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THE CONGREGATIONALISTS 
 
The Story of the Churches 
 
 The Congregationalists 
 
 By 
 LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON 
 
 Pastor at Assonet, Massachusetts ; and Author of *^ A 
 History of American Christianity " 
 
 NEW YORK: THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO. 
 33-37 East Seventeenth St., Union Sq. North 
 
Copyright, 1904, 
 
 By 
 
 The Baker & Taylor Co. 
 
 Published, March, igo4 
 
Publishers' Note 
 
 The aim of this series is to furnish a uniform 
 set of church histories, brief but complete, 
 and designed to instruct the average church 
 member in the origin, development, and his- 
 tory of the various denominations. Many 
 church histories have been issued for all de- 
 nominations, but they have usually been 
 volumes of such size as to discourage any 
 but students of church history. Each vol- 
 ume of this series, all of which will be 
 written by leading historians of the various 
 denominations, will not only interest the 
 members of the denomination about which 
 it is written, but will prove interesting to 
 members of other denominations as well 
 who wish to learn something of their fellow 
 workers. The volumes will be bound uni- 
 formly, and when the series is complete will 
 make a most valuable history of the Chris- 
 tian church. 
 
 374287 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. Definition and Plan 9 
 
 II. Puritan Ideals 13 
 
 III. Pilgrim and Puritan 23 
 
 IV. The Puritan Exodus 44 
 
 V. Controversy and Council 56 
 
 VI. Half-Way Covenant 76 
 
 VII. Keformation and Innovation ... 83 
 
 VIII. A Democratic Reaction 97 
 
 IX. A Retrospect 102 
 
 X. Great Awakening Ill 
 
 XI. Growth of Doctrine 133 
 
 XII. Age of Home Missions 140 
 
 XIII. Disruption 155 
 
 XIV. Unitarianism 170 
 
 XV. After the Disruption 182 
 
 XVI. Public Reforms 201 
 
 XVII. Congregationalism National . . . 223 
 
 XVIII. Recent Questions 238 
 
 XIX. The Unitarians 248 
 
 XX. A Wider Review 255 
 
 Bibliography 270 
 
 Index • • • , . . 273 
 
The Congregationalists 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 DEFINITION AND PLAN 
 
 Congregationalism is that principle of 
 church polity according to which the unit 
 of sovereignty in church government is the 
 individual congregation of Christian disci- 
 ples meeting habitually for worship and 
 fellowship. It is distinguished from Pres- 
 byterianism, according to which the unit of 
 sovereignty is the neighbor congregations 
 of a certain region, represented in a dele- 
 gated clerico-laical body which in turn is 
 subject to constitutional obligations to 
 councils of wider representation and higher 
 authority; it is distinguished from National- 
 ism, according to which the people of each 
 9 
 
lo The Congregational ists 
 
 Christian country are reckoned as the church 
 of that country, subject to a national hier- 
 archy whether related or unrelated to the 
 civil government; and it is distinguished 
 from Catholicism, which holds that the en- 
 tire communion of saints in all the world 
 constitutes a single corporation rightfully 
 subject to an individual head. 
 
 The history of Congregationalism may be 
 taken as recording the prevalence of this 
 principle of the right of self-government of 
 the individual congregation, as it has been 
 wrought out into practical application in 
 America, and propagating itself like leaven, 
 has widely and deeply affected the admin- 
 istration of other polities at the furthest re- 
 move from itself; or as it has been exem- 
 plified in those church fellowships, embrac- 
 ing so large a part of Protestant America, 
 by which it has been distinctly accepted; 
 or especially as it is illustrated in the history 
 of the sect that sometimes puts forth the 
 claim to exclusive rights in the title Congre- 
 
Definition and Plan 1 1 
 
 gationaiist, serving peremptory warning on 
 persons and churches outside of its organi- 
 zation who may use the title as descriptive 
 of their polity, as for infringement of its 
 trade-mark. 
 
 The present Story of The Congregation- 
 alists, beginning with the evolution of the 
 Congregational polity on the soil of New 
 England, will not avoid any one of these 
 three lines of study. It will incidentally in- 
 dicate the wide influence, direct and indi- 
 rect, which their characteristic tenet has 
 had throughout the country on ecclesiastical 
 and even on civil polity. It will show the 
 origin, and in some instances the wide ex- 
 tension and multitudinous increase, of the 
 several sects that are congregational in or- 
 ganization. And it will trace in such detail 
 as the limits of space permit, the progress 
 and changes of that now somewhat highly 
 organized and consolidated sect which 
 claims to be known as The Congregation- 
 alists. It will include in its view the growth 
 
12 The Congregationalists 
 
 of like organizations in other countries, and 
 some of the most nobly successful of mod- 
 ern Christian missions. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 PURITAN IDEALS 
 
 It would be most misleading to the stu- 
 dent of this part of church history, to as- 
 sume that the great and splendid body of 
 English clergy, gentry and yeomanry who, 
 to the number of twenty thousand, arrived 
 in New England in the twelve years from 
 1628 to 1640, came as Congregationalists, 
 to put into operation a preconceived system 
 of church polity. They were rather, as 
 their impassioned declarations testify, de- 
 voted and affectionate members of the na- 
 tional Church of England — so devoted and 
 loyal that they had been earnestly intent, 
 long before their departure from England, 
 on seeking its highest interests in a greater 
 purity of discipline and worship, in such 
 wise as to have exposed themselves to the 
 13 
 
14 The Congregationalists 
 
 peril of estate, liberty and life. Thirty 
 years before the great migration, at the ac- 
 cession of James I, the aims of the Puritan 
 party at that time were defined in detail in 
 the famous "Millenary Petition" presented 
 to the new king with the signatures of 
 nearly a thousand of the established clergy. 
 It is notable that they included no objection 
 to the doctrinal formularies of the National 
 Church, nor to its episcopal constitution. 
 The petition called for a relaxation of the 
 rigor of sundry ritual requirements, but its 
 gravest demands were for such an adminis- 
 tration of discipline as should relieve the 
 Church which they served and loved of the 
 shame of including in its membership, con- 
 trary to the express teaching of the New 
 Testament, the flagrantly and notoriously 
 wicked, and in its clergy, not only the ig- 
 norant, incompetent and non-resident, but 
 the openly immoral. Doubtless in the 
 three decades of controversy that had fol- 
 lowed, the demands of the Puritan party 
 
Puritan Ideals 15 
 
 had grown in extent and in definiteness, as 
 on the other side new abuses and tyrannies 
 had exasperated the debate. But still the 
 main contention of the reforming party, 
 that which gave them their party name, 
 continued to be the demand that the Na- 
 tional Church should no longer be an indis- 
 criminate mingling, both in clergy and in 
 people, of the worthy and the vile, but 
 should be purified. So far as the methods 
 by which this was to be accomplished had 
 become defined in the minds of the leaders, 
 those methods which some of them had 
 seen in successful use among the Reformed 
 churches of the continent and in Scotland, 
 and which had been commended to multi- 
 tudes of eager students in the university of 
 Cambridge in the lectures of famous Thomas 
 Cartwright, and which are comprehended 
 under the general term of Presbyterianism, 
 were undoubtedly most in favor; though it 
 was impossible that Richard Hooker's great 
 treatise of Ecclesiastical Polity, containing, 
 
i6 The Congregationalists 
 
 with much that was antagonistic, so much 
 that was highly congenial to their own 
 ideas, should not have won the admiring 
 attention and affected the opinions of these 
 thoughtful and studious men. 
 
 As between the two possible processes 
 of purifying the Church, the Puritans had 
 not the slightest hesitation. Some earnest 
 spirits, impatient with the slow progress 
 of reform, had taken as their motto, " Ref- 
 ormation without Tarrying for Any," and 
 summoned all faithful Christians to quit the 
 National Church as coming out of Babylon, 
 and to associate themselves in separated 
 congregations. But to the Puritan party in 
 general, this act of rending themselves 
 from fellowship with holy ministers and 
 faithful disciples in the parishes of the 
 establishment was not only condemned as 
 weakening the party of reform by desert- 
 ing from the fighting line, but was rejected 
 with sincere horror as the sin of schism. 
 Some of the experiments that had been 
 
Puritan Ideals 17 
 
 made, in Separatist congregations of exiles 
 in the Low Countries, had not been 
 attended with such success as to win the 
 respect of critical observers. The Puritan 
 party in the Church of England became 
 the more convinced that the true method of 
 reform was not that of the " come-outers " 
 who would leave the national church to 
 sink the deeper into the corruption in 
 which it was involved, but that of staying 
 within, shunning compliance with wrong, 
 and striving to exclude unfit members and 
 ministers by the ways of discipline pointed 
 out in the Scriptures; it was not by culling 
 out the holy, but by weeding out the 
 reprobate. 
 
 The first adventure towards the Puritan 
 colonization of New England illustrates the 
 National Church system in its most amiable 
 aspect. The Rev. John White, for more 
 than twenty years rector of Trinity Church, 
 Dorchester, by his devoted care for his 
 parishioners and his zeal for the interests of 
 
i8 The Congregationalists 
 
 religion, had won from the people the title 
 of "the patriarch of Dorchester." His 
 solicitude for the young men of his flock 
 did not cease when they were absent, as 
 often happened, on fishing voyages to the 
 New England coast. "He conceived the 
 plan of a settlement at some convenient 
 point, where sailors and fishermen, going 
 ashore, might find more comfortable 
 shelter and better supplies than the mere 
 wilderness could give them, and might 
 have the benefit of religious ministrations." 
 A company of "The Dorchester Adven- 
 turers" was organized with a capital of 
 ;^3,cxx); and some beginnings of a settle- 
 ment were made on Cape Ann; but after 
 two seasons of experiment the Dorchester 
 Adventurers became discouraged in their 
 hope of dividends and retired from the 
 enterprise. But the seed was quickened 
 when it died, and was "raised in glory." 
 
 For the thought of John White, through 
 all discouragements, deepened and widened 
 
Puritan Ideals 19 
 
 in his mind and in the minds of the Puritan 
 leaders with whom he was in correspond- 
 ence in various parts of England. The 
 current of public events had been for years 
 setting their plans, without their knowing 
 it, towards the west. The ill-starred reign 
 of Charles I, under which Church affairs 
 were dominated by the fierce fanaticism of 
 Laud, was more and more clouding and 
 even quenching the hopes alike of civil 
 liberty and of church reformation. The 
 starting of a poor little colony of Separa- 
 tists, at Plymouth, which was just emerg- 
 ing from its earliest perils and hardships; 
 and now the attempt at Cape Ann, not yet 
 quite extinct, stirred the minds, not of a 
 few persecuted exiles, but of sundry 
 ''knights and gentlemen about Dorches- 
 ter," together with " several other religious 
 persons of like quality in and about Lon- 
 don," to the great design of a Puritan 
 colony across the sea, in which the ideal of 
 a Christian church in a Christian state. 
 
20 The Congregationalists 
 
 which they had labored, thus far in vain, 
 to realize in their native land, might be 
 attempted without hindrance. With many 
 an example of ruinous failure in coloniza- 
 tion to deter them, the noble enterprise 
 was resolved upon, if only **fit men might 
 be procured to go over." The condition 
 was fulfilled when, June, 1628, Capt. John 
 Endicott, in The Abigail, with about forty 
 colonists, sailed from Weymouth, the port 
 of Dorchester, for the harbor of Naumkeag, 
 afterwards Salem. About a year after- 
 wards the young colony was reinforced by 
 more than one hundred and fifty persons 
 in three vessels abundantly provisioned. 
 With this company came three ministers 
 carefully selected by the governing com- 
 pany for their fitness for so weighty and 
 exceptional a charge. A historian (not 
 contemporary) relates of the foremost of 
 these that " when they came to the Land's 
 End, Mr. Higginson, calling up his children 
 and other passengers unto the stern of the 
 
Puritan Ideals 21 
 
 ship to take their last sight of England, 
 said, ' We will not say, as the Separatists 
 were wont to say at their leaving of Eng- 
 land, Farewell, Babylon! farewell, Rome! 
 but we will say, Farewell, dear England, 
 farewell, the church of God in England and 
 all the Christian friends there. We do not 
 go to New England as Separatists from the 
 Church of England, though we cannot but 
 separate from the corruptions in it; but we 
 go to practice the positive part of church 
 reformation, and propagate the Gospel in 
 America.'" Whether or not the incident 
 occurred as narrated, there is no doubt that 
 it expresses the sincere sentiment of the 
 Puritan colonists, both towards the 
 National Church which they loved, and 
 towards the Separatists whose course they 
 so severely reprobated. They were intent 
 on planting in the wilderness a state and a 
 state-church such as, in their view, England 
 and the Church of England ought to have 
 been. Especially (as their after course 
 
22 The Congregationalists 
 
 proves) they meant to reproduce whatever 
 was good in that parish system under 
 which each dwelling in the kingdom was 
 assigned to the charge of some minister, 
 and each minister and parish church had a 
 definite field of activity and responsibility. 
 
 With conceptions like these, and with a 
 noble self-consecration to Christian duty, 
 the company of about two hundred colo- 
 nists with Endicott for governor and the 
 three ministers sent out by the Massachu- 
 setts Bay Company, set themselves **to 
 practice the positive part of church refor- 
 mation " on the edge of the wilderness. 
 But meanwhile an incident befell which 
 was destined to have an important bearing 
 on the course of church history in America. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 PILGRIM AND PURITAN 
 
 When the Massachusetts Bay Company 
 planted its well provided colony at Salem, 
 it was not in ignorance of the fact that fifty 
 miles to the south the feeble community of 
 the Plymouth Separatists was struggling 
 into life. But the company's choice of a 
 location was made with no purpose of fel- 
 lowship with its neighbors. On the con- 
 trary, the Pilgrim settlement had, from its 
 beginning, been the object of distinctly un- 
 friendly feeling and deed on the part of the 
 religious party that was dominant in the 
 company. Some of the sorest of the troub- 
 les that beset that forlorn hope of a colony 
 in their preparations for the voyage, and 
 pursued them into their refuge in the wil- 
 derness, proceeded from that Puritan party 
 23 
 
24 The Congregationalists 
 
 to which they were bound by identity of 
 religious opinion and by feehngs of rever- 
 ence towards its great preachers and the- 
 ologians. The Puritans abhorred the schism 
 by which the Separatists had torn them- 
 selves loose from the general fellowship of 
 English Christians, and had been shocked 
 at the acrimonious denunciations flung back 
 upon the National Church by some who had 
 left it. The record of the seceders had not 
 been altogether such as to command re- 
 spect. Among them had been martyrs and 
 confessors of whom the world was not 
 worthy. But their earliest leader, Robert 
 Browne, a man of prophetic mind, in 
 whose writings are enunciated those prin- 
 ciples of polity both in church and state 
 which after three centuries have come to 
 general acceptance in America, had not in 
 him the stuff for a martyr, and after a 
 stormy day his sun set under a cloud. Of 
 the churches of The Separation, existing in 
 exile under the protection of the Dutch Re- 
 
Pilgrim and Puritan 25 
 
 public, some had brought scandal on their 
 cause, by meddlesome attempts at disci- 
 pline, by disputes over questions which to 
 us seem frivolous, and by schism within 
 schism. 
 
 There was one of these congregations to 
 which no part of this reproach could apply. 
 The little group of neighbors who were 
 wont to assemble, early in the seventeenth 
 century, at a decaying manor-house of the 
 Archbishops of York, of which William 
 Brewster was tenant, in the little village of 
 Scrooby, on the confines of Nottingham- 
 shire, were men and women whose con- 
 stancy under persecution, whose mutual 
 love and patience, gentleness and moder- 
 ation towards opponents, and noble perse- 
 verance against perils and distresses in the 
 prosecution of a great and beneficent enter- 
 prise, would have adorned the martyrology 
 of any age of the Christian Church. These 
 heroic qualities were the fair reflection of 
 the preeminent wisdom and holiness of the 
 
26 The Congregationalists 
 
 pastor, John Robinson. We recognize in 
 him, and to no small degree in the whole 
 Church which he served as pastor, the com- 
 bination, so rare in human nature, of un- 
 compromising devotion to ideal truth and 
 duty, with the patience of hope, and a 
 large and loving sympathy with good men 
 who differed from him. The little com- 
 pany of fellow-worshippers with him who 
 succeeded in escaping from the fierce per- 
 secution which was resolved that it would 
 neither tolerate them within the realm of 
 England nor suffer them to leave it, pur- 
 posely avoided implicating themselves in 
 the divisions into which some other com- 
 munities of exiled Separatists had fallen, 
 and shunning Amsterdam, found a tempo- 
 rary home in the quiet university town of 
 Leyden. Constrained by noble motives, 
 and filled with high hopes of what they 
 might accomplish for the advancement of 
 the Kingdom of God, but fully aware of 
 the perils and distresses that were before 
 
Pilgrim and Puritan 27 
 
 tnem in an enterprise the like of which had 
 not yet been attempted by Englishmen 
 without disaster, the feeble and ill provided 
 company effected its lodgment on the rock 
 of Plymouth on the shortest and darkest 
 day of the winter of 1620. 
 
 Few chapters of human history have 
 been oftener and more worthily told than 
 the story of the Pilgrim colony; and few 
 have better deserved the telling. But in its 
 bearing on the subject of this book it is of 
 less importance than is commonly sup- 
 posed. The Pilgrims, in their solitary 
 hamlet of Plymouth, were far from having 
 instituted what would be recognized as a 
 Congregational church in the modern sense 
 of the word. Their ideal of church gov- 
 ernment rejected the radical democratic 
 notions of Robert Browne, and held to a 
 government by the eldership, sanctioned by 
 the tacit or expressed consent of the mem- 
 bers. To them the question of the mutual 
 relation of churches was, in their utter iso- 
 
28 The Congregationalists 
 
 lation, not a practical question. The 
 church which gathered for worship at tuck 
 of drum on the bleak hilltop of Plymouth 
 was what would be called, in our modern 
 nomenclature, an Independent Presbyterian 
 church. 
 
 But there was one principle to which the 
 church of Plymouth stood committed by all 
 its antecedents, to wit, that a Christian 
 church is necessarily a church of Christians, 
 withdrawn from fellowship with the 
 openly unbelieving and ungodly and united 
 to each other by a covenant, express or 
 implied, of common duty and mutual faith- 
 fulness. Yet even this principle, by which 
 they had justified their withdrawal from 
 the "mixed muhitude" of the English par- 
 ish churches to the conventicle at Scrooby 
 manor-house, was held by the Plymouth 
 exiles in no such bitter and exasperated 
 spirit as had been manifested by some of 
 the Separatists, but in a spirit of patience, 
 respect and loving fellowship, even under 
 
Pilgrim and Puritan 29 
 
 extreme provocation, towards English fel- 
 low-Christians who held both their princi- 
 ple and their action in the severest reproba- 
 tion. The latest words of saintly John 
 Robinson, ''found in his study after his 
 decease," were counsels of peace towards 
 the unseparated brethren in the national 
 church of England. In his touching fare- 
 well to his departing flock, he spoke in the 
 spirit of prophecy of a time when unsepa- 
 rated Puritan ministers of the Church of 
 England should "come to the practice of 
 the ordinances out of the kingdom " and 
 out of the reach of the Act of Uniformity 
 and the bishops' courts, and predicted that 
 Vv^hen this should be, ''there will be no 
 difference between them and you." 
 
 The exiles departed "sorrowing that they 
 should see his face no more." That Robin- 
 son was never again to meet the church that 
 he so loved was due in part to the stern 
 disapproval of Separatism which was cher- 
 ished by the Puritan party in England, and 
 
30 The Congregationalists 
 
 their jealous unwillingness to permit the re- 
 inforcement of the Separatist colony by so 
 important an accession. This was not the 
 only sore distress that had been suffered by 
 the Pilgrims from the sharp antagonism of 
 their Puritan brethren in the national church. 
 The joy that was felt in the lonely hamlet 
 of Plymouth at the news that they were to 
 have Christian neighbors a day's journey to 
 the northward may well have been mingled 
 with serious misgivings. 
 
 But the relations between the two settle- 
 ments were from the beginning most af- 
 fectionate and fraternal. Upon landing at 
 Salem, the three ship-loads of reinforce- 
 ments for Endicott's company were found 
 to be infected with the scurvy, a com- 
 mon incident of long voyages in that and 
 even in later centuries. Governor Endicott 
 sent to Plymouth for medical aid, and the 
 visit of the "beloved physician " and deacon 
 of the Pilgrim church, Dr. Samuel Fuller, put 
 an end to all fears, on either side, of estrange- 
 
Pilgrim and Puritan 31 
 
 ment between the neighbor settlements. 
 Whatever prejudgments the Salem people 
 had formed against the Separatists melted 
 away under the kindly ministrations of 
 Deacon Fuller, and under his statement of 
 the principles and usages of the Plymouth 
 church. The letter of thanks from Endi- 
 cott to the governor of Plymouth is a 
 classic in American church history. 
 
 To the Worshipful and my right worthy 
 Friend, William Bradford, Esq., Gover- 
 nor of New Plymouth, these: 
 
 Right Worthy Sir : 
 
 It is a thing not usual that servants to 
 one master and of the same household 
 should be strangers; I assure you I desire 
 it not — nay, to speak more plainly, 1 cannot 
 be so to you. God's people are marked 
 with one and the same mark and sealed 
 with one and the same seal, and have, for 
 the main, one and the same heart guided 
 by one and the same Spirit of truth; and 
 where this is there can be no discord — nay, 
 there must needs be sweet harmony. The 
 same request with you I make unto the 
 Lord, that we may, as Christian brethren, 
 be united by a heavenly and unfeigned 
 
32 The Congregationalists 
 
 love, bending all our hearts and forces in 
 furthering a work beyond our strength, 
 with reverence and fear fastening our eyes 
 always on him that only is able to direct 
 and prosper all our ways. 
 
 I acknowledge myself much bound to 
 you for your kind love and care in sending 
 Mr. Fuller among us; and I rejoice much 
 that I am by him satisfied touching your 
 judgments of the outward form of God's 
 worship. It is, as far as 1 can yet gather, 
 no other than is warranted by the evidence 
 of truth, and the same which 1 have pro- 
 fessed and maintained ever since the Lord 
 in mercy revealed himself to me; being 
 very far different from the common report 
 that hath been spread of you touching that 
 particular. But God's children must not 
 look for less here below, and it is the great 
 mercy of God that he strengthens them to 
 go through with it. 
 
 I shall not need at this time to be tedious 
 unto you; for, God willing, I purpose to see 
 your face shortly. In the meantime, I 
 humbly take my leave of you, committing 
 you to the Lord's blessed protection, and 
 rest." 
 
 Your assured loving friend and servant, 
 John Endicott. 
 
 It is not difficult to trace, in the measures 
 taken towards the ordering of church insti- 
 
Pilgrim and Puritan 33 
 
 tutions at Salem, the precautions of prudent 
 men to avoid the ecclesiastical abuses 
 against which they had been protesting in 
 their native land. One of the most of- 
 fensive of these was the right of patronage 
 by which men were thrust into the min- 
 istry and imposed as pastors on unwilling 
 congregations, by the authority of some 
 secular person or corporation. It was easy 
 to see that the conscientious and religious 
 care with which the Massachusetts Com- 
 pany, under whose charter and encourage- 
 ment the colonists were settled, had se- 
 cured three clergymen of the highest quali- 
 fications for the service of the colony, 
 might, if simply acquiesced in, grow into a 
 precedent for reproducing in the new coun- 
 try the abhorrent simony and spiritual 
 tyranny of the old. It was determined that 
 an appointment by the company that stood 
 in the place of secular governor to the col- 
 ony conferred no spiritual authority over 
 the community of Christian worshippers in 
 
34 The Congregationalists 
 
 Salem, and that such authority could come 
 only through the free choice of the people 
 themselves. Accordingly a day of fasting 
 was set apart by the governor, and in the 
 assembly of the people the two Church-of- 
 England clergymen who were regarded as 
 candidates for the eldership in the Salem 
 Church gave their views as to what consti- 
 tutes a call to the ministry. ''They ac- 
 knowledged there was a twofold calling: 
 the one an inward calling, when the Lord 
 moved the heart of a man to take that call- 
 ing upon him and fitted him with gifts for 
 the same; the second was from the people, 
 when a company of believers are joined to- 
 gether in covenant to walk together in all 
 the ways of God." By written ballots the 
 two ministers, Skelton and Higginson, 
 were chosen respectively to be pastor and 
 teacher of the church. Then followed the 
 solemn induction into office. " They ac- 
 cepting the choice, Mr. Higginson and three 
 or four more of the gravest members of 
 
Pilgrim and Puritan 35 
 
 the church laid their hands on Mr. Skelton, 
 using prayers therewith. This being done, 
 then there was imposition of hands on Mr. 
 Higginson." The church was thus pro- 
 vided with its teaching eldership, and it 
 was proposed to go forward and complete 
 the organization by the election of other 
 elders and of deacons. But for reasons 
 that do not fully appear, it was deemed 
 best to stay the proceedings at this point. 
 They were not resumed until after other 
 action of quite a different sort, the motive 
 and grave significance of which to the par- 
 ticipants in it is easily discernible. 
 
 The protest of the Puritan party in the 
 church of England had been not only 
 against an unfit ministry forced upon the 
 churches by secular power or patronage, 
 but also, with not less emphasis, against 
 the indiscriminate mingling, in its member- 
 ship, of faithful believers in Christ, with 
 the notoriously vile and wicked and even 
 the publicly criminal. What precautions 
 
36 The Congregational! sts 
 
 were they taking against the recrudescence 
 in the new colony of this same abuse 
 which had been found intolerable in 
 England? And how "discern between 
 the righteous and the wicked " ? Accord- 
 ing to the principles of the Puritan 
 Nationalists, this should be accomplished 
 by the faithful exercise of church discipline, 
 excluding from the fellowship of the 
 church the incorrigibly unworthy. The 
 other method, of culling out the well 
 approved disciples from the general multi- 
 tude and constituting them into a church 
 by themselves — what was this but the very 
 practice of the Separatists, in their zeal for 
 "reformation without tarrying for any," 
 against which the Puritans had protested 
 as the sin of schism ? And yet what else 
 was to be done ? The early records give 
 indications enough that there was a dis- 
 tinctly and recognizably vicious element 
 mingled with even the choicest companies 
 of colonists. Was it now the duty of the 
 
Pilgrim and Puritan 37 
 
 Salem people, in ordering the beginnings 
 of their church estate, to include in the 
 brotherhood the dubious and the not at all 
 dubious characters whom it would be their 
 next duty to exclude by the painful stages 
 of discipline? These questions may well 
 have occupied the thoughts of the imper- 
 fectly organized church, during the stay of 
 proceedings after the ordination of the 
 two teaching elders. Partly, no doubt, 
 through the influence of the Plymouth 
 church, but quite as much under the 
 constraint of the new situation, the Chris- 
 tian people of Salem entered upon a pro- 
 cedure that became a type for church 
 organization throughout New England, 
 and has widely affected the course of 
 church history in the United States, to this 
 day. 
 
 The reason assigned for adjourning the 
 further organization of the church had been 
 the expected arrival of another company 
 from England. But without awaiting this 
 
38 The Congregationalists 
 
 arrival, another day of fasting was ap- 
 pointed for the election of elders and 
 deacons. In preparation for this, action 
 was taken that was logically antecedent to 
 the election of officers, to wit, the con- 
 stituting of the church. Thirty persons 
 were named to be the first members of the 
 church. A form of mutual covenant was 
 drawn by the pen of Teacher Higginson, 
 and thirty copies of it were written out; 
 and on the appointed day the thirty con- 
 stituent members solemnly declared: "We 
 covenant with the Lord and one with 
 another, and do bind ourselves, in the 
 presence of God, to walk together in all 
 his ways, according as he is pleased to 
 reveal himself unto us in his blessed word 
 of truth." This done, the church, formally 
 constituted by covenant, presented anew to 
 the pastor and teacher already less formally 
 chosen and inducted into office the invita- 
 tion to exercise these functions, and once 
 more the divine blessing was invoked upon 
 
Pilgrim and Puritan 39 
 
 them with laying on of hands, consecrating 
 them anew to their sacred work. 
 
 The transaction suggests certain reflec- 
 tions : 
 
 1. The Christians of Salem did accept, 
 in practice if not in theory, the Pilgrim 
 view that the church was to consist, not of 
 the baptized persons in a community, from 
 whom those proved unworthy should be 
 excluded by process of discipline; but of 
 persons of demonstrated fitness "called 
 out" from the community, with ** power 
 to add to their number" persons of like 
 fitness. 
 
