Three Hundred ^ars of the Episcopal Church in America \/ intl)fCttpof3lmjlark THE LIBRARIES Bequest of Frederic Bancroft 1860-1945 ^^^^--^-^^I^^ '/^^^^^^^^ // fd ^^^^-^^^-^ ( Three Hundred Years of the Episcopal Church in America By GEORGE HODGES Dean of the Episcopal Theological School Cambridge. Masaachusetts « Published for the Missionary Thank Offering Committee By GEORGE W. JACOBS 6f CO. Philadelphia A 93/, 7 3 Copyright, 1 906 By George W. Jacobs & Company Published November ^ igo6 ^/^'-/L/OJ^ iff CO Three Hundred Years of the Episcopal Church in America Contents (NTRODUCTION . . . .11 I. THE PARISH OF JAMESTOWN . 1 5 The Settlement . . . • 17 The Virginia Company , , • 17 The Expedition , . , .18 The Landing . . , .20 The Beginning of the Services . 21 Under the Presidents: to 16 10 , 23 The Hostility of the Indians . . 24 Captain John Smith . , • ^S The Inexperience of the Settlers , 26 Chaplain Hunt . . . ,29 The Starving Time . . • 30 Under the Governors: to 1624 . 31 Deliverance of Delaware . ' 3^ Chaplain Buck . . , '33 Gates and Dale . . , '34 The Harvest of Tobacco . '35 The First Representative Assembly . 38 The First Massacre . . .40 The College , , . ,41 5 Contents II. IN THE COLONIES . , . 44 Disability and Unpopularity . . 45 No Bishops . . . . '45 Puritan Majority . . . '49 The Commissaries: 17TH Century . 52 Virginia and Maryland . , > S^ Blair and Bray . . . '53 College of William and Mary . 54 The Venerable Society . '55 The Carolinas . . . • 56 New England . . . - S7 Pennsylvania . . . .60 New York 61 The Missionaries : i 8th Century . 63 New Churches . . . '63 The *' Dark Day " at Yale . . 65 Dean Berkeley . . . -67 Wesley and Whitcfield . . .69 III. IN THE UNITED STATES . 74 Construction: to 181 2 . . . 75 The Church in the Revolution . 75 The New Leaders . . . '78 Smith . . . o . • 78 Seabury . . . . '79 Scotch Consecration . .81 Scotch Communion Office . 82 White . . . o . . 84 6 Contents First General Convention (1785) . 86 Preliminary Steps , 86 Church in New England , 89 Constitution , 90 Prayer-Book • 91 Plan for Episcopate , 92 Consecration of White and Provoos t . 94. Second General Convention (1789 ). 95 State and Nation ' 95 Loss of King's Chapel . 98 Loss of the Methodist Societies . 100 A Period of Depression . , 102 Contention ; to i 860 . 103 The War of 1812 . , 104 The New Bishops . . 104 Hobart and Griswold . . 105 Raven scroft and Moore . 106 The Comprehensive Church . . 107 The Evangelical Movement . no The Ecclesiastical Movement . . 115 The Two Seminaries . 117 Domestic Missions . 121 Chase and Otey ' 123 The Convention of 1835 . 127 Kemper . 127 The Memorial . , . . 130 Muhlenberg and Potter » . 132 Accession: to 1907 . « 134 Contents The Civil War . Mcllvaine and Polk The General Conventions of 1862 and 1865 . The Discussion of the Sacraments Baptism (regeneration) Holy Communion (ritual) Revision of Prayer-Book and Canons 140 Religion and Science . , ,141 Religion and Society . . • H4 The New Churchmanship o * "^^7 The Present Day . , , • H9 134 135 137 138 138 139 8 List of Illustrations Ruins at Jamestown . . Frontispiece The Right Rev. Samuel Sea- bur v, D.D. . . . Facing page 22 The Right Rev. William White, D. D. . . " " 34 The Right Rev. Alexander Griswold, D. D. . . " "46 The Right Rev. John Henry Hobart, D. D. . . " " 56 The Right Rev. Richard Channing Moore, D. D. " " 70 The Right Rev. John Stark Ravenscroft, D. D. . " " 82 The Right Rev. James H. Otey, D. D., LL. D. . " " 96 The Right Rev. Philander Chase, D. D. . . " " 108 The Right Rev. Jackson Kem- per, D. D. . . . ** " 122 The Rev. James De Koven, D, D. . . . " «< 136 The Right Rev. Phillips Brooks, D. D. . . " <« 148 9 Defects in "Three Hundred Years- j of the Episcopal Church in America." To the Editor of The Churchman: Having seen the book recently pub- lished by the Missionary Thank-offering Committee, written by the Rev. George Hodges, Dean of the Episcopal Theologi- cal School, Cambridge, Mass., entitled, "Three Hundred Years of the Episcopal Church in America," I am so deeply im- pressed with certain omissions that I am constrained to call attention to some of them. While the writer of the book recog- nizes the strength of numbers and loyal devotion of the Churchmen in the period of the early days of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (1701) in Mary- land and Virginia (see page 56), wherein, in speaking of the visitation of George- Keith and John Talbot, he says in the Colonies they found "fifty Clergymen of the Church of England, of whom seven- teen were in Maryland and twenty-five were in Virginia; of the others, three were in the Carolinas, two in Pennsylvania, two* in New England, one in New York. Out- side of Virginia and Maryland there were four church buildings." And again (on page 63) in speaking of the ministrations of the S. P. G., he says: "In Maryland and Virginia there was but little need of their services. The Society sent only seven missionaries into these- parts. But in the other colonies for sev- enty-five years the Society was the main- stay. During that time it supported' wholly or in part 300 clergymen." And again (page 89) : "On that date,. then, in Christ's church, Philadelphia, the first General Convention met. It was com- posed largely of deputies from Virginia and Maryland; of the sixteen clergymen ten, and of the twenty-four laymen four- INTRODUCTION The Christian religion came to this country in two forms, one of which may conveniently be called Latin, and the other English. Latin Chi^istianity came first. It was preached in Mexico, and in the South and West, by missionaries fi'om Spain. It was preached in Canada, and in the North and middle West, by mission- aries from France. These missions were planted by men who never since have been surpassed in courage, self-sacrifice, and enthusiastic devotion ; and who have never been equaled in their understand- ing of Indian character and in their suc- cess in making Indian converts. This form of Christianity was bound up with the fortunes of the two nations which brought it to these shores. They had neither the purpose nor the method 11 Introduction which is necessary to a permanent settle- ment. Their purpose was to act as mid- dlemen in the barter of fui's and of gold between the savages of these forests and the citizens of Europe. Their method was to establish at every station a market and a fort. Thus the missionary had as his comj)anions the trader and the soldier. But trade and war, under colonial condi- tions, tend to prevent men from establish- ing themselves permanently in the land in which they live. The soldier gets his orders and his pay from over the sea, and the trader looks forward to the time when he may spend his gains and the rest of his days in his own country. Neither the market nor the fort was rooted in the soil. Accordingly, in the inevitable conten- tion for the mastery of this continent, the Latin colonists were at a disadvantage. They had money and arms and Indian allies, but they were opposed by men who were fighting for their homes. The 12 Introduction Freuchmen aud Spaniards were Freucli- inen aud Spaniards still, but the Eug- lislimen were already Americaus. After their defeat, the traders aud the soldiers retired, for the most part, to their own land, and the missionaries went with them. From that time, Latin Christi- anity entered but slightly into our na- tional life until it was brought back, within the memory of men still living, by immigrants who transferred to this country both their possessions and their allegiance. With this chapter in our re- ligious history I am not now concerned. English Christianity has existed here for now these three centuries in two forms, distinguished by differences in discipline and worship. On one side are those who retain from the long past the rule of bishops aud the use of a book of prayer. On the other side are those who for vari- ous reasons have, for the time being, dis- continued these ancient customs. The historic chui'ch came first, episcopal and 13 Introduction liturgical, and began the English Chris- tianity and the English civilization of this continent together, in 1607, at James- town. The non-episcopal and non-litur- gical brethren followed, in 1620, at Ply- mouth. I purpose, so far as is possible within the limits of this essay, to tell the story of the Episcopal Church, first in its initial experiences at Jamestown, then in the colonies, then in the United States. It is a record of varied fortunes, of oppor- tunities missed and of opportunities made fruitful, of contention within and preju- dice without, of the statesmanship of bishops and the heroism of missionaries and the patience and faith of the people, of failures followed by great successes. To-day, by the grace of God, the Episco- pal Church, for the first time, has a fair field, unhampered by political alliances, and unhindered by religious misunder- standing. 14 THE PAEISH OF JAMESTOWN The first prayers prayed in English on this continent were in Prayer-book words. They preceded the beginnings of coloni- zation. The defeat of the Armada in 1588 made English settlements possible in America. Twice, immediately before that, English ships had anchored by these shores, and their chaplains had conducted the service of the English Church. On the coast of the Pacific, Francis Fletcher, of Drake's ship, the Pelican^ had read the English prayers. A great stone cross in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, commemorates the fact. A little later, on the coast of the Atlantic, Thomas Hariot ' ' made dec- laration of the contents of the Bible" to the Indians of Eoanoke Island, and pres- ently, in 1587, the sacrament of baptism 15 The Episcopal was administered for the first time on these shores, with use of the English language. Manteo, the first Indian con- vert, and Virginia Dare, the first child born of English parents in America, were received into the Church. Shortly after the destruction of the Armada, two English ships in command of Martin Pring landed at Plymouth harbor, and stayed there for six weeks. Probably they had prayers : it was the universal custom. If so, the Prayer-book was used in the neighborhood of Ply- mouth Rock while William Brewster was still postmaster of Scrooby, and William Bradford was still attending the parish church of Austerfield. Presently, an ex- pedition in charge of Sir George Wey- mouth visited the coast of Maine, and set up a cross on Monhegan Island to show that Christian men had been there. On Sunday, August 9, 1607, a second expe- dition landed on the island, and the chaplain, Richard Seymour, held a serv- 16 Church in America ice at the cross. This was the first re- ligious service on the soil of New Eng- land, of which there is a definite record. But the colony was abandoned. English Christianity had already begun its vigor- ous life on this continent, on May 13th, of that year, at Jamestown. The Settlement Beginnings are so important and sig- nificant, and this particular beginning is now, after three centuries, so interesting to us, that I purpose, even in this brief history, to consider it at some length. All attempts at American colonization by individual adventurers having failed, a new start was made in 1606 by intro- ducing into the enterprise the joint- stock method. In that year, James I chartered the Virginia Company. The land thus granted extended along the Atlantic coast from Cape Fear to the Bay of Fundy. It was divided into three parts, of which the southern, from Cape Fear to the 17 The Episcopal Potomac, was assigned to a group of proprietors who from their residence in London were called the London Com- pauy. The northern portion, from Long Island Sound to the Bay of Fundy, was assigned to another group of proprietors who from their residence in and about Plymouth in Devonshire were called the Plymouth Company. The middle sec- tion was to be awarded to such colonists of either company as should first estab- lish self-supporting settlements in it. Each of these tracts extended back to the Pacific Ocean, which was thought to be one or two hundred miles distant across the country. On ^ew Year's Day, 1607, the London Company sent three ships to sea, — the Discovery^ the Godspeed and the Susan Constant. The names fitted well the as- pirations of the men who in the spirit of adventure and of religion were seeking to set up a new home in a foreign land. The commander of the fleet was Cap- 18 Church in America tain Christopher I^ewport, who had once retrieved the fortunes of Sir Walter Kaleigh by capturing a Spanish treasure- ship whose cargo was worth four million dollars. The council of the colony was composed of Bartholomew Gosnold, Ed- ward Winglield, John Smith, John Eat- cliife, John Martin, and George Kendall. Gosnold was a mariner of exi3erieuce, who in a previous voyage had named Cape Cod and Martha' s Vineyard. Wing- field' s father had had Queen Mary and Cardinal Pole for sponsors ; John Win- throf), afterward governor of Massa- chusetts, was his cousin. Smith was a soldier of fortune, who had already dis- tinguished himself in many amazing ad- ventures in various parts of the world. The chaplain was Robert Hunt, "an honest, religious, and courageous Divine" of the English Church. The expedition was a commercial en- terprise. Tt was not undertaken like the settlement of Plymouth, under the stress 19 The Episcopal of ecclesiastical conditions, nor primarily for the advancement of religion. But it was sent forth, in a religious spirit. ' ' The way to prosper and achieve good sue- cess, ' ' said the pai^er of instructions, ^ ^ is to make yourselves all of one mind for the good of your country and your own, and to serve and fear God, the giver of all goodness, for every plantation which our Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted ui3." After a long and stormy passage, the three ships entered Chesapeake Bay in the last week in April, and made their way into Hampton Eoads. The name Point Comfort testifies to their relief and joy. Sailing up the wide river which they named for King James, their patron, they disembarked on the 13th of May at a little peninsula. They called the place Jamestown, thus connecting the King's name with English Christianity in Amer- ica, as it was soon to be connected with the English Bible. The land was low, 20 Church in America and was even then fighting a losing battle with the river. But it was easily defen- sible, and this fact, in the present peril of savages and Spaniards, determined the settlement. They landed on \yednesday. On Thurs- day, they set about the erection of a fort, a three-cornered structure with a cannon at each angle. They prepared for Sun- day by hanging up an old sail, fastening it to three or four trees, to shelter them from sun and rain ; seats they made of logs ; a bar of wood between two trees served for a pulpit. This was the Sun- day after Ascension Day. The words of the Epistle, ^' The end of all things is at hand," may well have seemed to them a probable prophecy ; but they prayed, ^'We beseech Thee, Lord, leave us not comfortless," and the ascription, "That God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and do- minion forever and ever," expressed the desires of their souls. 