 Davis, J. Merle. Davis, Soldier Missionary. Boston, Pilgrim Press, 1916. 5 . De Forest, Charlotte B. The Evolution of a Missionary. (A bi¬ ography of Dr. J. H. De Forest.) New York, Revell, 1914. 6 Greene, Joseph K. Leavening the Levant. Boston, Pilgrim Press, 1916. 7 Gulick, Elizabeth P. Alice Gordon Gulick; Her Life and Work in Spain. New York, Revell, 1917. 8 Gulick, O. H. The Pilgrims of Hawaii. New York, Revell, 1918. 9 Hamlin, Cyrus. My Life and Times. Boston, Pilgrim Press, 1893. 10 Hubbard, Ethel. Eliza Agnew, the Mother of a Thousand Daughters. (Jubilee Series.) Boston, Woman’s Board, 1917. 11 Miner, Luella. China's Book of Martyrs. Phila., Westminster Press, 1903. 12 Prime, E. D. G. Forty Years in the Turkish Empire: Memoirs of Rev. William Goodell. 8th edition, Boston, American Board, 1891. 13 Riggs, Stephen R. Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux. Boston, Pilgrim Press, 2d edition, 1887. 14 Seabury, Joseph B. The Vision of a Short Life. (A memorial of Warren Seabury.) Cambridge, 1909. 15 Speer, Robert E. Memorial of Horace Tracy Pitkin. New York, Revell, 1903. 16 Talbot, Edith Armstrong. Samuel Chapman Armstrong. New York, Doubleday Page & Co., 1904. 17 Ussher, C. D., and Knapp, Grace H. An American Physician in Turkey. Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1917. 18 White, George E. Charles Chapin Tracy: Missionary, Philanthro¬ pist, Educator. Boston, Pilgrim Press, 1918. 19 Williams, F. W. Life and Letters of Samuel Wells Williams, Mis¬ sionary, Diplomatist, Sinologue. New York, Putnam, 1889. 20 Wright, H. B. A Life with a Purpose; a Memorial of John L. Thurs¬ ton. New York, Revell, 1908. MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM 43 II The Books on Our Missionary History Which Every CONGREGATIONALIST SHOULD KNOW 1 Allen, A. V. G. Jonathan Edwards. Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1890. A judicious, compact and valuable estimate of this great leader. 2 Bacon, L. W. The Congregationalists. New York, Baker, 1904. A brief historical interpretation of the Congregational order, omitting details. 3 Dunning, A. E. Congregationalists in America. New York, Hill, 1894. Boston, Pilgrim Press, n. d. An ample, detailed, historical account of our development as a denomination. Very clear. 4 Walker, Williston. A History of the Congregational Churches in the United States. New York, Scribner, 1894. A history which emphasizes the organic side of the denominational growth. 5 Strong, W. E. The Story of the American Board. Boston, Pilgrim Press, 1910. An invaluable, interpretative summary of the first century of foreign missions. 6 Beard, A. F. A Crusade of Brotherhood. Boston, Pilgrim Press, 1909. A readable yet compelling interpretation of the significant data of American Mis¬ sionary Association history. 7 Clark, Joseph B. Leavening the Nation. New York, Baker & Taylor Co., 1903. A fascinating story of the way in which the churches kept pace with the growth of the nation. 8 Ewing, William. The Sunday School Century. Boston, Pilgrim Press, 1918. The story of our denominational response to the needs of our youth as a part of Sunday-school progress in America. 9 Sherwood, J. M. Memoirs of Rev. David Brainerd. New York, Funk & Wagnalls, 1884. A serviceable and inexpensive edition of those quickening autobiographical de¬ tails based upon the authoritative edition in 1822, by Dwight, of Edwards’ earlier work of 1749, with valuable added material. 10 Creegan, Charles C. Pioneer Missionaries of the Church. New York, The American Tract Society, 1903. A group of brief but stirring sketches of twenty-six missionaries, eleven of them from American Congregationalism, three representing British Congregationalism. 11” Richards, Thomas C. Samuel J. Mills , Missionary Pathfinder , Pioneer and Promoter. Boston, Pilgrim Press, 1906. A finely told story of this remarkable life. 12 Hood, E. Lyman. The New West Education Commission , 1880-1893. Jacksonville, Fla., H. W. B. Drew Co., 1905. A monograph on a unique chapter in the history of American Congregationalism. 13 Thompson, A. C. Protestant Missions: their Rise and Early Progress. New York, Scribner, 1894. 14 Douglass, H. Paul. Christian Reconstruction in the South. Boston, Pilgrim Press, 1919. 15 Jenkins, Frank E. Anglo-Saxon Congregationalism in the South. Franklin Turner Co., Atlanta, 1908. 44 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 N MISSIONARY HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM • Love, W. De Loss. Samson Occum and the Christian Indians of North America. Boston, Pilgrim Press, 1900. A careful study of the history of the evangelization of the Indian tribes. Ellis, George E. The Red Man and the White Man in North America. Boston, Little, Brown & Co., 1882. A clear account of the religious work among the Indians. Moore, Edward C. The Spread of Christianity in the Modern World. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1919. A survey of the modern missionary movement against the background of history. Dyer, Edward O. Gnadensee, the Lake of Grace. Boston, Pilgrim Press, 1903. The story of the Moravian Indian mission so intimately connected with Congrega¬ tional history. Capen, Edward W. The Significance of the Haystack Centennial. Article in Bibliotheca Sacra, October, 1906. A close study of the details of this important episode. Anderson, Rufus. History of the Missions of the American Board in India (1874), to Oriental Churches (1872), and to the Sandwich Islands (1870). Boston, Congregational Publishing Society. Three volumes by one of our great missionary statesmen. Laurie, T. The Ely Volume. Boston, American Board, 1881. The record of the contributions of foreign missions to science and human well-being. Clark, J. S. An Historical Sketch of the Congregational Churches in Massachusetts, 1670-1858. Boston, Congregational Board of Publication, 1858. Clark, George L. A History of Connecticut. New York, Putnam, 1914. A history which sets forth Connecticut’s great share in missionary progress. Dyer, Frances J. Looking Backward over Fifty Years. An His¬ torical Sketch of the Woman's Board of Missions. Published in Life and Light, October, 1917. Walker, Williston. Ten New England Leaders. Boston, Silver, Burdett & Co., 1901. Typical Congregationalists, including Bradford, Eliot, Woods and Bacon. Faris, John T. Winning the Oregon Country. New York, Missionary Education Movement, 1911. The story of Whitman, Spalding and Jason Lee. It takes a wider range than Dr. Eells in Marcus Whitman, Pathfinder and Patriot. Hill, James L. The Immortal Seven. American Baptist Publication Society, 1913. The story of Adoniram Judson and his associates. Thompson, Charles L. The Religious Foundations of America. New York, ’ Revell, 1917. An attempt to trace to their European sources the principles which are at the basis of our national life. Two fine chapters discuss the Pilgrim and Puritan contribution. Steiner, Edward O. The Trail of the Immigrant. New York, Revell, 1906. A picture of the conditions which we must help to meet.