 2. They probably believed that in these 
 acts they were originating a church, just as 
 the Pilgrims believed that they were creat- 
 ing rights of government by their "social 
 compact " on the Mayflower. It is easy for 
 us, with our advantage of perspective, to 
 see that they were only organizing a church 
 already existent. If there had been no 
 church in Salem, by what authority were 
 
40 The Congregationalists 
 
 the thirty men detailed to do the organiz- 
 ing ? 
 
 3. The action taken implies a distinct 
 recognition of independence of the national 
 church of England — that the church of 
 England was not the church of New 
 England, any more than it was the church 
 of Scotland. By virtue of removal across 
 the ocean, the colonists, while still owning 
 allegiance to the British crown, and 
 sincerely professing their affection for the 
 national church, had ceased to belong to 
 "the ecclesiastical realm." 
 
 4. The action at Salem was, and was 
 meant to be, a distinct repudiation of the 
 sacerdotal conception of the church and 
 ministry. Like the rest of the New Eng- 
 land clergy of the first generation, the two 
 ministers of the Salem church had been 
 episcopally ordained in England; but the 
 fact was not regarded as having any validity 
 in Salem. So far were the founders of the 
 colony from any superstitious regard for 
 
Pilgrim and Puritan 41 
 
 *'the indelibility of orders," that they not 
 only renewed the laying on of hands, 
 "using prayers therewith," when they 
 blessed the newly inducted ministers in 
 the name of the Lord; but they even 
 thought it no sacrilege to repeat again that 
 solemn act of benediction on the same 
 persons only a few days later. 
 
 5. It was far from the thoughts of the 
 Salem colonists to found a sect. However 
 mistaken they might be as to the criteria of 
 Christian character, they had no intention 
 of excluding from their fellowship any true 
 disciple of Jesus Christ. As little did they 
 intend to permit any, in the spirit of Sepa- 
 ratism, to cut themselves off from the com- 
 mon fellowship and organize themselves 
 into a schismatic conventicle. They were 
 advised that the Separatist minister, Ralph 
 Smith, who had managed to get passage 
 on one of their ships, should not be suffered 
 to remain in the colony, " unless he will be 
 conformable to our government " ; and, al- 
 
42 The Congregational!' sts 
 
 though not unkindly treated, Smith found 
 more congenial surroundings at Plymouth. 
 In like manner, when two of the leading 
 colonists, the brothers Brown, drawing 
 others with them, set up a separate meeting 
 with the Book of Common Prayer, they 
 were called to account for their schismatic 
 course, and promptly shipped back to Eng- 
 land by fiery Governor Endicott, as being 
 of such a factious spirit that ** New England 
 was no place for such as they." 
 
 A picturesque incident of the organiza- 
 tion of the Salem church demands our 
 notice. Before the ordination solemnities 
 were ended, an eagerly awaited but belated 
 shallop landed on the beach at Salem "the 
 messengers of the church at Plymouth." 
 They came into the assembly, Governor 
 Bradford at their head, and in the name of 
 the Pilgrim church declared their ** appro- 
 bation and concurrence" and greeted the 
 new church with **the right hand of fellow- 
 ship." Thus was emphasized that principle 
 
Pilgrim and Puritan 43 
 
 of mutual communion among independent 
 churches which was to become one of the 
 distinctions of American Congregational- 
 ism. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE PURITAN EXODUS 
 
 While these events were in progress at 
 Salem, there was preparing, on the other 
 side of the sea, that notable coup d' etat 
 which was to result, in a few months, in 
 the creation of a powerful self-governed 
 republic on the shore of the Massachusetts 
 Bay. The signs of hope for the little settle- 
 ment just planted, the darkening prospects 
 of both church and state in England, alike 
 tended to convince many of the Puritan 
 leaders that the success of both their polit- 
 ical and their religious aspirations was to be 
 looked for rather in the New England than 
 in the Old. The spirit of colonization took 
 eager possession of ardent and prophetic 
 minds in various parts of England; but 
 there were especially three centres at which 
 44 
 
The Puritan Exodus 45 
 
 this spirit was most actively manifest. In 
 "the west country" John White, "the 
 patriarch of Dorchester," had never let go the 
 project of a Christian settlement which had 
 seemed to fail at Cape Ann but had now 
 come to new life in Endicott's young colony 
 at Salem; and he was in correspondence 
 with men of means and influence like- 
 minded with himself. In the northeastern 
 counties, where the famous pulpit of John 
 Cotton at Boston was one of several foci 
 of spiritual light, and where the patient 
 sufferings of the "little flock" of Scrooby 
 had been working like leaven, there were 
 consultations in which persons of high 
 rank and consideration took part. But 
 especially London, the home of patriotic 
 citizenship and Puritan zeal, was a centre 
 of activity and mutual conference in which 
 the movements of different groups were co- 
 ordinated. Not without mature though 
 private counsel, and cautious advice of 
 lawyers, was the bold and brilliant stroke 
 
46 The Congregationalists 
 
 resolved upon, to vest the official authority 
 of the Massachusetts Company in men who 
 would lead the colonists in person, and 
 take the royal charter, with its ample grant 
 of power, across the sea, to establish the 
 headquarters of authority in the colony 
 itself. The great and good John Winthrop 
 was made governor, and with him, or in 
 surprisingly few months after him, went 
 forth that Puritan migration which never 
 before nor since, in the historic movements 
 of the earth's population, has been equalled 
 for the dignity of its manhood and woman- 
 hood. In the year 1630 no fewer than 
 seventeen ships, carrying about one thou- 
 sand passengers, sailed from English ports 
 for Massachusetts Bay. This was the be- 
 ginning of The Puritan Exodus. "At the 
 end of ten years from Winthrop's arrival, 
 about twenty-one thousand Englishmen, or 
 four thousand families, including the few 
 hundreds who were here before him, had 
 come over in three hundred vessels, at a 
 
The Puritan Exodus 47 
 
 cost of two hundred thousand pounds 
 sterling." 
 
 The precedent set by the colonists of 
 Salem, in the organization of their church 
 was followed with remarkable exactness 
 by the succeeding settlements. Conspicu- 
 ous among them was the company of 
 which Winthrop himself was leader. At 
 its first settlement in Charlestown (whence 
 it removed presently to become the First 
 Church of Boston) the four foremost men 
 of the community, Winthrop, Johnson, 
 Dudley and Wilson, on an appointed day 
 of prayer and fasting, subscribed their 
 names to this covenant: 
 
 In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and 
 in obedience to his holy will and divine or- 
 dinance, we whose names are hereunder 
 written, being by his most wise and good 
 providence brought together into this part 
 of America in the Bay of Massachusetts, 
 and desirous to unite ourselves into one 
 congregation or church under the Lord 
 Jesus Christ our Head, in such sort as be- 
 cometh all those whom he hath redeemed 
 
48 The Congregationalists 
 
 and sanctified to himself, do hereby sol- 
 emnly and religiously, as in his most holy 
 presence, promise and bind ourselves to 
 walk in all our ways according to the rule 
 of the gospel, and in all sincere conformity 
 to his holy ordinances, and in mutual love 
 and respect each to other, so near as God 
 shall give us grace. 
 
 Thus having "united themselves into a 
 church" by a mutual covenant in which 
 they "bound themselves" to nothing to 
 which they were not already bound as dis- 
 ciples of Christ, they were in a position to 
 admit, or refuse to admit, others to their 
 fellowship. That 30th of July, 1630, was a 
 memorable day in New England history, 
 when, with solemn prayer and fasting in 
 which the churches already constituted in 
 Plymouth and in Salem joined with their 
 newly arrived brethren, the two churches 
 of Charlestown and Watertown were or- 
 ganized and their ministry inducted into 
 office with laying on of hands. The church 
 of Dorchester had this distinction, that al- 
 
The Puritan Exodus 49 
 
 ready, as the company was about to sail 
 from Plymouth, it had been organized at a 
 meeting held at "the New Hospital" of 
 that town, when a sermon was preached by 
 "the patriarch" John White. 
 
 The most typical of these acts of church 
 organization was that of the founders of 
 New Haven. Led by Davenport and Eaton, 
 they had arrived at "their desired haven" 
 in the early spring of 1638, but not until 
 fourteen months later, after much prayer, 
 study and discussion, did they consider the 
 business fully mature for action. Soon 
 after their landing they had made a provi- 
 sional "plantation covenant" mutually 
 pledging themselves to be governed in their 
 future action relating either to the church or 
 to the civil order, "by those rules which 
 the Scripture holds forth." During these 
 toilsome first months of the new plantation, 
 while their views of polity in church and 
 state were so deliberately canvassed, they 
 were not without organization. The town 
 
5© The Congregationalists 
 
 was "cast into several private meetings 
 wherein they that dwelt most together gave 
 their accounts one to another of God's gra- 
 cious work upon them, and prayed to- 
 gether, and conferred to mutual edification, 
 and had knowledge one of another." 
 When at last they were assembled " in Mr. 
 Newman's barn" the solemnities of the 
 day were introduced by a sermon from 
 Davenport on this text, "Wisdom hath 
 builded her house; she hath hewn out her 
 seven pillars." By common consent it was 
 agreed "that twelve men be chosen, that 
 their fitness for the foundation-work may 
 be tried;" and "that it be in the power of 
 these twelve to choose out of themselves 
 seven that shall be most approved of the 
 major part, to begin the church." It was 
 the 14th of June, 1639, when the "seven 
 pillars " were hewn out. By covenant 
 among themselves, and by receiving others 
 into the same compact, it was held that a 
 church was constituted on the 22d of 
 
The Puritan Exodus 51 
 
 August. It is wonderful that in these and 
 like proceedings it did not grow clear to the 
 minds of the founders that instead of creat- 
 ing church and civil state by their ** social 
 compact," they were simply putting into 
 orderly and organic form the church and 
 state already in being. With one accord 
 they accepted so much of the Separatist 
 polity as to hold that the church existed by 
 virtue of a mutual agreement (either tacit 
 or expressed) among certain individual be- 
 lievers that they would be a church. It is 
 easy to believe that the example and argu- 
 ment of the Plymouth Separatists had less 
 to do in bringing them to this position, 
 than the exigencies of the situation. To 
 the extreme tenets of the extreme Separa- 
 tists, renouncing fellowship with faithful 
 ministers and worshippers in the Church of 
 England, the churches of New England 
 generally gave no adhesion. 
 
 In the year 1640 the assembling of the 
 Long Parliament secured protection to the 
 
52 The Congregationalists 
 
 Puritans in England, and the Puritan Exodus 
 to America ceased. At this date there were 
 forty churches in New England, all formed 
 after substantially the same model, beside 
 three in Long Island. The Exodus had in- 
 cluded a very large proportion of able and 
 learned ministers, so that it was possible in 
 many churches to realize the ideal of the 
 founders, that each church should be pro- 
 vided with its presbytery of two teaching 
 elders (pastor and teacher) as well as one or 
 more ruling elders. These officers, with 
 deacons who should be the church al- 
 moners, were chosen by free election, and 
 the teaching elders inducted into office with 
 the laying on of hands. That no disrespect 
 was intended to the ministry that they had 
 formerly exercised in English parishes was 
 expressly declared in Mr. Wilson's protest 
 to that effect at his ordination as teacher of 
 the Boston Church. But that the former 
 ministry was held to confer no authority 
 over God's heritage in New England was 
 
The Puritan Exodus 53 
 
 made equally explicit by the declaration of 
 George Phillips, the intended minister of 
 Watertown, that if his people ''will have 
 him stand minister by that calling which he 
 received from the prelates in England, he 
 will leave them." 
 
 The churches thus constituted were dis- 
 tinctly Presbyterian in their internal struc- 
 ture, being governed by the board of elders 
 with the sanction, either tacit or explicit, 
 of the brotherhood. In their mutual rela- 
 tions the churches were independent, yet 
 acknowledging the duty of mutual helpful- 
 ness and mutual respect and deference. 
 But upon this independence was one serious 
 limitation. In Massachusetts the "Great 
 and General Court" was, in a very prac- 
 tical sense, a Church court. None but 
 communicants in the churches were either 
 electors to it or eligible to it. It '* exer- 
 cised a minute superintendence, after the 
 manner of the English Parliament and 
 Courts Spiritual, ... on all manner of 
 
54 The Congregational ists 
 
 ecclesiastical subjects" (Buck's "Massa- 
 chusetts Ecclesiastical Law," 21). In par- 
 ticular the supreme authority of the colony 
 was resolved not to lose any good that 
 could be saved out of that parochial system 
 under which the England of their time was 
 divided into nine thousand parishes, each 
 with its church and minister. The arriving 
 colonists were not permitted to scatter 
 through the wilderness at pleasure. It was 
 for the colonial government to assign to 
 each successive company its place of habi- 
 tation, and to draw the boundaries of its 
 township, which were also the parish 
 boundaries, except as, with the increase of 
 population, it by and by became expedient 
 in many cases to divide the township into 
 two or more parishes. Each parish was 
 rigorously required to be provided with 
 church, clergy, meeting-house and parson- 
 age. It was the purpose of the founders 
 that every church should have its well de- 
 fined responsibility for every soul within its 
 
The Puritan Exodus 55 
 
 parish bounds. The adjustment of relative 
 rights and duties between churches and 
 parishioners occupied not a little of the at- 
 tention of the early colonial governments. 
 The constitution of the New England 
 churches of the first generation may per- 
 haps best be characterized as Presbyterian- 
 ism with a synod of lay delegates. It was 
 a long process of evolution by which the 
 system now known as Congregationalism 
 came into existence. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 CONTROVERSY AND COUNCIL 
 
 "It must needs be that offenses come." 
 It was only by the pressure of severe exi- 
 gencies that the polity of the young 
 churches of New England could be com- 
 pletely shaped. One of the first of them 
 was the exasperated controversy that arose 
 over the case of Mrs. Ann Hutchinson. 
 Only four years after the settlement of Bos- 
 ton, and only a year after the arrival of the 
 great John Cotton to become the teacher of 
 the Boston church, this admiring parish- 
 ioner of his in the old Boston church fol- 
 lowed him, attended by her husband, to his 
 new field of work. She had many qualifi- 
 cations for a mischief-maker, a kindly heart 
 and skillful hand in nursing the sick, a 
 ready gift of pious eloquence, an inordinate 
 56 
 
Controversy and Council 57 
 
 conceit of her superior holiness and her 
 special confidential relations with the Al- 
 mighty, a pleasant way of gently flattering 
 her influential adherents, and a rasping sar- 
 casm for dissentients. With her weekly 
 meeting, at first for women only, in which 
 she criticised the Sunday's sermons, dealing 
 out approval for Mr. Cotton and her 
 brother-in-law Wheelwright as being in the 
 covenant of grace, and disparaging with 
 contemptuous pity the rest of the clergy as 
 being under the covenant of works, she 
 managed before long to get not only the 
 church and the town but the whole colony 
 into a broil. The election of Governor was 
 made to turn on the theological question; 
 and the dashing and impulsive young 
 Harry Vane, newly arrived from England 
 with the prestige of distinguished family 
 and influence at court, was made to super- 
 sede the wise and faithful Winthrop. The 
 situation affected the fathers of the colony 
 with a threefold anxiety: first, the preten- 
 
58 The Congregationalists 
 
 sions of this enthusiastic prophetess to 
 direct revelations from heaven threatened 
 the foundations of the republic which rested 
 on the sufficiency of the Scripture as a 
 guide to political as well as personal life; 
 secondly, the Hutchinson conventicle was 
 of a schismatic temper and tendency, pro- 
 ducing, if not seeking, the division of the 
 Boston church into two parties exasperated 
 by personal irritation; thirdly, the teachings 
 of the new leader seemed to be charged 
 with a pernicious and demoralizing anti- 
 nomianism. The case required action. In 
 a fast-day sermon to the Boston church, 
 Wheelwright, after a manner usual with 
 the supersanctified, essayed to "beat 
 his fellow-servants " denouncing them as 
 "Antichrists"; and was censured for it at 
 the next meeting of the General Court, 
 acting as representative of all the churches. 
 The " Antinomian Controversy" would 
 not have been entitled to so large space in 
 so condensed a narrative as this, but for its 
 
Controversy and Council 59 
 
 having been the occasion of the first of 
 those ecclesiastical councils which are so 
 characteristic of American Congregational- 
 ism. At the invitation and at the charges 
 of the colonial legislature, a "synod" 
 was convened at Cambridge, which in- 
 cluded "all the teaching elders through 
 the country," with "sundry elders from 
 other jurisdictions" and "messengers 
 from all the churches." From the 30th 
 of August to the 22d of September the 
 council sat in solemn, sometimes in tender 
 and tearful debate. At last, with an almost 
 unhoped-for approach to unanimity, it gave 
 its condemnation of eighty-two errors 
 alleged against the party of Mrs. Hutchin- 
 son. Even Mr. Cotton was drawn into 
 substantial harmony with the council. 
 The whole course of consultation had been 
 so wise, sincere and Christian, that Gov- 
 ernor Winthrop proposed that there should 
 be annual synods. But the centripetal 
 force was well balanced by the centrifugal. 
 
6o The Congregationalists 
 
 Salutary as had been the influence of the 
 council, the opinion prevailed that it was 
 safer for the independence and liberty of 
 the churches that such assemblies should 
 be convened only as occasion might seem 
 to require. 
 
 The action of the civil authority was 
 summary and severe. Some of the adher- 
 ents of the Hutchinson faction were dis- 
 franchised; and the two leaders, Wheel- 
 wright and Mrs. Hutchinson herself, were 
 banished. They seem with little doubt to 
 have been willful and insolent mischief- 
 makers in the little community; and in 
 their case, as before in the case of the 
 Browne brothers in Salem, and afterwards 
 in the case of Roger Williams, it was held 
 that persons who could not get on com- 
 fortably with their neighbors should seek 
 other neighborhood. There was more 
 justification and less hardship in such a 
 judgment, in the feeble beginnings of a 
 small community than there would have 
 
Controversy and Council 61 
 
 been afterwards, under settled and assured 
 institutions and a wider domain. 
 
 The occasions for further consultation 
 among the churches were not long in 
 arising. In 1643, six years from the ad- 
 journment of the first Cambridge synod, a 
 meeting of the clergy of the several colonies 
 was held, also at Cambridge, at which 
 Cotton and Hooker presided and questions 
 of polity were discussed. But three years 
 more had not passed before new exigencies 
 demanded the convoking of another 
 "synod," not of the clergy only but of 
 the churches. To begin with, there were 
 considerable divergences of opinion and 
 practice in the internal administration of 
 some leading churches of New England. 
 The ministers of Newbury and Hingham, 
 going a step beyond the generally accepted 
 aristocratic notion of church government, 
 would limit the action of the membership 
 to the election of teaching and ruling 
 elders; while the general tendency of the 
 
62 The Congregationalists 
 
 churches was in the contrary direction, to- 
 wards greater power and responsibility in 
 the private members. Secondly, like ques- 
 tions were beginning to agitate the Puritan 
 party in England, and questions bearing on 
 the momentous task of the reorganization 
 of the Church of England were formulated 
 and sent across the sea — first a series of 
 Nine Questions and then a series of Thirty- 
 two Questions — which were answered by 
 eminent New Englanders, Davenport, and 
 Cotton, and Richard Mather, but which 
 were felt to be entitled to a more authorita- 
 tive answer than could be given by in- 
 dividuals. But the chief urgency for con- 
 sultation proceeded from the formidable 
 consequences, destined to grow more 
 formidable still through several agitated 
 generations, of the principle adopted from 
 the Separatists, that the purity of the 
 church was to be sought, not by the 
 eliminating of unfit members, but by the 
 culling of choice material for a new 
 
Controversy and Council 63 
 
 organization that should decide on applica- 
 tions for admission. The colonies had to 
 face the fact that already in 1643 a painfully 
 large proportion of the people were stand- 
 ing outside of the church. In Massa- 
 chusetts, where the suffrage was con- 
 ditioned on church membership, the 
 active citizenship was reduced to an 
 oligarchy of about one in ten. It was not 
 only felt as a grievance to be thus shut out 
 from the body politic; but some were 
 sincerely complaining of the spiritual 
 privation of being excluded, themselves 
 and their families, from the sacraments; 
 on the other hand, the churches themselves 
 felt weakened by the exclusion of many 
 who could hardly be pronounced less fit 
 for church fellowship than those who 
 were within the pale. 
 
 And yet it does not appear that there was 
 any intent on the part of the Founders to 
 draw lines excluding from the church any 
 sincere disciple of Jesus Christ. The idea 
 
64 The Congregationalists 
 
 of establishing sectarian churches for a cer- 
 tain style of Christian from which other 
 sorts of Christians should be excluded be- 
 longs to a later age, and would have been 
 abhorrent to the first generation. They sin- 
 cerely meant that all the faithful Christians 
 of each town should be the church of that 
 town, exercising all the functions of a 
 church free of interference from without; 
 but in seeking this worthy object they fell 
 into two grave mistakes, i. In their right- 
 eous reaction from the miserable corruption 
 of the English parish churches they went to 
 the opposite extreme, not only putting out 
 the demonstrably unworthy, but keeping 
 out those whose worthiness was not satis- 
 factorily demonstrated. In their diligent 
 searchings of Scripture for rules of church 
 order, they missed the lesson of the parable 
 of The Tares of the Field. 2. Their chief 
 criterion of fitness for church fellowship, 
 the narration by the candidate of his con- 
 scious experience of a change divinely 
 
Controversy and Council 65 
 
 wrought in his character, was most falla- 
 cious, easily admitting many unfit, but 
 practically excluding some whose lives ap- 
 proved them to all observers as being of 
 the number of the saints. The growing 
 number of good men outside of the church, 
 some of them claiming as of right privileges 
 which were denied them, made a third oc- 
 casion for the Synod of Cambridge, 1646-48. 
 The story of the summoning of the 
 synod, its gathering from the four colonies, 
 its successive adjournments, and the polit- 
 ical difficulties in which it was somewhat 
 implicated — " is it not written in the chron- 
 icles?" It may be found exact and ample 
 in Professor Walker's "Creeds and Plat- 
 forms." The seventeen chapters of the 
 Cambridge "Platform of Church Discipline 
 Gathered out of the Word of God" em- 
 bodied the results of twenty years of study 
 and experience, and remained for a hun- 
 dred years an authoritative statement of the 
 polity of the New England churches. The 
 
66 The Congregationalists 
 
 titles of the chapters indicate the subject- 
 matter. 
 
 ** Chapter I. Of the Form of Church 
 Government, and that it is one, immutable, 
 and prescribed in the Word of God. 
 
 " Chapter II. Of the Nature of the Cath- 
 olic Church in general, and in special, of a 
 particular visible church. 
 
 " Chapter III. Of the Matter of the Visi- 
 ble Church, both in respect of Quality and 
 Quantity. 
 
 ''Chapter IV. Of the Form of a Visible 
 Church, and of church covenant. 
 
 "Chapter V. Of the first subject of 
 Church Power; or, to whom church power 
 doth first belong. 
 
 "Chapter VI. Of the Officers of the 
 Church, and especially of pastors and 
 teachers. 
 
 "Chapter VII. Of Ruling Elders and 
 Deacons. 
 
 " Chapter VIII. Of the Election of Church 
 Officers. 
 
Controversy and Council 67 
 
 "Chapter IX. Of Ordination and Impo- 
 sition of Hands. 
 
 "Chapter X. Of the Power of the 
 Church, and its Presbytery. 
 
 "Chapter XI. Of the Maintenance of 
 Church Officers. 
 
 "Chapter XII. Of Admission of Mem- 
 bers into the Church. 
 
 "Chapter XIII. Of Church Members: 
 their removal from one church to another; 
 and of letters of recommendation and dis- 
 mission. 
 
 "Chapter XIV. Of Excommunication 
 and other Censures. 
 
 "Chapter XV. Of the Communion of 
 Churches one with another. 
 
 "Chapter XVI. Of Synods. 
 
 ' ' Chapter XVII. Of the Civil Magistrate's 
 Power in Matters Ecclesiastical." 
 
 It is of practical as well as historical in- 
 terest to us of the present age to note the 
 points at which existing Congregational 
 churches have departed from this early type. 
 
68 The Congregationalists 
 
 I. The high jure divino pretensions of 
 the Founders that theirs is the only author- 
 ized and prescribed form of church govern- 
 ment, if sometimes entertained, are now 
 rarely urged. 
 
 II. The negative statement that the New 
 Testament church was "neither national, 
 provincial nor classical," but '' only congre- 
 gational," is still accepted by Congregation- 
 alists. 
 
 III. The principle that a church should 
 consist of "saints by calling" and of *'the 
 children of such, who are also holy," is ac- 
 cepted in statement, even when disregarded 
 in practice; but the principle enunciated 
 with emphasis here and elsewhere in the 
 *' Platform," that a minister is such only by 
 virtue of his election to office in a congre- 
 gation, and has no ministerial standing out- 
 side of that congregation or after the close 
 of his ofiFicial function therein, however es- 
 sential to the logical unity of the system, is 
 generally abandoned, and the idea of a min- 
 
Controversy and Council 69 
 
 isterial order, against which the fathers pro- 
 tested, is generally accepted. 
 
 IV. The assertion that a mutual covenant 
 is the necessary condition of the existence 
 of a church, and the only source of church 
 authority, if accepted and acted on by mod- 
 ern Congregationalists in the internal af- 
 fairs and mutual relations of their churches, 
 is frankly abandoned by their recognition 
 of churches otherwise constituted. Hap- 
 pily, the "Platform" cautiously provides 
 that a covenant merely implied, "without 
 any writing or expression of words at all," 
 may be valid. 
 
 V. The tenet that church authority, by 
 the charter of the church, which is the New 
 Testament, is vested primarily in the broth- 
 erhood, is accepted; but that it is to be 
 exercised only in the election of elders is 
 generally declined. 
 
 VI. and Vll. The ideal of the Founders 
 was that each church should be equipped 
 with its presbytery of not less than three — 
 
yo The Congregationalists 
 
 pastor, teacher and ruling elders. The first 
 two giving themselves wholly to the minis- 
 try of the word and sacraments, were to 
 be supported by the church. The ruling 
 elder was charged with the executive 
 functions of the church, and with not a 
 few of the spiritual. The presbytery were 
 jointly to administer the government of the 
 church, with the consent (tacit or express) 
 of the brotherhood. This ideal ceased to 
 be realized after the first generation. The 
 distinction between pastor and teacher, al- 
 ways somewhat tenuous, was insufficient 
 to justify each little congregation in the cost 
 of maintaining two ministers. The duties 
 of ruling elder were such, in point of diffi- 
 culty and delicacy as the fit person could 
 rarely be induced to undertake. -Finally, 
 the growing spirit of democracy, both in 
 state and in church, was more averse to the 
 vesting of church authority in an elective 
 eldership. At the present day, the officers 
 of a Congregational church are ordinarily a 
 
Controversy and Council 71 
 
 pastor and deacons, and such committees 
 as the church may wish. The ideal of the 
 congregational presbytery survives only in 
 the ''Standing Committee" which fulfills 
 some of its functions. 
 
 VIII and IX. The sturdy protest of the 
 Founders against regarding ordination as a 
 quasisacrament conferring permanent rank 
 among Christians has been forsaken. 
 With them ordination was nothing but 
 the solemn inauguration of church officers 
 into the places to which they had been 
 elected. The imposition of hands might 
 be by other elders in the same church, or 
 by some of the people, or even (if thought 
 best) by elders of other churches. A min- 
 ister "clearly loosed from his office-rela- 
 tion " is no longer a minister nor qualified 
 to act as such, until again called to office, 
 in which case he may be ordained to the 
 office, with imposition of hands. The 
 general practice of the Congregational 
 churches of the present day proceeds upon 
 
72 The Congregationalists 
 
 the opposite theory, that ordination con- 
 fers upon the subject a permanent minis- 
 terial status. At his first induction into 
 church office he is said, in Presbyterian 
 phrase, to be "ordained and installed." 
 Afterwards, at any future settlement, he is 
 said to be simply "installed" and (as if 
 conforming to some sacerdotal notion of 
 the "indelibility of orders") the laying on 
 of hands is solemnly omitted. 
 
 X. The views of the aristocracy of the 
 eldership drawn out in detail in this chapter, 
 are no longer entertained. 
 
 XI. The moral principle binding it as an 
 obligation on those who profit by the min- 
 istrations of the church to contribute to the 
 maintenance of it, are as distinctly recog- 
 nized now as ever; the enforcing of these 
 obligations by the civil power is no longer 
 resorted to. 
 