21 The Episcopal *'This/' says Smith, in words which enable us to see that sight with the eyes of one who was himself a part of it, '' this was our church, till we built a homely thing like a barne, set upon cratchets, cov- ered with rafts, sedge and earth, so was also the walls : the best of our houses [were] of the like curiosity : but for the most part farre much worse workmanship that could neither well defend [from] wind nor raine." First the fort, for the preservation of their lives; then the Church for the salvation of their souls ; this was the order of their building. ' ' We had daily Common Prayer morning and evening,^' says Smith, ^' every Sunday two sermons, and every three months the Holy Communion, till our minister died ; but our prayers daily, with a hom- ily on Sundaies, we continued two or three years after, till more preachers came." There in the wilderness, with the river before, and the unbroken forest behind, every day began and ended with 22 The Right Rev. Samuel Seabury^ D. D. (See page 76) Church in America the Prayer-book prayers. The first Cele- bration of the Holy Coiiimuuioii was ou the 21st day of June, being the Third Sunday after Trinity. The affairs of Jamestown, under the London Company, were administered at first by Presidents who were elected by a local counciL That lasted for two years. Then there was a new charter and it was therein provided that the colony should be administered by governors, appointed directly by the comx^any itself. Finally, in 1624, the King annulled the charter, and took the control of the colony into his own hand. Thus the history of these early years is in two divisions : first, the period of the presidents, including the Starving Time of 1610 ; then, the period of the governors, including the General Massacre of 1622. Under the Presidents : to 1610 The colony suffered at once from the 23 The Episcopal hostility of the savages, and from the in- experience of the settlers. The Indians of Virginia were of the Algonquin race, like those of Xew Eng- land. But the New England colonists came into no great peril from their sav- age neighbors until King Philip's War, in 1675, after half a century of peace. The Massachusetts Indians, before the coming of the English, had been broken in spirit by defeat and depleted in num- bers by pestilence. The Virginia In- dians, on the other hand, were ready to fight ; they immediately began to dis- tress the settlers. Within the first few days, a force of two hundred of them assaulted the unfinished fort, killing one Englishman, and wounding eleven others. Thereafter, for a long time, they lurked in the long grass, wait- ing with arrows for unwary white men. From this peril the colony was saved, for some years, by the courage of Captain 24 Church in America Smith. His services at Jamestown were paralleled later, in a lesser way, by Cap- tain Staudish at Plymouth. His adven- ture with Pocohontas established a truce with the stoutest of their savage neigh- bors. The Powhatan had his headquar- ters about fifteen miles from Jamestown on the north side of the York Eiver, at what is now called Putin (i. e., Powhatan) Bay. A stone structui'e, commonly called Powhatan's chimney, marked the place until a March wind blew it down in 1888. There Pocohontas rescued Smith in a manner not uncommon among Indians, and he was formally admitted to their tribe. Even so, however, the peace was precarious and temporary. The colo- nists, ill-furnished with supplies and un- skilled in hunting and fishing, were de- pendent ui^on the Indians for food. A concerted plan was formed to starve them out. This, Smith defeated by the might of a bold face and a confident voice, appealing to a fear which was close allied to igno- 25 The Episcopal ranee. But the situation was full of danger. A more serious hindrance to the prog- ress of the colony was the inexperience of the settlers. The process of successful colonization, even after several tragic lessons, had not yet been learned by the English i)eople. The kind of men to send, and the equipment of tools and stores to send with them, had not yet been determined. Among the planters there were, indeed, four carpenters, a blacksmith, two brick-layers and twelve " labourers," together with a preacher, a surgeon, a sailor, a tailor and a barber ; but the others were mostly gentlemen volunteers and servants. By reason of the unfamiliar climate, and the malarious dampness of the camp, and the insufliciency of food, half of the colonists died between May and Septem- ber. They had the same hard experience, a few years later, who faced the rigors of Plymouth. It was the inevitable conse- 26 Church in America queuce of a lack of understanding of the art of planting colonies. The settlers had no corn and no cattle. A little wheat and barley remained from the provisions of the ship, but most of it was spoiled. Their only drink was water from the river, which at high tide was salt and at low tide was foul. ''Had we been as free from all sins as gluttony and drunk- enness," said one of the company, "we might have been canonized for saints." Thus they spent the first summer. Xext to Morning and Evening Prayer the most used service in the Prayer-book was that appointed for the burial of the dead. Captain Newport came back in January, 1608, with the "First Supply" of pro- visions and new colonists, and brought a " Second Supply " in September. This made the number about two hundred. Englishmen were still under a twofold delusion concerning America. They be- lieved that it lay upon an easy route to India, and that the way was strewn with 27 The Episcopal gold and jewels. The London Company charged Captain Newport, on pain of dismissal, to bring back either a lumj) of gold or a map of the route to the South Seas. These hopes, which were largely dispelled before the Puritan emigration, attracted adventurous spirits. Industrial conditions in England contributed an- other element to the colonial situation in Virginia. The land had not yet recov- ered from the social changes consequent upon the dissolution of the monasteries. When agriculture began to give place to sheep -raising, this turned great numbers of small farms into wide ranges of i^asture land, and left farm laborers without em- ployment. Moreover, the unj)recedented increase in the amount of available gold from the mines of Peru had caused a calamitous rise in prices, thus magnify- ing the cost of living. The idle people, victims of these various changes, offered a tremendous economic problem for which the colonies seemed to offer some solution. 28 Church in America For the good of England, numbers of these people were transported to these shores. The good of America was not especially considered. Therefore many of the settlei*s who came in Xewport's ships did but add to the difficulties and distresses of the Jamestown colony. Captain Smith came presently into control, and Chaplain Hunt was his right hand. Together they administered the settlement, the man of the Fort and the man of the Chui^ch. Wingfield, in an extant account of those days, gives us a curious glimpse of the j)lace of religion in the plantation. He is at pains to de- fend himself against an accusation that he had once asked the chaplain to omit the sermon. The Indians were about the town that day, he said, and by the time they were dispersed the sun was setting. * ' The preacher did aske me if it weare my pleasure to have a sermon : hee said hee was prepared for it. I made answere that our men were weary and hungry and 29 The Episcopal that hee did see the tynie of the dale was faiT past — and that if it pleased him, wee would spare him till some other tyme." In general, Wingfield adds, "I never failed to take such noates by wrighting out of his doctrine as my capacity could comprehend, unless some raynie day hin- dred my indeavour." Thus they spent their Sundays, the chaplain preach- ing, and the congregation of gentlemen and soldiers and laborers and servants, "wrighting out of his doctrine" accord- ing as their capacity could comprehend. The colony was an English parish, — lacking only wives and children, — in the wilds of Yii'ginia. But the chaplain died, and Captain Smith, injured by an explosion of pow- der, returned to England, and Virginia saw him no more. The next exploits of this stout churchman were in Kew Eng- land, to which country he gave that name. Then came the Starving Time. There was no efficient discipline, and the 30 Church in America stores were consumed. The Indians drove away the settlers' hogs, and killed the settlers whenever they had an oppor- tunity. Winter came, and fierce cold with it, so that men froze to death. For lack of axes, or strength to wield them, or for fear of Indians, no trees were cut in the woods, but the cabins, as death emptied them, were burned for fuel. Even the protecting x^alisade, meant for use against the savages, was used for fire against the bitter frost. It w^as too much for the faith of some. One flung his Bible into the fire crying, ^^Thereisno God in heaven V^ Under the Governoes : to 1624 Meanwhile, in England, there had been a change in the charter of the company. The administration of the presidents had passed into the administration of the governors. A great new expedition was in preparation under the first colonial governor, Lord Delaware. Delaware was 31 The Episcopal related on his mother's side to QiieeD Elizabeth. His sister's son became the first treasurer of Harvard College. Sir Thomas Gates was his lieutenant-gov- ernor. The fleet sailed with the prayers of the churches, one division starting first under Gates, the second following, some time after, under Delaware. The shij) which carried Gates, the Sea Venture^ was wrecked on the Bermudas. The others of the first expedition, the '^ Third Sup- ply," reached Jamestown in the Starving Time, to which their hungry mouths con- tributed. After perils and escapes, of which Shakespeare made use in ''The Tempest," Gates refitted his broken ships and came to Jamestown. Of five hundred settlers, only sixty were then alive. They had sm'vived distresses which have no l)arallel in the tragic history of American colonization. They were then in the last extremities of weakness. Gates had his chaj)lain with him, Mas- 32 Church in America ter Buclc. The firet act was to assemble the settlers in the church. There, led by the minister, they prayed their i)ra3^ers together. Then they took council one of another and determined to abandon the undertaking. They would forsake Vir- ginia, and make their way to Newfound- land. Accordingly, they got together their few possessions, packed their bags and boxes, said farewell to Jamestown, which had become to them a cemetery rather than a settlement, and pushed out ux)on the river to the sea. At that mo- ment, the ships of Lord Delaware came in sight. There he was, with men and pro- visions, for the rescue of the colony. Delaware knelt in prayer on the bank of the river, and they all joined in a silent thanksgiving to God for the sud- den mercy of this deliverance. Then they went to church, and Master Buck preached, and offered i)raise and prayer. Thus with acts of devotion, in the spirit of piety, and in the name of God, the 33 The Episcopal colony began to live anew. After that, they went on unfalteringly, in faith and courage, and were blessed increasingly. The colonists who had lived through the long starvation, were men of stout wills and stalwart bodies. The new arrivals were many of them artisans and mechan- ics. The church was repaired, and the daily service was resumed. Pews were made of cedar, and an altar of walnut. On Sundays the place was full of color from the wild flowers with which it was garnished, and from the scarlet cloaks of the fifty spearmen who composed the governor's body-guard. Delaware returned and first Sir Thomas Gat«s and then Sir Thomas Dale ruled in ]iis stead. They were stern men, who had seen hard service in the Netherlands. They laid upon the colonists the obliga- tions of laws which in our gentle times seem harsh. Settling in their minds what men ought to do, they made them do it, under severe i)enalties. And the com- 34 The Right Rev. William White, D. D. (See page gz) Church in America pulsions included chiu'ch attendance, and obedience to religion. That was a uni- versal custom of the age, followed alike by Puritan and Chiu'chman. While Gates and Dale were thus en- forcing order, John Eolfe was introducing into the Jamestown colony a kind of in- dustry which from that time to this has determined, for better, for worse, the character of life in the South. They used to have a saying in Virginia that God made first man, then woman, thirdly corn, and fourthly tobacco. Eolfe began the cultivation of tobacco. The general conditions of life in Xew England were settled by the glaciers, which made farming difficult by scatter- ing stones over the fields, provided cod- fisheries by dropping stones into the sea, and dug the channels of the rivers whose waters should turn the wheels of mills. The New England settlers were accord- ingly gathered into many little commu- nities, seated by harbors and waterfalls, 35 The Episcopal and iu the intervales, where the holdings of land were small. Everything was right for the ux)building of democracy. Until quite recent times it was the fashion with American historians, most of whom lived in New England, to dis- parage the Virginia colonists as cavaliei's and aristocrats in contrast with their sturdy, hard-working, and progressive neighbors in Massachusetts. The fact that many of the historians were Puritans as well, tended to make this contrast more emphatic and significant. It is now perceived, however, by students of his- tory, that the differences between the two localities have grown out of the soil itself. The settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts came substantially from the same English stock, and from the same conditions of English life. They were of the middle class, south and north alike, yeomen and tradespeople, with an intermingling in each colony of a few persons of gentle birth and breeding. With the exception 36 Church in America of the Pilgrims of Plymouth, they were all Churchmen, Piu'itau Chiu-chmeu. The ecclesiastical differences aucl the social differences were developed, for the most part, after leaving England. The most potent force in this diverse development was the nature of the soil. Other influ- ences, of course, came into play. The near neighborhood of the Plymouth In- dependents was a factor in the new growth of the Massachusetts men. The great number of clergymen of uncommon ability in the northern colony gave it a theological strain such as was unknown in the South. But the soil determined the difference. The soil of Virginia was congenial to the production of tobacco. This became almost immediately the great crop. It required wide estates. It needed a great number of laborers, but required very few of them to be skilled workmen. In consequence, the more enterprizing of the settlers became landowners on a large scale. They lived in great houses, sepa- 37 The Episcopal rate one from another, with bad roads between. There were few oi)portunities for conference and discussion. There was a wide social distance between the employer and the emi3loyed. This dis- tance was disastrously increased in 1619 when a ^' Dutch" ship appeared at Jamestown, having for sale a cargo of twenty negroes. In that year, there being a thousand colonists, living in eleven settlements, a novel and notable step was taken by Sir George Yeardley, then governor, under the instruction of the London Company. By his summons burgesses were elected, two from each community, to meet in a representative assembly for the enact- ment of laws. The place of meeting was the church at Jamestown. The church was new that year : the building of Dela- ware's day having given place to a wooden structure, fifty feet long and twenty feet wide. There in the church itself was held the 38 Church in America first of all American congresses, the be- ginning of all fi'ee government in this country. The session began on July 30, 1619, with a prayer of Master Buck "that it would please God to guide and sanctify all our proceedings to His own glory and the good of the plantation." Laws were passed against idleness, gaming, drunk- enness, and ' ' excess in apparel. ' ' Plans were made for the education of the chil- dren of the natives " in the true religion,'^ and by way of preparation for ' ' the col- lege intended for them." All ministers were instructed to make an annual report of christenings, burials, and marriages. They were to read divine service accord- ing to the order of the Church of Eng- land, and every Sunday afternoon to cat- echize the children. The people were to frequent the services and sermons, all such as bore arms bringing their "pieces, swordes, powder, and shotte." The report of the Assembly shows that 39 The Episcopal the governor was accustomed to sit in the chancel. A curious regulation provided that the taxes should be assessed at serv- ice time, all single men being taxed ac- cording to their dress, and married men according to the dress of their wives. Ruffs and laces, and coats and gowns of bright colors enlivened the Church on Sundays even in those early times. Al- ready there had been a brilliant wedding, when Pocahontas and John Eolfe were married in the chancel in 1614. The brick church, whose tower remains, was fifty-six feet long and twenty-eight feet wide, and was built in 1639. By the year 1622, the colony extended up the James Eiver for a hundred and forty miles, a narrow strip of settled country through a region still in the hands of hostile savages. This hostilit}^, however, had been almost forgotten in the eight years of peace. Suddenly, without warning, the Indians arose and massacred the colonists. They assaulted the whole 40 Church in America Hue of settlements, and killed between three and four hundred ])eoi)le. This massacre prevented two excel- lent purposes with which the minds of the i^lanters had been seriously occux^ied. It put a stop to all j)lans for Indian mis- sions, and for higher education. As for the Indians, their sudden vic- tory was their destruction. The colony, recovering from its sur^jrise and defeat, drove them away. Thenceforth, they were accounted ^' irrecosileable enemies," and if any came lurking about, the stat- utes empowered the captain to gather a party of his men and hunt them like wolves. At the same time, the massacre killed the college. It is interesting to see how the English appreciation of learning, which founded Harvard College in 1630, moved the Jamestown colony in 1621. ** It is a just and wholesome pride," says John Fiske, "that Kew England people feel in recalling the circumstances under 41 The Episcopal which Harvard College was founded, in a little colony but six years of age, still struggling against the perils of the wilder- ness and the enmity of its sovereign. But it should not be forgotten that aims equally lofty and foresight equally intel- ligent were shown by the men who from 1619 to 1624 controlled the affairs of Virginia." They proposed to establish a university for English and Indian youths. The London Company endowed it with ten thousand acres of land ; the Archbishops contributed fifteen hundred jjounds ; the Bishop of London added another thou- sand. An anonymous contributor, who signed himself ' ' Dust and Ashes, ' ' prom- ised a thousand more. Another bene- factor was Nicholas Ferrar, of Little Gidding, the friend of George Herbert and of Isaak Walton. One donor gave his library, another provided Bibles and Prayer-books, another presented the Communion plate. Mr. George Thorp 42 Church in America came over to be the Eector of the College. He had hardly arrived when the savages fell upon the settlements, and he was killed. Then for a good while, the en- ergies of the colony were all needed for preservation and recuperation. The substantial and enduring strength of the settlement was shown by the confi- dence with which the planters undertook the restoration of their fortunes. But from that time, the History of Jamestown is merged in the larger annals of the col- ony in general. 43 II IN THE COLONIES After the settlement of Jamestown, the history of the Church in the colonies is within a space of time whose bounda- ries we may set, for convenience of mem- ory, at 1620 on the one side, and 1776 on the other. This space of about one hundred and fifty years, — a half of our history, — falls naturally into two parts, the first beiug in the seventeenth century, and the sec- ond in the eighteenth. In the first of these periods, England was for the most j)art under the House of Stuart, in the second it was for the most part under the House of Hanover. In the first period our ancestors in England were engaged in ecclesiastical contentions, in the sec- ond they were engaged in political con- tentions. In the first period the Church 44 Church in America in this country existed maiuly in Vir giuia and Maryland, and was adminis- tered by commissaries of the Bishop of London ; in the second, the Church a]}- peared in all the colonies and was fos- tered by missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Disability and Uxpopulaeity During this entire time, from the plant- ing of Jamestown to the Declaration of Independence, the Church lay under the disability of an incomplete organization. It was without a resident bishop. Peti- tions without number were presented to the English authorities of both Church and State, asking for a bishop. They came from both sides of the ocean, from missionaries, from eminent laymen, from convocations of clergy. Sometimes these petitions were de- clined by reason of indifference or igno- rance. Church people in England knew 45 The Episcopal little about this country and many of them cared less. We seemed to them like a iDOor plantation in the middle of the Soudan. Moreover, the only bishop who then seemed possible was a dignified person, who resided in a palace, had six horses to his carriage, and was accus- tomed to the society of courts. They could not imagine him in Jamestown. Sometimes the petitions were declined by reason of the current contentions. The wars of the seventeenth century kept the attention and interest of most men at home ; they had no time to mind the colonies. The wars of the eighteenth century fostered the spirit of independ- ence which at last asserted itself in the American Revolution ; people in this country, at first Puritans, but afterward Churchmen also, objected to an institu- tion which might hold the colonies more firmly to the English throne. Thus in the seventeenth century, when American Churchmen appealed for a bishop, they 46 The Right Rev. Alexander V. Griswold, D. D. (See page 103) Church in America were met by English indifference ; and in the eighteenth century, when English Churchmen were desirous that a bishop should be sent to America, they were met by American hostility ; and there was no bishop. There being no bishop, there was nO' body here to ordain new ministers. Or- dination could be had only by going to Loudon. But that involved both ex- pense and peril. The ships were beset not only by winds and waves, but by pirates and by smallpox. Accordingly the number of clergy was small. When the non-episcopal brethren came, with their easy and direct arrangements for the planting of parishes, they established themselves in strength ; but the Church lacked leaders. Moreover, in conse- quence of this ordination journey, not only was the number of ministers small, but few of them had previously lived in America. During most of this period, the ministry of the Church was chiefly 47 The Episcopal replenished not from the homes of the planters, and not by the accession of men who were acquainted by experience with colonial life, but from England. There they were ordained and had commonly served an English parish before they pre- sented themselves here. Some of them were good men, filled with missionary enthusiasm ; but some came because they could not find employment at home. Even the good men, coming thus into the back woods, found it difficult to un- derstand their parishioners, and their parishioners found it equally difficult to understand them. In addition to the disability caused by the absence of bishops, the Church in most of the colonies had the further dis- advantage of unpopularity. The general conditions in seventeenth-century Eng- land favored not an episcopal, but a non-episcopal emigration. Most of the colonies were founded at a time when the Puritans were pursued by the au- 48 Church in America thorities. Their opinions both in poli- tics and in religion were in stout oi)posi- tion to the powers civil and ecclesiastical. Clergymen of a Puiitan mind were there- fore silenced and dispossessed, and their sui^porters were fined and imi:)risoued. Men of energy, and enterprise and con- viction came over here to get away. In Massachusetts and Connecticut, the Con- gregationalists and the Presbyterians ; in Khode Island, the Baptists ; in Peunsj^l- vauia, the Quakers ; made up the great majority of the colonists. Churchmen, for whom England was a x)leasant country and who had no strong reason to be emi- grants, stayed at home. Except in Vir- ginia and Maryland, they made up an inconsiderable portion of the population. The little minority of Churchmen were inevitably unpopular. Their neighbors had brought from England a strong re- sentment against both Church and State. They imparted to their children the ani- mosity which went along with the Puri- 49 The Episcopal tan Revolution and the Restoration of the Stuarts. To their minds, the Church stood for the bigotry of bishojDS and the tyranny of kings. It rej^resented a state of life from which they had escaped, and from which they hoped ever to be free. John Winthrop had a lot of books stored in aloft, and among them one in which the New Testament and the Prayer-book were bound together. One day, the mice got in and ate the Prayer-book, leaving the New Testament untouched. It seemed to ^Yinthrox) an appro^iriate mark of the disapproval of heaven. In Virginia, the Church was formally established by the House of Burgesses. A like action was afterward taken in Maryland. This colony, founded by Ro- man Catholics on principles of religious liberty, had come into possession of the Puritans during the Commonwealth, and then, after the Restoration, was adminis- tered by Churchmen. In the Carolinas, the Church was established by the pro- 50 Church in America prietary charter. Maine and New Hamp- shire were founded by Churchmen. Charles I once hoped to make them su- perior to their Puritan neighbors. He appointed Ferdinando Gorges, the pro- prietor of Maine, and John Mason, the proprietor of New Hampshire, to posi- tions of authority over all New England. Beacon Hill, in Boston, derives its name from the signal by which the Puritans were to warn the community of the aj:)- proach of the Churchman. But the Churchman did not come, and the Church colonies soon fell into the hands of Mas- sachusetts. In New York, an Act of Assembly taxed the jDCople for the sup- port of ' ' Protestant ' ' ministers, and this was interpreted by several governors who were Churchmen, to mean clergy of the Church of England ; to that extent the Church was established in that colony. 51 The Episcopal The Commissaries : Seventeenth Century The strength of the colouial church of the seventeenth century was in Virginia and Maryland. In 1650, and after, colo- nists came who had been driven out of England by the Puritans, as the Puritans had previously been exiDclled by the Churchmen. These were men who were devoted to ideals, and who had suffered for the sake of the King and of the Church. They imported a new and valu- able quality into Southern life. The comforts of a gentle climate, the ease and plenty of the great plantations, the existence of a leisure class, brought seri- ous temptations and affected clergy and laity alike. The story of the Southern Church in the middle of the century is not altogether pleasant reading, though the unpleasant features have been exag- gerated out of perspective. The Vir- ginia colonists who appealed to the Great and General Court of Massachusetts to 62 Church in America send down ministers of tlie gospel, are found to be three congregations of Pim- tans who naturally desired Puritan preaching. The incident has been made to imply that the Virginia Churchmen were in need of missionaries. One re- members that Morton of Merrymount was accused of atheism by his neighbors in Boston, the basis of the charge, ac- cording to John Fiske, being the fact that he used the Book of Common Prayer ! In Massachusetts as well as in Virginia, the colonists, Puritan and Churchman alike, were of the same blood, and met temptation sometimes with success, sometimes with failure. But after 1650 the Virginians improved much. Then the commissaries came, to repre- sent the Bishop of London, and to exer- cise such discipline as was possible un- der the circumstances. The first was the Rev. James Blair, appointed for Vir- ginia. He found seventy places of wor- 53 The Episcopal ship in the colony, all under the admin- istration of the Church, half of them provided with ordained ministers, the other half having lay readers. There were parsonages for all the clergy, and extensive glebe lands. The second com- missary was the Eev. Thomas Bray, for Maryland. Blair and Bray were impressed alike with the need of more ministers, and each endeavored, in his own way, to sup- ply the need. Blair founded, in 1693, the College of William and Mary. Bray founded, in 1701, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The College of William and Mary is the oldest school in the country, next to Harvard. It suffered bitterly both in the War of Independence and in the War of the Union, and has never recovered from these losses ; but in the colonial period it was an influential institution. It is re- membered among scholars as the birth- 54 Church in America place, in 1776, of the oldest literary society iu this country, the Phi Beta Kappa. It is taken into account by his- torians as the nursery of the Southern men who took their great part in the making of the nation. Thomas Jeffer- son, the author of the Declaration of In- dependence, and John Marshall, the inter- I)reter of the Constitution, were educated there. George Washington was Chan- cellor of the college. Out of this insti- tution came young men of character and learning to minister to the parishes of the colonial church. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (The ''Vener- able Society," the ''S. P. G.") was the first fruit of a new missionary zeal in England, and of a new interest in the welfare of the colonies. From the time of its formation the supply of clergy for the colonial church increased greatly, and much care was taken in the selection of them. The first missionaries of the So- 55 The Episcopal ciety, George Keith and John Talbot, made a general visitation of the colonies. They found fifty clergymen of the Church of England in this country, of whom seventeen were in Maryland and twenty- five in Virginia. Of the others, three were in the Carolinas, two in Pennsyl- vania, two in New England, one in New York. Outside of Virginia and Mary- land, there were four church buildings : St. Philip's in Charleston (1682), King's Chapel in Boston (1689), Christ Church in Philadelphia (1695), and Trinity Church in New York (1697). A glance at these four parishes will complete our survey of the Colonial Church in the seventeenth century. 1. In the Carolinas for twenty years after their settlement, there was no visi- ble recognition of religion. The planters lived, for the most part, on large farms, each proprietor in the midst of his estate. In 1680, however, Eeginald and Millicent Jackson provided a church lot in Charles- 56 The Right Rev. John Henry Hobart, D. D. (See page 103) Church in America tou, and on it a church building was presently placed. An early rector, Sam- uel Marshall, was so well liked that the Assembly appropriated to him and his successors a stipend of one hundred and fifty pounds, and added as a personal gift "a negro man and woman and four cows and calves." 2. The settlers of ^N'ew England who landed at Plymouth in 1620, were separa- tists who had definitely left the Church of England. But the settlei^ who landed at Salem in 1630 were members of the Church. ''Farewell," they said, "dear England ! Farewell the Church of God in England, and all the Christian friends there ! We do not go to Xew England as Separatists from the Church of Eng- land, though we cannot but separate from the corruptions of it : but we go to i^rac- tise the positive part of church reforma- tion and i^ropagate the Gospel in Amer- ica." " We desire you would be pleased to take notice of the principals and body 57 The Episcopal of our company, ' ' wrote Winthrop, ^ ' as those who esteem it our honor to call the Church of England, from which we rise, our dear mother, and we cannot part from our native country, where she spe- cially resideth, without much sadness of heart, and tears in our eyes, ever ac- knowledging that such hope and part as we have obtained in the common salva- tion, we have received it in her bosom, and suckt it from her breasts." They were of the opinion, however, that in their departure from England they had departed not from the faith nor from the communion of the National Church, but from its rubrics and canons. They were to establish a Church of America, making their own rubrics and canons as the new needs demanded. This iDosition thus taken by the Churchmen who founded the colony of Massachusetts was that which was afterwards taken by the Churchmen who, after the Eevolution, organized the Episcopal Church. But the Churchmeu 58 Church in America of 1630 were iu the midst of the stress of a great ecclesiastical couteution, and they went into . au extreme wherein they dispensed even with the Bishop and the Prayer-book. The Churchmen of 1785 lived in times when their judg- ment was not affected by the strife of parties. The Puritans found William Black- stone, a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, the only occuj)ant of the present site of Boston. He was a clergy- man who had left England because, as he said, he did not like the Lord Bishops. Presently, after Endicott and his company settled in the vicinity, he moved again, finding that he had still less liking for the Lord Brethren. When New Hami)shire, in 1611, and Maine, in 1652, came under the control of Massachusetts, the Kev. Eichard Gibson had a church and parsonage at Ports- mouth, and the Eev. Kobert Jordan was ministering at Portland and in parts ad- 68 The Episcopal jacent. The Puritans ejected Gibson, and made life hard for Jordan. The Eev. Eobert Katcliffe was the first clergyman to establish himself success- fully in New England. This he did in Boston, under the protection and patron- age of the royal governor. At first in the town house, then in the Old South meeting house, in the face of the indig- nation of most of the citizens, he wore his surplice and read prayers out of the book. On Sunday, May 30, 1686, the liturgy was first publicly read in colonial New England, and on June 15th, a parish of the Church of England was organized in Boston. King's Chapel was built for the new congregation. 3. In Pennsylvania, George Keith, the S. P. G. missionary, had been a Quaker, and had exercised a helpful and eminent ministry in the Society of Friends. When he became convinced of the need of sac- raments and orders, and was received into the Church, a good many of his friends 60 Church in America and sympathizers came with him. Un- der these circumstances, Christ Church was founded in Philadelphia. The Rev. Evan Evans, who ministered there during the first eighteen years of the eighteenth century, is said to have baptized, in the first third of that time, as many as eight hundred Quakers. Along with this suc- cess, however, there was an unavoidable accomj)animent of bitterness and hostil- ity. The Church in Philadelphia was disliked by the Quakers, by whom that city was mainly inhabited, as the Church in Boston was disliked by the Puritans. 