 XII. In this chapter on "Admission of 
 Members," two things are noteworthy: i, 
 the rigorous insistence on evidence of re- 
 
Controversy and Council 73 
 
 pentance and faith, to be presented by each 
 candidate in the form of *'a personal and 
 public confession and declaring of God's 
 manner of working upon the soul; " 2, the 
 emphatic absence of any other test. It is 
 the obvious intention of the Founders that 
 the church of each community was to in- 
 clude all penitent believers there dwelling. 
 The notion that a church might be organ- 
 ized of a certain class of Christians, from 
 which certain other Christians should be 
 intentionally excluded by a prescribed doc- 
 trinal or other test was foreign to their 
 conception of the church. 
 
 XIII. Both in the theory and in the prac- 
 tice of the early days, the church assumed 
 a responsibility for the movements of its 
 members such as would be neither claimed 
 nor conceded at present. 
 
 XIV, XV, XVI. The general principles 
 here enunciated have not ceased to express 
 the views of Congregational churches. 
 Throughout the " Platform " it is to be ob- 
 
74 The Congregationalists 
 
 served that while " high " views of the au- 
 thority of the eldership are set forth; never- 
 theless, in distinct contradiction to the 
 Presbyterianism of Newbury and Hingham, 
 it is recognized that the ultimate authority 
 in questions of admitting or excluding is 
 vested in the brotherhood. The demo- 
 cratic principle thus laid down as of divine 
 authority has gained more and more in gen- 
 eral recognition and in width of application. 
 XVII. It is much to the honor of the 
 wisdom of the synod that the concluding 
 chapter ** Of the Civil Magistrates' Power 
 in Matters Ecclesiastical," contains so little 
 to provoke the dissent of later ages. A 
 change that is rather of practice than of 
 principle has necessarily followed upon the 
 change from homogeneous communities to 
 communities divided by the widest di- 
 vergences of opinion and organization. A 
 worthy jealousy of that Erastianism of the 
 English Church which their souls abhorred, 
 saved them from grave mistakes. 
 
Controversy and Council 75 
 
 Two of the topics commended to the 
 Synod by the General Court of Massachu- 
 setts received little attention. The growing 
 difficulties attending on the question of 
 "baptism and the persons to be received 
 thereto," were left unsolved. The duty of 
 preparing a Confession setting forth the 
 doctrinal tenets held in common by the 
 Christians of New England was superseded 
 by the timely arrival, fresh from the hands 
 of its makers, of the Westminster Con- 
 fession, which met with the unanimous and 
 glad approval of the Synod, " for the sub- 
 stance thereof," as *' very holy, orthodox 
 and judicious in all matters of faith." For 
 more than one hundred and fifty years, the 
 Westminster standards continued to be re- 
 ferred to by men of differing theological 
 parties as expressing the common belief of 
 the churches; and in families and even in 
 the common schools the " Shorter Cate- 
 chism " was used as a manual of religious 
 instruction. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 HALF-WAY COVENANT 
 
 The question which the synod at Cam- 
 bridge had pushed aside still insisted on an 
 answer. A conflict seemed to be growing 
 more serious with the lapse of every year, 
 between two ideals, both dear to the Puri- 
 tan heart: — the purity of the church, as 
 consisting of " visible saints and their chil- 
 dren," and the parish system by which the 
 whole population of the several towns 
 should be held under the tutelage of the 
 churches. The growing danger was seri- 
 ously felt by both parties. The churches 
 and pastors saw the increasing number of 
 those who failed to pass the accepted cri- 
 teria of membership, and were in danger 
 of drifting afar from any relation to the 
 church; and on the other hand those who 
 76 
 
Half- Way Covenant 77 
 
 had been baptized into the church, who 
 held and cherished the truth that had been 
 taught them, and whose lives were without 
 reproach, but who were unable to testify to 
 the conscious experience of a spiritual 
 change from death to life, found not only 
 themselves debarred from the communion, 
 but their children excluded from baptism 
 as aliens and "strangers from the cove- 
 nants of the promise." The situation was 
 growing each year more tense, and there 
 were tendencies in two opposite directions 
 towards a solution of it. One was towards 
 the severely logical individualism of the 
 Baptists, which had no place for infant 
 baptism or infant church-membership. 
 The other was towards "the parish way," 
 or the Presbyterian way, according to 
 which the baptized children of the parish, 
 arriving at years of discretion and being 
 without reproach, were all to be welcomed 
 to the Lord's table. That the accepted 
 criterion of fitness for church-membership 
 
78 The Congregationalists 
 
 was fallacious, that, strictly applied, it 
 would have excluded from communion the 
 foremost theologian and saint of the con- 
 temporary Puritan party, Richard Baxter, 
 was not going to be made entirely clear to 
 their successors until six generations after- 
 wards (1847) by Horace Bushnell in his 
 treatise of " Christian Nurture." 
 
 The divergence of opinion and of practice 
 was so great and so manifestly increasing 
 as to call for action on the part of the 
 colonial legislatures — always prone to an 
 exorbitant sense of their responsibility in 
 spiritual matters. In 1657 the Massachu- 
 setts General Court, moved thereto by 
 Connecticut, invited a conference of lead- 
 ing pastors who, gathering at Boston to the 
 number of seventeen, gave counsel de- 
 cidedly in favor of a more relaxed rule than 
 that of the Founders. But this was far 
 from appeasing the controversy. The 
 sincere and painful anxiety of such 
 venerated men as Davenport and Charles 
 
Half-Way Covenant 79 
 
 Chauncy prevailed with many others 
 against any abatement of the conditions of 
 membership in the church. A true synod, 
 including not ministers only but "mes- 
 sengers of the churches," was summoned 
 to meet at Boston in 1662, and the number 
 in attendance — more than seventy — was 
 proof of the gravity of the question at 
 issue. After protracted and earnest dis- 
 cussion, by a great majority but in face of 
 an earnest protest from some of the best 
 men, the main question before the synod 
 was thus resolved: 
 
 "Church-members who were admitted 
 in minority, understanding the doctrine of 
 faith and publicly professing their assent 
 thereto; not scandalous in life, and 
 solemnly owning the covenant before the 
 church, wherein they give up themselves 
 and their children to the Lord and subject 
 themselves to the government of Christ 
 in the church, — their children are to be 
 baptized." 
 
 It was an illogical compromise between 
 
8o The Congregationalists 
 
 irreconcilable principles. It came, indeed, 
 into general use in New England, but 
 never with universal consent. Instead of 
 ending controversy, it intensified it, giving 
 rise to a copious polemical literature. In 
 conspicuous instances, as in Hartford and 
 in Boston, it rent churches asunder. From 
 New Haven the great and good Davenport, 
 foreseeing the ruin about to befall his 
 cherished ideals through the merger of that 
 little republic with Connecticut, left behind 
 him the fair plain that was dearer to his 
 heart than native land, exclaiming *'in New 
 Haven Colony Christ's interest is miserably 
 lost," and went to assume, in his old age, 
 the pastoral office in the First Church in 
 Boston, from which many members had 
 withdrawn to practise the less rigid system 
 in the Third Boston Church— the ''Old 
 South." The " Half- Way Covenant" con- 
 tinued in general use for nearly a century, 
 until it melted away in the fervent heat of 
 "the Great Awakening," or withered 
 
Halt- Way Covenant 81 
 
 under the rigors of the Edwardean 
 theology. 
 
 An even larger relaxation of the condi- 
 tions of church communion was proposed 
 by one of the saintliest and most spiritually 
 successful pastors of the time — Solomon 
 Stoddard of Northampton. He held that 
 the baptized church-member sound in 
 doctrine and of unblemished life should be 
 not merely admitted to a quasi-fellowship, 
 transmissible in turn to his children, but 
 welcomed to full communion, with the 
 hope that the sacraments of the church 
 would be effectual, with the word, in the 
 work of grace of which the candidate had 
 been thus far unconscious. This view and 
 practice gained not a little currency. It was 
 a frank abandonment of the church-princi- 
 ple which the Founders had adopted from 
 the Separatists of Plymouth. Under the in- 
 fluence of Stoddard's grandson, colleague, 
 and successor in the Northampton church, 
 Jonathan Edwards, the churches began the 
 
82 The Congregationalists 
 
 painful return to their earlier principles. At 
 the present day those principles are gener- 
 ally held in the Congregational churches of 
 America; but with an intelligence and 
 liberality in the application of them, by 
 which some of the embarrassments en- 
 countered in the early days are avoided. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 REFORMATION AND INNOVATION 
 
 The hopes that had been honestly enter- 
 tained of great good to churches and peo- 
 ple, to result from the successive councils 
 of pastors and of churches were not real- 
 ized. At the end of a half century from 
 the great Puritan migration, the men of the 
 second generation looked about them on 
 that field in which, in prayer and suffering 
 and eager hope, the fathers had sowed 
 " wholly a right seed," and felt something 
 of the dismay with which the servants of 
 the householder put to their lord the ques- 
 tion, "Whence then hath it tares?" This 
 garden of the Lord seemed overrun with 
 foul weeds. Through what agitating vicis- 
 situdes these colonies had passed, in these 
 fifty years! The tyranny of Charles and 
 Laud, that had sent the fathers of New 
 83 
 
84 The Congregationalists 
 
 England across the ocean, had given place 
 to the Long Parliament and the Common- 
 wealth, and this in turn to the Protectorate. 
 And now, at last, the Restoration had placed 
 the perfidious Stuarts again in power, and 
 was threatening to exterminate the char- 
 tered liberties of the colonies, and over- 
 throw their institutions, civil and ecclesias- 
 tical. On our own side of the sea, the 
 noble figures of the first leaders were no 
 more seen ; only a few venerable heads, as 
 of John Eliot and Governor Bradstreet, re- 
 mained of all that goodly fellowship. 
 There were many signs of outward pros- 
 perity. The three pioneer churches of 
 Plymouth, Salem and Boston had grown to 
 some six score. But it seemed to some 
 that he who had multiplied the people had 
 not increased the joy. There had been 
 failure of crops and shipwrecks at sea. 
 The colonies had been scourged by pesti- 
 lences. The long peace with the Indians — 
 reward of just and generous dealing with 
 
Reformation and Innovation 85 
 
 them on the part of the colonists — had 
 been followed by the horrors and desola- 
 tions of King Philip's war. These were 
 only part of the multiplying disasters which 
 stirred men's minds to ponder "the causes 
 and state of God's controversy " with the 
 people. A memorial to the General Court 
 of Massachusetts was presented by eighteen 
 of the clergy led by Increase Mather, then 
 easily the foremost man in New England, 
 asking that a synod of the churches be 
 called to consider the questions: What are 
 the evils that have provoked the Lord to 
 bring his judgment on New England ? and 
 What is to be done that those evils may be 
 reformed ? 
 
 Thus was constituted **The Reforming 
 Synod," whose answer to the first question 
 proposed recounted thirteen prevailing evils 
 as signs of growing worldliness and un- 
 godliness; and to the second question pre- 
 scribed twelve remedies: i. Good exam- 
 ple on the part of those in authority, in 
 
86 The Congregationalists 
 
 family, in church and in state. 2. A re- 
 newed declaration of adherence to "the 
 faith and order of the Gospel." 3. Greater 
 strictness in admitting to full communion. 
 4. Faithfulness in church discipline, not 
 only towards parents, but towards the chil- 
 dren of the church. 5. The restoration of 
 the complete ministry, in each church, of 
 pastor, teacher, and ruling elders. 6. That 
 the magistrates should see to it that the 
 church officers have due support. 7. Faith- 
 ful execution of wholesome laws, in par- 
 ticular the laws restricting the sale of strong 
 drink. 8. The solemn and explicit renewal 
 of covenant. 9. In such renewal, distinct 
 pledges of reformation of prevailing sins. 
 10. In renewing covenant, that the churches 
 agree in common vows "to promote the 
 interest of holiness and close walking with 
 God." II. Effectual care for the schools 
 and the college. 12. Earnest prayer that 
 God " would be pleased to rain down right- 
 eousness upon us." 
 
Reformation and Innovation 87 
 
 The remaining task of "The Reforming 
 Synod" was an easy one. Already the 
 Westminster Confession had been formally 
 and sincerely declared to express the doc- 
 trinal belief of the New England churches; 
 and it is wonderful how little, in an age of 
 earnest theological study, had been the de- 
 flection from that standard. The very slight 
 amendments to that document proposed at 
 the Synod of "the Congregational Churches 
 of England" at the Savoy in London in 
 1658 sufficed to make it representative of 
 the singularly unanimous opinions of the 
 Massachusetts churches of 1680. It is char- 
 acteristic of Congregationalism on both 
 sides of the sea, that this "Declaration" 
 was intended in "no way to be made use 
 of as an imposition upon any." The set- 
 ting up of prescribed forms of doctrinal 
 statement to which assent should be ex- 
 acted, was the device of a later age. 
 
 The " Reforming Synod " was the last of 
 the church councils summoned by civil au- 
 
88 The Congregationalists 
 
 thority in Massachusetts. In the political 
 changes of England, the theocratic govern- 
 ment of the colony had lapsed and the royal 
 governors and their councillors had no mind 
 to act as nursing fathers to the churches. 
 And yet there were not wanting urgent oc- 
 casions for the sort of tutelage which the 
 General Court had been wont to exercise. 
 An event occurred in Boston in 1699, which 
 made an epoch in the history of American 
 Congregationalism, and at the time pro- 
 foundly grieved and even alarmed those 
 who cherished the New England theology 
 and polity. A small group of young men 
 of high consideration, including some men 
 of property, built a new meeting-house 
 and organized a fourth Boston church— the 
 '* Brattle Church "—announcing at the same 
 time, on the one hand, their adherence to 
 the doctrinal standards of Cambridge and 
 Westminster, and on the other their distinct 
 departure from some of the prevailing 
 usages of the colony. They desired that 
 
Reformation and Innovation 89 
 
 the ordeal of a public recital of one's inti- 
 mate spiritual experiences should no longer 
 be imposed upon candidates for member- 
 ship in the church; that not communicants 
 only, but all who shared in supporting the 
 minister should be allowed a voice in his 
 election; that any child might receive bap- 
 tism, who should be presented by Christian 
 sponsors; and that in the services of public 
 worship there might be used the simple 
 reading of Scripture without comment, and 
 also the Lord's Prayer. These demands, 
 formulated in a "Manifesto," were of 
 themselves sufficiently startling to the the- 
 ologians of the time and place; but the 
 mode of procedure in the institution of the 
 new church was even more offensive. Re- 
 spectfully invoking the fraternal fellowship 
 of the neighbor churches, they nevertheless 
 effected their organization without advice 
 or consent of council. Under the old 
 regime, the civil authorities would have 
 had somewhat to say in the case; but as 
 
go The Congregationalists 
 
 things now stood, the Act of Toleration, 
 enacted for the relief of dissenters from the 
 established Church of England was equally 
 a protection to a departure from the ways 
 of the established churches of New Eng- 
 land. But a still more distinct affront to the 
 principles of the fathers was the course 
 pursued in the settlement of Benjamin Col- 
 man as pastor. He was in England at the 
 time, and rather than encounter the exas- 
 perated prejudices of the Boston clergy, he 
 was advised to procure ordination ''sine 
 titulo'' from the Presbytery of London. 
 Both the ordination and the assumption of 
 office which followed were an open de- 
 fiance of the example of the fathers and of 
 their principles as enunciated a half-century 
 before in the Cambridge Platform. It was 
 much to the credit of the Boston churches 
 that they could condone such irregularities 
 and, with not much delay, receive "the 
 Manifesto church " to fellowship. But the 
 indignation of conservative men, like the 
 
Reformation and Innovation 91 
 
 Mathers, father and son, was great. The 
 foundations were destroyed, and what 
 should the righteous do ? Increase Mather, 
 recounting these and other innovations, de- 
 clared "if we espouse such principles as 
 these, we give away the whole Congrega- 
 tional cause at once, and a great part of the 
 Presbyterian discipline also." Nevertheless 
 the new church took root and flourished. 
 
 In their reasonable fears of a general 
 wreck of the church-system planted at 
 such cost and attended by so many signs 
 of divine blessing, the churches missed the 
 salutary constraint and guidance of the 
 Christian magistrate, so lately withdrawn. 
 In view of the possibilities of disorder that 
 loomed before them, it is no wonder that 
 serious thoughts arose of what good results 
 might follow from a more solid organiza- 
 tion of ministers and churches for mutual 
 control and supervision. The matter was 
 pondered in the several neighborhood meet- 
 ings of pastors, and in the general Minis- 
 
92 The Congregationalists 
 
 ters' Convention at Boston in 1704, and the 
 result was a draft of constitution for a 
 " consociational " system like what, only 
 three years later, was carried into effect in 
 Connecticut, under the Saybrook Platform. 
 The current of feeling was setting strongly 
 in this direction. It is only the tiro in 
 church history who will be surprised to 
 find in the front rank of this conservative 
 reaction the names of some of the leaders 
 in the liberal innovations of ''the Manifesto 
 church." 
 
 It was only in Connecticut that the con- 
 sociational system went into practical 
 operation. This colony, happy in its com- 
 parative obscurity, had escaped the revolu- 
 tion that had overthrown the Massachusetts 
 theocracy. Almost unimpaired by foreign 
 interference it maintained the popular in- 
 stitutions devised by the genius of Thomas 
 Hooker. Its legislature still had power, 
 and only too ready a will, to exercise its 
 episcopal jurisdiction over the churches. 
 
Reformation and Innovation 93 
 
 This lay body felt, not less keenly than the 
 clerical meetings in Massachusetts, the 
 perils of the times. Not without cor- 
 respondence with the leading ministers of 
 the older colony, the General Assembly 
 was moved to enact a statute "ordaining 
 and requiring " that in each county the 
 ministers, with such messengers as the 
 churches should see fit to appoint, should 
 meet and consider the subject of methods 
 of ecclesiastical discipline, and that each of 
 these county meetings should send two 
 or more delegates to Saybrook, at the next 
 Commencement of the infant College, and 
 that the synod thus constituted should 
 "draw a form of ecclesiastical discipline" 
 to be submitted to the legislature for ap- 
 proval, at its next session. The result of 
 the synod's deliberation was the fifteen 
 articles of " The Saybrook Platform." 
 This, being submitted to the legislature, 
 was eagerly approved, with an ordinance 
 that the churches "thus united in doctrine, 
 
94 The Congregationalists 
 
 worship and discipline be, and for the 
 future shall be owned and acknowl- 
 edged, established by law." The Platform 
 provided for one or more Associations of 
 ministers in each county, and that con- 
 terminous with the district of each As- 
 sociation should be a standing council or 
 "Consociation" of churches, in which 
 each church should be represented by 
 pastor and delegate, and which should take 
 judicial cognizance of cases brought before 
 it, and "hear and determine" them. Ac- 
 cording as its provisions might be con- 
 strued rigorously or liberally, the Platform 
 would be either tantamount to a Presbyte- 
 rian discipline, or would be a methodized 
 form of promoting the fraternal fellowship 
 of the churches. This divergence of inter- 
 pretation was put upon the instrument 
 from the beginning. In Fairfield County 
 the high-church Presbyterian construction 
 prevailed. In the contiguous county of 
 New Haven, the Platform was ratified by 
 
Reformation and Innovation 95 
 
 the representatives of the churches, as a 
 means of promoting communion of 
 churches, only with express reservation 
 of the rights and liberties of the churches. 
 The consociation system continued in more 
 or less vigorous life for a century and a 
 half, though meanwhile the legal sanction 
 of it had been repealed. The historical dis- 
 course at the one hundreth and fiftieth anni- 
 versary of the Synod of Saybrook was spoken 
 of by some, at the time, as "the funeral ser- 
 mon of the Saybrook Platform." The same 
 meeting of the General Association of the 
 State witnessed the inception of a system of 
 church ** conferences " for mere purposes 
 of fellowship and practical evangelization, 
 having no governmental function; and by 
 these the standing councils of consociation 
 have been gradually and generally super- 
 seded. 
 
 The current which, at the end of the 
 seventeenth century was setting so strong 
 towards a more compacted government of 
 
96 The Congregatlonalists 
 
 the churches, arrived at nothing in Massa- 
 chusetts. In Connecticut it created a dis- 
 tinct type of Congregationalism, having 
 affinities with Presbyterianism, with which 
 by and by it was to enter into an alliance 
 that should have an important influence on 
 the course of American church history. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A DEMOCRATIC REACTION 
 
 The powerful current which, in Massa- 
 chusetts, was setting towards confederation 
 in church government, bearing on its sur- 
 face the most eminent leaders of society, 
 did not long flow without encountering a 
 more powerful counter-current, or rather 
 undertow. 
 
 While the Puritan institutions, in both 
 church and state, had been of a notably 
 aristocratic character, the whole condition 
 of society was tending more and more to- 
 wards democracy. This tendency, in the 
 Bay Colony, was not hindered but rather 
 intensified by the recurring conflict with 
 intrusions of court and parliament and 
 bishops, and by the arrogance of the petty 
 vice-regal court and its adherents of "the 
 97 
 
gS The Congregationalists 
 
 sect of the Herodians." While the Mathers 
 and other eminent conservatives were 
 planning measures for limiting the sover- 
 eignty of the individual church, and for 
 confirming the control of the eldership, a 
 contrary feeling was growing in the 
 popular heart, and was about to come to 
 commanding expression. 
 
 John Wise, one of the foremost names in 
 American literature of the colonial period, 
 was a Protestant of the Protestants. His 
 first appearance in history is in the act of 
 protesting in the town meeting of Ipswich 
 against a tax unlawfully imposed by Gov- 
 ernor Andros, a protest so bold and effect- 
 ive that the speaker was arrested, deposed 
 from his office of pastor, and imprisoned. 
 When Andros was overthrown and (in his 
 turn) imprisoned, the pastor, now restored 
 to his charge, and recognized as a tribune 
 of the people, lent a strong hand in the re- 
 organization of the government; he was 
 chaplain to the colonial troops in Governor 
 
A Democratic Reaction 99 
 
 Phips's Canada expedition, and proved his 
 bravery in the field as well as his prowess 
 in debate. This was the man, " the first 
 great American democrat," as Prof. Moses 
 Coit Tyler has styled him, who boldly 
 stepped into the lists, undeterred by the 
 supercilious sneers of the great men of his 
 time, as champion of the rights of the 
 churches and their members. Two little 
 books of his were an open challenge to 
 generally prevailing views and usages. 
 One, published in 17 10, was entitled: 
 " The Churches' Quarrel Espoused; or a re- 
 ply in satire to certain proposals made in 
 answer to this question, What further 
 steps " [are to be taken, that the councils 
 may have due constitution and efficacy in 
 supporting, preserving and well ordering 
 the interests of the churches in the coun- 
 try] ? "By John Wise, pastor to a church 
 in Ipswich." The title of the other book, 
 published in 17 17, was: "A Vindication of 
 the Government of New England Churches: 
 
loo The Congregationalists 
 
 drawn from antiquity; the light of nature; 
 holy Scripture; its noble nature; and from 
 the dignity divine providence has put upon 
 it." Critics are agreed in extolling the 
 originality, wit, eloquence and power that 
 characterize these writings. They deal 
 with the foundation principles, not only of 
 church government, but of all government, 
 declaring "that a democracy in church or 
 state is a very honorable and regular gov- 
 ernment according to the dictates of right 
 reason." They powerfully influenced the 
 later development of the New England 
 church polity, in the direction both of de- 
 mocracy within the church, and independ- 
 ence among the churches. And their influ- 
 ence on civil affairs was not less notable. 
 In 1772, on the eve of the war of independ- 
 ence, these rousing defenses of the rights 
 of the people were remembered and drawn 
 from their oblivion and reprinted in Boston 
 in two large editions in that single year. 
 But admirable as they are in themselves, 
 
A Democratic Reaction loi 
 
 there is reason to believe that they were in 
 some measure consequence as well as cause 
 of the tendency in the popular mind to- 
 wards liberty and liberality in church and 
 in state. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 A RETROSPECT 
 
 The eve before the dawn of " The Great 
 Awakening" is an epoch from which to 
 look backward over the first century of the 
 Congregational churches of America. 
 
 The four colonies which in 1643, had 
 combined in the first federal union in 
 America, were Plymouth, Massachusetts, 
 Connecticut and New Haven. These had 
 now become merged into two, and within 
 the boundaries of these two, Massachusetts 
 and Connecticut, the system of Congrega- 
 tional churches had had its growth and 
 evolution. 
 
 Of the ideals in the minds of the Foun- 
 ders of these churches, some had endured 
 with persistent vitality. That there should 
 be a system of parish churches, every town 
 
A Retrospect 103 
 
 or precinct of a town having its church 
 charged with the oversight of the popula- 
 tion, which, in turn, was under obligation 
 for the maintenance of the church — this 
 was the invaluable contribution to Amer- 
 ican civilization from the National Church 
 from which the Puritan colonists came 
 forth. In both jurisdictions it had been 
 maintained almost unimpaired. In excep- 
 tional and very rare cases a "poll-parish" 
 had been created consisting of individuals 
 or families not defined by boundaries, but 
 adhering by choice to a certain congrega- 
 tion. Provision was granted, grudgingly 
 at first, afterwards liberally, for separate 
 meetings of dissenters from the parish 
 church. 
 
 The purity of the church, which had 
 been a leading aim of the colonists in their 
 migration into the wilderness, continued to 
 be insisted on with a zeal intensified by re- 
 membrance of abuses in the parish churches 
 of England. The church was to be made 
 
104 "^^^ Congregationalists 
 
 up of ''visible saints," and must be consti- 
 tuted by a mutual covenant. But the 
 adoption of impracticable criteria of "vis- 
 ible sanctity" had led into difficulties 
 which inevitably modified the polity of 
 the churches. The notion that one's spir- 
 itual state could be diagnosticated by a 
 study of the "rational symptoms" in each 
 case, led to the exclusion from the privi- 
 leges of the church of many who clearly 
 ought not to have been excluded, and so to 
 the admission of them to a quasi-member- 
 ship by a "half-way covenant" the terms 
 of which, honestly accepted, implied unre- 
 served Christian discipleship. Like con- 
 siderations, together with the popular prin- 
 ciple, "no taxation without represen- 
 tation," led to the organization of the 
 "ecclesiastical society" having charge of 
 the temporalities of the church, and having 
 a vote, conjointly with the church, in the 
 election of pastor. 
 The refusal, in the first generation, to 
 
A Retrospect 105 
 
 recognize any such thing as a rank or order 
 of ministers other than the officers, for the 
 time being, of a congregation; and the 
 claim that ordination was merely a form of 
 inaugurating such officers into their local 
 functions, had faded out. It was coming 
 to be understood that one who had been 
 ordained to the ministry of one church con- 
 tinued thereafter to be regarded in all the 
 churches as of ministerial rank. 
 
 The attempt of the Founders to organize 
 in every church a presbytery of two teach- 
 ing elders and one or more ruling elders, 
 had fallen by its own weight and costli- 
 ness, and the general usage was one minis- 
 ter to each church. Thus the government 
 of the congregation, which had been Pres- 
 byterian, when the presbytery dwindled to 
 one man became virtually episcopal. The 
 polity was felt on all hands to be in peril- 
 ously unstable equilibrium. An allegiance 
 that might be conceded to a representative 
 body of three or more, would become most 
 
io6 The Congregationalists 
 
 precarious when claimed for a single indi- 
 vidual. The escape from this situation must 
 be either in 'the direction of classical gov- 
 ernment, as proposed in Massachusetts and 
 effected in Connecticut; or in the rehabili- 
 tation of the authority of the people, as 
 demanded by Robert Browne 150 years 
 before, and now again by John Wise. 
 