4. Only in New York was the Church given a hospitable welcome. The Dutch founders of that colony had no quarrel with the Church of England. When the province came into English possession, the Dutch Reformed congregation shared with their Anglican brethren the use of the Church in the fort, the Dutch wor- shiping there in the morning, the Eng- lish in the afternoon. In 1693, the As- 61 The Episcopal sembly enacted that the four counties of New York, West Chester, Queens and Kichmond should have five "Protestant " ministers supported by public taxation, and that all freeholders should be entitled to vote for wardens and vestrymen. The word ''Protestant" being interpreted to mean the form of religion accepted in the Protestant nation of which the colonies were a part, the vestry of the city of 'New York, in 1695, called Mr. William Yesey to be the first minister of Trinity Church, on condition that he be ei)iscopally or- dained. In 1697, the church being un- finished, Mr. Yesey was inducted into his position by the governor of New York, in the Dutch church. In 1705, the parish was presented with the Queen's farm, a considerable tract of uncultivated land, which has since proved uncommonly i:>ro- ductive. There was a Dutch church, and a French church for Huguenots ; Trinity was the parish church of all the English- speaking citizens. 63 Church in America The Missionaries : Eighteenth Century The mlDistratious of the missionaries of the S. P. G. gave an immediate im- pulse to the life of the colonial church. Wherever they went, congregations were assembled, old parishes were revived, new ones were organized, in many places churches were built. The missionaries found ' ' a great rii)eness and inclination among all sorts of people to embrace the Gospel." In Virginia and Maryland there was little need of their services. The society sent only seven missionaries into those parts. But in the other col- onies, for seventy-five years, the society was the mainstay. During that time it supported, wholly or in part, three hun- dred clergymen. Rhode Island responded at once to the efforts of the new men. Trinity Church in Xewport was planted in 1702, and built its present sanctuary in 1726. St. Paul's, Kingston, commonly called the 63 The Episcopal '^Nairagansett Church," was erected in 1707, and is still standing. St. Michael's, Bristol, followed in 1719, and St. John's, Providence, in 1722. In Boston, to King's Chapel was added Christ Church (1723) and Trinity (1735). Queen's Chapel in Portsmouth (1732) had for its first rector Arthur Brown, who figures in Longfellow's ''Lady Went- worth " in the " Tales of a Wayside Inn. ' ' St. Mary's Church appeared in Burling- ton, N. J. (1703) and was talked of as a good seat for a bishop of America. St. Peter's Church (1716) was established at Albany, the rector also serving as a mis- sionary to the Mohawk Indians. The new ministers were men of learn- ing and piety. It is true that the second rector of Providence was blown out of church one Sunday by " an extraordinary gust of wind," and the people, welcoming this ejection as an act of heaven, refused to let him in again. But this was a nota- ble exception. 64 Church in America The services were for the most part very plain, without chauting, the Psalms being sung in metre to the arrangement of Tate and Brady. The surplice was little used, but the scarlet coats and rich laces of the congregation, gave the church, as reported by a visitor to Portsmouth, ' ' a gay and shining appearance. ' ' The chief events of this pre-revolution- ary period of the eighteenth century were the ^'Dark Day" at Yale in 1722, the visit of Dean Berkeley in 1729, and the missions of John AYesley and George Whitefield. 1. On the day after commencement in 1722, the faculty of Yale College, to- gether with five prominent pastors of Connecticut, called the trustees into the library and presented to them a letter stating an extraordinary change of mind. They said that they had become con- vinced of the invalidity of Presbyterian ordination and that they deeply felt the difficulties under which they labored in 65 The Episcopal relation to tlieir continuance out of the visible communion of an Episcoi^al church. The college at that time had but thirty-five students, and a rector and a tutor composed the faculty. But the position and character of these teachers, and of the pastors who joined in their secession, gave their declaration an im- portance of the highest magnitude. Pu- ritanism was the established order in Connecticut. It was struck as with a blow. The occasion was remembered as the ^'Dark Day." These eminent con- verts had read their way into the church. Without personal acquaintance of clergy or laity, studying the books in the college library, they had found that the path of truth, as they were con- vinced, brought them to the church door. Thereafter the chui'ch progressed in Connecticut, being commended to the people by the solid attainments, the intelligent loyalty, and the elevated character of the clergy, Chui'chmen 66 Church in America were respectfully termed ^^ sober dis- senters." 2. Samuel Johnson, who next to Eector Cutler was the most substantial person in this transaction, entered presently into important conference with a remarkable visitor to these shores, whose name and memory are among our most valuable possessions. Dean Berkeley, afterward Bishop of Cloyne, famous already in philosophy as well as in religion, arrived in Newport in 1729 and stayed until 1731. In those two years he made a deeper im- pression uj)ou the Colonial Church than any other individual. Berkeley was one of the first Englishmen to perceive the importance of the American colonies. He it was who saw that ' ' westward the course of empire takes its way." He conceived the idea of founding a univer- sity for our benefit in the Bermudas. Sir Eobert Wali^ole, being Prime Minister at that time, had promised to endow the in- stitution with an appropriation of twenty 67 The Episcopal thousand pounds from the public treas- ury. He suggested that Berkeley would be more likely to get it if he showed his zeal by actually coming over to these shores. This he therefore did, arriving at Newport in the midst of a saint's day- service, and being welcomed at the wharf by the rector and the congregation. The Bermuda University never came to life, but the Dean' s visit stimulated sev- eral projects which had already been formed for higher education in the col- onies. The belief in good learning as the handmaid of religion, which had al- ready ax)peared in the proposed college of 1619, and in the actual college of William and Mary in 1693, had projected a plan for a church college in the two cities which, with Boston, were the most considerable in the country. The idea was to found an institution for higher ed- ucation in New York, and another in Philadelphia. Such was the weight of Samuel Johnson in these negotiations 68 Church in America that each of these colleges called him for first president. He declined the call of the College and Academy of Philadel- phia, now the University of Pennsyl- vania, and accepted the invitation of King's College, now Columbia University in New York. In the arrangement of each of these schools, he and his fi'iends were greatly guided by the counsels of Dean Berkeley. 3. In the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury, the quiet current of religious life both in England and in America, was vigorously disturbed by a new kind of preaching. In America, the Great Awak- ening, in England, the Great Eevival, stirred the hearts of the people as they had not been stirred since the Reformation. Each of these renewals of the religious life was due in great part to the inspira- tion of clergymen of the Colonial Church. The prophet of the Great Awakening was George \ATiitefield ; the father of the Great Eevival was John Wesleyc 69 The Episcopal "Wesley came as a missionary of the Venerable Society to Georgia, and was made rector of Chi'ist Cliurcli in Savan- nah. He entered upon his duties in a spirit of great devotion, living an ascetic life and laying upon himself and his pa- rishioners the discipline of an extreme churchmanship. In a time Avhen canons and rubrics were commonly observed with a good deal of discretion, and in a back woods community where, if any- where, such discretion was needed, he amazed and offended the parish by his insistence on the details of canonical obedience. He baptized children by im- mersion, admitted none but communi- cants as sponsors, refused the Holy Com- munion to dissenters, and declined to read the burial service over the uubap- tized. These obligations passed the patience of the people, and Wesley gave up in much depression of spirit, and re- turned to England. He praised the de- vout living of his neighbors, the clergy 70 The Right Rev. Richard Channing Moore, D. D. (See page 104) Church in America of South Carolina, ^^ among wliom/^ he says, ' ' in the afternoon [at a clerical con- ference] there was such a conversation, for several houi^s, on ' Christ our Right- eousness,' as I have not heard at any Visitation in England, or hardly any other occasion." But his congregation disappointed him. This was a part of the novitiate through which he passed to the great work of his life. The shij) which carried Wesley back to begin the Great Revival i^assed the ship which was bringing Whitefield to take his mighty part in the Great Awak- ening. Whitefield succeeded Wesley in tlie Savannah parish, and filled the church so that people stood outside at all the doors and windows. He founded a school for orphans, and dreamed, like a good Churchman, of a college in Georgia. But Whitefield was preeminently a preacher. In that calling, he found his power. The Great Awakening, under the impulse of Jonathan Edwards, had 71 The Episcopal already laid its stress on the importance of religious feeling. A true Christian, according to this new teaching, was one who had j)assed through a clearly defined subjective experience. No man ever lived who was more gifted than White- field in the ability to ai)peal to emotion, and to induce this subjective experience. He gave himself, therefore, to the Great Awakening. Resigning his i)arish, he became what we would call a mission preacher. In the debate, however, be- tween feeling and living, between emo- tion and order, the Church, for the most part, maintained the old position. Whitefield found the larger number of symi)athetic brethren elsewhere. Often the meeting house was open to him when the church was shut. The Great Awakening was both a help and a hindrance to the Church. It was a hindrance in that it seemed for the mo- ment to put the Church in the wrong re- garding the spiritual Hfe. Churchmen 72 Church in America were cold, when their neighbors were at a white heat. Bnt in the main the Ee- vival helloed the Church. The quiet maintenance of liturgical worship, the self-restraint, the emphasis on conduct, the reliance of the Church on Christian nurture rather than on sudden conver- sion, commended our ways to many sober and thoughtful j)ersons, who sought refuge in our sanctuaries from the thun- der and lightning of the revival j)reachers. T3 Ill IN THE UNITED STATES The American Eevolution divides the history of the Episcopal Church into two ahnost equal parts. With the Declara- tion of Independence the first era of om^ history came sharply to an end and the second era began. From that time to the present, it is convenient to divide the space, for i3nrj)oses of easy memory, by the two intervening wars, the War of 1812 and the War of 1860. The domi- nant note of the years to 1812 was Con- struction ; the Church was effecting an adjustment to the new conditions, fram- ing a constitution, completing an organ- ization. A distinctive, though not equally dominant note, from 1812 to 1860, was Contention ; the Church, coming into 74 Church in America new life aud vigor, was developing a cor- porate consciousness, with good Cliui-ch- men at one exti'enie calling one way, and good Chiu'clinien at the other extreme calling another way. From 1860 to the present day has been, in the main, a time of Accession ; neither party having con- trolled the Church, but both having joined in the meeting of new difiiculties aud the performance of new tasks, the united Church has prospered exceed- ingly. Construction : to 1812 A good number of the men whose en- ergy and wisdom achieved our inde- pendence and shaped our institutions were Churchmen. Outside of Kew Eng- land, the leaders of the new nation were mostly of our communion. Xot only were Jefferson and IMarshall educated at a Church college, but Lee, who moved the Declaration of Independence, was a 75 The Episcopal Churchman ; Patrick Henry was a Churchman ; Benjamin Franklin was a Churchman, though not a very sound one ; Eobert Morris, whose self-sacrific- ing efforts in the field of finance rein- forced the courage of our soldiers on the field of battle, was a Churchman ; John Jay and James Madison were Church- men ; Washington was a Churchman. The first session of the Continental Congress was opened with the prayers of Jacob Duche, rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia. Samuel Adams, of Mas- sachusetts, moved that the rector be in- vited to perform this office. John Adams wrote to his wife that the parson ap- peared with his clerk '' and in his pon- tificals," that he read the thirty-fifth Psalm, which responded in an extraordi- nary manner to the ' ' horrible rumor of the cannonade of Boston," and that he then struck out into an extemporary prayer for America, for the Congress, and for Boston. ^'I must confess," says 76 Church in America Adams, "I never heard a better prayer, or one so well pronounced.'' Nevertheless, so many of our clergy and laity were royalists at that critical time that the Church in general was con- sidered a tory company. Brattle Street in Cambridge was called indifferently Tory Row or Church Eow ; the two names meant the same thing. In Virginia and Maryland, a third of the clergy main- tained the cause of the Revolution, but in the other colonies they were mostly on the other side. This was the natural re- sult of the lack of bishops, in conse- quence of which, all ordinations being performed in London, few Americans by birth had entered the ministry. The clergy had come over from England in mature life, they had been sux)ported by an English society, and they had English sympathies. Dr. Parker in Boston and Dr. Wliite in Philadelphia changed the state prayers to meet the changed condi- tions, but they were exceptions. Other 77 The Episcopal clergy, in great numbers, left their par- ishes, voluntarily or involuntarily, and sought refuge in Nova Scotia. K^o other religious body was seriously injured by the American Eevolution. The Church was almost destroyed. Out of this forlorn condition the Church was brought into new life by the services of three men : Dr. Smith of Maryland, Dr. Seabury of Connecticut, and Dr. White of Pennsylvania. They represented the three divisions of the country, the south, the middle, and the north, and they undertook the various forms of action which were needed under the circumstances. Dr. Smith looked after the church property ; Dr. Seabury secured the apostolic succession ; Dr. White brought the colonial churches to- gether. 1. Dr. William Smith was the first Provost of what is now the University of Pennsylvania. Oxford had given him his divinity degree. A sermon on the Present 78 Church in America Situation of American Affairs, preached in Christ Church, Philadelphia, in 1775, had greatly stirred the zeal of patriots. During the war he had been dismissed from the college, as being an Episcopal minister, though afterward he returned. In 1780, he called a conference of clergy and laity in Maryland, at Chesterton. At this conference a petition was prepared asking the Assembly of that state to give the disestablished church a civil exist- ence, empowering vestries to collect money and pay salaries. A name was needed for such legislation, and the name Protestant Episcopal was selected then and there. 2. Dr. Samuel Seabury had been a chap- lain in the British army during the war. The son of a Congregational family and a graduate of Yale, he was now a priest of the Church in Connecticut. In 1783, the year in which peace was proclaimed, ten of the fourteen clergy of that state met at the house of the Eev. John Eut- 79 The Episcopal gers Marshall, rector of St. Paul's Church, Woodbury, and elected a bishoi). They called no laymen into their council, and they imposed the seal of secrecy on all the members of their company. The situation was still full of peril. They chose Seabury to be their bishoj). He was to go to England and obtain consecra- tion, if j)ossible, from bishops of the Church of England ; failing in that en- deavor, as seemed altogether likely, he was to apply to the non-juring bishops of Scotland. Seabury was courteously received by the ecclesiastical authorities in England, but there were serious obstacles in the way of his wishes. Some of these were wholly political. A bishop must take an oath of allegiance. Parliament, in- deed, might relieve Seabury from this requirement, but there was a feeling in some minds that such an act would be ill received in America, where most people, it was thought, had strong objections to 80 Church in America bishops. Other hindrances proceeded from the situation. Seabury^ it ap- peared, did not represent any national church. He was the choice of a little group of obscm^e persons in a single col- ony. An anxious year having been spent in fruitless negotiation, Seabury turned to his alternative. He applied to Scotland. There were then in Scotland two Epis- copal communions, each with its bishops. One was in cordial relation with the Church of England. The other had been founded a century before by the Churchmen who had declined to change their allegiance from James II to Will- iam III. These Chui'chmen, from their refusal to take the new oath, were called Non-jurors. There were bishops among them, and they had consecrated suc- cessors. It was to these successors of the non-juring bisho^DS that Seabury now be- took himself. They were in good stand- ing, according to canon law ; their only 81 The Episcopal disability was on the side of civil law. This disability was now their opportu- nity. They were in a j)Osition to conse- crate a bishop for America without rais- ing any question of international politics, and without requiring any oath of alle- giance. By them, therefore, Seabury was duly consecrated at Aberdeen, on Sunday, November 14th, 1784. Eobert Kilgour, primus of the non-jurors, was the consecrator, and Arthur Petrie, Bishoj) of Boss and Moray, and John Skinner, Bishop Coadjutor of Aberdeen, assisted. The Scotch bishops made a single re- quest of Seabury. They asked him to endeavor to persuade the Church in America to adopt the Communion Office of the non-jurors. This liturgy was a return, in some measure, to the original English Prayer-book of 1549. The prayer of consecration in that book con- sisted of three parts : an Intercession, a recital of the Institution, — that is^ of 82 The Right Rev. John Stark Kavenscroft, L>. D. (See page 104) Church in America our Lord's words at the Last Supper — and an Oblation, consisting first of an offering of the ' ' holy gifts ' ' and secondly of an offering of ' ' our souls and bodies. ' ' In the prayer-book as it was in England in Seabury's time, and still remains, the In- tercession was taken out of the Prayer of Consecration, and made into the prayer for the Chui'ch Militant ; and, the first part of the Oblation being omitted, the second part was made an alternative form of thanksgiving after the Lord's Prayer. Only the Institution remained in place. In the Scotch book the Prayer of Consecration began with the Institu- tion 5 then followed, from 1549, the Ob- lation of the holy gifts, beginning ''Wherefore, O Lord," and ending ''unto us by the same" ; then was in- terposed a wholly new Invocation, taken from the liturgies of the Eastern Church, where it is a characteristic and invari- able feature, beginning "And we most humbly," and ending "blessed Body 83 The Episcopal and Blood " ; and the iDrayer ended with the Oblation of our souls and bodies, be- ginning ''And we earnestly desire," and ending " world without end. " Thus the prayer contained two paragraphs which had no place whatever in the Eng- lish book, the Oblation of the holy gifts and the Invocation of the Holy Spirit. Bishop Seabuiy promised to do his best to induce the American Church to make these changes, and so took his leave, finally reaching home in 1785. In August of that year he presided over the first convocation of his clergy. 3. William White was a native of Philadelphia. His attention had been turned to the ministry by a sermon which Whitefield, then an old man, preached in the parish church. Going to England for ordination, he remained for a year and a half, making many friends. Boswell's ' ' Life of Johnson ' ' contains a letter which that great person wrote to young Mr. White, after his return, in 1773. Gold- 84 Church in America smith, he tells him, has a new comedy in rehearsal at Covent Garden, which ' ' de- serves a very kind reception.'' This was ' ' She Stoops to Conquer. " ' ' Xo book, ' ' he says, ^ ' has been published since your departure of which much notice is taken. ' ' Becoming rector of Christ Church, Phila- delphia, in succession to Dr. Duche, he was appointed chaplain to the Conti- nental Congress in 1777. His brother-in- law, Eobert Morris, warned him that to accept the place was to offer his throat to be cut, but he accepted it. There- after, he was an honored member of the group of eminent men who were direct- ing the course and forming the future of the nation. These men were engaged in [ the interests of all the colonies together. They were bringing the independent provinces into the United States. White was of their temper and disposition. While Dr. Smith was busy with the prob- lems of Maryland, and Dr. Seabury was organizing the Church in Connecticut, 85 The Episcopal Dr. White liad in mind a union of all the provincial churches under a common body of canon law. From him proceeded the movement which resulted in the first General Convention. The initial step toward this Conven- tion was taken in May, 1784, while Sea- bury was still abroad, six months before his consecration. A little company of clergymen met at I^ew Brunswick, in New Jersey, as members of the Corpora- tion for the Eelief of the Widows and OriDhans of the Clergy, This corpora- tion, founded by Dr. Smith, was the only general institution of the Colonial Church. Its members came from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Meeting thus, to arrange the financial future of the society, they took the op- portunity to confer together upon the ecclesiastical situation. Dr. White pre- sided. They agreed to call a meeting of representatives of all the states in Oc- tober, at New York. 86 Church in America The second step toward the Conven- tion was a conference, summoned by Dr, White, of the clergy and laity of Penn- sylvania. This meeting is memorable for the fact that the parishes were formally rei^resented by laymen as well as by clergymen. This arrangement had no precedent in England. It was a natural result of the history of the Colonial Church. With no bishop, and with few clergy, the administration of ecclesias- tical affairs had been of necessity, to a great extent, in the hands of the laity. There they were, and there, happily, they have ever since remained. When Dr. White asked the Pennsylvania par- ishes to send lay delegates, he thereby recognized and confirmed one of the dis- tinctive characteristics of the Episcopal Church. Another contribution was made by Dr. White to the progress of our affairs by presenting to this meeting a state- ment of Fundamental Principles. There 87 The Episcopal should be a General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America ; the deputation of each state to such a convention should consist of clergy and laity ; wherever there should be a bishop he should be considered ex officio a member of the convention ; the Church thus organized should maintain substantially the doctrine, discipline and liturgy of the Church of England. These principles were communicated to the Churchmen of the several states for dis- cussion at New York. The third step toward the General Con- vention was the New York meeting in October. Eight states were represented. But in most of them the delegates came not from a state convention but from individual parishes. Accordingly, the conference had no authority to legislate. However, they discussed and in the main approved Dr. "VYhite's Fundamental Prin- ciples. They called a convention to meet in Philadelphia, September 27, 1785. 88 Church in America Ou that date, then, in Christ Church, Philadelphia, the first General Conven- tion met. It was composed largely of deputies from Virginia and Maryland j of the sixteen clergymen, ten, and of the twenty-four laymen, fourteen, came from these states. Kobody was present from New England. The Church in Xew Eng- land stood for the moment by itself. It was fully organized, with a bishop duly consecrated, it had invited the brethren of the other states to meet in Connecticut and organize a national chuixh. It had declined the invitation of the other breth- ren to the convention in Pennsylvania, on the ground that the Fundamental Principles did not give f)roper prece- dence to the bishop. Moreover, the con- secration of Seabury had displeased many. He had obtained it, they com- plained, without the knowledge of the rest of the Church, and from a source which was, to say the least, unfortunate. Seabury did not know how he would be 89 The Episcopal received. Therefore, the New England brethren stayed away and the first Gen- eral Convention proceeded without them. Dr. White was chosen to preside. A committee was appointed to report (1) a Constitution, (2) a Eevision of the Book of Common Prayer, and (3) a Plan for Obtaining the Consecration of Bishops. The committee began their work on Tues- day ; on Saturday, they reported a Con- stitution and Prayer-book ; on the follow- ing Tuesday, the convention adopted the constitution ; on Wednesday, they or- dered the new Prayer-book to be printed. Meanwhile, they had accepted a proiposed plan for the episcopate. On Friday, October 7th, they adjourned, after a ses- sion of ten days. Few legislative bodies have accomplished so much in so short a time. Most of this work was the result of careful preparation. The constitution, for example, was based on Dr. Whitens Principles. To them it added a pro- 90 Church in America vision for the ratification of the Prayer- book as amended, and a declaration, sub- stantially as now in use, to be made be- fore ordination, accepting the doctrine, discii)line and worship of the church and acknowledging the Scriptures as the word of God. This constitution, under which the church is living to this day, was de- clared, when ratified by the church in the several states, to be unalterable ex- cept by the General Convention. The Prayer-book was the work of Dr. Smith. At the close of the convention, he preached a sermon explanatory of the changes. ' ' We stood arrested, ' ' he said, *' at an awful distance. It appeared al- most sacrilege to aj^proach the porch or lift a hand to touch a single point, to polish a single corner, or to clear it from its rust of years. ' ' It appeared, however, that after this moment of devout timidity, the revisers had proceeded with much boldness. The printed book showed that they had omitted all the imprecatory 91 The Episcopal Psalms, nineteen of the Thirty-nine Ar- ticles, both the Athanasian and the Nicene Creeds, and had subtracted one article from the Apostles' Creed, besides innumerable minor changes of words and phrases, bad and good. Two services were added, one for the Fourth of July and one for Thanksgiving day. The plan for obtaining the episcopate consisted of an address to the bishops and archbishops of the Church of England. It set forth, in the name of all the Amer- ican churches there represented, the need of an Anglican succession. It was ac- companied by certificates from several states testifying that such an ajDiDlication was in no way objectionable to the civil authority. The local conventions were counseled to elect suitable persons as bishops for their respective states. The constitution and the Prayer-book had to await ratification by a succeeding convention, but the address to the Eng- lish bishops called for immediate action. 92 Church in America John Adams, minister to the court of St. James, presented it to the Archbishop of Canterbuiy in person. The reply of the prelates was most encouragingo They recognized the api^eal as the voice of a national church. They desired, however, an assurance that the church in America proposed to continue in the doctrine, dis- cipline, and worship of the Church of England. A correspondence ensued, be- ing carried forward on our side by Dr. Smith and John Jay, first chief justice of the United States. The proposed book alarmed the English bishops, who insisted on the integrity of the Ai)ostles' Creed, and the restoration of the ^N'icene Creed at least. But already the book had been declined by most of the dioceses, so it was easy to promise compliance with these wishes. Finally, the two arch- bishops wrote that Parliament was ready to pass a bill enabling them to consecrate bishops for America. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania had elected 93 The Episcopal White, aud Maryland had elected Smith, Griffith had been chosen by Virginia, Provoost by New York. Smith, how- ever, had declined, for various reasons j and Griffith could not afford the journey. So White and Provoost went, and on Sunday, February 4, 1787, were conse- crated in the chapel of Lambeth Palace. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. John Moore, was the consecrator ; the Arch- bishop of York, Dr. William Markham, was the presenter. The Bishop of Bath and Wells and the Bishop of Peterborough assisted in the consecration. It was a very quiet, not to say domestic, service, and Bishop White noted that even the sermon, preached by a chaplain, ''had very little reference to the particularity of the occasion." In 1790, a third bishop was added to these two, and thus the English succession was fully assured, by the consecration of James Madison to be Bishop of "Virginia. A year before this consecration, the 94 Church in America church met by its deputies in the second General Convention. The year 1789 is memorable in our national annals as that in which, by the adoption of the Constitu- tion, the United States became a nation. The convention met in Philadelphia, where the national constitution had been ratified. The session of the convention in which the constitution of the Church was adopted was held in the State House, in the same room in which the national constitution had i^reviously been signed. These coincidences corresponded with a remarkable likeness of the government thus provided for the Church with the government which had been provided for the nation. Each was founded on a writ- ten constitution. By adopting this con- stitution, thirteen independent ecclesias- tical provinces became the dioceses of one church, as thirteen independent colonies had become the states of one nation. Diocesan conventions answered to State conventions, and the General Convention 95 The Episcopal to the Congress of the United States. The House of Clerical and Lay Deputies was like the House of Eepresentatives j and the House of Bishops was like the Senate except in the matter of tenui-e of offi.ce. The principles of representative government controlled the Church as they controlled the State. The congregation elected the vestry ; the vestry, sometimes with the formal approval of the congre- gation, selected the rector. The rector and certain elected deputies from the congregation represented the parish in the diocesan convention. These repre- sentatives jointly chose the bishop. The bishop and certain elected deputies, clerical and lay, from the diocesan con- ventions represented the diocese in the General Convention. In that convention no change could be made in the constitu- tion or in the Prayer-book unless it were first enacted by one General Convention, then reported back to all the dioceses, and then at the next General Convention 96 The Right Rev. James H. Otey, D. D., LL. D. (See page 121) Church in America reenacted. In one respect, the Chui'ch was more democratic than the State ; it gave no man executive authority. There was a presiding bishop, but no president. This likeness of the administration of the Church and of the State came nat- urally from the fact that the same men were engaged in the two transactions. Another resemblance between the jjolit- ical and the ecclesiastical conditions Wcis the immediate api^earance of party differ- ences. Bishop Seabury was not only in the Scotch succession, but he was a tory and a high churchman. Bishop Pro- voost, on the other hand, despised the Scotch succession, hated tories with a conscientious hatred, and disagreed se- riously with Seabury' s churchmanship. When Provoost heard that Seabury had been invited to the second General Con- vention and had accepted the invitation, he refused to l)e present. In this un- pleasant situation, Dr. AMiite's courtesy, largeness of mind, serenity of spirit and 97 The Episcopal good sense saved the Cliurch from imme- diate division. Tlie convention of 1789 made a few changes in the constitution and adopted it. They made a few alterations in the English Book of Common Prayer, disre- garding the Proposed Book, but accept- ing, with a slight amendment, the Prayer of Consecration of the Scotch non -jurors. Meanwhile, two events, one of a local, the other of a general imj^ortance, showed the need of a strong government. The local event was the loss of King's Chapel in Boston : the general event was the sep- aration of the Methodist societies. 