 The principle of the fellowship of the 
 churches, illustrated from the beginning 
 and articulated with emphasis in the Cam- 
 bridge Platform, had suffered no decline. 
 On the contrary, as the supervision of the 
 civil government became relaxed, and di- 
 vergencies of sentiment began to appear, 
 and here and there a dissenting congrega- 
 tion. Baptist or Episcopalian, was formed, 
 the need of mutual counsel and concerted 
 action in matters of grave moment and 
 common concern became the more appar- 
 ent. There was a serious divergence of 
 method between Massachusetts and Con- 
 necticut, one adhering to the early practice 
 
A Retrospect 107 
 
 of acting by councils strictly occasional, 
 dissolving when the occasion ceases, the 
 other organizing standing councils within 
 definite territories. There were disad- 
 vantages in each method; one was liable to 
 irregularity, the other trenched upon liberty. 
 But there was one form of organization 
 that had taken permanent root. The "As- 
 sociations " or clubs of neighboring minis- 
 ters for mutual improvement had come 
 into general -favor and were found to serve 
 a useful purpose in introducing and recom- 
 mending candidates to the churches, ** for 
 the trial of their gifts." By a phrase nat- 
 urally borrowed from the Presbyterian vo- 
 cabulary, this recommendation, given after 
 examination of the candidate's qualifica- 
 tions, came to be called a *' license to 
 preach." It had no more authority than 
 the churches chose to concede to it; and (to 
 the credit of their good sense) they com- 
 monly conceded very much. 
 Thus, in the course of a hundred years, 
 
io8 The Congregationalists 
 
 there had grown up in these colonies, from 
 its roots in the New Testament scriptures, a 
 complete ecclesiastical polity. In twenty 
 years from the landing at Salem, the great 
 Puritan migration had ceased to flow; in 
 fact the reflux, it is estimated, carried back 
 to England more persons than had originally 
 come thence. But their posterity had peo- 
 pled the coasts of the two colonies and the 
 Connecticut River valley with towns and 
 villages, each with its church and its 
 "learned and orthodox minister" and its 
 school; and at cost of immense sacrifice in 
 those days of poverty, two colleges, destined 
 to take rank among the famous universities 
 of the world, were training young men in 
 the higher learning for service in church 
 and in civil state. 
 
 The constellation of great men who had 
 presided over the birth of these churches 
 had long ago sunk below the horizon. 
 Hooker, Davenport, Cotton, Eliot, Richard 
 Mather, had been succeeded by men of the 
 
A Retrospect 109 
 
 second and third generations, among whom 
 Increase and Cotton Mather of Boston and 
 Pierpont of New Haven were eminent. 
 The literature of the church had grown 
 large, being copiously increased with every 
 new question that emerged. The duty of 
 preaching the gospel to the heathen In- 
 dians, so earnestly laid to heart in the first 
 beginnings of settlement, had never been 
 neglected. The early endeavors of Roger 
 Williams and John Eliot had been supple- 
 mented by the labors of many a village pas- 
 tor and his church, favored by slender ap- 
 propriations from that most ancient of 
 Protestant missionary societies founded 
 under Oliver Cromwell. 
 
 And here is a curious fact, not without 
 parallel in church history: — in these colo- 
 nies, ** whose end was religion," where 
 every man was a theologian, and the chief 
 themes of popular discussion were theolog- 
 ical, and the literature was exclusively the- 
 ological, and where variations of opinion 
 
no The Congregationalists 
 
 and divergent tendencies were distinctly as- 
 serting themselves, there was nevertheless 
 no separation into theological parties. 
 Under no constraint, and with apparent 
 sincerity, there was general agreement in 
 referring to the Westminster Confession as 
 slightly amended by the Savoy Synod in 
 1658, as expressing the common belief of 
 the New England churches. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 GREAT AWAKENING 
 
 The third decade of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury closed with the New England churches 
 resting under a wide-spread shadow of de- 
 pression and discouragement. Fifty years 
 before (1680) the '' Reforming Synod" had 
 testified to a like depression; and its warn- 
 ing and exhortation and the *' mighty cry " 
 for divine help to which it had stirred up 
 the people had not been in vain. There 
 had been signs of renewed life; but the 
 torpor had come back over the churches 
 "as the clouds return after the rain." We 
 have not to seek far to find causes for the 
 spiritual declension. The fifty years past 
 had been years of almost incessant war 
 with the Indians, and of political agitation 
 in Massachusetts. The frequent and some- 
 
1 1 2 The Congregationalists 
 
 times acrimonious controversies over church 
 questions were not usually means of grace. 
 But it is common to lay the chief blame for 
 the declension on the general adoption of 
 the ** half-v^ay covenant." The real blame 
 was due to the defective practical theology 
 that necessitated the half-way covenant. 
 The notion that persons freely and unre- 
 servedly pledged to every duty of Christian 
 discipleship should be debarred from the 
 communion of the church simply for lack 
 of a certain passive experience confessedly 
 beyond their power to attain was a notion 
 self-condemned before honest consciences. 
 To admit these persons grudgingly to a 
 ** half-way " membership that should em- 
 power them to present their children for 
 baptism, did not solve the difficulty. The 
 real solution lay in recognizing that a will- 
 ing heart for all the will of Christ was itself 
 a divine gift and an evidence of regener- 
 ation. The fault of the time was not in re- 
 ceiving such to ** half-way" membership. 
 
Great Awakening 113 
 
 but in not welcoming them to full com- 
 munion. The dullness and coldness of the 
 churches is often ascribed to the admission 
 of so many as " proselytes of the gate " to 
 a quasi-membership. It might have been 
 in some measure happily relieved by open- 
 ing the gate and admitting them to the re- 
 sponsibilities and privileges of brethren. 
 
 So thought Solomon Stoddard, whose 
 frontier parish of Northampton, on the 
 Connecticut River, was destined to become 
 a central point of interest in the history of 
 these times. His is a name not to be men- 
 tioned without respect and even reverence. 
 Born in Boston in 1643, graduated at Har- 
 vard in 1662, and afterwards serving there 
 as tutor and librarian, he became minister 
 of Northampton in 1669, and there re- 
 mained for sixty honored and fruitful years. 
 His great dignity and holiness of character 
 added power to his earnest preaching; in a 
 time when the churches generally were 
 languishing, his ministry was marked by 
 
114 The Congregationalists 
 
 no less than five revivals. From such a 
 man, a protest against excessive rigor in 
 church administration came with peculiar 
 weight. It is well to remember that it was 
 in the year of his graduation at Harvard 
 that the great synod was held at Boston, at 
 which seventy "elders and messengers" of 
 the churches did, "after much discussion 
 and consideration from the Word of God," 
 vote and conclude in favor of the Half-way 
 Covenant. He was no novice, but a ma- 
 ture scholar of fifty-seven years, and a pas- 
 tor for thirty-one successful years, when he 
 published, in 1700, his "Doctrine of Insti- 
 tuted Churches." This was followed, nine 
 years later, after not a little controversy, by 
 his "Appeal to the Learned; being a vindi- 
 cation of the right of visible saints to the 
 Lord's Supper, though they be destitute of 
 a saving work of God's Spirit on their 
 hearts." It requires an effort for us to ap- 
 prehend the idea that sounds so paradox- 
 ical, of "visible saints " in "an unconverted 
 
Great Awakening 115 
 
 condition." We may be aided by reading 
 one of the forms of this " half-way cove- 
 nanting " in use in a Boston church: 
 
 You now from your heart professing a 
 serious belief of the Christian religion, as it 
 has generally been declared and embraced 
 by the faithful in this place, do here give up 
 yourself to God in Christ, promising with 
 his help to endeavor to walk according to 
 the rules of that holy religion all your days; 
 choosing of God as your best good and 
 your last end, and Christ as the Prophet and 
 Priest and King of your soul forever. You 
 do therefore submit unto the laws of his 
 kingdom as they are administered in this 
 church of his; and you will also carefully 
 and sincerely labor after those more positive 
 and increased evidences of regeneration 
 which may further encourage you to seek 
 an admission unto the table of the Lord. 
 
 There are few pastors at the present day 
 who are not so far "Stoddardean" but that 
 they would eagerly admit that one who 
 could take this covenant intelligently and 
 sincerely ought at once to be welcomed to 
 the full communion of the church. One 
 who would take it otherwise than sincerely, 
 
ll6 The Congregationalists 
 
 ought not to be permitted to take it at 
 all. 
 
 It grows clear, as we read, that the fa- 
 thers of the New England churches, in their 
 righteous reaction from the scandalous cor- 
 ruptness of the English parish churches, had 
 set up an ultra-scriptural standard of church- 
 membership, the consequences of which, in 
 the third and fourth generations, were 
 plaguing their successors. Their "plat- 
 forms" and other manifestoes bristled with 
 proof-texts and biblical phrases in italic 
 type. But in their overzeal for church 
 purity they had failed to put due emphasis 
 on the parable of The Tares of the Field. 
 They were bent upon keeping out the tares, 
 at whatever risk to the wheat; and they had 
 fixed a criterion of regenerate character, 
 which might seem to serve, in an age of 
 deep emotions, but failed in calmer times. 
 The exacting of a recital of intimate spirit- 
 ual experiences neither spared the wheat 
 nor rooted out all the tares. Instead of 
 
Great Awakening 117 
 
 frankly abandoning it in favor of some 
 more scriptural criterion, like ** He that 
 doeth righteousness is righteous," or ** By 
 their fruits ye shall know them," they clung 
 to their "tradition of the elders" with the 
 illogical and mischievous compromise, that 
 one who was not prepared to pass their 
 arbitrary ** fencing of the table" might 
 come halfway. The doctrine of Stoddard, 
 instead of a further decline from the half- 
 way covenant, was really, under an infe- 
 licitous statement, a return to sound prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 As the sixty-years' pastorate of Stoddard 
 drew towards its close, the church and 
 parish of Northampton were sharing the 
 generally prevalent inertness. High hopes 
 were awakened when, in 1727, the grand- 
 son of the aged pastor was ordained as a 
 colleague. Well might good men be hope- 
 ful at the coming of a young man of such 
 rare promise as this Jonathan Edwards. In 
 his home at the parsonage at East Windsor, 
 
li8 The Congregationalists 
 
 Connecticut, and in his boyhood at Yale 
 College, where he graduated at seventeen, 
 he had already manifested traits of genius 
 in philosophy and of holiness in character 
 which called forth the admiring question. 
 What manner of man shall this be ? After 
 two years from his graduation passed at 
 New Haven in theological study, he spent 
 a few months in New York as minister to 
 the feeble Presbyterian congregation lately 
 gathered there, and then returned to Yale 
 to serve for two years as tutor. Here, at 
 her home in the New Haven parsonage, he 
 won the love of Sarah Pierpont, a woman 
 worthy of himself. The little prose-poem 
 in which he describes to himself the 
 spiritual beauties of her character is one of 
 the points of the striking parallel between 
 Edwards and Dante. The great Floren- 
 tine's description of his Beatrice is not 
 more tenderly beautiful. Edwards was 
 twenty-four years old when he was or- 
 dained pastor of the Northampton church. 
 
Great Awakening iig 
 
 When, a few months later, he installed his 
 "espoused saint" in the parsonage at 
 Northampton, the house became a well- 
 spring of spiritual influences for the whole 
 nation, the streams of which have never 
 ceased to flow. 
 
 The newly inaugurated ministry made 
 no break in the traditions of the church. 
 Even the death of the venerable Stoddard, 
 two years after he had laid his hands on 
 the head of his grandson, does not seem to 
 have led to any departure from his methods. 
 It would have been little accordant with the 
 mind of the young pastor, to refuse to any 
 the comfort and help of the holy supper, 
 on the ground of their non-compliance with 
 conditions with which it was in no sense 
 possible for them to comply. For six 
 years his preaching of righteousness 
 seemed as a voice crying in the wilderness. 
 At length the faith and prayer of the 
 preacher were rewarded by some signs of 
 yielding to the word of God. The frivolity 
 
120 The Congregationalists 
 
 or wantonness of the youth, that had vexed 
 his righteous soul, began to be sobered. 
 With deepening fervor he urged -upon 
 men's hearts the familiar themes, justifica- 
 tion by faith, the awfulness of God's 
 justice, the excellency of Christ, the duty 
 of pressing into the kingdom of God. 
 Presently a young woman, a leader in the 
 village gayeties, became ''serious, giving 
 evidence of a heart truly broken and 
 sanctified." It was the beginning of " The 
 Great Awakening." The story of the 
 revival cannot be better told than in the 
 language of Edwards himself: 
 
 The work of God, as it was carried on 
 and the number of true saints multiplied, 
 soon made a glorious alteration in the 
 town, so that in the spring and summer, 
 anno 1735, the town seemed to be full of 
 the presence of God. It was never so full 
 of love nor so full of joy, and yet so full 
 of distress, as it was then. There were 
 remarkable tokens of God's presence in 
 almost every house. It was a time of joy 
 in families on the account of salvation's be- 
 ing brought unto them; parents rejoicing 
 
Great Awakening 121 
 
 over their children as being new-born, and 
 husbands over their wives and wives over 
 their husbands. The goings of God were 
 then seen in his sanctuary. God's day was 
 a dehght, and his tabernacles were amiable. 
 Our public assemblies were then beautiful; 
 the congregation was alive in God's service, 
 every one intent on the public worship, 
 every hearer eager to drink in the words of 
 the minister as they came from his mouth; 
 the assembly in general were from time to 
 time in tears while the Word was preached, 
 some weeping with sorrow and distress, 
 others with joy and love, others with pity 
 and concern for the souls of their neigh- 
 bors. 
 
 But the crown and glory of the work 
 was when the thankful people presented 
 themselves before the Lord with solemn 
 acts of thanksgiving and vows of purity 
 and faithfulness and charity in all the duties 
 of daily life. By public covenant they con- 
 secrated themselves to the relative duties of 
 parents and children, husbands and wives, 
 brothers and sisters, masters, mistresses 
 and servants. 
 
122 The Congregationalists 
 
 The work spread abroad through all the 
 Connecticut Valley and the region round 
 about. It was heard of in the region of 
 Newark, planted by a New England colony, 
 and of Elizabeth, where Jonathan Dickin- 
 son, a native of Hatfield, next town to 
 Northampton, was the foremost man of 
 New Jersey Presbyterianism; and the news, 
 as it spread, quickened the churches with 
 new life. Dr. Benjamin Colman of Boston 
 wrote to Edwards for the facts in the case; 
 and his reply, forwarded to Dr. Watts and 
 Dr. Guyse, was published by them in Lon- 
 don under the title, "Narrative of Surpris- 
 ing Conversions." The little book, carried 
 by John Wesley in his pocket on a walk 
 from London to Oxford, in 1738, opened 
 his eyes to the vision of new possibilities 
 for the kingdom of God. "Surely," he 
 writes, "this is the Lord's doing, and it is 
 marvellous in our eyes." That same year 
 George Whitefield sailed for Georgia, to 
 take up the work, in that infant colony, in 
 
Great Awakening 123 
 
 which his college friend, Wesley, had 
 made so painful a failure. 
 
 The waters that had been stirred as by an 
 angel did not return to their long wonted 
 stagnation. Through the long seaboard 
 from Maine to Georgia, there was a stir of 
 expectant hope. In the autumn of 1740, on 
 the invitation of Colman, Whitefield made 
 a rapid progress through New England, 
 preaching at every halt, spending three 
 days at Newport, a fortnight in Boston, and 
 three days at New Haven, and a few hours 
 each at many other places. Never did 
 apostle more literally fulfill the command, 
 ''as ye go, preach." And wherever he 
 preached, he was thronged by eager, agi- 
 tated, sometimes weeping and fainting con- 
 gregations. No heart, it seemed, could 
 resist the power of his incomparable 
 eloquence. And yet some of those who 
 *' esteemed him most highly in love for his 
 work's sake " recognized, with misgivings, 
 the personal faults and the mistakes by 
 
124 The Congregationalists 
 
 which his work was marred. His good 
 sense and modesty were not proof against 
 the adulations that everywhere waited on 
 him. He was superstitiously inclined to be 
 governed in his conduct by "impressions " 
 assumed to be divine. He was prone to 
 ** beating his fellow-servants," his excessive 
 self-conceit taking its common form of 
 censoriousness in the judgment of others. 
 He was much addicted to inveighing 
 against other ministers as "unconverted," 
 declaring in Boston, before a great as- 
 sembly including many ministers, that 
 " the generality of preachers talk of an un- 
 known and unfelt Christ; and the reason 
 why congregations have been so dead is 
 because they have had dead men preaching 
 to them." These were faults that were not 
 slow in bringing their penalty. Imitated 
 with aggravations by some of the asso- 
 ciates and followers of the great preacher, 
 who found it easier to copy his faults than 
 his inimitable gifts, to what could they lead 
 
Great Awakening 125 
 
 but to disorder ? Following close upon 
 Whitefield's flying tour through New Eng- 
 land, came Gilbert Tennent of New Jersey, 
 whose abusive sermon on "An Uncon- 
 verted Ministry " had just split the Presby- 
 terian Church into two synods, of the Old 
 Side and the New Side — a schism that was 
 long in healing. The hysterical agitations, 
 such as the sober wisdom of Edwards 
 sought to hold under control, suffered no 
 abatement under the fervid harangues of 
 Tennent. For several months in the winter 
 and spring of 1741, he continued his work 
 at Boston, sustained by the confidence of 
 some of the best men of the clergy. In 
 Connecticut, several zealous pastors left 
 their parishes for evangelizing tours from 
 town to town, not waiting for invitations 
 from the pastor in charge, but invading 
 other men's parishes at their own discre- 
 tion. It was impossible that such pro- 
 cedures, however conscientiously under- 
 taken, should fail of giving offense. The 
 
126 The Congregationalists 
 
 colonial legislature, which had ever an 
 alacrity at meddling with church affairs, in 
 1741 summoned a " General Consociation " 
 — the last Congregational Synod called by 
 civil authority — to consult for "the true in- 
 terest of vital religion." This council pro- 
 nounced the opinion that no minister ought 
 to preach or administer the sacraments in a 
 parish not his own, without the consent of 
 the settled minister of the parish. So ob- 
 vious a principle of good manners failed to 
 restrain the zeal of the itinerants; and the 
 legislature followed it up with a law that 
 a pastor leaving his flock to intrude un- 
 invited into his neighbor's should lose his 
 legal right to collect his salary, and be 
 liable to be put under bonds for good be- 
 havior. Intruders from outside of the 
 colony were liable to be expelled from 
 within its borders. 
 
 Admitting (what at this day would be 
 generally denied) the right of the govern- 
 ment to interfere at all in such matters, it is 
 
Great Awakening 127 
 
 not difficult to find justification for the 
 course that was taken by the legislature. 
 If there was any value in the organization 
 of the state into parishes each with its 
 church and minister responsible for the care 
 of its people, something must be done to 
 prevent the parish system, inherited from 
 the fathers, from being broken down by 
 headstrong zealots breaking bounds at no 
 call but that of an " impression " alleged to 
 be divine. It was the mildest penalty that 
 the case admitted, to signify to one quitting 
 his own parish on a self-appointed mission 
 to other men's parishes, that he must cease 
 thereby to draw a salary for the work that 
 he had ceased to do at homa If they 
 should invade the parish of a neighbor min- 
 ister with the implication or (as oftener 
 happened) with the very explicit denunci- 
 ation that he was a blind leader of the blind, 
 it was not imposing an intolerable hardship 
 that they should be required to give se- 
 curity for their decent and orderly conduct. 
 
128 The Congregationalists 
 
 As for evangelists from abroad, their wel- 
 come had been so eager and so general, 
 that the fact that one failed of being in- 
 vited by some pastor would furnish a pre- 
 sumption against him as an adventurer not 
 to be encouraged or entertained. 
 
 Evidently the new gospel was bringing 
 not peace but a sword. In the controversy 
 that was inevitably springing up, two pro- 
 tagonists were conspicuous. The work of 
 Jonathan Edwards, "Some Thoughts con- 
 cerning the present Revival of Religion in 
 New England" (Boston, 1742) was an- 
 swered the next year by Charles Chauncy, 
 pastor of the First Church in Boston, in a 
 volume the title of which bore a purposed 
 resemblance to that which Edwards had 
 used — " Seasonable Thoughts on the State 
 of Religion in New England." It included 
 widely collected and carefully authenticated 
 instances of extravagance and fanaticism 
 in the progress of the revival, with serious 
 warnings of impending danger to the 
 
Great Awakening 129 
 
 churches. The debate entered into the 
 conventions of ministers and into the disci- 
 pline of colleges. It was at this time that 
 David Brainerd was expelled from Yale 
 College for indulging himself in the be- 
 setting sin of the revivalists, and saying of 
 Tutor Whittelsey (a man of high Christian 
 character, afterwards pastor of the New 
 Haven church) " he has no more grace than 
 this chair." The objectors to the methods 
 of the "New Lights" were powerfully re- 
 inforced by the growing indiscretions of 
 the itinerants. James Davenport, pastor at 
 Southold, Long Island, was one of White- 
 field's prime favorites. Surrendering him- 
 self to the control of "impressions" and 
 "impulses" and Bible phrases "borne in 
 upon his mind," he abandoned his Long 
 Island parish, and went crusading through 
 Connecticut and Massachusetts, thrusting 
 himself uninvited into other men's labors, 
 charging those who opposed him with 
 being "unconverted" and with "leading 
 
130 The Congregationalists 
 
 their people blindfold to hell," and adjuring 
 the people to desert both pastor and church. 
 Intent on schism, he came by invitation to 
 New London to aid in organizing a Sepa- 
 ratist church, and there "published the 
 messages which he said he received from 
 the Spirit in dreams and otherwise" and 
 summoned the people with a "Thus 
 saith the Lord" to put away the ob- 
 jects of their idolatry. Wigs, cloaks and 
 breeches, hoods, gowns, rings, jewels 
 and necklaces, were laid in a heap, on a 
 Sunday afternoon, and publicly burned, 
 with songs and shouts. In the pile were 
 devotional books of such authors as Flavel, 
 Beveridge and Increase Mather, and it was 
 proclaimed to the crowd that "the smoke 
 of the torment of such of the authors of the 
 above-said books as died in the same belief 
 as when they set them out was now as- 
 cending in hell, in like manner as they saw 
 the smoke of these books arise." Such ex- 
 travagances wrought a reaction and cured 
 
Great Awakening 131 
 
 themselves. In a little more than a year 
 from this time, Davenport himself, who 
 had been treated with much forbearance as 
 not responsible for his actions, recovered 
 his reason, with the restoration of his bodily 
 health, and published a pathetic acknowl- 
 edgment that he had been under the influ- 
 ence of a spirit of delusion which he had 
 mistaken for the Spirit of truth. Men set- 
 tled down into a more sober mind. Good 
 men had been widely sundered in senti- 
 ment; and yet, on reconsideration, the 
 difference was not extreme. The most 
 zealous revivalists admitted that there had 
 been deplorable excesses; the most cau- 
 tious conservatives recognized that benefi- 
 cent and divine work had been wrought. 
 The hearts of alienated brethren flowed to- 
 gether, and soon no trace remained of the 
 storm that had swept over New England, 
 except a few languishing schisms in Con- 
 necticut country towns. Nevertheless the 
 severe strain had revealed the fact of diverse 
 
132 The Congregationalists 
 
 tendencies in opinion and taste and spiritual 
 temperament, which were destined to have 
 a most serious influence on the course of 
 later history. Some of the lessons taught 
 by the now subsided agitation were in- 
 structive to students of church polity. The 
 most serious disorders had prevailed in re- 
 gions where the semi-Presbyterian arrange- 
 ments of the Saybrook Platform were 
 looked to as a bulwark of good order. 
 And the gravest schism that the Great 
 Awakening occasioned — a complete rupture 
 between "Old Side" and "New Side" 
 that continued unhealed for eighteen years 
 — took place under the compact classical 
 government of the Presbyterian Church. 
 In the looser tissue of the Congregational 
 communion, the wounds healed by the first 
 intention. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 GROWTH OF DOCTRINE 
 
 In the strength of the refreshment re- 
 ceived in the few years of the Great Awak- 
 ening, the churches of New England were 
 to subsist for more than forty years. These 
 were to be years not only of reaction from 
 profound agitation and excitement, but also 
 of exhausting wars, of political turmoil, 
 and of the influx of anti-religious principles 
 from abroad. But for the new and more 
 abundant life that had been infused into 
 them, the very existence of the churches 
 might have been imperiled by these malign 
 influences. 
 
 But they were not unfruitful years. The 
 fervid missionary zeal of David Brainerd, 
 commemorated in his biography by Jona- 
 than Edwards, inspired with like zeal 
 ^33 
 
134 The Congregationalists 
 
 Henry Martyn and a great company of men 
 and women like-minded, on both sides of 
 the sea. The faithfulness of many a parish 
 church was rewarded by the ingathering of 
 Indian converts. One of these, Samson 
 Occum, educated for the ministry by Pastor 
 Wheelock of Lebanon, gathered in England 
 funds for that school for the training of 
 Indian preachers which grew into Dart- 
 mouth College. In the twenty years from 
 1740, the number of the New England 
 churches had been increased by one hun- 
 dred and fifty. 
 
 Among the fruits of the Great Awaken- 
 ing must be reckoned that profound stirring 
 of intellectual life that added to the Amer- 
 ican church polity which had grown up on 
 the soil of New England, a distinctly Amer- 
 ican school of theology. It is most remark- 
 able that in more than a hundred years of 
 strenuous theologizing, among a people 
 greatly addicted to free thought and speech, 
 there should have been so little deviation 
 
Growth of Doctrine 135 
 
 from the Reformed theology as articulated 
 in the Westminster standards. But the re- 
 vival had forced the adjudication of some 
 questions with which these documents did 
 not adequately deal. The Half-way Cove- 
 nant and the " Stoddardean " discipline 
 were illogical evasions of a difficulty that 
 refused to be thus disposed of. They were 
 an admission that conditions of salvation 
 were exacted with which it was impossible 
 to comply. The case required a new the- 
 odicy to "justify the ways of God to men." 
 It was to this that the great founder of the 
 New England theology, Edwards, applied 
 those intellectual powers which have been 
 the admiration of the world of thinkers and 
 scholars. Not without mature meditation 
 did he apply in practice the fruits of his 
 study. For nearly twenty years he prac- 
 tised the system introduced into the North- 
 ampton church by his grandfather. Not 
 until 1748 did he deliver his soul of a bold 
 and open protest against any compromise 
 
136 The Congregationalists 
 
 of the divine claim of repentance and faith 
 as the inexorable condition of acceptance 
 with God. To his mind and that of his 
 successors, the solution of the "conflict of 
 ages" was to be found in alleging the 
 "power of contrary choice" and the dis- 
 tinction between natural and moral inabil- 
 ity. Nothing but a deep conviction of the 
 personal guilt of every man who should 
 fail to comply with the demands of the 
 gospel could possibly have sustained the 
 soul of this most conscientious man in 
 those lurid and Dantesque denunciations of 
 divine vengeance against the impenitent 
 and unbelieving with which he terrified the 
 shrieking listeners in his Enfield sermon on 
 "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." 
 The subject of human duty, ability and re- 
 sponsibility cannot be followed far without 
 opening, at the right hand and the left, into 
 all the subjects of theological discussion. 
 The themes of Edwards's own speculation 
 ranged from heaven to hell. His disciples 
 
Growth of Doctrine 137 
 
 and successors, a numerous series even 
 counting only the most eminent, were 
 linked together, from generation to genera- 
 tion, not only by the bond between teacher 
 and scholar, but to a curious degree by the 
 ties of family relation. The foremost of 
 them, Hopkins and Bellamy, had been stu- 
 dents in tne family of Edwards. Smalley 
 and Jonathan Edwards the younger were 
 among the many students with Bellamy. 
 Emmons studied under Smalley. Timothy 
 Dwight was grandson of Edwards. Taylor 
 was a favorite pupil of Dwight. Park was 
 for a time a student of Emmons. The 
 questions intently studied in one generation 
 were taken up in the next for further elab- 
 oration. Thus grew up that body of litera- 
 ture known in America as the New England 
 theology, and known and widely honored 
 and accepted in other lands as the American 
 theology. 
 