1. During the British occupation of Boston, the Old South Meeting House had been used as a riding-school for soldiers. After the British troops were dri\'en out, the congregation of the Old South took possession of King's Chapel while their own church was being repaired. The rector and most of the parishioners had fled to Nova Scotia. When the Old 98 Church in America South people had returned to their own place, with many thanks to the wardens for their hospitality, and a remnant of the former congregation had resumed the prayer-book services, Dr. Parker of Trin- ity wrote in 1784 to Dr. White that King's Chapel ^'is now suj)plied by a Lay Eeader who is a candidate for Holy Orders.'' The lay reader was James Freeman, whose ministry was highly ac- ceptable to the parish. But Mr. Free- man, presenting himself as a candidate for orders, was found to have adopted Unitarian opinions. He failed, accord- ingly, of ordination, but he succeeded in commending his opinions to the parish. Pews forfeited by the flight of their own- ers had by this time been sold, so Church- men complained, to persons '^ who never were of the EjDiscopal Church, and who hold sentiments diametrically opposite to said Church." In 1787, on a Sunday in November, the senior warden ordained the lay reader to be '^rector, minister, 99 The Episcopal priest, pastor, teaching elder, and public teacher" of King's Chapel. 2. In May of that year, Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury had addressed to the President of the United States a memorial beginning, "We, the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church." The Methodists had previously occupied a position in the Church akin to that of various monastic orders in the Middle Ages. They were disliked by many bishops and other clergy, and were much spoken against both in England and in America ; but this had been the case, no less, with the Franciscans. They con- tinued, in spite of opposition, to be in good standing. Now Wesley had made Coke and Asbury superintendents of the Methodists in America, and had author- ized them to ordain ministers. The sep- aration logically followed. Wesley, in- deed, deplored it. Dr. Coke presently proposed to Bishop White a reordination of the Methodist ministers, and by this 100 Church in America means a reincorporation of the Methodist societies in the Episcopal Chuix'h j but the vast importance of the Methodist movement was not foreseen, and the proposition was unhappily declined. And now, the work of construction be- ing done, the Church, with all its fine new organization, fell upon evil days. The men who had done the work of pio- neers and builders had used their best strength in these efforts, and were unable to meet the new difficulties which fol- lowed. Dr. Smith went back to his col- lege in Philadelphia. Bishoj) Madison devoted himself to the College of William and Mary. Bishop Seabury put forth manifestos to his clergy beginning, "I, Samuel, by Divine permission Bishop of Connecticut, issue this injunction." Ad- dressing the Presbyterians of the United States, he exhorted them to relinquish "those errors which they, through prej- udice, had imbibed." Bishop Provoost resigned his diocese and spent his days 101 The Episcopal translating Tasso. Bishop White de- clared that confirmation is not the most important function of a bishop. He at- tended to his parish in Philadelphia. Only once did he go beyond the moun- tains. These were but symptoms of a univer- sal malady. The Eevolution was fol- lowed throughout the States, in all the religious bodies, by a time of general /apathy. Men were weary of the violence of the Great Awakening, and were so in- terested in the absorbing problems of political reconstruction that they had no time for religion. Faith was victori- ously assailed by infidel arguments from France. Tom Paine was the most popu- lar author of the day. IN'o new churches were erected, and those already built were empty. In 1796, the Methodists had for three years lost annually four thousand members. In 1798, the Pres- byterian General Assembly remarked with dismay '^a visible and prevailing 102 Church in America impiety aud contempt for the laws and institutions of religion. '' Tliere were few candidates for the ministry. In Vir- ginia, Chief Justice Marshall, a faithful Churchman, thought the Chui'ch too far gone to be ever revived. In the General Convention of 1800, only seven dioceses were represented ; the House of Bishops, two in number, met in the hall bedroom of the rectory of St. Paul's, in Balti- more. In 1811, at the College of William and Mary, students were publicly debat- ing ''whether Christianity had been in- jurious or beneficial to mankind." Contention : to 1860 Out of this deep depression, the Church, with its neighbor churches, returned to life by the grace of God. The Christian religion has passed through many crises. Sometimes by reason of its foes, some- times by reason of its friends, it has seemed at the point to die. But it pos- sesses a victorious vitality. 103 The Episcopal The War of 1812 strengthened the Church. It put an end to much of the j)olitical prejudice which had arisen from its position at the time of the Eevolution. In the new strife with England, Church- man, Methodist, Baptist, Congregation- alist, Presbyterian, fought side by side. They went into battle singing a national anthem written by a Churchman — Fran- cis Key of Maryland, — The Star Span- gled Banner. In the opportunity thus made, nevr men came forward to meet the new conditions. In May, 1811, in Trinity Church, ^ew York, John Henry Hobart was made Bishop of New York and Al- exander Yiets Griswold was made Bishop of New England. Hobart and Griswold revived the Church in the North. Rich- ard Channing Moore of Virginia and John Stark Eavenscroft of North Caro- lina revived the Church in the South. They found weak and discouraged dio- 104 Church in America ceses, and left them strong aud full of faith aud expectation. Hobart had the whole of Xew York State for his diocese, and up and down he went in it, ministering to scattered Church people, gathering them into ]3ar- ishes, preaching sermons, founding soci- eties for the distribution of tracts, for the planting of Sunday-schools, for the advancement of missions, for the educa- tion of the clergy. He prepared a ' ' Com- panion for the Altar" which quickened the devotion of communicants. He con- tended with the Presbyterians over the Apostolic Succession. He edited a Church newspaper. He began the evan- gelization of the Oneida Indians. Xo man equalled his initiative, his energy, his perseverance, his devotion ; and wherever he went, without hesitation and without apology, he exalted the Church. Griswold was given all of New Eng- 105 The Episcopal land, except Connecticut. He was a man of the plain people. He had got liis education by the light of a pine knot. In his first parish, lie iiad maintained himself by teaching the district school in winter and working on his neighbors' farms in summer. Just after his election to the episcopate, there was a notable revival of religion in his parish at Bris- tol, Ehode Island. The whole town was stirred. This experience was reijeated throughout his wide diocese. He trav- eled in stage coaches over long roads. He climbed the mountains. He preached in the woods. When he became bishop, the !S"ew England States, north of Con- necticut, had been compelled to unite their feeble forces in a single diocese, and even then the Church was poor and weak. Griswold made five dioceses, self-support- ing, vigorous, under four bishops. Eavenscroft found four churches in ^orth Carolina, and left twenty-seven. Moore found five clergymen in Virginia 106 Church in America and left one hundred. The southern dioceses, where the colonial church had been strongest, suffered most severely \ from the Revolution. Their connection ] with the English state was now their ill i fortune. Their lands were taken away, | their churches were destroyed, commun- \ ion plate disapi^eared, fonts were used | for watering troughs. The surviving | Church people were in despair. The new bishops brought light into the midst of darkness. They endured hardship. They preached the Gospel. They at- tacked the growing evils of social life. They put the Church on record straight and clear, against unrighteousness. They were men of moral earnestness and of spiritual enthusiasm. But of these four bishops, two were high Churchmen and two were low Churchmen. The Church of England, at the time of the Reformation, included all the English people. It contained in one comj)rehen- 107 The Episcopal sive communion all the varieties of re- ligious temperament. Some of its mem - bers set a very high estimate upon t he ins titutions of relig. ion ; that is, upr>n fh 9 ministry and the sacraments. Others se t a lower value upon these institutions, es- teemin^Jhem anrl ^^^^^^fv thf^i^i hntfinfl- ing Oml fiirpotly^ fnv tli f^msf^lyps^ -^^ith^^ it (lepen ^ice upon rit^s nv priests. Thu s thpvft^wprf^ rimvplni^pn^ hi^h and low. But tHey all lived together in one church. The formularies of the English Church were constructed with this situation in mind. It was by no mistaken ingenuity that John Robinson said at Ley den, " to the confession of faith published in the name of the Church of England and to every article thereof we assent wholly," and that Newman said at Oxford that the Articles were accordant with the Decrees of Trent. It was intended that all kinds of people should find in the Prayer-book abundant help and satisfaction. It was made an inclusive book. 108 The Right Rev. Philander Chase, D. D. (See page izi) Church in America But the Eeformation time was one of strife, into which the Church of England inevitably fell. Presently, extreme men on one side went out of the Church and became Koman Catholics. Then extreme men on the other side went out and be- came Piu'itans. An endeavor to compel uniformity was much to blame for these separations. Disregarding the past and defying human nature, the effort was made to compel different people to be alike. Thenceforth, there were in Eng- land two religious i)arties, Churchmen and Dissenters ; and the Dissenters were of two kinds, Catholic and Protestant. Between these comi^anies of dissenters, the Church went on, trying to be true to its primitive purpose, and still including men some of whom had symi^athies with Rome, and some of them sympathies with Geneva. There they were, priests and prophets, institutionalists and individu- alists, high Churchmen and low Church- men, in one fold. They quarreled more 109 The Episcopal or less, in a domestic way j but it was like the disputes of Democrats and Re- publicans. They were fellow citizens in the household of God. When they came to these shores, they sided, generally, one party with the Whigs, the other with the Tories. The Churchmen of the northern colonies, especially in New England, were mainly tories and high Churchmen, like Seabury. The Churchmen of the southern colonies, especially in Yirginia, were mainly whigs and low Chui'chmen, like White. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the life and vigor of the Church both in England and America was with the low Churchmen ; in the second quar- ter of the century, the progress of relig- ion in the Church in both countries was with the high Churchmen. The first impulse of the new century was an Evangelical Movement. It was felt in common by all the churches, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The 110 Church in America Great Awakening and the Great Eevival had met in Whitefield, who spoke for both. He died in Newburyport in 1770. On the last day of his life he preached from morning till night, and even then was followed to his lodgings by eager people desirous to hear the word of life again. He came down out of his bed- chamber, and stood in the doorway hold- ing a lighted candle in his hands, and there spoke till the flame went out in the socket. That night he died. It was a symbol of the situation. The warmth and light of religion burned down into smoke and ashes. In the instructions of the i)ulpit, respectability became a sub- stitute for Christianity. The Evangelicals lighted the old fires again. They returned, in some respects, to the doctrines of Whitefield and Wes- ley. The first camp -meeting was held in the summer of 1800, and this assault upon apathy and iniquity proved at the moment most successful. At the same 111 The Episcopal time, tlie Sunday-school, the iuventiou of a Churchman, Kobert Raikes of Glouces- ter, was brought into the active min- istry of religion, first in England, then in this country. Presently, there was a generation of men and women to whom the Christian faith had been taught sys- tematically. In spite of defects and errors of method, the Sunday-school changed the attitude of society toward religion. It reestablished the parishes on enduring foundations, Meanwhile, the evangelical ardor which was thus flaming forth in the camp -meet- ing and in the Sunday-school, was awakening both here and in England a new zeal for missions. In 1799, in London, the English Church Missionary Society was started. It began with a little group of obscure persons, rich only in their faith and strong onlj^ in their Christian courage, nobody paying any attention to them. It appealed to a Church half in- different and half skeptical. It encircled 113 Church in America the globe. A few years later, a little band of students at Williams College held a prayer-meeting in the shadow of a hay-stack and devoted themselves to the foreign field. At that time, there was not a missionary society in the country. These young men compelled the forma- tion of one. In 1810, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was organized. In that year there was only one theological seminary in the country. That was at Andover, where it had been established to stay the l^rogress of Unitariauism, which at that time had captured not only the first Xew England parish of the Churchmen, but the first New England college of the Pur- itans. Missionary societies and semi- naries followed in all the churches. The emphasis of the evangelical move- ment was upon the individual as distin- guished from the institution. It appealed to the soul of every man. It convicted men of sin. It converted them, through 113 The Episcopal a jirescribed spiritual experience, into disciples of Jesus Christ. Its character- istic doctrine was the Atonement. The evangelical Churchmen differed from their evangelical neighbors in their use of tlie Prayer-book. They brought their converts to baptism, to confirmation and to the Holy Communion. They main- tained the self-restraint, the order and the reverent ways of the litui-gical serv- ice. At the same time, agreeing as they did with their brethren of other names in their fundamental doctrines, sharing with them in the same religious expe- rience and recognizing among them the fruits of the Spirit, they felt that they were all members together of the same family of faith. They wore the black gown of Geneva, and liked it. Then the evangelical movement waned, following the invariable precedent of all strong, partial emphasis. Some grew weary and indifferent, deaf to the old menaces and ax)peals, and cold to the ap- 114 Church in America proaches of revivalists. Based on emo- tion, the unstable foundation began to give way. Some gradually perceived that there were whole ranges of religious truth and great tracts of human nature which had been neglected. Thus an ec- clesiastical movement followed. In 1827, Keble published the Christian Year. In 1833, he preached on National Apostasy. The Oxford tracts immedi- ately followed. The new movement went upon the fact that man is not an individ- ual only, he is a member of society, with social needs and responsibilities. It saw also that man is not all mind and soul, he has a body also. The men of the new thought laid hold on these neglected facts. Keble, and Pusey, and Newman called attention to the Church. They showed that it was no mere voluntary so- ciety associated in defense of a common faith and assembled for purposes of edifi- cation or of inspiration, but that it is the most venerable of institutions, descending 115 The Episcopal out of the days of the apostles, havi ug a coutiuuous life, with ancient and signifi- cant traditions, with noble customs, dis- pensing grace and truth. They awakened again the primitive and ineradicable in- stinct of worship, and exalted the services and the sacraments as its occasions and opportunities and privileges. They sum- moned men to restore and beautify the neglected sanctuaries, to repair the altars of God that were broken down, and to keep again the old festivals of faith and devotion. They proclaimed the doctrine of the Incarnation, God in Christ, and Christ in the Church continually minis- tering to the world. The new movement met with oi)posi- tion. Human nature is prudently con- servative and reluctant to change its ways. It is also, after much hard expe- rience, inclined to suspicion and is afraid that every new road, especially in re- ligion, will lead eventually to the Nether Pit. The leaders of the Oxford Eeforma- 116 Church in America tion were so hardly dealt with that soDie of them sought shelter iu Eorne. Their followers were preached against, written against, legislated against, and had their services intermitted by mobs. They were accused of disloyalty and falsehood. But the ecclesiastical movement like the evan- gelical movement before it, was ordained of God. It had its defects and follies. Here and there it lapsed into eccentricity, into individualism, into materialism and superstition. But it had a heart of truth. It affected all English-speaking Christendom. These two movements, ecclesiastical and evangelical, had their rise and their leadership in England, but they crossed the ocean. They brought into the Epis- copal Church the spirit of their conten- tion. In 1819, the General Theological Seminary was opened in Kew York. It had two professors and six students, and they met in the vestry room of St. Paul's Chapel. Mr. Clement C. Moore, who 117 The Episcopal wrote ^^'Twas the Mght Before Christ- inas," gave the school sixty lots in Chel- sea Village. Mr. Jacob Sherred, a ves- tryman of Trinity Church, bequeathed it sixty thousand dollars. Bishop Hobart was the leading person in its founding and in determining its policy. It was a nursery of the ecclesiastical movement. Thirty years later, Arthur Carey came out of the seminary maintaining the posi- tion of Newman's Tract Ninety, and hold- ing out fraternal hands to the brethren of Trent. In 1823, the Virginia Theological Semi- nary was founded at Alexandria. Bishop Moore was its foster father. It was a nursery of the evangelical movement. Young men went out from its iustruc- tioD, many of them into the foreign field, preachiug the gospel of experience as contrasted with the gospel of authority. Such a situation led naturally to strife. At first, in the face of the great problems which confronted the Church in the new 113 Church in America country, the two companies did each its own work in its own held. Bishop Ho- bart and Bishop Moore esteemed one an- other as brethren. The two seminaries, founded without intentional rivalry, wei*e not conscious of comx3etition. In 1835, when the first missionaries went from the Episcopal Church to China, one was Henry Lockwood, of the seminary in Xew York, and the other Francis Hansen of the seminary in Alexandria. Even in the heart of subsequent controversy, the contention in the Church in this country was not so bitter as it was in England. It is true that in 1852, Bishop Ives of Xorth Carolina resigned his diocese and went off on one side to the Church of Eome ; and not long after, in 1874, Bishop Cummins of Kentucky went off on the other side and started the Eeformed Episcopal Church. But these were rare exceptions, and neither man carried many with him. Beneath all controversy, and behind n9 The Episcopal all extreme and partisan statement, there was an abiding sense of the true nature of the Anglican Church. It was per- ceived by reflective and influential per- sons on each side that the genius of the Church is its catholic comprehensive- ness, and that there is hospitable room in it, both for the institutionalism which in its extreme returns to the Middle Ages' and for the individualism which in its extreme goes the whole length of the Protestant Eeformation. The General Convention of 1844, heard the men of the evangelical movement and the men of the ecclesiastical movement engage in long and vigorous debate, but it declined to commit itself to either side. ' ' The lit- urgy, offices, and articles of the Church," it said, '"are sufficient exponents of her sense of the essential doctrines of Holy Scripture." In these formularies, high Churchmen and low Churchmen stood alike, with equal confidence, and equal loyalty and equal right. 120 Church in America This moderation of controversy was due in great part to the vast ijractical demands which were made upon the energies of the Church by the growing demands of the New West. The work of domestic missions had been seriously hindered by an unfortu- nate inheritance of opinion. Even in the State, the unity of the nation was not generally discerned. It did not be- come a universal i:>rinciple till it was determined by a civil war. In the Church, there was a like uncertainty. Each colony had had an independent ecclesiastical organization. They had stood apart like so many national churches. They had now come together, indeed, and made a confederation under a constitution, but the doctrine of dio- cesan rights went along with the doctrine of state rights, to which it corresponds. There was no clear general conception of an American Church. 121 The Episcopal As a result, there was no sense of com- mon initiative. The Church did not consider itself as a single church resi^on- sible in the land for the extension of the Kingdom of God. The General Conven- tion felt no call to send out missionaries. In the State, when a district, in the course of human events, came to have a sufficient number of American citizens, it might, if it chose, request admission into the confederation of states. So when a state, in the providence of God, came to have a sufficient number of resident Churchmen, the parishes to which tliey belonged might, if they chose, organize themselves into a diocese and request ad- mission into the confederation of dioceses. Accordingly, that portion of the con- tinent which we now call the Middle West had been left to go its own way. Among the settlers were many church- men, who desired the service of the Chui^ch. Occasional pioneer priests ven- tured into the new places, and did what j^H H ^^H ^T ■^ J k Y \ Al The Right Rev. Jackson Kemper, D. D. (See page 12$) Church in America tliey could. But they were few in num- ber, and the sheep, for the most part, liad no shepherd. In the meantime, the ^Methodists, the Baptists, the Presbyteri- ans, having ecclesiastical organizations easily adaptable to the frontier condi- tions, were building churches. And to these chiu'ches, as good Christians hav- ing no choice, the sons and daughters of the church were going. It is, indeed, a matter of note that the names of the dis- tinguished families of Dutch colonists in Xew York, of Puritan colonists in Mas- sachusetts, and of Quaker colonists in Pennsylvania, are now found on the com- municant lists of the church ; but in tlie Middle West, the descendants of church colonists are largely to be found to-day in the denominational churches. This neglect was amended and at last ended by the example of Bishoi> Chase and Bishop Otey. Philander Chase, Deacon Chase's fif- teenth child, was born in a log cabin in 123 The Episcopal Vermont. At Dartmouth College he found a Prayer-book and became a churchman. Taking orders, he became itinerant missionary to the northern and western parts of the diocese of New York. He went about preaching in the little settlements, when stumps of trees were still standing in the unfenced streets of Utica, and a solitary man in a cabin was boiling salt on the site of Syracuse. The IDeople of New Orleans having asked for a Protestant minister. Bishop Moore per- suaded Chase to go. There he founded Christ Chui'ch in 1805. Eeturning to the north, after a serious illness, he be- came rector of Christ Chmxh, Hartford. Thence he j)ushed out to the newly settled plantations of Ohio. In 1818, the five clergymen of Ohio, with a few laymen, chose Chase for bishop. After a dozen years, he resigned his diocese in the midst of a disagreement with his clergy, and moved on into the wilds of Illinois. At Chicago, where there were three houses 124 Church in America and a fort, a treaty was beiug made with the Indians. The plains were dotted with wigwams, and savages were dancing around their cami^-fires. In 1835, the three clergymen of Illinois with the lay- men of their i^arishes made Chase their bishop. Thus he founded two dioceses. In each of these dioceses, he built a col- lege, — Kenyon in Ohio, Jubilee in Illi- nois. It was a good season for planting colleges. Trinity was founded by Bishop Brownell, at Hartford, in 1824, as a refuge from the denominational limitations of Yale. Hobart was established at Geneva, in 1825, on foundations laid by Bishoi) Hobart, with funds provided by Trinity church, Xew York. Chase established his colleges partly for general education as the basis of good churchmanship and good citizenship, but chiefly for the training of young men for the ministry. To get funds for his colleges he went to England and there attracted great attention and ob- tained large gifts from wealthy and titled 125 The Episcopal persons. A frontiersman, strong, hand- some, fresh from a career of adventure, familiar with the wild woods, and yet a bishop, he impressed the imagination of the English. Chase's mission to Ohio and Illinois was paralleled by Otey's mission to Tennessee and Kentucky. James Hervey Otey was born on a farm in Virginia. He went to Tennessee to teach school. Attending a service held by a wandering missionary, he was baptized, and applied for ordina- tion. At that time there was not an Episcopal congregation in the state. Few people knew anything about the Episcopal church, and these few disliked it. Otey's stalwart manliness and genuine religion compelled attention. In 1829, he and three other clergymen organized the dio- cese of Tennessee, and he was presently made bishop. A schoolmaster like Chase, he appreciated the value of a school. He planted one for boys and one for girls. He began an alliance between church- 126 Church in America inaDship and education which afterward resulted, in 1856, in the University of the South. Chase and Otey, with their new dio- ceses, stirred in the general church a zeal for missions. They put an end to the attitude of i^assive waiting. At the Gen- eral Convention of 1835, just fifty years after the initial convention at which the church effected its organization, it was definitely proclaimed that the whole church is a missionary society, and every bajDtized member of it a missionary. This had already been perceived, and a board of missions had existed since 1821, but the convention of 1835 made it a liv- ing fact by sending a missionary bishop. Jackson Kemper was made bishoj) of the northwest. That was the year in which the young men from the two seminaries started for China. Kemper founded churches in Iowa, in Minnesota, in Missouri, in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin he established schools at 127 The Episcopal Nasliotali. James Lloyd Breck, priest and pioneer, started schools in Minne- sota at Faribault, and leaving enduring foundations on whicli other men should build, pushed on and on, across the plains, across the mountains, till he built a school on the coast of the Pacific, at Benicia. Other missionaries followed, presbyters and bishops. Kip ministered to the miners of '49, Scott founded the diocese of Oregon, Whipple became the apostle to the Indians, \yithin fifteen years after the consecration of the first missionary bishop, both the clergy list and the communicant list had more than doubled. The seven hundred clergy of 1835 had become fifteen hundred ; the thirty-six thousand communicants had become eighty thousand. Nevertheless, the Church was still, in method and in purpose, a sect. The Con- vention of 1835, by sending a missionary bishop, had proclaimed a consciousness of corporate life and opportunity. But, 128 Church in America with the exception of its mode of gov- ernment, the Cliurch had not adapted it- self to the general situation. It stood in the old ways, and minded the rubrics and canons which had done good service in the ancient dioceses of England. Many of its clergy and people were still of the temper of the early Churchmen of the colony of Massachusetts, who wrote to the Venerable Society that they maintained "an offensive demeanor toward them that are without.'' The Prayer-book, for example, was presented in sacred entirety to the Scotch- Irish set- tlers along the Mississippi, to the Indians in the region of the Great Lakes, and to the miners by the Sacramento River. If they did not understand it, if they re- sented it, the Church deplored their ig- norance or their prejudice. But this, — to apply our Lord's words about catching men, — was to blame the fish instead of changing the bait. It was the policy upon which Braddock had 129 The Episcopal insisted when he met the Indians in battle on the bank of the Monougahela Eiver. Braddoek had learned war in Enrope, where soldiers fonght in j)la- toons. When Colonel Washington conn - seled him that in Western Pennsylvania it was the custom to fight from behind trees, Braddoek rejected the advice ius novel and indecent. In all the prescrip- tions of respectable and conventional warfare, there was not a mention of a tree. Braddoek said, as he fell mortally wounded iu the midst of complete de- feat, ''I will do better another time." It seemed to some far-sighted and sagacious Churchmen of the middle of the nine- teenth century that that other time had now properly come in the experience of the Church. In the General Convention of 1853, Dr. Muhlenberg, on behalf of a number of notable signers, offered a me- morial to the House of Bishops. The memorialists raised the question *' whether the Protestant Episcopal 130 Church in America Church, with only her i^resent canon- ical and traditional customs and usages, is competent to the work of preaching and dispensing the Gospel to all sorts and conditions of men, and so adequate to do the work of the Lord in this land and in this age." This question, for their part, they answered in the nega- tive. ''Our Church," they said, ''con- fined to the exercise of her present sys- tem, is not sufficient" for this work. The remedy which they proposed touched the two most obWous characteristics of the Episcopal Church : it is episcopal and it is liturgical. It is the church of the bishop and of the book. Concern- ing the book, they proposed to loosen the law of uniformity. They would ad- mit to the communion of the Church, *' without that entire surrender which would now be required of them, of all the liberty in public worship to which they have bfien accustomed," the minis- tei's and congregations of other religious 131 The Episcopal bodies. Conceriiing the bishop, they^ l^roposed to give him greater freedom of leadership and of personal initiative. They would have him in a position to welcome such ministers and congrega- tions, to ordain the ministers, and to re- ceive the congregations, letting them go on, for the most part, in their own way. Thus they anticipated an increase of Christian unity, and a relation of the Church to the whole iDCople of the land. This memorial, written by William Augustus Muhlenberg, was taken up with enthusiasm by Alonzo Potter. These and other like-minded men were Church- men of a type which was both new and old. 'New in a time of contention which had parted the Church into two camps, it was nevertheless a return to the wider spirit of that former time when in Eng- land the Church and the nation had been identical. They were comprehen- sive Churchmen. In Muhlenberg's phrase, they were Evangelical Catholics. 132 Church in America Muhlenberg was a comprehensive priest. He founded the free Church of the Holy Communion in K'ew York, and named it for the fraternal rather than for the sacramental spii'it in religion. He had daily services, weekly commun- ion, and a boy choir. He was the first to make use of trees at Christmas and of flowers at Easter. He started the Fresh Air Fund. He founded St. Luke's Hos- pital. Potter was a comprehensive bishop. He found Pennsylvania di^-ided, accord- ing to the bad way of the time, into wrangling parties. He became the bishop of neither party, and of both. He welcomed into his diocese, and sus- tained with his sympathy and api)recia- tion, devout, faithful, and effective cler- gymen, regardless of their position con- cerning points then controverted. He was, moreover, a citizen as well as a bishop. He commended the Church to the people of the Commonwealth, not on 133 The Episcopal the basis of authority or of the past, but on the basis of present love, faith, and good works. The memorial was referred to a com- mittee to report to the next General Con- vention. It was discussed and discussed. Then the Civil War diverted men's atten- tion, and no action was taken. But the way had been opened toward a larger churchmanship, in a finer spirit, intent on the illimitable expansion of the Church. Accession : to 1907 The approach of the contest between the l!