 Of course this great intellectual move- 
 ment was not accomplished without colli- 
 
138 The Congregationalists 
 
 sion of opposing minds. Serious and some- 
 times acrimonious debates took place. Not 
 many were called to submit to so painful 
 an experience as that of the great Jonathan 
 Edwards. His resolute refusal to abate the 
 conditions which he deemed scriptural and 
 right in receiving candidates to the Lord's 
 Supper provoked an angry hostility to him 
 in the town to which his more than twenty 
 years of ministry had been so noble a dis- 
 tinction and so great a blessing. Sorrow- 
 fully he laid down his work at the demand 
 of a council ratified by an overwhelming 
 vote of the church, and with his wife and 
 eight of his living children withdrew to the 
 perilous frontier of civilization in the Berk- 
 shire hills, where he served as missionary to 
 the Stockbridge Indians. In this wilderness 
 he wrote some of his masterpieces of meta- 
 physical divinity. After seven years he was 
 invited to be president of Princeton College, 
 then lately founded by New England and 
 "New Light" influence, in the interest of a 
 
Growth of Doctrine 139 
 
 more advanced theology and a larger "lib- 
 erty of prophesying " than were encouraged 
 by the conservative orthodoxy of Harvard 
 and Yale. Only a few weeks after his ar- 
 rival at Princeton, he entered the pest-house 
 to submit himself to inoculation for the 
 smallpox, and there died in 1758, in his 
 fifty-fifth year. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 AGE OF HOME MISSIONS 
 
 At the close of the war of independence, 
 of all the colonial church establishments the 
 only ones that survived in health and vigor 
 were those of the Congregational polity. 
 The Dutch and afterwards the English 
 church in New York languished. Quaker- 
 ism, in the Jerseys and Pennsylvania, was 
 declining. The Anglican establishments 
 from Maryland southward were as good as 
 dead. In New England the solid organiza- 
 tion of parish churches was coextensive 
 with the settled population, and was still 
 extending, as new regions came to be occu- 
 pied. In the lapse of a century and a half, 
 there had been changes in the order of the 
 church polity. The early idea of the gov- 
 ernment of each church by an elective elder- 
 140 
 
Age of Home Missions 141 
 
 ship of not less than three had shrunk to an 
 eldership of one, who was prone to arrogate 
 to himself autocratic power. The purely 
 democratic government of the towns, and 
 the powerful current of popular opinion, 
 aided the inevitable reaction towards gov- 
 ernment directly by the brotherhood of the 
 church. The duties of the fellowship of 
 churches, though sometimes conspicuously 
 neglected, were so far from being laid aside, 
 that they were defined and regulated by a 
 growing body of precedents like a common 
 law; or (in Connecticut) by a "platform" 
 of ordinances — an infraction of the sover- 
 eignty of the individual congregation which 
 some considered a less evil than the " un- 
 chartered freedom " that sometimes perpetu- 
 ated a diificulty by setting up council against 
 council. Successive controversies had 
 arisen, resulting in some cases in there 
 being two churches in the same town repre- 
 senting different sentiments or tastes ; but 
 it does not appear that churches had yet 
 
142 The Congregationalists 
 
 begun to be established with the distinct 
 intent of excluding some fellow-Christians. 
 Doubtless (and not unreasonably) a candi- 
 date's ''soundness in doctrine" was in- 
 quired into as being one of the indications 
 of his fitness for membership in the church; 
 but it was not with the purpose of making 
 separations among Christians, but as one 
 way of distinguishing between the church 
 and the world. If a candidate, departing 
 from what was considered (however mis- 
 takenly) as essential and fundamental truth, 
 should express Arminian opinions, he might 
 very probably be debarred from the com- 
 munion; but it would not be with the no- 
 tion that he might be an excellent Christian, 
 only better suited to some ** sister church," 
 but rather that a man holding such views 
 was no Christian at all; and that since (to 
 quote the title of a pamphlet of the day) 
 "heaven is shut against Arminians," it is no 
 wrong if the church on earth is shut against 
 them too, until they amend their sinful 
 
Age of Home Missions 143 
 
 errors. In short, the ideal of the New Eng- 
 land churches (however imperfectly real- 
 ized) was to be parish churches, each com- 
 prehending the Christian disciples of its 
 parish. In theory and design, at least, they 
 were not sectarian. 
 
 Here and there was a congregation of 
 dissenters from the parish church. It is 
 wonderful how few and inconsiderable they 
 were — chiefly Quaker, Baptist and Episco- 
 palian. The Separatist congregations or- 
 ganized during the commotion of the Great 
 Awakening presently adopted Baptist prin- 
 ciples, or coalesced harmoniously with the 
 sisterhood of the Congregational churches 
 about them. Naturally the organization of 
 dissent led on both sides to the emphasizing 
 of mutual distinctions, and to controversies 
 which did not always do more harm than 
 good. 
 
 In the extreme languor of the churches 
 that followed the war of independence, they 
 were providentially laden with a task of su- 
 
144 The Congregationalists 
 
 preme importance, difficulty and dignity, 
 well fitted to exercise all their remaining 
 strength. The outward flow of the New 
 England population had already begun, be- 
 fore the war, and there had been consulta- 
 tion among the Connecticut pastors about 
 making provision for the ''Green Mountain 
 Boys" who were building their pioneer 
 cabins in the wildernesses of Vermont. 
 Immediately on the conclusion of peace, the 
 business was resumed, the evangelizing 
 tours of individual pastors being reinforced 
 by and by with considerable companies, in- 
 cluding some of the foremost men of the 
 Connecticut clergy, detailed to this duty by 
 the General Association. 
 
 In the adjustment of territorial claims 
 arising out of the terms of the colonial 
 charters, there had been allowed a Massa- 
 chusetts Reserve in Western New York, and 
 a Connecticut Reserve stretching across 
 Northern Ohio; and towards these regions 
 the first tidal wave of westward migration 
 
Age of Home Missions 145 
 
 was naturally determined. It presently 
 grew to such dimensions that more system- 
 atic methods for more continuous work 
 were demanded. In 1798 was organized 
 the Missionary Society of Connecticut, "to 
 Christianize the heathen of North America, 
 and to support and promote Christian 
 knowledge in the new settlements within 
 the United States." This example was fol- 
 lowed the next year in Massachusetts, and 
 a few years later in New Hampshire, Ver- 
 mont and Maine. The work thus organized 
 was immediately occasioned by the move- 
 ment of population; it was both effect and 
 cause of that divine work of spiritual quick- 
 ening at the opening of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, which has been characterized as The 
 Second Awakening. Its influence extended 
 from the seaboard to the remotest frontier 
 of civilization, '*and there was nothing hid 
 from the heat thereof." In the ruder re- 
 gions of the West, it was attended by ex- 
 travagant symptoms of epidemic nervous 
 
146 The Congregatlonalists 
 
 excitement. In New England the lessons 
 painfully taught, two generations before, by 
 the frenzy of poor James Davenport and his 
 associates had not been forgotten. The 
 people had well learned the apostolic dis- 
 tinction between godliness and bodily exer- 
 cise. But everywhere the new revival was 
 like life from the dead. At the accession of 
 Timothy D wight, in 1795, to the presidency 
 of Yale College, demoralization and infidel- 
 ity, in that institution, had reached nearly 
 its lowest limit. The college church was 
 almost extinct, and the students generally 
 were ostentatiously infidel. As this declen- 
 sion was typical of the country generally, so 
 was the recovery from it. There is an im- 
 pressive absence from the story, of famous 
 evangelists traversing the country on tours 
 of preaching; everywhere men who had 
 been " waiting for the consolation of Israel " 
 were quick to answer to the first signs of 
 new life. It was wonderful how soon and 
 how completely the losses of the church 
 
Age of Home Missions 147 
 
 were made good. As the Great Awaken- 
 ing had been marked by the first American 
 venture in religious journalism (the "Chris- 
 tian History" of Thomas Prince) so the 
 present awakening of missionary zeal gave 
 birth to the Connecticut Evangelical Maga- 
 :(ine (1800) and the Massachusetts Mis- 
 sionary Magazine (1802). The generous 
 enthusiasm of religious activity was destined 
 to have the most important results, both 
 direct and indirect, on the future of the 
 Congregational churches of America. 
 
 The task imposed upon the churches of 
 this period was notably different from that 
 borne by the former generations. It was no 
 longer that of tending the infancy of homo- 
 geneous communities on their own soil, un- 
 der the tutelage of their own government, 
 and of seeing them equipped with the insti- 
 tutions of a Christian civilization. Their 
 brethren and neighbors, embarking in their 
 canvas-covered wagons, had gone further 
 from home, so far as concerned means of 
 
148 The Congregationalists 
 
 communication, than the fathers who had 
 crossed the sea to be the founders of a new 
 nation. And in their new wilderness they 
 were not alone. Another stream of migra- 
 tion was flowing westward on parallel 
 lines, and often debouching into the same 
 channels with that from New England. 
 This was the Scotch or Irish Presbyterian 
 migration, so nearly similar to the New 
 Englanders, but not identical. These emi- 
 grants also were followed into the wilder- 
 ness by the pastoral care of missionaries of 
 their own sort. 
 
 In these circumstances there were three 
 possible courses to be taken: either one 
 party or the other might surrender its pref- 
 erences and accept the regimen of the 
 other; or the two parties might set up rival 
 churches in the same village; or some plan 
 might be formed by which, in the same com- 
 munity, they might agree in common wor- 
 ship and Christian service. Many influences 
 tended to this last course. In colonial days. 
 
Age of Home Missions 149 
 
 there had been systematic consultation be- 
 tween the Presbyterian Church (then a small 
 and uninfluential body) and the General As- 
 sociation of Connecticut, regarding meas- 
 ures to be taken to ward otT the very real 
 and formidable danger that a hierarchy of 
 lord-bishops backed by the canon law — a 
 yoke which neither they nor their fathers 
 had been able to bear — would be imposed 
 upon the colonies by crown and parliament. 
 After the close of the war of independence, 
 the General Assembly had gladly availed 
 itself of the eminent qualifications of Dr. 
 Dwight to secure a book of psalms and 
 hymns suited to churches of both com- 
 munions. To a remarkable extent their 
 clergy had been manned from New Eng- 
 land. The Association and the Assembly 
 were in the habit annually of exchanging 
 delegates; and at the Assembly's request 
 these " corresponding members " were 
 given, in each body, equal power with its 
 own members. So it came to pass, in 1800, 
 
l^o The Congregationalists 
 
 that Jonathan Edwards the younger, a theo- 
 logian hardly inferior to his illustrious father, 
 long a Connecticut pastor, and now presi- 
 dent of Union College at Schenectady, was 
 sitting in the General Association of Con- 
 necticut as delegate of the General Assem- 
 bly of the Presbyterian Church. He was a 
 representative of both parties, or rather a 
 representative of those interests of the 
 kingdom of Christ in the West which were 
 the common concern of both parties. He 
 served on a committee to prepare a " plan 
 of union" on which mixed communities 
 of Congregationalists and Presbyterians 
 might carry on their church affairs together 
 without schism. The next year in May, 
 he was chairman of a like committee 
 in the General Assembly. His report 
 was adopted; and the next month it 
 was also adopted in Connecticut. This was 
 *'The Plan of Union." It provided that a 
 Presbyterian church might be served by a 
 Congregational minister, and vice versa, and 
 
Age of Home Missions 151 
 
 that a congregation including members of 
 each persuasion mighit conduct its affairs by 
 means of a standing committee. It was a 
 studiously equitable arrangement, the prac- 
 tical value of which in advancing the Chris- 
 tianization of the new States is denied by 
 none. It saved many a community from 
 being ravaged by schism. It greatly honored 
 the essential principle of Congregationalism, 
 to wit, that a community of Christians has 
 a right to manage its own affairs even 
 though it may see fit to manage them in the 
 Presbyterian way; at the same time it dis- 
 allowed the Separatist claim of the right of 
 a party to rend itself from the community 
 when affairs are not managed according to 
 its own mind. And it largely infused the 
 spirit of self-respect and self-government 
 into many congregations included under the 
 Presbyterian hierarchy, and influenced the 
 American development of the system itself. 
 
 But the practical working of the Plan of 
 Union was to attach a very large propor- 
 
152 The Congregationalists 
 
 tion, not only of the mixed congregations 
 but of those made up mainly from New 
 England, to the Presbyterian Church. The 
 reasons for this were not far to seek. To 
 begin with, the Congregationalists of that 
 day had no aversion to the Presbyterian 
 polity. The ministers of Connecticut, or- 
 ganized on the Saybrook Platform, openly de- 
 clared, and with much justice, that their sys- 
 tem was rather Presbyterian than Congrega- 
 tional; and the purpose of the most emi- 
 nent of the Massachusetts clergy to estab- 
 lish a like system there had been averted 
 only by the fiery appeal of John Wise to 
 the growing spirit of democracy and inde- 
 pendence. Further, the methods of the 
 Presbyterian advance, in which the presby- 
 tery is logically antecedent to the congrega- 
 tion, gave much advantage, in priority of 
 organization, over the method which begins 
 with the congregation, leaving the wider 
 organization to follow at its convenience. 
 The missionaries from New England found 
 
Age of Home Missions 153 
 
 at hand opportunities of fraternal fellowship 
 in the presbytery, and were often content 
 to remain in it. Withal, the organization 
 of civil government, in the earlier West, on 
 the county as a unit, instead of the pure 
 democracy of the town-meeting, naturally 
 tended to the analogous organization of the 
 church. But above all these reasons it 
 would be unjust not to commemorate with 
 due honor the generous magnanimity with 
 which the pilgrims of this new exodus, 
 pastors and people alike, consented to sacri- 
 fice personal preferences and cherished 
 usages and traditions, to the interests of the 
 kingdom of heaven. 
 
 It has been estimated that "the Plan of 
 Union has transformed over two thousand 
 churches which were in origin and usages 
 Congregational, into Presbyterian churches." 
 One's judgment of the policy that had such 
 a result will naturally be affected by his 
 point of view. To the zealous propagan- 
 dist, eager to belong to a big sect, it must 
 
154 The Congregationalists 
 
 seem nothing less than "disastrous" — the 
 work of "the Lord's silly people." Others 
 will reckon it among the highest honors of 
 a sect which in many ways has been nobly 
 distinguished in the service of the Church 
 Catholic, that it was capable of so heroic an 
 act of self-abnegation. There are some 
 competitions in which the honors and the 
 ultimate rewards of victory belong to the 
 defeated party. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 DISRUPTION 
 
 Simultaneously with these widely exten- 
 sive labors of the Congregationalists outside 
 of New England, revolutionary agitations 
 and changes were taking place among the 
 churches in the most ancient seats of our 
 Puritan and Pilgrim Christianity. And the 
 immediate occasion of these agitations was 
 found in that same revival of religion which 
 had inspired the apostolic self-denial and 
 the earnest missionary zeal manifested in 
 the pioneer work at the West. The diver- 
 gent tendencies that had revealed themselves 
 during and after the Great Awakening, in the 
 controversy in which Jonathan Edwards and 
 Charles Chauncy were the protagonists, re- 
 appeared with emphasis. They represented 
 the difference of temperament and taste be- 
 155 
 
156 The Congregationalists 
 
 tween the more eager and zealous, and the 
 more sober and critical but not necessarily 
 less earnest. They represented a difference 
 of judgment in church administration, es- 
 pecially on the much debated point of the 
 conditions of admission to the Christian 
 sacraments. Naturally also they represented 
 a widening difference of theological con- 
 viction. The " Improvements in Theology 
 made by President Edwards " and enforced 
 by his powerful reasoning and his lofty 
 character had been by no means unani- 
 mously accepted by the New England pas- 
 tors. And now that remarkable dynasty of 
 theologians who (as his son phrased it) had 
 ** followed his course of thought," had gone 
 on to the third generation, adding new 
 principles, and making new refinements 
 and wider applications. Identifying them- 
 selves with earnest movements for the ad- 
 vancement of religion at home or afar, and 
 much engaged in the training of students 
 for the ministry, the leaders of the new the- 
 
Disruption 157 
 
 ology soon became conscious of a growing 
 influence that might easily seem to war- 
 rant a tone of authority natural enough, but 
 not conciliatory to the slower-moving and 
 more cautious minds that held to the early 
 forms of theological statement. There was 
 nothing like schism either in or among the 
 churches. But the two schools of opinion 
 known as Old Calvinist and Hopkinsian 
 were drawing apart from each other, and a 
 dividing line might presently have been 
 drawn between them, but for the emerging 
 into plain view of another element in the 
 life of the Congregational churches, which 
 was destined, both by action and by reac- 
 tion, to exert a profound and even revolu- 
 tionary influence on Congregationalism. 
 
 In the year 1787, the old Episcopalian 
 church of King's Chapel in Boston declared it- 
 self Unitarian, amended its prayer-book ac- 
 cordingly and inducted into its ministry 
 James Freeman, a man of avowed Unitarian 
 principles. Thus "the first Episcopalian 
 
158 The Congregationalists 
 
 church in New England became the first Uni- 
 tarian church in America." It compelled at- 
 tention to a fact which for many years had 
 been no secret from any who chose to observe 
 it, that throughout this part of New England 
 there was a deep and frankly uttered dis- 
 sent, not only from the extreme statements 
 of the later Hopkinsians, but from the gen- 
 eral system of doctrine which, as set forth in 
 the Westminster standards, had not indeed 
 been imposed as a test, but in repeated dec- 
 larations of earlier date had been referred to 
 as expressing the common belief of the 
 churches. Among the dissidents were two 
 eminent men who died in that same year 
 1787 which witnessed the ordination of 
 Freeman at King's Chapel : one was Ebe- 
 nezer Gay, for nearly seventy years pastor 
 at Hingham ; the other was Charles Chauncy, 
 the antagonist of Edwards on the subject of 
 the Revival, who for sixty years was pastor 
 of the First Church in Boston. Much 
 younger than either of these, though his 
 
Disruption 159 
 
 brief and brilliant career closed more than 
 twenty years earlier, was Jonathan May- 
 hew, of the West Church in Boston, distin- 
 guished not only for his captivating elo- 
 quence, but for the large latitude of his the- 
 ological opinions and his aggressive and 
 defiant way of enunciating them. A fourth 
 name to be added is that of Jeremy Belknap. 
 In that same notable year, 1787, he came 
 from Dover, New Hampshire, where he had 
 been for twenty years pastor, to be the first 
 Congregational minister of the Federal 
 Street Church, which up to that date had 
 been Presbyterian. His theological position 
 was defined by his publishing a hymn-book 
 from which all recognition of the Trinity or 
 the supreme deity of Christ had been elimi- 
 nated. 
 
 The thing chiefly remarkable in the theo- 
 logical situation illustrated in these conspic- 
 uous instances is not the fact of a some- 
 what prevalent departure from the standards 
 of a previous generation. The like depar- 
 
l6o The Congregationalists 
 
 ture is characteristic of the time both in the 
 Old England and in the New. The wonder 
 is that in an age of strenuous theological 
 disputation it should have excited so little 
 debate, and led to no rupture of fellowship. 
 It certainly was not unnoticed. The men 
 who have been named were of the highest 
 eminence, and in eminent positions; and 
 their opinions were distinctly understood. 
 But, not without mutual anxieties and jeal- 
 ousies, the various parties kept together in 
 one fellowship of churches and ministers, 
 in which relations of sincere respect and 
 warm personal friendship stretched across 
 the theological dividing lines. 
 
 But schism was inevitable. It is not alto- 
 gether strange that the first church to go 
 asunder was the old Pilgrim church at Ply- 
 mouth. When the church by a majority 
 and the parish by an overwhelming vote had 
 determined on the settlement of a minister 
 of "liberal" sympathies, it was wholly in 
 accordance with the Separatist traditions of 
 
Disruption l6l 
 
 Plymouth that the dissatisfied minority, 
 numbering ahnost one-half of the commu- 
 nicant members, should secede "without 
 tarrying for any." This they did, in Octo- 
 ber, 1801, setting up at the entrance of the 
 new church a dogmatic test intended to ex- 
 clude Unitarians. The old church remained 
 on the basis of the original church cov- 
 enant. 
 
 This was a preliminary and local skirmish. 
 The tug of war began two years later, when 
 the chair of theology in Harvard College fell 
 vacant by the death of Professor Tappan. 
 On the choice of his successor the parties 
 joined issue. The corporation was equally 
 divided, and the question hung long in the 
 balance. At last the balance turned in favor 
 of the ''Liberal" candidate, the greatly re- 
 spected Henry Ware, pastor at Hingham. 
 This election, and three others of like com- 
 plexion which soon followed, announced 
 unmistakably to the two ''evangelical" 
 parties that the influence of the college was 
 
i62 The Congregationalists 
 
 thenceforth committed to the opposite side. 
 It was a painful and disheartening blow to 
 those who cherished the doctrinal traditions 
 of the New England churches. But there 
 were severer blows to follow. 
 
 The immediate consequence of seating 
 the Unitarian candidate in the chair of the- 
 ology at Harvard (it took place in 1805) was 
 the founding of Andover Theological Semi- 
 nary. With wonderful promptness the two 
 " evangelical " parties, the Old Calvinist and 
 the Hopkinsian, composed their serious dif- 
 ferences and united their resources, and in 
 September, 1808, the new Seminary, the 
 first in Protestant America, was opened, 
 with thirty-six students. For thirty years 
 from that time, the annual average of enter- 
 ing students was sixty-two. The Seminary 
 was the mighty pioneer in that work of the 
 systematic and thorough training for the 
 ministry in which, both in their own semi- 
 naries and by the service of their sons in the 
 seminaries of other sects, the American Con- 
 
Disruption 163 
 
 gregationalists have held an unquestioned 
 preeminence. 
 
 The two antagonist parties were now 
 strongly intrenched at Cambridge and An- 
 dover. Each had its monthly organ pub- 
 lished in Boston, the Liberal Anthology and 
 the Orthodox Panoplist. Each was eagerly 
 desirous to place its best men in positions 
 of influence. The accession to the Liberal 
 pulpit of Boston of two such splendidly 
 gifted youths as Channing at Federal Street 
 and Buckminster at the Brattle Church was 
 inadequately offset by the settlement of 
 Joshua Huntington at " the Old South " and 
 of the demonstratively and aggressively or- 
 thodox John Codman at the Second Church 
 in Dorchester. It was on the occasion of 
 his settlement that Mr. Codman announced 
 his purpose to draw a line of distinction in 
 matters of professional courtesy among his 
 neighbors of the opposing schools of opin- 
 ion — an announcement which came near to 
 costing him his place. But at this date 
 
164 The Congregationalists 
 
 (1808) so far were the parties from a rupture 
 of fellowship, that at the installation of 
 Huntington the protagonists, Morse and 
 Channing, took part together in the public 
 services, and at the installation of Codman 
 Channing preached the sermon. 
 
 But it was impossible that the form of 
 fellowship could long continue. The ten- 
 sion was such that so small a matter as a 
 pamphlet could start a rent that should run 
 through the entire fabric. Dr. Jedediah 
 Morse of Charlestown supplied the pam- 
 phlet, under the title: ''American Unita- 
 rianism; or A Brief History of the Progress 
 and Present State of the Unitarian Churches 
 in America." It consisted of extracts from 
 letters from Mr. Freeman of King's Chapel 
 that had been published in England in a 
 "Life of the Rev. Theophilus Lindsey," a 
 deceased Unitarian minister in London. 
 The three points of offense in the pamphlet 
 (for it was meant to be offensive) were 
 these: that it gave the impression, (i), that 
 
Disruption 165 
 
 there had been a covert conspiracy to draw 
 away the New England churches from their 
 faith; (2), that the leaders of New England 
 Liberalism had been guilty of dishonest 
 evasion and concealment of their principles; 
 (3), that they were in sympathy with the 
 highly unpopular theological tenets of the 
 Rev. Joseph Priestley, leader of the English 
 Socinians. The imputations were all of 
 them unjust and outrageous. But they 
 answered their purpose of infusing addi- 
 tional acrimony into a controversy that 
 needed no such intensifying. The war of 
 journals, pamphlets and books waxed hot- 
 ter and hotter. 
 
 And now the schism went on apace. As 
 in the days of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, 
 the cry was, "To your tents, O Israel." 
 At least, this was the cry of the Orthodox 
 party, who were bent on forcing the fight. 
 The time had arrived which Increase Mather 
 foresaw and deprecated, when men would 
 seek to "gather churches out of churches." 
 
i66 The Congregationalists 
 
 In cases where the church, being Orthodox, 
 found itself sustained by a majority, how- 
 ever scanty, of the parish, no question need 
 be raised. When the Orthodox church 
 found itself opposed by the Liberal parish, 
 it was advised to insist on its right of initi- 
 ative in the choice of a pastor, or (fatal 
 counsel, as it proved!) to separate from 
 the parish and organize a new " ecclesias- 
 tical society " for the care of its temporali- 
 ties. The case of a Liberal church with an 
 Orthodox parish does not seem to have oc- 
 curred. In case of a parish asserting its 
 Liberal sympathies with the consent or ac- 
 quiescence of the church, persons of Ortho- 
 dox convictions were strenuously urged to 
 " come out of Babylon " and connect them- 
 selves with some distinctly Orthodox church 
 — a counsel by no means universally fol- 
 lowed. 
 
 For twenty years the schism went on 
 rending and tearing, disturbing the peace 
 of towns, churches and families. A nota- 
 
Disruption 167 
 
 ble and in some respects exceptional in- 
 stance is that of Dedham, which gave occa- 
 sion for "the Dedham decision " found in 
 volume xvi of the Massachusetts Reports. 
 In 1 818, 'Mn that town, the majority of the 
 church members being Evangelical, the so- 
 ciety, /. e., the legal voters of the First Par- 
 ish of Dedham, who were preponderatingly 
 Unitarian, took the initiative and, in spite 
 of the protests of two-thirds of the church, 
 called the Rev. Alvan Lamson as their minis- 
 ter, and invited a council of Unitarians to 
 ordain him." The council, which included 
 some of the foremost men of the Unitarian 
 clergy and laity, consented to take this 
 course, so utterly without justification in 
 either principle or usage. The church now 
 withdrew from the residuary minority that 
 adhered to the parish. Hereupon arose the 
 legal question, which part of the now di- 
 vided church was the First Church in Ded- 
 ham. The case being carried to the Su- 
 preme Court of the State, it was decided 
 
i68 The Congregationalists 
 
 that the parish church is the church that is 
 connected with the parish — that the State 
 recognizes no church as having any legal 
 status except in connection with some regu- 
 larly constituted society — that if the entire 
 church should withdraw, it would thereby 
 lose its existence, and a church which might 
 afterwards be organized in the parish would 
 succeed to the name and property of the 
 seceded church. 
 
 " The Dedham decision " had a sweeping 
 application. According to a reckoning 
 afterwards made from the Orthodox point 
 of view, forty-six churches were ''driven 
 from their houses of worship by town or 
 parish votes or by measures equivalent to 
 such votes" while thirty-five others had 
 been "constrained in conscience to secede 
 as individuals and form distinct churches." 
 On the other hand not less than thirty-nine 
 churches including some of the most vener- 
 able and influential, while protesting against 
 the separation that was forced for con- 
 
Disruption 169 
 
 science' sake by the Orthodox part3% freely 
 took their position on the Liberal side. In 
 Boston one only of the old churches, the 
 "Old South," remained to the Orthodox 
 party, so complete had been the change. 
 Boston ''awoke and found itself Arian." 
 From this point forwards the Story of the 
 Congregationalists is divided into two 
 streams. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 UNITARIANISM 
 
 Never in all the course of church history 
 has a new religious movement started with 
 so magnificent a send-off as this of the 
 Boston Unitarians. Granting the strength 
 of its theological position, no element of 
 strength beside seemed lacking to it. It 
 numbered 125 churches, by far the greater 
 part of which were in the region of Boston. 
 Nine out of the ten churches of Boston ad- 
 hered to it. Of the twenty-five first 
 churches founded in Massachusetts, about 
 twenty, beginning with the Pilgrim church 
 of Plymouth, were Unitarian. The vener- 
 able College at Cambridge was under its 
 control. Church buildings and productive 
 funds for religious uses amounting, it was 
 estimated, to $600,000 were in its posses- 
 170 
 
Unitarianism 171 
 
 sion. The wealth, culture and social influ- 
 ence of Boston were Unitarian. The great 
 offices of the State were held by Unitarians. 
 The Unitarian clergy-list was such a roster 
 of splendid names as no clergy of like 
 numbers in Christendom could show. 
 Neither were its graces those alone of learn- 
 ing and rhetoric, although in these it was 
 greatly distinguished ; the more spiritual 
 graces of charity towards man and piety 
 towards God were, in many a beautiful 
 instance, illustrated in saintly lives. There 
 was much to justify the prophecy that was 
 uttered, that Unitarianism would presently 
 become the prevailing form of American 
 Christianity. 
 
 The theology represented by Channing 
 and his friends was a lofty and reverent 
 Arianism. Its methods were scrupulously 
 biblical ; indeed as compared with their 
 antagonists, it might not be unjust to say 
 that they were the more biblist of the two, 
 and the latter the more rationalist. The 
 
172 The Congregationalists 
 
 strength — and the weakness — of the new 
 movement lay not so much in its theology 
 (using the word strictly) as in its anthro- 
 pology. Its reaction from commonly ac- 
 cepted forms of statement as to human 
 depravity and impotence was violent. The 
 command "honor all men" was obeyed 
 from the heart. If its preachers were led 
 thereby to adopt a weak tenet of "the 
 rectitude of human nature," they suffered 
 the consequence of a loss of grip on the 
 average conscience, and the substitution of 
 culture for conversion. 
 