^orth and the South raised the ques- tion as to the association of religion with politics. Shall the Church take sides in the contention of the States 1 Some said, yes ; following the precedents of Isaiah and Jeremiah. Some said, no ; quoting from the epistles of St. Paul. On behalf of the political action of the Church was the voice of conscience, asserting that 134 Church in America slavery was a matter of morals. On be- half of abstiuence from such action was the voice of experience, recalling how the Church had been hindered in her prog- ress by entangling alliances with the House of Stuart and with the House of Hanover. Moreover, it was urged, the rights and wrongs of the dispute were by no means clear. The relation of the states to the nation was still uncertain. Is there a sovereign nation, as they said at the North, one and indivisible, now and forever? Or, is there a confedera- tion of sovereign states, from which any state is free to resign at will ? And as for slavery, while most men at the Xorth and some in the South disliked it, would it be ended most successfully by the vio- lence of war ? In this perplexity, some Churchmen took one side and some another. Bishop ]\lcllvaine of Ohio answered the call of President Lincoln, and went to England with Archbishoi) Huglies, Henry Ward 135 The Episcopal Beeclier, and Thurlow Weed to persuade the English people not to recognize the Confederacy 5 and there he did notable service. Bishop Polk of Louisiana an- swered the call of President Davis, and became a general in the Confederate Army. But Mcllvaine and Polk had been friends since Polk was a cadet at West Point and Mcllvaine was chaplain there. Polk had been converted by Mc- llvaine, and they had entered into a sol- emn compact to pray each for the other, by name, every Sunday morning. That, in less dramatic form, was a gen- eral situation. Owing, in great part, to the triennial meetings of the General Convention, Churchmen north and south were personal friends. Sometimes the Convention met in the INTorth, sometimes in the South, and always the roll of dele- gates began with Alabama and went down along the lengthening list of states. On the whole, the largest number of con- spicuous Churchmen in the war were on 136 Thk Rev. James De Kuven. D. D. (See tage 139) Church in America the Southern side. Jefferson Davis, Pres- ident of the Confederate States, Avas a Churchman. Robert E. Lee, commander- in-chief of the Confederate forces, was a Churchman. In 1861, the southern dioceses followed the secession of the Southern States. They met in convention, and adopted a constitution and canons. But in 1862, at the General Convention in Xew York the roll call began as always with Alabama. The Church, like the nation, recognized no partition. At the same time, the Con- vention adopted a resolution afdrming the duty of Churchmen to sustain and defend the country and praying for the restoration of the Union. And then they went to keep a day of penitence and fast- ing in Trinity Church, whose rector's father. General Dix, had spoken his mind on the subject of tearing down the American flag in words which stirred the nation. In 1865, the roll was called again, and North Carolina, Tennessee, 137 The Episcopal and Texas answered. The southern dio- ceses returned as the Southern States came back into the Union. They had been absent from only one convention. ^yhen the war was over, and men were able to think of other things, the atten- tion of the Church was taken for a time by the old strife of parties. This now took the form of a discussion as to the essential meaning of the sacraments. As regards the sacrament of baptism, the discussion centred about the w^ord '^ regeneration." This word had been used in connection with baptism since the time of the i^ew Testament, but the Great Awakening and the Great Eevival had laid hold upon it for another pur- pose, and had thus given it, to the popu- lar mind, another and quite different meaning. The low Churchmen, taking this meaning, were loath to use the word ; some of them omitted it. In 1871, the bishops issued a declaration to the effect that in their judgment "the word 138 Church in America ' regenerate ' is not there so used as to determine that a moral change in the subject of baptism is wrought by the Sacrament.'^ As regards the Holy Communion, the discussion turned upon the matter of ritual. The high Churchman held a doctrine of the Eucharist akin to that which was held in the Middle Ages, and they desired to express it by forms and ceremonies such as were used in the Latin Mass. The low Churchman held a doc- trine of the Lord's Supper akin tx) that which was held by the Swiss reformers, and they objected strongly to such forms aud ceremonies. The debate eugaged the energies of the Church till the General Convention of 1874. It was ably led for the high Churchmen, by James DeKoven, whose saintly life gave weight to his arguments. It was formally decided by a canon on ritual, adverse to the ritualists. The de- bates, however, had so established the 139 The Episcopal Ijriuciple of ritual liberty that tlie de- cision made little difference in practice. Afterward, in 1903, when the canons were revised, these prohibitions had no friends. These discussions, with which the hos- tility between high church people and low came presently to an end, were fol- lowed in the Church by two revisions, first of the Prayer-book, then of the canons. They were mainly in the direc- tion indicated by the Memorial of 1853. The alterations of the litm^gy provided both for the amendment and for the elas- ticity of the services. They were set forth in a '^ Book Annexed ' ' to the report of a committee, which was related to the Prayer-book of 1892, as the ^^ Proposed Book" was related to the Prayer-book of 1789 ; except that most of the sugges- tions of the Book Annexed were adopted. The altei^tions in the canons were mostly for the purpose of making the Church more effective as a power for righteous- 140 Church in America ness. Thej^ undertook a division of the national church into provinces, for the sake of better legislation. They made more strict the regulations regarding the growing evil of divorce. The Memorial api^eared most clearly in a Declaration of the Bishops in 1880 on Christian Unity, and in the debates arising from an endeavor to make this declaration available for use in our pres- ent difficulties. The pronouncement af- firmed four essentials to the restoration of unity : the Scriptures, the two Creeds, the two Sacraments, and the Historic Episcopate. During the x>rogress of these debates within the Church, two new movements were beginning in English-speaking Christendom at large. One concerned the relation between Eeligion and Science ; the other concerned the relation between Religion and Society. In 1859, Darwin published the ^'Origin of Species." The doctrine of evolution, 141 The Episcopal thus for the first time brought to the at- tention of the people in general, was there applied to the natural history of man. The Copernican theory of the uni- verse had already shown that the earth is but an insignificant bit of matter among the innumerable hosts of stars. The Darwinian theory seemed now to show that even on this discredited i)lanet, man is but a higher species of animal. Moreover, in the unbroken sequence of events, effect following cause, man com- ing from the animals, and animals from plants, and plants from the earth, with natural selection and survival of the fit- test accounting for all changes, there ap- peared to be no room for God. Along with the degradation of man went the expulsion of God. Thus, in the third quarter of the century, it seemed to many as if the foundations of the world were^ out of course. Presently it appeared, indeed, that the doctrine of evolution as applied to the 142 Church in America life of man had no such direful conse- quences as had at first been feared, but the idea of growth, which, was the heart of truth in it, proved to be filled with ex- plosive forces. It was applied to all de- partments of thought. History began to be rewritten ; the present began to be interpreted by its source in the past. Thus our most cherished convictions ap- peared not only to have grown, through many changes, from remote ages, but to be growing and changing still. Every- thing was therefore in a state of flux. Yesterday our fathers believed that, to- day we believe this, to-morrow our chil- dren shall believe the other. The resulting contest between science and religion turned at first upon the meaning of the first chapters of Genesis. Soon the whole book, from the Garden of Eden to the Day of Judgment, was subjected to question and criticism. Un- der the compulsion of the new theory of growth, men began to ask, How, then, 143 The Episcopal did the Bible grow ? A new science of Bible study came into existence. The doctrine of evolution was, accordingly, one of the most unsettling forces which have ever turned the whole world up- side down. At the same time, in the world of so- ciety, great upheavals were taking place. It is true that the epoch-making book had been published long before. Adam Smith's "Wealth of JS'ations,'' which is related to the problems of modern society, as the '' Origin of Species " is related to the problems of modern science, had ap- peared in the same year with the Declar- ation of Independence. And, the year before, James "VYatt had begun the man- ufacture of steam engines. But the new forces made their way slowly. It was not till after our Civil War that the working-man obtained the right to vote in England. Thereupon the new voters legalized the trades-union. In 1875, they abolished the old law of con- 144 Church in America spiracy, thereby making democracy se- cure, and setting master and man on the same footing. Then the strikes began : at first in England, where the lot of the working-man was hard ; then in this country, where it was becoming equally hard. Already in England, between 1832 and 1848, the strife about the Corn Laws had convinced the working-men that the land owners were their enemies, — and the land owners belonged mostly to the Church of England ; and the strife about the Factory Acts had convinced the working-men that the mill owners were their enemies, — and the mill owners belonged mostly to the congregations of dissent. This separation between the wage earners and the churches was brought over here. Then Socialism came in, to inform and stimulate all this unrest. Meanwhile, with the growth of great cities and the consequent crowding of vast populations in tenement houses, the 145 The Episcopal unit of the parish changed. The paro- chial unit had been the family : — father, mother and children living under a single roof and sitting together in one pew. Now it was the individual. In the face of this change, the old parochial machinery became useless. The methods which had availed under the old conditions no longer affected people who had changed both their outlook upon life and their way of living. The little fish escaped through the big meshes of the parish net. Churches gave up in despair, and moved uptown, where family life was still of the conventional kind. Thus the gulf between the rich and the poor, between the employer and the employed, between the Church and great masses of the people, widened. These two movements, intellectual and social, were for the last half of the nine- teenth century what the evangelical and ecclesiastical movements had been for the first half. They demanded a new kind 146 Church in America of churchmanship, and the broad Church- man ai)peared. At fii'st, the interests of the new Churchmen were engaged in the ques- tions arising out of the debates between religion and science. As the ^'Tracts for the Times" had announced the eccle- siastical movement, so ^ ' Essays and Ee- views," published in 1860, announced the intellectual movement in the Church. The contention was for fearless study, unfailing pursuit of truth, and freedom of expression. Then, with Frederick Maurice and Charles Kingsley, the social interest was added. The two went on side by side in the souls of the same men. Their desire was to commend religion on the one side to the scholar, and on the other side to the wage-earner. They read the "Wealth of Nations" and the "Origin of Si)ecies," with profound sympathy, finding truth in both. They called themselves evolutionists, and made much of the doctrine of Immanence ; that 147 The Episcopal is, of the universal, pervading presence of God, in whom our life consists, and who manifests Himself as well in the nat- ural as in the supernatural. They called themselves socialists, and preached the Brotherhood of Man, taking up the cause of the oppressed, fighting the battles of the i)Oor. Some of these men were high Church- men, who gave ritualism a new meaning by their self-sacrifice in the slums. Some were low Chui'chmen who vindicated again the supremacy of the spirit over the letter. They made mistakes, went off on this side and on that into extremes, got themselves accused of heresy, and were exposed to all the misunderstand- ing and criticism which had previously attended the evangelical movement and the ecclesiastical movement. But through this they lived and prospered, winning new victories for truth and for the Church. The intellectual aspects of the new broad Churchmanship were most nota- 148 The Right Rev. Phillips Brooks, D. D. (See page 147) Church in America bly represented in this country by Phillips Brooks, the greatest preacher of his generation. Its social aspects ap- peared most eminently in St. George's parish, in New York, the pioneer and pattern of the ''institutional" chui'ches. The Episcopal Church had now fairly entered upon the larger life and maturer strength in the courage of which she cele- brates her three hundredth anniversary. Without and within, old prejudices had been dispelled, and new activities had been undertaken. The Brotherhood of St. Andrew stirred the souls of young Churchmen. Church clubs united the parishes of large cities. Eeligious orders gave new opportunities for devotion and service. Deaconesses were trained. Hos- pitals were erected. Cathedrals began to api^ear, centres of diocesan industry and inspiration. Boys' schools, St. Paul's at Concord, New Hampshire, St. Mark's and Grot on in Massachusetts, and many others, began to make the influence of 149 The Episcopal the Church felt in a new way among the privileged and influential. IS'ew seminaries for the training of the clergy- sprang up and grew strong : — Berkeley in Middletown in 1850, the Philadelphia Divinity School in 1862, the Episcopal Theological School at Cambridge in 1867, the "Western Theological Seminary at Chicago in 1885, the Church Divin- ity School of the Pacific in 1894. Missions were extended, at home and abroad. BishojDS and clergy and women helpers went to China, to Japan, to Alaska, to the Philippine Islands. The Woman's Auxiliary to the Board of Mis- sions multiplied both interest and effi- ciency. All this is of our own time. The good of it, and the glory of it, and the men and women who have done it, are known to us. Another historian, for an- other anniversary, will give them the praise which is their due. The fifteen hundred clergy of 1835, have become five thousand j the eighty 150 Church in America thousand communicants have become eight hundred thousand. Thanks be to God for all His many mercies. Peace and joy, with growth in grace, and godly quietness, and good works, and favor with God and man, be to the Church always, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Suggested Readings History of the Protestant Episcopal Church.— C. C. Tiffany. History of the American Episcopal Church.— 6'. D. McConnell. The Church in America. — Leigliton Cole- man, The Episcopalians. — D. D. Addison. The Cradle of the Eepublic— X. G. Tyler. Old Virginia and Her Neighbors. — John Fiske. The Beginnings of Kew England. — John Fiske. England in America. —L. G. Tyler, AVilliam White.— J. H. Ward, 151 The Episcopal Samuel Seabury. — Edward Beardsley. John Henry Hobart. — John McVicJcar. Alexander Yiets Griswold. — J. 8. Stone. Philander Ghase. — L. C. Smith. James Harvey Otey. — W. M. Green. William Augustus Muhlenberg. — Anne Ayres. Phillips Brooks. — A. Y. G. Allen. Memorabilia of Sixty-Five Years. — J. H. Spencer. Kecords of a Long Life. — Heman Dyer. The Eecent Past.— J?. R. Wilmer. Lights and Shadows of a Long Episco- pate. — H. B. Whipple. Eeminiscences. — T. M. Clark. Eeminiscences of Bishops and Arch- bishops. — H. C. Potter. Eeminiscences. — B. S. Tuttle. 152 The Missionary Thank Offering To be presented at the General Con- vention in Richmond by the Men of the Church in gratitude for Three Hun- dred Years of English Christianity. Jamestown, 1607 — Richmond, 1907 Central Committee Acting under appointment from the Board of Missions DAVID H. GREER, D.D., Chairman Coadjutor Bishop of New York 7 Gramercy Park, New York GEORGE C. THOMAS, Treasurer 206 West Washington Square, Philadelphia GEORGE W^ PEPPER, Secretar>- 1438 Land Title Building, Philadelphia 153 DUE DATE 201-6503 Printed in USA ^Zl.lZ H665 ^ X o ex X