 The Unitarians were charged with having 
 departed from the doctrine of the Fathers 
 of New England. It was true. So, in a 
 less degree and by more gradual deflections, 
 had their accusers. But to claim that they 
 had ceased to be Congregationalists was 
 (and is) preposterous. The old churches 
 of Boston and the neighborhood, in their 
 old meeting-houses, under their regularly 
 settled, recognized and approved pastors, 
 
Unitarianism 173 
 
 without change of rule or organization, 
 were going forward without other interrup- 
 tion than that some of their members had 
 voluntarily withdrawn. The departure 
 from Congregational principles was not 
 when the Unitarians, to their regret, were 
 left by themselves in the old churches; but 
 when the retiring members organized them- 
 selves into distinctively and exclusively 
 partisan churches, sometimes under ex- 
 pressly sectarian names, as " Calvinistic" 
 or ''Trinitarian," with tests intended to de- 
 bar their late fellow-members from fellow- 
 ship. 
 
 In logic and in conscience the residuary 
 parish church, holding the name and the 
 privilege and the prestige of the old town- 
 church, and its meeting-house, and its 
 funds for the maintenance of the minister, 
 ought to have assumed the duties and re- 
 sponsibilities of the parish church, holding 
 itself " debtor to every man " in the parish, 
 except as some persons had discharged it 
 
174 The Congregationalists 
 
 of the debt by committing themselves to 
 other spiritual care. It was an immense 
 opportunity that lay before these churches 
 at the critical time when immigration was 
 just beginning and the change from rural to 
 village and city life was impending. It 
 does not appear that they ever apprehended 
 the duties involved in the privileges so lav- 
 ishly bestowed on them. Perhaps no 
 churches have shown less sense of responsi- 
 bility for the population of a given precinct, 
 than these old parish churches. That there 
 were nobly generous men among them, and 
 men possessed of an ** enthusiasm of hu- 
 manity," is abundantly demonstrated, as by 
 the "ministry at large" founded by Dr. 
 Tuckerman, and other good works. But in 
 general these churches, both in city and in 
 country, were inactive and unenterprising. 
 
 Without attempting to determine in what 
 degree this fault is to be referred to defects 
 of theology, it is easy to recognize in it the 
 debilitating effect of the initial successes. 
 
Unitarianism 175 
 
 The new sect (for such, by no consent of 
 its own, it had come to be) had won two 
 Pyrrhic victories: it had taken control of 
 Harvard College; and it had come into pos- 
 session, by a judicial decision that filled the 
 "exiled" churches with an undying sense 
 of injustice, of names and records and 
 church-buildings and funds, that kept them 
 very much "at ease in Zion." The move- 
 ment was strangely sterile. It started in 
 181 5 with 125 churches, of which 100 were 
 in Massachusetts. Thirty-three years later 
 it numbered 201 ; and fifteen years after that 
 it numbered 205. In the last forty years, 
 more earnest efforts at the propagation of the 
 sect have not been without result. 
 
 The real fruits of the Unitarian movement 
 do not admit of tabulation, and they are 
 very far from insignificant. The fact, in- 
 deed, that the list of eminent names in 
 American literature is so largely a catalogue 
 of Unitarians cannot be confidently alleged 
 as a fruit of the " ism." But the narrowest 
 
176 The Congregationalists 
 
 sectarian prejudice against this order of the 
 Congregational churches need not hesitate 
 to recognize, not only the noble contribu- 
 tions which it has made to great social re- 
 forms, but also the salutary degree in which 
 the principles and temper of Unitarian Chris- 
 tianity have pervaded the literature and even 
 the theology of the American church in 
 general, including those parts of it which 
 are least conscious of any such influence. 
 
 Within the prescribed limits of this vol- 
 ume, the history of this separation — the 
 secession of the Orthodox from the Unita- 
 rians — can be told only with the utmost 
 brevity. Two incidents however demand 
 mention. The first was the rise of the 
 Transcendentalists. They represented the 
 reaction, in the minds of thoughtful men, 
 from that sensational philosophy of Locke 
 and his Scotch successors which had so 
 long been exclusively dominant in Amer- 
 ica. Its first recognized entrance into church 
 affairs was when, in 1832, the young pastor 
 
Unitarianism 177 
 
 of the Second Church in Boston, Mr. Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson, startled his congregation 
 by proposing to abandon the observance of 
 the Lord's Supper. He did not find it in- 
 teresting, he said. When the church de- 
 murred at this modest demand, he retired to 
 his literary seclusion at Concord, not, how- 
 ever, without treating his congregation, at 
 parting, with an elaborate argument against 
 its use of the sacrament. The old-style 
 "Channing Unitarians," always reverent 
 towards the Scriptures and the person of 
 Christ, found much to offend them in the 
 oracles with which the young philosopher 
 emerged each autumn upon the lecture-plat- 
 form. And when, in 1838, he delivered his 
 address to the Graduating Class of the Har- 
 vard Divinity School, they were more than 
 offended, they were shocked, at what 
 seemed to them nothing better than panthe- 
 ism. It was "atheism disguising itself 
 under a preposterous name," said one. 
 Prof. Andrews Norton, eminent for his 
 
lyS The Congregationalists 
 
 learning in the Scriptures and his defense of 
 their authority, denounced the new teaching 
 as " the latest form of infidelity," and Prof. 
 Henry Ware, Jr., felt constrained in 
 spirit to preach, in reply, in the college 
 chapel, a sermon which he sent to Mr. 
 Emerson with a friendly letter, and received 
 in return an exasperatingly flippant answer. 
 The war of pamphlets thus joined was 
 still raging when a new combatant entered 
 the field. Theodore Parker, in an ordination 
 sermon preached in 1841, on "The Tran- 
 sient and Permanent in Christianity," boldly 
 challenged, in the startling and defiant way 
 in which he delighted, that whole system of 
 the defense of the gospel from history and 
 miracle on which Channing and his asso- 
 ciates had been accustomed to rely. "The 
 foundations were destroyed, and what 
 should the righteous do f " Something 
 must needs be done; and yet process for 
 heresy was hardly suited to the antecedents 
 of Unitarianism. But practically, by general 
 
Unitarian ism 179 
 
 consent, Parker found himself outside of the 
 fellowship of the Unitarian ministry. 
 Parker was not the man to shrink from the 
 controversy thus invited. His position was 
 reasserted with emphasis in his volume 
 (1842) of "Discourse of Matters Pertaining 
 to Religion;" and in his translation of De 
 Wette's "Introduction to the Old Testa- 
 ment" the most alarming results of German 
 criticism were commended not only to the 
 learned but to the popular mind. Instead of 
 his country pulpit in Roxbury, he mounted 
 the platform of the largest concert-hall in 
 Boston, and became the most popular 
 preacher in the city, while all over the land 
 he was heard as a lyceum lecturer. It is an 
 impressive illustration of the swift current 
 of modern thought, that many of the opin- 
 ions for which Parker was disfellowshipped 
 as a heretic by the Unitarians in 1844, came, 
 before the end of the century, to be dis- 
 cussed as open questions among theologians 
 
i8o The Congregationalists 
 
 of unquestioned standing in orthodox com- 
 munions. 
 
 When, after the close of the civil war, the 
 Unitarians began to get together for an 
 aggressive campaign, it became obvious 
 that among the newer churches organized 
 by new men, many of them recruited from 
 other denominations and reacting violently 
 from their former principles, the tide was 
 setting vehemently towards an extreme 
 radicalism. "The Western Issue" drawn 
 between those who insisted on holding to 
 the name of Christian, and those who 
 wished to reject it in favor of some state- 
 ment of "absolute religion," was so sharp 
 that it would have split the denomination if 
 this had been big enough to split. It was 
 finally settled by the unanimous adoption, 
 at the National Conference in 1894, of this 
 declaration : 
 
 "These churches accept the religion of 
 Jesus, holding, in accordance with his 
 teaching, that practical religion is summed 
 
Unitarianism 181 
 
 up in love to God and love to man. 
 The Conference recognizes the fact that its 
 constituency is Congregational in tradition 
 and polity. Therefore it declares that noth- 
 ing in this constitution is to be construed as 
 an authoritative test; and we cordially in- 
 vite to our working fellowship any who, 
 while differing from us in belief, are in gen- 
 eral sympathy with our spirit and our prac- 
 tical aims." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 AFTER THE DISRUPTION 
 
 After the disruption of the two parties of 
 the New England Congregationalists, in the 
 first two decades of the nineteenth century, 
 as soon as the smoke and dust of a most 
 acrimonious controversy were a little blown 
 away, it was for the Orthodox seceders at 
 Boston to look about them and reckon up 
 their losses. There was cause for both 
 dismay and congratulation. Immediately 
 about them the ruin was almost complete. 
 The college was gone; and nearly all the 
 old churches, with their venerable name and 
 history, and their buildings and funds and 
 legal privileges. Young Harriet Beecher 
 (name afterwards illustrious) coming to 
 Boston with her father in 1826, afterwards 
 182 
 
After the Disruption 183 
 
 wrote her impressions of the situation in 
 these words: "All the literary men of 
 Massachusetts were Unitarian. All the 
 trustees and professors of Harvard College 
 were Unitarians. All the elite of wealth 
 and fashion crowded Unitarian churches. 
 The judges on the bench were Unitarian, 
 giving decisions by which the peculiar 
 features of church organization, so care- 
 fully ordained by the Pilgrim fathers, had 
 been nullified. . . . The dominant ma- 
 jority entered at once into possession of 
 churches and church property, leaving the 
 orthodox minority to go out into school- 
 houses or town halls, and build their 
 churches as best they could." 
 
 On the other hand, the area of the 
 Unitarian movement was singularly lim- 
 ited. One of its own historians (Professor 
 Allen) has thus defined it: '*A radius of 
 thirty-five miles from Boston as a centre 
 would sweep almost the whole field of its 
 history and influence. Outside of this, 
 
184 The Congregationalists 
 
 twelve or fifteen churches lay in a belt a 
 little to the north, running as far back as to 
 the Connecticut River; while the important 
 towns of Portland, Portsmouth, Worcester, 
 Providence, and New Bedford made its 
 frontier stations. Baltimore and Charleston 
 were distant outposts, established in 1817; 
 New York and Springfield were added to 
 the list in this very year." 
 
 The rest of New England was hardly 
 affected, except indirectly, by the contro- 
 versy which had so convulsed the region of 
 Boston. Everywhere else the churches 
 stood true to the doctrinal system which, 
 not without modifications in transmission, 
 they had inherited from the fathers— more 
 staunchly true, in fact, for the questions 
 that had been debated. In Connecticut, 
 the almost total failure of Unitarianism to 
 make any lasting impression may be 
 ascribed in part to the " consociation" sys- 
 tem with its conservative influence; but 
 quite as much to the fact that its orthodoxy 
 
After the Disruption 185 
 
 was represented by the recognized leader- 
 ship, not of extreme dogmatists of the 
 somewhat domineering Hopkinsian dy- 
 nasty, but by so commanding a personality 
 and so genuinely liberal a teacher as Presi- 
 dent Dwight of Yale College. In the loss 
 of Harvard, the Orthodox party found 
 consolation in the growing influence of 
 Yale, and in the younger institutions of 
 Dartmouth (1769), Williams (1793), Bowdoin 
 (1794), and Middlebury (1800), while Am- 
 herst was about to begin, in 1821, its dis- 
 tinguished and eminently evangelical career. 
 But especially reassuring was the effective 
 work of Andover Theological Seminary 
 (1808) sending out each year fifty or sixty 
 recruits for the evangelical ministry so 
 trained and equipped for their work as 
 never young ministers had been before 
 since the apostolic era. The noble success 
 of this foundation inspired men to the 
 imitation of it at Bangor (1816) and at New 
 Haven (1822). Meanwhile Harvard was 
 
i86 The Congregationalists 
 
 languishing, not only in its theological 
 work, but in all its work, through a wide- 
 spread mistrust as to its religious in- 
 fluence. 
 
 While the Unitarian Congregationalists 
 succeeded, in Boston and its neighborhood, 
 to the property and prestige and easy dig- 
 nity of the establishment, their Orthodox 
 brethren had settled into the attitude of a 
 dissenting sect, with the good qualities in- 
 cidental to such organizations, and *'the 
 faults of its qualities." With conscientious 
 zeal, as serving the Lord, they devoted them- 
 selves to the work of "gathering churches 
 out of churches," to eager polemic attacks 
 upon the opposite party, and to the organi- 
 zation of a propaganda for the principles 
 which they sincerely identified with the in- 
 terests of the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 The acceptance of this attitude, necessi- 
 tated, perhaps, by the situation, was favored 
 by the dominant, not to say domineering 
 influence, in that region, of a very remarka- 
 
After the Disruption 187 
 
 ble and interesting and typical character, 
 Nathanael Emmons, for fifty-four years pas- 
 tor of Franklin, educator in theology of a 
 hundred ministers, voluminous author of 
 sermons and theological treatises. He was 
 the ideal New England theologian, who 
 could "look for an hour at the point of a 
 needle without winking," and spend four- 
 teen such hours daily in his study. He was 
 reverenced by those who knew him well, 
 for his ascetic sanctity; and impartial critics 
 have admired not only the closeness of his 
 reasoning, but the fervid earnestness of his 
 sermons. Neither was he so rapt in celes- 
 tial contemplations as to lose sight of earthly 
 affairs. He was actively interested in mis- 
 sionary enterprises and in public reforms 
 and in the ethical aspects of civil politics. 
 It is not strange that this vindicator of the 
 autocratic sovereignty of God should find 
 little to approve in the doctrinaire democracy 
 of Thomas Jefferson, whom he picturesquely 
 characterized, in a famous sermon, as "Jer- 
 
i88 The Congregationalists 
 
 oboam the son of Nebat which made Israel 
 to sin." 
 
 Oddly enough, in passing from civil polity 
 to ecclesiastical, he seems to have parted 
 with his " iron logic " and his grammar, and 
 also with his principles. For his ** Scrip- 
 tural Platform of Ecclesiastical Government " 
 (1826 — some later editions have been ** doc- 
 tored") is a piece of low-grade "social- 
 compact" Jacobinism, fallaciously argued 
 and blunderingly expressed. A church, ac- 
 cording to this ''platform," is a club the 
 members of which are bound to such mu- 
 tual duties as they may have agreed upon. 
 It is ''essential" to the club, as "to every 
 voluntary society, to admit whom they 
 please into their number," and to rule out 
 or blackball whom they please. This is the 
 working basis on which the organization of 
 the seceding churches of Eastern Massachu- 
 setts proceeded; and the principle which it 
 illustrated, though not adopted in articulate 
 form, proceeding, nevertheless, from so in- 
 
After the Disruption 189 
 
 fluential a centre as Boston, has had a wide 
 and pernicious vogue in American church 
 history. 
 
 The first step taken in Boston towards re- 
 trieving the painful losses of the Orthodox 
 party, was taken with wisdom and energy. 
 The most commanding position in the city 
 was secured, at the corner of the Common, 
 and a noble building erected, to be the home 
 of the newly organized ''Park Street 
 Church." This organization was effected 
 in 1809, while the rupture between the par- 
 ties was yet incomplete. But the manner 
 of it left no room for doubt as to the pur- 
 pose of the enterprise. The members de- 
 clared their acceptance of the Westminster 
 Shorter Catechism and of the Savoy Con- 
 fession, and then added a creed of their 
 own, drawn out in many articles, to be used 
 as a test for the exclusion of applicants for 
 membership who might be otherwise 
 minded. It was to be frankly and expressly 
 a sectarian church. This was not the first 
 
igo The Congregationalists 
 
 instance of this departure from the Congre- 
 gational usage which was still faithfully 
 cherished by the old parish churches; but it 
 was doubtless the most conspicuous and in- 
 fluential instance. The Andover students 
 would naturally take it as an object-lesson 
 in church administration, and apply it as the 
 normal method, at remote points. Mr. Joel 
 Hawes, coming, in 1818 from Andover to 
 the ancient church of Thomas Hooker at 
 Hartford, persuaded the church to set aside 
 the ancient covenant that had been in use 
 from time immemorial, and substitute an 
 elaborate code of doctrine in eleven articles, 
 to which candidates for membership were 
 required to give publicly their "cordial as- 
 sent." Through the New England mission- 
 aries the novel usage spread into the Presby- 
 terian Church; and Scotchmen who had 
 been accustomed to seeing the elders 
 sworn into office by the Westminster 
 standards were surprised to find the like 
 dogmatic tests applied to the tender 
 
After the Disruption 191 
 
 souls of neophytes at their first com- 
 munion. 
 
 The Park Street meeting-house came to 
 be a sort of cathedral church to the Ortho- 
 dox Congregationalists. From Andover 
 came Prof. Edward Dorr Griffin, a thunder- 
 bolt of theologic war, who in 1811, re- 
 signed his professorship to become pastor 
 of the church, and in a course of Sun- 
 day evening lectures, afterwards pub- 
 lished, set forth his convictions of truth in 
 the most uncompromising, not to say ex- 
 treme manner. It was sermons like that in- 
 cluded in his published works, "On the 
 Use of Real Fire in Hell," that won for the 
 church the popular title of ** Brimstone 
 Corner," and gave point to the practical 
 comment of some irreverent hearer who 
 sifted a train of flowers of sulphur from the 
 church door to the door of the parsonage. 
 In like spirit did Dr. Edward Payson, with 
 what he doubtless deemed to be a holy 
 boldness, propound his doctrine of human 
 
192 The Congregationalists 
 
 nature, that **by nature man is, in stupidity 
 and insensibility, a block; in sensuality and 
 sottishness, a beast, and in pride, malice, 
 cruelty and treachery, a devil." It is easy 
 to believe (what indeed can be proved) that 
 preachers whose teaching concerning hu- 
 man nature was in such terms, were not in- 
 capable of speaking of the divine nature in 
 such a way as to justify the charge of trithe- 
 ism so freely made against them, and so in- 
 dignantly repelled. 
 
 Thus on both sides of the dividing line, 
 appeared some of the unhappy results of 
 the great schism. The two wings of the 
 noble brotherhood of the New England 
 churches had gone asunder, and each wing 
 by itself made a somewhat wobbling flight. 
 If (as we have seen) the left wing bore 
 away perilously in the direction of unbelief, 
 the right wing was swaying towards forms 
 of over-believing and misbelieving hardly 
 less pernicious. Happily for those whose 
 dangers lay in this direction, the polemic 
 
After the Disruption 193 
 
 excesses of some near the storm-centre 
 were in a way to be held in check by the 
 good sense of their brethren more remote 
 from the agitations and exasperations of 
 controversy. 
 
 Not less happily new and inspiring duties 
 now emerged, lifting their hearts into a 
 freer and serener atmosphere than that of 
 the local contentions in which they were all 
 the time tempted to waste their strength in 
 *' beating their fellow-servants." 
 
 Among the fairest fruits of the Second 
 Awakening at the opening of the nineteenth 
 century was the little company of Williams 
 College students that was wont to meet be- 
 side a haystack in a secluded meadow, to 
 pray for the conversion of the world to 
 Christ. In 1810, the third year of the Sem- 
 inary at Andover, came these young gradu- 
 ates of Williams, Samuel John Mills, Luther 
 Rice, Gordon Hall, and James Richards, 
 their hearts all aglow with a generous spirit 
 of self-sacrifice for the kingdom of heaven. 
 
194 The Congregationalists 
 
 Their noble enthusiasm infected their fel- 
 low-students, and Adoniram Judson from 
 Brown University, Samuel Newell from 
 Harvard and Samuel Nott from Union were 
 added to the number of *'The Brethren" 
 committed to personal service as mission- 
 aries to the heathen. They applied for ad- 
 vice to the General Association of Massa- 
 chusetts, then lately organized for ministe- 
 rial fellowship to the exclusion of the Lib- 
 erals, and by this body measures were taken 
 that resulted in the organization, at the 
 house of Noah Porter of Farmington, in 
 1810, of the " American Board of Commis- 
 sioners for Foreign Missions." In the face 
 of serious discouragements the first five 
 missionaries from America to a foreign 
 country, Judson, Newell, Nott, Hall and 
 Rice, were sent to India. The fact that two 
 of the five, Judson and Rice, shortly after 
 landing, announced their conscientious 
 adoption of Baptist principles, however dis- 
 heartening at first, fell out wonderfully to 
 
After the Disruption 195 
 
 the furtherance of the gospel ; for it was not 
 only the beginning of Judson's apostolic 
 mission to Burmah, but it led to the com- 
 mitting of the Baptist denomination to the 
 enterprise of missions which it has prose- 
 cuted with honorable success. 
 
 The American Board has been the parent, 
 directly or indirectly, of all American mis- 
 sions in heathen lands. The nine commis- 
 sioners from Massachusetts and Connecti- 
 cut, of whom it originally consisted, soon 
 added to their number representatives of the 
 Presbyterian and Dutch churches, and the 
 Board continued to be the channel of mis- 
 sionary activity for both these denomina- 
 tions until, after many years, they consti- 
 tuted their separate organizations. The 
 catalogue of its missions is a roll of honor 
 splendidly adorned with the names of con- 
 fessors and martyrs, and with the record 
 not only of heroic endeavor but of success- 
 ful achievement. 
 
 The spirit of organization for beneficence 
 
196 The Congregationalists 
 
 on a national or ecumenical scale possessed 
 the Congregational churches at this period. 
 A striking exemplification of the large- 
 minded and unselfish way in which the 
 business was done is found in the institu- 
 tion at Boston, in 181 5, of the Education 
 Society for furnishing recruits for the min- 
 istry. Its benefactions were to be widely 
 diffused, and representatives of other de- 
 nominations, including Bishop Griswold of 
 the Episcopal Church, were in the list of 
 officers. It ceased to be servant of all the 
 churches only when other churches preferred 
 to serve themselves. As early as 1814, a re- 
 ligious Tract Society was founded at An- 
 dover, afterwards transferred to Boston, 
 and becoming transfigured into the Ameri- 
 can Tract Society, and at last merged with 
 one of the same name in New York, at- 
 tained to wide influence. There have been 
 many to grieve that the Congregational 
 churches should have spent their strength in 
 furnishing and circulating literature "ac- 
 
After the Disruption 197 
 
 ceptable to all evangelical Christians," while 
 other sects were energetically pushing the 
 literature favoring their several pretensions; 
 and there have been not a few to congratu- 
 late themselves on belonging to a fellowship 
 capable of such honorable self-abnegation. 
 
 When the first party of five missionaries 
 sailed for India by way of the Cape of Good 
 Hope, Mills, the foremost of the brother- 
 hood, found himself bound in spirit to go 
 in the opposite direction. With one com- 
 panion, commissioned by the Connecticut 
 Missionary Society, he set out on an adven- 
 turous journey of missionary exploration 
 through the unknown Southwest as far as 
 New Orleans, preaching, distributing Bibles, 
 and founding churches and Bible Societies. 
 Insatiable of toil and hardship, he started 
 two years later (1814) on a second tour 
 through the same region, preaching at St. 
 Louis the first Protestant sermon that had 
 been heard west of the Mississippi, and 
 with protracted labor organizing the First 
 
198 The Congregationalists 
 
 Presbyterian Church in that Roman CathoUc 
 town — the mother of many Presbyterian 
 churches manned, under the Plan of Union, 
 by Congregational pastors sustained by the 
 Missionary Society of Connecticut. Out of 
 the labors of Mills, and the reports which he 
 brought home with him, came the merger 
 of several local Bible societies in the Ameri- 
 can Bible Society, 1816. 
 
 In his long horseback journeys through 
 the wilderness the prophetic soul of this 
 young man had ample time to ponder an 
 even bolder project of evangelic enterprise, 
 which, however, was not original with him- 
 self. Nearly fifty years before, Samuel 
 Hopkins and his erudite neighbor at New- 
 port, Ezra Stiles, had actually begun collect- 
 ing money to be applied to the educating of 
 Christian negroes in America, and sending 
 them forth as missionaries to the Dark Con- 
 tinent. This was the project that had a new 
 birth in the heart of Mills. In 1816 he per- 
 suaded the Presbyterian ''Synod of New 
 
After the Disruption 199 
 
 York and New Jersey " to enter upon his 
 plan for educating Christian men of color 
 for the work of the gospel in their father- 
 land. That same year he sailed in company 
 with the Rev. Ebenezer Burgess (afterwards 
 pastor of the "exiled" church of Dedham) 
 to explore the coast of Africa for the site for 
 a colony. On the return voyage he died, 
 and his body was committed to the sea. 
 When his surviving colleague brought home 
 the sorrowful news, good men made lamen- 
 tation; and some remembered how he had 
 said to one of his fellows, as the class was 
 scattering at the end of its studies, " You 
 and I, brother, are little men, but before we 
 die, our influence must be felt on the other 
 side of the world." Only five years of 
 active service, but the young man's word 
 had come true! 
 
 The crowning act of this decade of benef- 
 icent organization was the instituting of the 
 American Home Missionary Society in 1826. 
 It was well named "American," for the 
 
200 The Congregationalists 
 
 only limitation on the largeness and freedom 
 of its mission work was the geographical 
 limitation implied in that title. It was in- 
 tended to coordinate and economize the 
 work of many societies, presbyteries and 
 synods, under the *' Plan of Union" which 
 already for a quarter-century had been in 
 operation, to the great aggrandizement and 
 invigoration of the Presbyterian Church, and 
 inevitably to the infusing into the articulate 
 system of Presbyterianism something of the 
 spirit that had been trained in the town- 
 meetings and Congregational churches and 
 the searching theological discussions of New 
 England. By and by, when satisfaction in 
 the growing numbers, wealth and influence 
 of the Presbyterian Church shall come into 
 collision, in some minds, with jealousy of 
 the prevalence of this new spirit, conse- 
 quences may ensue which could not be dis- 
 tinctly forecast in advance. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 PUBLIC REFORMS 
 
 It took a wonderfully short time to re- 
 cruit the Boston Orthodox Congregational- 
 ists to a much higher effective force than 
 that of the entire body of the churches be- 
 fore the disruption. The work may be 
 considered as mainly achieved, when, in 
 1826, that fiery spirit, Lyman Beecher, was 
 persuaded, at the high noontide of his 
 great powers, to leave his rural parish on 
 the hills of Litchfield, Connecticut, to be- 
 come pastor of the newly organized Han- 
 over Street Church. Here the intense ear- 
 nestness of his preaching, with its strong 
 appeal to the reason as well as to the feel- 
 ings, was attended with constant and great 
 spiritual results. For the six years that he 
 remained, he was as distinctly the most 
 
202 The Congregationalists 
 
 conspicuous leader of the Evangelical 
 churches as Dr. Channing of the Liberal 
 churches. Two eminently good men more 
 contrasted in every quality of intellect and 
 temperament it is difficult to conceive of, 
 than these two representative Congregation- 
 alists. It so happened that the time when 
 they were serving so near each other, yet 
 completely out of each other's sight and 
 touch, was a time when the Congregational 
 churches all with one accord, though in two 
 divisions, were taking conspicuous part in 
 some of those reformatory movements in 
 which from the beginning they have had a 
 noble record; it was also a time when the 
 two parties, beside the conflict of each 
 against the other, were grievously vexed 
 each with sore controversy among its own 
 members. How the Unitarian fellowship 
 was distracted by the emerging of theTran- 
 scendentalists and the neology of Parker we 
 have already briefly told. Hardly more 
 time need we spend in narrating the small 
 
Public Reforms 203 
 
 contentions over questions of the metaphys- 
 ics of theology which embroiled parties and 
 schools among the Evangelicals. It is diffi- 
 cult at the present day to appreciate the 
 eagerness with which the tenuous distinc- 
 tions that divided Andover from New 
 Haven, and afterwards East Windsor from 
 both, were gravely debated among the abler 
 men, and painfully pettifogged by the 
 lesser. Doubtless these divisions of party and 
 faction, acrimonious as they were, were in 
 some measure mitigated by the common 
 zeal of all for great human interests. 
 
 The interest of the Puritan churches of 
 America in the conflict with drunkenness 
 dates from their foundation. Among the 
 earliest public ordinances of the legislatures 
 were those for repressing the abuse of ar- 
 dent spirits. The '* Reforming Synod" put 
 special emphasis on the importance of en- 
 forcing these laws. In fact the laws were 
 of a most wise and salutary character, such 
 as later devices have not much improved 
 
204 The Congregationalists 
 
 upon. Under them the tippling-house, 
 "saloon," or public barroom was illegal. 
 The taverner's license empowered him to 
 furnish to his lodgers their customary 
 drinks; but not to allow drinking at the bar 
 to his neighbors. President Dwight, in his 
 '* Travels," notes the contrast between the 
 orderly New England tavern, under the re- 
 straint of this law, and the disorder visible 
 at the taverns beyond the New York line, 
 v^/here the license was regarded as a means 
 of raising revenue. Nevertheless towards 
 the end of the eighteenth century, as a result 
 of combined causes not difficult to trace, 
 there had come a wide-spread and pitiable 
 lapse into drunken habits. Simultaneously, 
 in various parts of the American church, 
 there was a sudden awakening to an evil 
 and peril that had grown stealthily and un- 
 observed. It is no extravagant boast to say 
 that among the earliest and most efficient 
 leaders of the new reformation were the 
 foremost men of the Congregational 
 
Public Reforms 205 
 
 churches. Ebenezer Porter, Heman Hum- 
 phrey, and the heroic layman, Jeremiah 
 Evarts, were of the number. But the names 
 of Lyman Beecher and William Ellery Chan- 
 ningare honorably preeminent in these early 
 days. Suddenly confronted with the actual 
 state of society by an incident in his pastoral 
 work in Litchfield, Beecher burst forth with 
 an eruption of volcanic eloquence in "Six 
 Sermons on Intemperance" which were re- 
 peated in Boston and published in many 
 editions. In impressive contrast with his 
 impetuous neighbor, Channing, with calm 
 intensity of speech, argued from his cher- 
 ished tenet of the dignity of human nature, 
 which he held with justifiable reaction from 
 the extravagant statements of the tradition- 
 ary theology, against the vice which debased 
 one made " little lower than the angels " to 
 the level of the lunatic or the idiot or the brute. 
 And no doubt, thisgentler voice could reach 
 many a heart and conscience to which 
 louder tones found no access. 
 
2o6 The Congregationalists 
 
 The first national temperance society was 
 organized in 1826. The best and most en- 
 during work of the reformation was 
 achieved within ten years from that date; 
 and it was accomplished ''without law, 
 without any attempt at legislation, by the 
 mere force of public opinion." It was the 
 work of the Christian church, wherein if 
 many daughters of Zion did virtuously, it 
 would be willingly admitted that the Con- 
 gregational clergy and churches, and those 
 that had been colonized from them into the 
 Presbyterian Church excelled them all. 
 
 Later, the work took on a more ascetic 
 and censorious character. From the year 
 1840 it was assumed very much into the 
 hands of professional "reformed drunk- 
 ards" naturally inclined to extenuate their 
 own faults by describing themselves as 
 "victims" and putting the blame on "the 
 traffic"; and into the hands of politicians 
 who promised to secure the triumph of 
 virtue by exterminating temptation. Even 
 
Public Reforms 207 
 
 through these devious courses it was sus- 
 tained by a great following from the 
 churches, but no longer with that unanimity 
 to which was due its early success. 
 
 With reference to the subject of slavery, 
 also, the record of the primeval Congrega- 
 tionalists was wholly noble. The unbroken 
 succession of protests and deeds against 
 slavery has often been recorded, from the 
 acts of the Great and General Court of 
 Massachusetts (which, be it remembered, 
 was also a church court) through the utter- 
 ances of John Eliot and Samuel Sewall and 
 Cotton Mather, down to the days of the 
 war of independence, when the voices of 
 Samuel Hopkins and Ezra Stiles and Levi 
 Hart and Aaron Cleveland, with many 
 others, were lifted up in chorus in denunci- 
 ation of the wrong. A little later (1791) 
 the younger Jonathan Edwards preached 
 before the Connecticut Abolition Society 
 that sermon on " The Injustice and Impolicy 
 of the Slave-trade" which was long cher- 
 
2o8 The Congregationalists 
 
 ished and circulated as a classic of anti- 
 slavery literature. It is not necessary to 
 derogate from the high honor due to 
 Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and 
 Quakers, in thus asserting the worthy 
 position held by the Congregationalists in 
 the conflict with slavery. The tug of war 
 began with the successful aggression of 
 slavery in extending its domain beyond the 
 Mississippi in 1820. Four trumpet-toned 
 articles by Jeremiah Evarts in The Panoplist, 
 rallied the opposition from its momentary 
 discouragement, to an immediate, general, 
 sustained and systematic effort for the abo- 
 lition of slavery. The response was 
 prompt and general. Those parts of it 
 which most concern this story are the cru- 
 sade organized by the students of Andover 
 for anti-slavery agitation by the press and 
 by speakers detailed to the neighbor towns; 
 the annual fourth-of-July anti-slavery mass 
 meetings maintained by the united Congre- 
 gational and Baptist churches at Park Street 
 
Public Reforms 209 
 
 Church, Boston; and the effort, originating 
 at Andover, for the establishment of a col- 
 lege for the liberal education of young men 
 of color — an effort that narrowly failed of 
 success. 
 
 The Congregational churches had some 
 advantages over others, with the drawbacks 
 incidental to them, in their dealing with this 
 question, destined to become so exciting 
 and divisive, i. They had only the scant- 
 iest affiliations at the South, which gave 
 them the less power of influence over slave- 
 holding communities, but released them 
 from one temptation to make undue con- 
 cessions to them. 2. Their State repre- 
 sentative bodies, at this time, were exclu- 
 sively clerical, and so exempt from the 
 danger of being unduly swayed by politi- 
 cian members. 3. Their large charitable 
 and religious operations were carried on, 
 not by delegated bodies framed into the 
 constitution of the churches, but by volun- 
 tary associations of individuals, undertaking 
 
210 The Congregationalists 
 
 the duty of almoners in behalf of as many 
 as might choose to trust them, and leaving 
 the rest free to choose some other channel 
 for their bounty. These were among the 
 conditions that made it comparatively easy 
 for the Congregationalists to pass through a 
 most difficult crisis with conspicuous fidelity 
 to truth and righteousness. 
 
 During this period of " storm and stress " 
 the churches were exposed to a double 
 danger. Either they might be tempted, by 
 no ignoble considerations, to compromise 
 the interests of justice and humanity for 
 the sake of religious or national peace; or 
 they might be incited to a polemic fury of 
 denunciation, censoriousness and hatred. 
 To hold the religious public, in its various 
 organizations to the middle course of strict 
 righteousness was no light task. Among 
 those whose influence most availed to ac- 
 complish it, with Albert Barnes of the 
 Presbyterians and Francis Wayland of the 
 Baptists, like precedence will be generally 
 
Public Reforms 211 
 
 conceded to the names of Channing and 
 Leonard Bacon, Congregational pastors. 
 
 Out of many incidents of that period of 
 anti-slavery agitation of which the Missouri 
 Compromise (1820) was the beginning, and 
 the repeal of the Missouri Compromise by 
 the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (1854) was the be- 
 ginning of the end, four may be named as 
 of leading importance — the founding of 
 Oberlin College and Theological Seminary 
 (1834-5) ; the slavery debate in the American 
 Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- 
 sions (1845); the founding of The Independ- 
 ent (1848); and the Albany Convention 
 (1852). 
 
 For those who know only the Oberlin of 
 to-day, well endowed, abounding in num- 
 bers and resources, firmly intrenched in the 
 confidence of the American church, and 
 glorious with the prestige of great spiritual 
 achievement, there is needed no small effort 
 of the historic imagination to realize not 
 only the feebleness and heroism of faith in 
 
212 The Congregationalists 
 
 which it made its beginnings, but also the 
 serious distrust with which it was regarded 
 by wise and good men both at the West 
 and at the East who were intent on the 
 same objects by different methods. The 
 founders of this great institution were of 
 the number of the ''young men who see 
 visions." A young Presbyterian pastor at 
 Elyria, Ohio, John J. Shipherd, and an ex-mis- 
 sionary to the Choctaw Indians, Philo P. 
 Stewart, then living at Shipherd's house, con- 
 certed between them the plan of a college 
 open alike to men and women, furnishing a 
 liberal education at the lowest possible cost; 
 about the college as a centre, they would 
 plant a community of Christian people like- 
 minded with themselves. With few induce- 
 ments beside the sheer joy of self-sacrifice, 
 they gathered a little company of New Eng- 
 land Pioneers in Ohio. They secured the 
 title to a township of wild land in the 
 "Western Reserve," entered upon it, axe in 
 hand, cleared land and built their cabins and 
 
Public Reforms 213 
 
 their first college building. Soon an incident 
 occurred which gave an unexpected forward 
 impulse to the undertaking. At Lane 
 Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, where 
 Lyman Beecher had come from Boston to 
 be president, and Calvin E. Stowe was pro- 
 fessor, discussion ran high among the stu- 
 dents on the slavery question; which be- 
 coming known to the trustees, they, with- 
 out consulting the faculty, undertook to 
 suppress it by edict. The result was that 
 four-fifths of the students agreed to go to 
 Oberlin on condition that the evangelist, 
 Charles G. Finney, should be secured as 
 their instructor. The condition was ful- 
 filled, and the seminary which the projec- 
 tors of this pilgrim colony had longingly 
 hoped for was born in a day. With small 
 respect to the warnings of prudent men as 
 to the force of public prejudice, the 
 college was freely open not only to 
 both sexes but to all races. Without 
 compromise or apology, the institution 
 
214 ^^^ Congregationalists 
 
 was committed to a bold and unpopular 
 radicalism. 
 
 Mr. Finney himself was an impersonation 
 of the characteristics of Oberlin. A man of 
 absolute consecration, of ascetic self-denial, 
 of tireless activity and endurance, he had 
 ranged the country, east and west, on tours 
 of revival preaching that had been attended 
 by remarkable results, not only of momen- 
 tary agitation (which was often great) but 
 of the solid and lasting conversion, espe- 
 cially of men of intelligence and force, to 
 lives of intense evangelic earnestness like 
 his own. But his beneficent work was as- 
 sociated with "new measures" and new 
 forms of doctrinal statement that excited 
 serious misgiving or positive disapproval. 
 His theology was in advance even of the 
 Edwardean school, in its insistence on 
 " ability as commensurate with obligation," 
 and on a tenet of " Oberlin perfectionism " 
 which led near the perilous verge, and in 
 some cases beyond the verge, of antinomi- 
 
Public Reforms 215 
 
 anism. For many years an Oberlin graduate 
 was liable to be looked on doubtfully by 
 cautious men, until he had personally given 
 proof of soundness of doctrine and sobriety 
 of judgment. Under a more rigid polity, 
 such deviations would have led (as in the 
 Presbyterian Church they did lead) to de- 
 nominational schism. In this case, they led 
 to earnest and instructive discussion, to the 
 slow modification of opinions and methods 
 on both sides, and to the grateful recogni- 
 tion of Oberlin as a noble reinforcement in 
 that service of Christ to which it had been 
 consecrated by the prayers of its founders. 
 The debate and consequent action on the 
 subject of slavery at the annual meeting of 
 the American Board of Commissioners for 
 Foreign Missions, at Brooklyn, in 1845, 
 were of critical importance. The question 
 at issue was whether every holder of a 
 slave ought by a fixed rule to be excom- 
 municated, without regard to his conduct 
 Nn that relation. The representatives of the 
 
2i6 The Congregationalists 
 
 Anti-slavery Society, present in force, urged 
 the affirmative. Tlie question was debated 
 witii patience and thoroughness, and at the 
 end a report was unanimously adopted 
 reprobating in the strongest language the 
 system of slavery, but refusing to sanction 
 the rule condemning every slaveholder re- 
 gardless of his conduct as such. The 
 unanimity of this action was proof of that 
 sober anti-slavery sentiment of the Ameri- 
 can church in its several sects which carried 
 the country, at last, for freedom. Of 
 course many were disappointed at the 
 failure of extreme action, and the cry was 
 raised that "the church was the bulwark of 
 slavery." But it was a happy illustration of 
 the flexibility with which the Congregational 
 polity accommodates itself to new exigen- 
 cies, that the dissatisfied party found their 
 redress so ready to their hand. Not being 
 content with the declared policy of its 
 almoner, they were free to find another. 
 Within a year the ''American Missionary 
 
Public Reforms 217 
 
 Association " was organized on distinctly 
 and aggressively anti-slavery principles, 
 and offered its services as an agency for 
 both home and foreign missions. There 
 was nothing schismatic in this. The new 
 society entered at once on a limited but 
 useful work; and the effect of its bid 
 for the confidence of the churches was 
 wholly salutary. The history of this and 
 some like incidents may well satisfy the 
 student that the best security against 
 abuses in large charitable operations lies in 
 the ready facility with which one agency 
 may be exchanged for another, on the 
 slightest occasion. A more recent illus- 
 tration of the same principle was presented 
 on occasion of a serious dissatisfaction with 
 the doings of the executive of the "Ameri- 
 can Board." The organization of a *' Berke- 
 ley Temple Committee " promptly sup- 
 plemented the defaults of the Board, and 
 afforded that body a locus penitentice of 
 which it was not unduly slow to avail itself. 
 
2i8 The Congregationalists 
 
 Another incident of this period which 
 requires little more than mention, but which 
 is too important to the later history not to 
 be mentioned, is the founding of The Inde- 
 pendent newspaper in New York, in 1848, 
 with Leonard Bacon, Joseph P. Thompson 
 and Richard S. Storrs, Jr., as editors, 
 Joshua Leavitt as office editor, and Henry 
 Ward Beecher, then lately come from the 
 West to be pastor of Plymouth Church, 
 Brooklyn, as special contributor. The start- 
 ing of this metropolitan enterprise was one 
 indication out of many, of the disposition 
 of the Congregationalists to escape from 
 their provincial limitations and to take the 
 continent for a field of work. Already they 
 had showed a notable proclivity to religious 
 journalism. Thomas Prince, Jr., in 1743-4, 
 had published his weekly journal of revival 
 news under the title of The Christian 
 History. The Boston Recorder was insti- 
 tuted in the height of the Unitarian contro- 
 versy with Sidney E. Morse, son of Jedediah, 
 
Public Reforms 219 
 
 as editor; and through sundry changes of 
 title is continued to this day as The Congre- 
 gationalist. The Religious Intelligencer y 
 at New Haven, early in the century did im- 
 portant service in guiding the swelling 
 current of anti-slavery discussion. In 1823 
 the brothers Morse founded, and for twenty- 
 five years conducted, along cautiously con- 
 servative lines, The New York Observer. 
 In 1 83 1 The New York Evangelist v^2iS be- 
 gun by Joshua Leavitt; one of its earliest 
 successes was the publication of reports of 
 Mr. Finney's sermons and lectures. In its 
 later management, much of its editorial 
 writing was done by Dr. Leonard Bacon 
 and by his son George, pastor at Orange. 
 The fact that so much of this important 
 work of Congregationalists was done in no 
 distinct connection with their denomination 
 was highly characteristic. But the new jour- 
 nal was at the beginning an expounder and 
 advocate of Congregationalism. It was an 
 invaluable adjuvant in the new westward 
 
220 The Congregationalists 
 
 movement of the New England polity. 
 And in the thickening slavery debate it was 
 a mighty defender of those sober and 
 strongly defensible positions against slavery 
 which came to be the positions of the loyal 
 states and of the nation. 
 
 For more than two centuries, since the 
 Cambridge Synod of 1846-8, there had been 
 no attempt at a general meeting represent- 
 ing the Congregationalists of America, when 
 a movement of the General Association of 
 Michigan resulted in an invitation to every 
 Congregational church in the United States 
 to be represented by pastor and delegate at 
 a convention at Albany, October 5, 1852. 
 There was serious reason why the demand 
 for such a convention should proceed from 
 the West. The " Plan of Union " had been 
 repudiated in no courteous fashion by the 
 Old School majority in the Presbyterian 
 General Assembly at the time of its high- 
 handed act of excision by which that sect 
 had been broken into two nearly equal parts. 
 
Public Reforms 221 
 
 The strong sympathy of the Congregational 
 churches for the exscinded New School 
 Church had made them reluctant to with- 
 draw from that agreement, disadvantageous 
 to themselves as it was known to be in its 
 practical working. But it was now begin- 
 ning to be apparent to both parties that the 
 agreement could no longer be maintained. 
 The eager competition of the Presbyterian 
 agencies to secure a foothold in new settle- 
 ments "in advance of all others," and the 
 public disparagement of Congregationalism 
 at the West as being something far less re- 
 spectable than its New England original, 
 called for an open demonstration of mutual 
 fellowship between East and West, and 
 some action on the "Plan" which had so 
 manifestly outlived its usefulness. The 
 convention was large and earnest. Four 
 hundred and sixty-three pastors and dele- 
 gates were present. Its most important ac- 
 tion was, (i), by a unanimous vote to aban- 
 don the " Plan of Union"; (2), to reprobate 
 
222 The Congregationalists 
 
 the insinuations and charges against Con- 
 gregationalists at the West; (3), to deliver 
 with emphasis the unvarying protest of 
 these churches against the "stupendous 
 wrong" of slavery; (4), to undertake the 
 raising of a fund of $50,000 to aid in build- 
 ing churches at the West — a fund that was 
 begun on the spot by the subscription of 
 $10,000 from one of the delegates. The 
 fund went on growing till it exceeded 
 $60,000. 
 
 The Albany Convention cleared the way, 
 as it had not been cleared before, for the 
 free advance of Congregational principles 
 and organizations at the West. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 CONGREGATIONALISM NATIONAL 
 
 In the westward advance of Congrega- 
 tionalism, it is easy, looking backward, to 
 recognize, what was not always obvious 
 at the time, that there were two Congrega- 
 tionalisms moving forward together, some- 
 times closely intertwined. First there was 
 the Congregationalism of the old New 
 England pattern, in which the form of pol- 
 ity was cherished as the best means of 
 bringing the Christian people of any com- 
 munity into common fellowship and organ- 
 ization. The principles of this Congrega- 
 tionalism implied the duty of individuals 
 and parties in any community to accept loy- 
 ally and fraternally the judgment of the 
 whole, even when it contravened their own; 
 and by relieving the local congregation of 
 223 
 
224 The Congregationalists 
 
 any bondage of allegiance to a national sec- 
 tarian propaganda, made it the easier for 
 people of various persuasions and preju- 
 dices to come together. Secondly, there 
 was the come-outerism commended by Dr. 
 Emmons as a "Scriptural Platform of Ec- 
 clesiastical Government," the "scripture" 
 of which was most distinctly written in the 
 " Contrat Social" of Jean Jacques Rous- 
 seau. It involved an unlimited " right of 
 secession," and the right of the seceders to 
 organize on an exclusive basis, keeping out 
 such of their fellow-Christians as were un- 
 congenial to them. This was the ideal un- 
 der which the seceding Orthodox churches 
 of Eastern Massachusetts had been organ- 
 ized into a wonderfully effective and aggres- 
 sive dissenting sect. From this influential 
 centre it widely affected the Congregation- 
 alism of the whole country. Not only did 
 the use of imposed and prescribed doctrinal 
 tests (so abhorrent to the Fathers) come 
 into general use; but the new churches 
 
Congregationalism National 225 
 
 v/ere distinctly labeled "Trinitarian" or 
 * ' Calvinistic " ; and it came to be considered 
 quite laudable, by stipulations in the cove- 
 nant, to erect churches on an anti-slavery, 
 or a total-abstinence, or a prohibitionist 
 basis. The former method gave rise to 
 Congregational churches, sometimes not 
 ostensibly bearing that denomination, and 
 uniting in one fellowship such various ele- 
 ments as go to make up the Christian pop- 
 ulation of a new settlement. The latter 
 constituted churches of Congregaiionalists, 
 in which each member was presumed to 
 prefer a certain polity and type of dogma 
 and usage of worship. It is remarkable 
 that notions so mutually contradictory could 
 work so kindly in harness together in home 
 mission work. It is needless to ask which 
 of the two was the more effective force in 
 proselyting and propagandism. 
 
 An interesting feature in the westward 
 work of the Congregational churches has 
 been the part taken in it by groups of col- 
 
226 The Congregationalists 
 
 lege friends. In fact this is a frequently re- 
 peated feature of all church history. To 
 name no others, there was the group of Ig- 
 natius Loyola and his friends at Paris; the 
 " Holy Club " at Oxford in the days of the 
 Wesleys; the Oriel College group later at 
 the same university; and (not unworthy to 
 be named with these eminent instances) 
 "The Brethren " of Samuel J. Mills at Wil- 
 liamstown and Andover; and the "Illinois 
 Band" organized at Yale Theological Semi- 
 nary in 1827, the type of later brotherhoods 
 devoted to like service, and of more recent 
 fraternities for "college settlement" and for 
 university missions in the ends of the 
 earth. 
 
 If limits of space would permit, it would 
 be a pleasure to transcribe so noble a roll of 
 honor as the seven names of the Illinois 
 Band. Eminent among them were Theron 
 Baldwin, "Father of Western Colleges," 
 and Julian M. Sturtevant, for fifty-six years 
 in the service of Illinois College at Jackson- 
 
Congregationalism National 227 
 
 ville. The method of the " Band " was fol- 
 lowed by its successors. They seek the 
 neediest or most hopeful field; they post 
 themselves within supporting distance of 
 each other; they establish churches and 
 send for reinforcements; by combination 
 they found a college. Western New York 
 and Ohio had been occupied under the Plan 
 of Union. Indiana had been occupied in 
 force by the Methodist Church. Illinois was 
 in need of laborers and they entered it with 
 admirable zeal and success. The Iowa 
 Band (Andover, 1843), and the Washington 
 Band (Yale, 1890) have made a like record. 
 The outbreak of the Civil War found the 
 Congregationalists in a favored position. 
 They had no Southern allies to be conciliated 
 by compromise or antagonized by hostili- 
 ties. They were of one accord on the ques- 
 tions on which other denominations were 
 divided and intensely agitated. Churches 
 and colleges emptied their young men into 
 the Northern army. The victorious end of 
 
228 The Congregationalists 
 
 the war opened a great field of beneficent 
 activity from which they had before been 
 excluded by their known anti-slavery prin- 
 ciples. It was fit that the denomination 
 which from the beginning had been fore- 
 most both in missions and in education, 
 should be among the first and most effective 
 in the new work of evangelization at once 
 by church, school and college. With ad- 
 mirable promptitude and energy, the Ameri- 
 can Missionary Association recognized its 
 calling, and became the almoner, not of 
 Congregationalists only, but of many others 
 eager to help in the work. The record of 
 the success of this great work at the South, 
 afterwards expanding to include *' the de- 
 pressed races " generally, does not admit of 
 being condensed into a tabular form; for it 
 is in its nature diffusive. As it has not 
 originated within sectarian limits, so its re- 
 sults are not confined by them. Any sum- 
 mary of its results must be taken with large 
 allowance. 
 
Congregationalism National 229 
 
 The new opportunities and responsibili- 
 ties laid upon the Congregational churches 
 by the changed conditions at the close of 
 the war were widely felt to demand con- 
 sideration in another National Council. It 
 was thirteen years after the Albany Council 
 of 1852, that the Boston Council of 1865 
 assembled, June 14th, in the venerable Old 
 South Meeting-house. It enrolled five hun- 
 dred and two members, ministers and dele- 
 gates of the churches. No one felt that the 
 council failed of a great and high success, 
 notwithstanding that two of the chief points 
 in its program were only approximately 
 reached. Considering how many genera- 
 tions had passed since any authoritative dec- 
 laration had been made of the common be- 
 lief of the churches, and what considerable 
 modifications had supervened upon the 
 ancient "platforms" of polity, it was not 
 unreasonable, in entering on widely ex- 
 panded labors, to set forth distinct state- 
 ments on both these points. It would have 
 
230 The Congregationalists 
 
 been good for the churches represented to 
 know their own mind clearly, and give clear 
 and authorized assurances to the public 
 whom they were offering to serve and to 
 whom they appealed for cooperation. But 
 after not a little debate, which left it uncer- 
 tain whether the five hundred minds would 
 agree in a common statement of belief, the 
 council was fain to content itself with an 
 improvised "Burial Hill Declaration" of 
 adherence to the "faith and order held by 
 our fathers " substantially as set forth two 
 hundred years before. There is great virtue 
 in that word "substantially." In like man- 
 ner, a "platform" of church government, 
 after the style of the Cambridge Platform, 
 designed to represent existing usage, which 
 had been prepared by two acknowledged 
 authorities in church law, was laid aside in 
 favor of a statement of principles in three 
 brief paragraphs. Practically the most im- 
 portant work of the council was its appeal 
 to the churches to raise $250,000 for im- 
 
Congregationalism National 231 
 
 mediate service in the evangelization and 
 education of the freedmen of the South. 
 
 At the close of the synod of 1637, held on 
 occasion of the so-called Antinomian con- 
 troversy, Governor Winthrop was so filled 
 with delight at the spirit of wisdom and 
 brotherly love that had prevailed, that (with 
 a mind like that of Simon Peter in the holy 
 mount) he proposed that there should be 
 such a council every year. In like manner, 
 the happy progress and outcome of the two 
 National Councils at Albany and Boston led 
 to the manifestation, not of a unanimous, 
 but of a widely prevalent desire for a peri- 
 odical national council. At various meet- 
 ings held in the year 1870 for conference as 
 to a celebration of the two hundred and 
 fiftieth anniversary of the landing of the Pil- 
 grims, this desire had formal expression; 
 and after due consultation and preparation, 
 the first of a series of triennial National 
 Councils was held at Oberlin, November 
 15, 1 87 1, with an attendance of 276 repre- 
 
232 The Congregationalists 
 
 sentatives of Congregational churches in 
 twenty-five States and Territories. A Con- 
 stitution was adopted, fixing a ratio of rep- 
 resentation, recognizing the autonomy and 
 independence of the churches, disavowing 
 all pretensions to legislative or judicial func- 
 tions, and repudiating any claim to be the 
 only churches of Christ. 
 
 The National Council has thus far done 
 little to justify the misgivings of those who 
 doubted the wisdom of instituting it. One 
 valuable service it has rendered with excel- 
 lent tact and success. The declaration of 
 the common belief of the churches by the 
 vague announcement of a "substantial" 
 agreement with ancient formulas had been 
 quite satisfactory to very few, and highly 
 unsatisfactory to many. The demand was 
 presented to the National Council in 1880, 
 for **a formula that shall not be mainly a 
 reaffirmation of former confessions, but that 
 shall state in precise terms in our living 
 tongue the doctrines that we hold to-day." 
 
Congregationalism National 233 
 
 The Council responded by appointing seven 
 men who in turn should select a committee 
 of twenty-five representing different regions 
 and different tendencies, to draw up the de- 
 sired statement. The sole instruction given 
 by the Council to this committee of a com- 
 mittee, was this admirably judicious one — 
 that they should report, not to the Council 
 but directly to the churches and to the 
 world, through the press. The "Confes- 
 sion of 1883," as their report is commonly 
 called, bears no extrinsic sanction beyond 
 the authority of the names subscribed to it; 
 but as these include some of the ablest 
 theologians and wisest men of their time, 
 their work has met with general and solid 
 approval. The document was signed by 
 twenty-two out of the twenty-five names; 
 and the entire freedom with which the three 
 conscientiously withheld their signatures 
 gave the more emphasis to the twenty-two 
 names that were signed. 
 The value of a later change accomplished 
 
234 The Congregationalists 
 
 by the moral influence of the National Coun- 
 cil remains to be tested by time — perhaps a 
 long time. At the Council of 1892, after a 
 decade of controversy sometimes acrimo- 
 nious concerning the conduct of the executive 
 of the "American Board," a committee ap- 
 pointed three years before reported the ex- 
 istence of a wide-spread desire that the 
 Societies which were the agents of the 
 churches in the administration of their com- 
 mon charities, should become more directly 
 representative of the churches in their con- 
 stitution. It is a striking proof of the real 
 pliability of a close corporation to public 
 opinion expressed with emphasis, that with 
 the least possible delay the "American 
 Board " undertook to constitute a controlling 
 part of its membership out of the nominees 
 of the several State organizations represent- 
 ative of the churches. It had already been 
 demonstrated how prompt and effective was 
 the recourse of the churches in case of dis- 
 satisfaction with any of their almoners — 
 
Congregationalism National 235 
 
 that it was simply to find or organize an- 
 other to be employed instead. This course 
 was taken in 1846, in the creation of 
 the American Missionary Association, and 
 again in 1888, in the activity of the Berkeley 
 Temple Committee; in both cases with no 
 harm done, and much incidental good. In 
 this way no church had any difficulty in 
 getting itself " represented " in the practical 
 direction of the Societies. One hindrance 
 was in the way of this recourse. The form 
 of High-churchism by which Congregation- 
 alists are affected is that of investing their 
 apparatus of benevolent societies with a 
 solemn and sacrosanct dignity, as if to inter- 
 fere with them or divide them were a 
 schism or a sacrilege — a habit which has 
 been characterized as "sacrificing to their 
 net and burning incense to their drag." It 
 is the prevalence of this feeling that 
 makes the only need of constituting the 
 societies by a series of primary and 
 secondary elections like those that go 
 
236 The Congregationalists 
 
 to the making up of a political conven- 
 tion. 
 
 It is conceivable that, in their present 
 tendency tov^ards solid organization on a 
 continental scale as a sect in competition 
 with other sects, Congregationalists may 
 gain some of the advantages of confedera- 
 tion, while losing none of the distinguished 
 advantages of the former independence; it 
 is conceivable, but, judging from the past 
 of church history, not probable. Looking 
 far ahead, it is easy to foresee the emergence 
 of questions upon credentials, or upon the 
 "recognizing" of a theological seminary, 
 that shall invest the National Council, in 
 spite of itself, with judicial functions. In 
 like manner the investing of State * ' Associa- 
 tions" with the right of nominating direc- 
 tors to national societies may, in easily im- 
 aginable contingencies, devolve upon the 
 societies the arbitration of disputes, and 
 draw them into controversies in comparison 
 with which the stormiest experiences of the 
 
Congregationalism National 237 
 
 past would seem like a calm. It is the loose 
 texture of their organization which in the 
 past has saved the Congregationalists, in 
 every case but one, from any distinct and 
 lasting schism. It is not possible to make 
 the tissue more fibrous and hard, without 
 making it more fissile. 
 
 The present tendency to federation is a 
 clear triumph of the sectarian Congregation- 
 alism of Dr. Emmons and modern Boston, 
 over that comprehensive Congregationalism 
 of the New England Fathers, which was 
 commended by Dr. Leonard Bacon and 
 President Sturtevant. It remains to be seen 
 whether the centripetal force will be happily 
 balanced and corrected by the centrifugal. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 RECENT QUESTIONS 
 
 While these events and movements, dur- 
 ing the latter half of the nineteenth century, 
 had been carrying the principles and insti- 
 tutions of Congregationalism to the ends of 
 the continent and of the earth, a change of 
 practical theology had been going forward 
 '*not with observation " which is hardly less 
 than revolutionary. The change began with 
 the publication by Horace Bushnell of Hart- 
 ford, 1847, of a thin volume of "Views of 
 Christian Nurture and of Subjects Adjacent 
 thereto." The history of the book is inter- 
 esting. Two discourses on this thesis, 
 ** That the Child is to grow up a Christian," 
 had excited not a little interest in the circle 
 of the author's ministerial neighbors. The 
 publication of them was called for, and the 
 238 
 
Recent Questions 239 
 
 discourses were unanimously approved and 
 accepted for publication by the Massachu- 
 setts Sabbath-School Society. Months 
 passed, during which influences were busily 
 set at work, ultimately with success, to in- 
 duce the Committee of Publication to reverse 
 its action. The manuscript being returned 
 to its author, was published by him with an 
 "Argument for the Discourses" and addi- 
 tional papers, on "The Spiritual Economy 
 of Revivals of Religion"; "Growth, not 
 Conquest, the True Method of Christian 
 Progress"; "The Organic Unity of the 
 Family " ; " The Scene of the Pentecost, and 
 a Christian Parish." It could have been no 
 matter of regret to the author that the efforts 
 for the suppression of his book should have 
 resulted (as usual in such cases) in quick- 
 ening public interest in it. It was gravely 
 impugned for heresy; but the author was 
 fortunate in having drawn this fire in ad- 
 vance; his "argument for the discourses " 
 went to prove not only that the doctrine of 
 
240 The Congregational ists 
 
 the discourses was the common orthodoxy 
 of the church from the earliest ages, but that 
 the revivalism against which it was aimed 
 was itself a modern innovation, dating 
 chiefly from the Great Awakening of a hun- 
 dred years before. 
 
 The inevitable discussion that followed 
 upon this challenge was attended with no 
 immediate visible consequences of impor- 
 tance; but not often in the history of theo- 
 logical literature has any book been so dis- 
 tinctly proved to have "its seed in itself 
 after its kind." The author's high faith and 
 deep sincerity of conviction, his boldness of 
 paradoxical statement, and the rare charm 
 of his literary style, both in this and in 
 his copious later works, captivated the at- 
 tention of thoughtful readers throughout 
 Christendom. He survived the often re- 
 newed scourge of tongues, to find himself 
 in his lifetime, canonized in the affections 
 of multitudes in every part of the church 
 catholic as saint and doctor of the church. 
 
Recent Questions 241 
 
 Directly, and quite as much indirectly, tiie 
 little volume on Christian Nurture, in its 
 original form and in its later redactions, has 
 had a profound effect, in every sect of the 
 American church, in modifying the exag- 
 gerated revivalism which has been its dis- 
 tinguishing characteristic for a century and 
 a half. An incidental result of the book is 
 found in the world-wide institution of the 
 Societies of Christian Endeavor, the founder 
 of which, as pastor of a church in Portland, 
 Maine, refers to this book as the germ of 
 his enormously productive labors for the 
 young. 
 
 The bearing of this doctrine of Christian 
 Nurture on the essence of the Congregational 
 polity belongs partly to prophecy as well as 
 to history. The story of the Congregational 
 churches has been told inadequately indeed, 
 if it has not disclosed the recurring embar- 
 rassments in which they have been involved, 
 from the very beginning, by their demand, 
 as a condition of full communion, for the 
 
242 The Congregationalists 
 
 evidence of a conscious experience of con- 
 version. It is wonderful whiat progress has 
 been made, in fifty years, in the reconsider- 
 ation of a principle once deemed axiomatic. 
 The reconsideration cannot proceed further 
 without being attended by reconstruction 
 fitting to new conditions. An illustration 
 added to many heretofore adduced, of the 
 non-persistence of schisms among Congre- 
 gationalists is found in the fact that the 
 Seminary which was Dr. Bushnell's most 
 acrimonious antagonist in this and later con- 
 troversies, being now transplanted to Hart- 
 ford, the scene of his illustrious labors, is 
 distinguished among others by its reverence 
 for his memory. 
 
 Of the difficulties encountered by Con- 
 gregationalists in making the theological 
 change of base necessitated by advances in 
 Biblical study, there is the less occasion to 
 speak, as these difficulties are common to 
 all sects and all theologies. Yet it is well to 
 record that theirs was the leadership into 
 
Recent Questions 243 
 
 these difficulties, through the pioneer work 
 of Moses Stuart and Edward Robinson, and 
 later of George R. Noyes, Andrews Norton 
 and Theodore Parker; and they have paid 
 their full quota of contributions to the re- 
 lieving of the same difficulties. 
 
 More special to Congregationalism are 
 certain questions just now emerging which 
 concern the application of that polity to 
 church work in great cities. One of them 
 is this: whether, in meeting the exigencies 
 of this work, the several congregations of 
 the city may not so combine as to act, in 
 some respects, as one church. History is 
 not without some hints bearing on this 
 question. It leads back the mind to that 
 very early date (1650) when, the church in 
 Boston having overflowed the capacity of 
 its meeting-house, provision had to be made 
 for the growing population. This was 
 really a crisis in the development of the 
 New England church polity. Should an ad- 
 ditional meeting-house be built for the 
 
244 ^^^ Congregationalists 
 
 church of Boston, now grown too large 
 ordinarily to meet in a single building; or 
 should there be two churches, a First and a 
 Second ? On this point the intimations of 
 Scripture seem sufficiently clear; the stu- 
 dents of the New Testament who had seen 
 so clearly and insisted so sturdily that the 
 Scriptures recognize no such thing as the 
 church of a province, were certainly not 
 incapable of perceiving the exactly parallel 
 fact that the Scriptures are equally ignorant 
 of the churches of a town; that *'the church 
 of Achaia " or "the church of Galatia " is 
 not more foreign to apostolic usage than the 
 First Church and Second Church in Ephesus, 
 or the North Church and the South Church 
 in Rome, or St. Cephas' Church and St. 
 Apollos' Church and Christ Church in Cor- 
 inth. Apparently, however, the arbitrary 
 dogma that a church "ought not to be of 
 greater number than may ordinarily meet 
 together conveniently in one place " was 
 already a veil upon their hearts. The an- 
 
Recent Questions 245 
 
 swer to pending questions about church 
 work in cities must be sought by going 
 back of the Cambridge Platform; and, in 
 modern America, rather in the direction of 
 church federation, than in the direction of 
 sectarian combination. 
 
 Another question which sometimes arises 
 touching the conduct of great city churches, 
 involving the doubt whether the Congrega- 
 tional polity is applicable to that function, is 
 answered by history with great distinctness. 
 By painfully practical demonstration it has 
 sometimes been made to appear as if the 
 constitution that works admirably in a 
 church of a hundred members was im- 
 practicable in a church of ten or fifteen 
 times as many. The difficulty is identical 
 with that which is encountered in the ad- 
 ministration of the town-meeting govern- 
 ment when the few hundred voters of the 
 town have been multiplied to the many 
 thousand voters of a city. The direct de- 
 mocracy of the town-m.eeting: has to be 
 
246 The Congregationalists 
 
 superseded, in that case, by the repre- 
 sentative democracy of city government. 
 The conduct of a multitudinous city church 
 requires a like modification; otherwise it 
 settles, in peaceful times, into an oligarchy ; 
 in times of excitement and irritation, it is in 
 danger of becoming a mob. At all times, 
 such a body is absurdly unqualified for the 
 judicial duties which are among the most 
 serious duties which devolve upon a church. 
 A glance into the past, even the recent past, 
 discloses an important relief for this diffi- 
 culty; for it is within the memory of living 
 men that New England churches have begun 
 to be governed by universal suffrage. By ap- 
 proved usage the government of the church 
 was in the hands of the men of full age. 
 Looking still further back, we find the gov- 
 ernment of the church vested in a represent- 
 ative body of three or more elders, with a 
 reference, on capital questions, to the vote 
 of the brotherhood. It admits of doubt 
 whether the original church of Boston, or 
 
Recent Questions 247 
 
 Salem, or Hartford, with its restricted suf- 
 frage, its government by a board of elders, 
 and its lack of a prescribed code of dogma 
 as a bar to membership, would be recog- 
 nized to-day as a Congregational church. 
 Future experience may show whether or 
 not our modern Congregationalism is too 
 rigidly hardened into its recent sectarian 
 mould to admit henceforth of that elastic 
 adaptation to changing needs by which it 
 has formerly been distinguished. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE UNITARIANS 
 
 The story of that wide-spread alliance of 
 churches which likes to claim for its ex- 
 clusive use the title of The Congregational- 
 ists has been told at such length as to leave 
 no adequate space for other histories that 
 are entitled to be included under the same 
 denomination. 
 
 The story of the Unitarian churches, from 
 the beginning, is included in the general 
 history of the churches of New England. 
 The story of the disruption by which, early 
 in the nineteenth century, the Congre- 
 gational churches ''became two bands," 
 has been briefly told, with some incidents 
 of later history. (See pp. 155-184.) But 
 in general the Unitarian wing of the Con- 
 gregational churches of America is entitled 
 248 
 
The Unitarians 249 
 
 to the beatitude pronounced on the land 
 whose annals are brief. Its history is 
 adorned with some of the noblest names in 
 American literature, theology, patriotism 
 and beneficence. Its influence on the mind 
 of America and of the world has been 
 quite out of proportion to its numbers; but 
 then, on the other hand, its numbers and 
 visible, corporate achievements are equally 
 disproportioned to the magnificent equip- 
 ment of men and material resources with 
 which its career began. It began (taking 
 1820 as the date of the completed dis- 
 ruption) with more than one hundred 
 churches, including some of the strongest 
 and most historically venerable in America, 
 and with a clergy such as (for its numbers) 
 all Christendom beside could hardly show. 
 At the end of forty years of immense ex- 
 pansion of the country, the number of 
 churches had not been doubled; and the 
 denomination had grown relatively weaker 
 in its own metropolitan centre, Boston, 
 
250 The Congregationalists 
 
 while its outposts were far from vigorous. 
 It had no foreign missions; and had taken 
 an inappreciably small part in the distinctive 
 work of the Congregationalists — that of 
 supplying the country with institutions of 
 the higher learning. This statement makes 
 no account of the beneficences of indi- 
 viduals; but making the largest allowance 
 on this score, the comparative sterility of 
 Unitarianism as a sect is a fact that needs 
 explaining. 
 
 Some of the reasons for it are altogether 
 honorable. From the outset, the Unitarian 
 churches had been most unwilling to be a 
 sect; and became such, not by their seced- 
 ing from others, but because the others 
 insisted on seceding from them. They 
 were reluctant and slow in putting them- 
 selves in battle array for aggressive action. 
 Appeals to sectarian pride and aggrandize- 
 ment tended rather to repel than to attract; 
 and rather than let anything be done 
 through strife or vainglory, they some- 
 
The Unitarians 251 
 
 times preferred not to let anything be done 
 at all. But after all it is not easy to acquit 
 them of the charge of letting their liberalism 
 lapse into indifferentism. There was truth 
 as well as salutary pungency in the com- 
 plaint of James Freeman Clarke: "The 
 Unitarian churches of Boston see no reason 
 for diffusing their faith. They treat it as a 
 luxury to be kept for themselves. ... I 
 have heard it said that they do not wish to 
 make Unitarianism too common." 
 
 After the close of the civil war, in which 
 individual representatives of both clergy 
 and churches had done splendidly dis- 
 tinguished service, in the field and in the 
 hospital and preeminently in the Sanitary 
 Commission, the impulse to undertake some 
 important work for the reconstructed coun- 
 try which was felt by every religious 
 organization, did not fail to excite to good 
 works the Unitarian body. The American 
 Unitarian Association, which since its be- 
 ginning in 1825 had languished on a starv- 
 
252 The Congregationalists 
 
 ing income, took a vigorous start forward. 
 Its income rose at a bound from $8,000 to 
 $100,000. Among the first-fruits of this 
 new enterprise was the extremely effective 
 measure of establishing stations at im- 
 portant university towns, beginning with 
 Ann Arbor, Michigan. But the consider- 
 able accretions to Unitarianism as a de- 
 nomination, particularly at the West, which 
 ensued upon this aggressive policy were 
 attended with serious inconveniences. 
 Among the new adherents were some 
 who in the violence of their reaction from 
 more rigorous forms of Christianity were 
 openly reacting from Christianity itself. 
 The system of Unitarianism as a school of 
 Christian teaching was thus brought under 
 a wider and more serious reprobation, 
 which the sincere faith and wholesome 
 instruction and saintly lives of its great 
 theologians and philanthropists have availed 
 little to avert. 
 That the mission work of the Unitarians 
 
The Unitarians 253 
 
 should have a more distinctly sectarian 
 character than that of other Christian bodies 
 is a paradoxical fact which is explained by 
 the necessity of the case. It is the attitude 
 of their fellow-Christians towards them 
 that forces them, in turn, into an attitude 
 most uncongenial to their antecedents and 
 habits. The ill-effects to both parties of 
 the complete sundering of fellowship be- 
 tween the two parties of Congregational- 
 ists, finds new illustration in a divergence 
 now in progress. A tendency zealously 
 favored among the Orthodox is to abolish 
 the parish or ** ecclesiastical society" which 
 has been ordinarily the holder of the tem- 
 poralities of the church, and to have the 
 church itself made a legal corporation for 
 the holding of its property, real and per- 
 sonal. The Unitarians, moving in the other 
 direction, tend to the abolishing of the 
 church as a distinct spiritual covenanted 
 body, leaving nothing but a society behind. 
 The history of this last hundred years has 
 
254 The Congregationalists 
 
 dwelt on divergences more and more dis- 
 tinctly emphasized between these parties. 
 There are also converging lines, growing 
 more and more distinct with the lapse of 
 recent years. It may be that a new chapter 
 is about to be added to the history. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 A WIDER REVIEW 
 
 We have now traced, in our rapid narra- 
 tive, the growth on American soil of a 
 system of church poHty which has pro- 
 foundly influenced the course of church 
 history and even of political history in the 
 western hemisphere. Many factors have 
 entered into the result. There was the 
 providential opportunity afforded to the 
 Founders of freely building, not on other 
 men's foundations. There was sincere and 
 diligent study of the Scriptures in search of 
 a divinely approved polity. There was re- 
 action from abuses that had been observed 
 and painfully experienced in the old coun- 
 try. There was pressure of new exigencies 
 in the new country. Incidentally there was 
 the influence, never a controlling one, of 
 255 
 
256 The Congregationalists 
 
 many past years of Separatist theorizing 
 and experimentation, of which the fairest 
 and sweetest fruit was the feeble church 
 and colony of Plymouth. 
 
 This polity native to the soil took vigor- 
 ous and enduring root, while all the colonial 
 church establishments beside, Catholic, An- 
 glican, Quaker, and Reformed, died or 
 languished. Early in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, the course of the history of the Con- 
 gregational churches of America became 
 divided into two streams of very unequal 
 volume — a division which has persisted to 
 the present day. 
 
 Of the several church-fellowships dis- 
 tinctively Congregational in organization 
 but not in the same line of historical con- 
 nection with the primeval churches, one is 
 so preeminent in numbers and honorably 
 distinguished in its long history as to have 
 demanded a separate volume on "The Bap- 
 tists" in the series of "The Story of the 
 Churches." 
 
A Wider Review 257 
 
 Among the rest, one of the most inter- 
 esting is that which entitles itself "The 
 Christian Connection." It was a growth of 
 the great revival at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century, at which time a serious 
 protest against the insistent dogmatism of 
 many Congregational and Presbyterian 
 churches, setting up codes of doctrine as a 
 bar to membership, alienated some earnest 
 people who, finding themselves thus ex- 
 cluded from the communion which they 
 would have sought, entered into fellowship 
 with each other on the basis of a common 
 allegiance to Christ, and a common subjec- 
 tion to the will of God as set forth in the 
 Scriptures. By a notable coincidence this 
 process was going on simultaneously at 
 three remotely distant centres of revival, in 
 Virginia, in Vermont, and in Kentucky and 
 Ohio. The multiplying and increasing con- 
 gregations were not long in finding each 
 other out, even over such vast intervening 
 distances, and in entering into relations of 
 
258 The Congregationalists 
 
 correspondence. Agreeing in a common 
 faith and a common order, they are still 
 more emphatically at one in their repudi- 
 ation of imposed creeds as barriers to fel- 
 lowship among Christian disciples, and 
 their protest against sectarian names and 
 divisions. We have already seen how, 
 about this same time, there arose, especially 
 in Eastern Massachusetts, an inordinate zeal 
 for imposing dogmatic tests, and for propa- 
 gating select sectarian churches according 
 to the pattern designed in the ** Scriptural 
 Platform " of Dr. Emmons. This tendency 
 among the Congregationalists of that period 
 did much to justify and even necessitate the 
 separate organization of **The Christian 
 Connection." By a process not without 
 precedent in church history, the protest 
 against sectarianism became itself the basis 
 of a sectarian organization; and the honor- 
 able aversion to bear any divisive name has 
 inevitably resulted in the perversion of the 
 name of Christ (as at Corinth in the 
 
A Wider Review 259 
 
 apostolic age) into a sectarian appella- 
 tion. 
 
 The churches of " The Christian Connec- 
 tion," nearly fifteen hundred in number, 
 comprising upwards of one hundred thou- 
 sand communicants, are simply Congrega- 
 tional churches. There was once a reason 
 for their separate organization. At the 
 present day, no such reason (aside from the 
 fact that the organization already exists) 
 could be alleged which would not be equally 
 a reason why the communion of the Congre- 
 gational churches should be itself divided 
 by the withdrawal or exclusion of some of 
 its worthiest churches. The continuance of 
 the divided organization after the reasons 
 for it have ceased is one illustration out of 
 many of how much easier it is to create a 
 division than to heal it. 
 
 The Universalist denomination, which, 
 through changes of sentiment on both sides 
 of the dividing line of controversy, is in less 
 sharp antagonism than formerly with the 
 
26o The Congregationalists 
 
 " orthodox " sects, is nevertheless removed 
 from the category of strictly Congregational 
 churches by some features of organization 
 which affiliate it rather to the family of the 
 classical or synodical churches. A like ob- 
 servation would apply to some of the or- 
 ganizations of the vastly expanding and 
 increasing body of the Lutheran churches, 
 among which the tendency towards the 
 autonomy of the local congregation is 
 clearly noticeable. 
 
 In fact the prevailing power of the Con- 
 gregational principle, in America, is no- 
 where more impressively manifested than in 
 its practical dominance in those orders of the 
 American church in which theoretically it is 
 least recognized. No American sect has 
 been organized with a loftier contempt of 
 Congregational principles than the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church as it took form under the 
 controlling influence of John Wesley. 
 " We are not republicans, and do not intend 
 to be," was his characteristic dictum. But 
 
A Wider Review 261 
 
 in spite of his intentions, that is the direc- 
 tion in which his great institute is tending. 
 Even the form of the original oligarchy has 
 been modified by our climatic conditions; 
 and where the form remains, it is well un- 
 derstood, both within and without, that the 
 absolute authority over the individual con- 
 gregation is to be exercised with scrupulous 
 regard to the previously ascertained wishes 
 of the congregation. 
 
 It would naturally be expected that the 
 last of the hierarchical church-governments 
 to yield to the Congregational principle of 
 local home rule should be the episcopacy of 
 the Roman Church. And indeed through 
 many trying and critical years the conflict 
 between hierarchical authority, and con- 
 gregational rights under the name of " trus- 
 teeism," was fought out, and carried in 
 favor of the hierarchy at last, only under 
 pressure of the extreme sanctions of spirit- 
 ual power. The result of the conflict was 
 nominally a complete victory of the episco- 
 
262 The Congregationalists 
 
 pate over the congregations; but virtually it 
 left the two parties in such a mood of re- 
 spect for each other's powers as to result in 
 a tacit understanding that the absolute 
 power of the clergy is to be exercised, 
 except in extreme cases, according to the 
 ascertained wishes of the congregation. It 
 would be too much to say that the polity of 
 the Roman Catholic Church in the United 
 States is Congregational; it is not too much 
 to say that the administration of it has been 
 profoundly affected by the spirit of those 
 conceptions of church order which are the 
 native growth of our soil. Nowhere is this 
 influence more justly appreciated than in 
 those conservative circles of Old World 
 Catholicism in which the words '' L^ameri- 
 canisme/' " der Ameri/ianismus," are whis- 
 pered as words of serious portent. 
 
 The Story of the Congregationalists as 
 here told has been narrowly limited to the 
 genesis, growth and expansion of it in 
 America. In England, the practical institu- 
 
A Wider Review 263 
 
 tion of Congregational churches had to wait 
 for a half century from the American be- 
 ginnings. Under the Commonwealth, the 
 problem of the reconstruction of the ecclesi- 
 astical institutions of the nation was resolved 
 in the Westminster Assembly in a Presby- 
 terian sense. In that historic council the 
 principles that had been wrought out into 
 practice in New England were represented 
 by a minority inconsiderable in number, but 
 in every other measurement worthy of all 
 consideration. What might have been the 
 result if the great leaders of the New Eng- 
 land churches had not declined the urgent 
 invitation to return and take part in the de- 
 liberations, is an interesting but not a prac- 
 tical question. The many New Englanders 
 who did return and rose to high places un- 
 der Parliament and Protector must doubtless, 
 by their testimony, have made a deep im- 
 pression on public opinion. But those un- 
 certain and stormy days were not favorable 
 to church-building, and whatever begin- 
 
264 The Congregationalists 
 
 nings were made were soon swept away 
 by the fetid reflux of the Restoration. 
 
 The history of the English Congregation- 
 ahsts from the Act of Toleration in 1689 is 
 not less noble than that which we have re- 
 counted in America. It is the story of pa- 
 tient endurance for conscience' sake under 
 long persistent public odium and insult; of 
 honorable achievement in education and 
 learning and high public service, in spite of 
 the protracted exclusion from the universi- 
 ties; and of self-denying mission work at 
 home and in the ends of the earth, such as 
 might well put to shame the Establishment 
 with its immense resources, and provoke it, 
 at last, to a worthy emulation. 
 
 The task imposed upon the Congrega- 
 tionalists of England was a far different 
 one from that which had burdened their 
 brethren in the American wilderness sixty 
 and seventy years before, and in some re- 
 spects a more painful one. The duty was 
 not laid upon them to organize a system of 
 
A Wider Review 265 
 
 churches and parishes for a growing State; 
 but only, in that evil and adulterous genera- 
 tion, to make such protest for righteousness 
 and for Hberty and purity in worship and 
 discipline as their scanty numbers and poor 
 resources would permit. There was no 
 necessity for maintaining among their scat- 
 tered congregations such mutual correspond- 
 ence as was required among the parish 
 churches of New England. Consequently 
 it became characteristic of them to insist 
 with emphasis upon the independence of 
 the churches, and to look with distrust upon 
 even the most guarded alliance of churches 
 for common ends. Not until 1833 was a 
 common organization effected, in "The 
 Congregational Union of England and 
 Wales." Of late the tendency has been 
 strong in the direction of closer organization, 
 being promoted by frequent correspondence 
 with the American churches, and still more 
 by a growing sense of the common inter- 
 ests and duties of the free churches of the 
 
266 The Congregationalists 
 
 United Kingdom, in all their different orders. 
 The wide and powerful expansion of Con- 
 gregational institutions throughout the 
 British Islands and the British Empire is a fit 
 subject for a volume, but must here be 
 passed with a mere mention. Like brevity 
 must needs be observed in referring to the 
 spontaneous tendency towards Congrega- 
 tional polity which is observable in recent 
 movements for "reformation without tar- 
 rying" that have been begun in state-church 
 countries, whether Catholic or Protestant, 
 as Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, and 
 the Scandinavian countries. 
 
 The crowning glory of the Story of the 
 Congregationalists is the record of what 
 they have done, not for the upbuilding of 
 themselves into a strong and numerous 
 sect, but, in honorable disregard of such 
 ambition, for the glory of God in the serv- 
 ice of his creatures. None can deny them 
 this honor, that theircharity has been of that 
 sort which " seeketh not its own." Taking 
 
A Wider Review 267 
 
 the lead in the organization of large chari- 
 ties, they have been controlled, in this work, 
 by a veritable passion for fellowship with 
 all Christians, insomuch that a large part of 
 their greatest work stands without credit to 
 themselves and even accredited to others. 
 In *'the Leavening of the Nation " (to bor- 
 row the apt title of Dr. Clark's interesting 
 history), their work extends far beyond the 
 nearly six thousand churches that are affili- 
 ated with each other under the sectarian 
 title. Few clergy-lists of American denomi- 
 nations fail to show in places of highest 
 usefulness the names of those trained in this 
 discipline. It implies no disparagement to 
 the good work of other orders of churches, 
 to say (what none will deny) that the Con- 
 gregationalists have been preeminently 
 leaders in the higher education. Their 
 monumental work is seen, not only in the 
 chain of institutions stretching across the 
 continent bearing the sectarian name, but 
 beginning with Harvard and Yale and 
 
268 The Congregationalists 
 
 Princeton and Schenectady and the Western 
 Reserve, it includes with these many others 
 into which the life and strength of their 
 sons has passed, but which they did not 
 care to limit by affixing their own name, 
 and which they were even content to see 
 taken under the exclusive direction of 
 others. 
 
 From their first germinant growth in the 
 soil of New England, the Congregational 
 churches have been consecrated by a special 
 divine unction to the work of missions. 
 From John Eliot to David Brainerd, and 
 from Brainerd to Mills and his fellows be- 
 side the Williamstown haystack, and from 
 their day to this present, the bright succes- 
 sion has never been interrupted. But as in 
 other enterprises, so in this, they have not 
 been careful to brand their work with their 
 own trade-mark. By preference it has been 
 from of old their choice that the fruits of 
 their successful service should be indistin- 
 guishably mingled with those of their fel- 
 
A Wider Review 269 
 
 lov^-Christians; and when, in process of 
 time, they have been found laboring in de- 
 tachment from the rest of " the sacramental 
 host, " it has been not because they have 
 withdrawn from others, but because others 
 have withdrawn from them. They may 
 well afford this noble carelessness; for their 
 record is on high, and even here on the 
 blurred pages of our earthly history, it is 
 no doubtful record. The rich and perennial 
 fruits of labors that have been wrought on 
 all the continents and islands under the di- 
 rection of the London Missionary Society, 
 the American Board of Commissioners for 
 Foreign Missions, the American Home Mis- 
 sionary Society, and the American Mission- 
 ary Association are abundant and fragrant 
 in every corner of the garden of the Lord. 
 And their seed is in themselves after their 
 kind. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 [The literature relating to the story of the 
 Congregationalists is very copious, includ- 
 ing, for its earlier periods, all the documents 
 of New England history. Dr. H. M. Dex- 
 ter's " Collections towards a Bibliography of 
 Congregationalism" embraces '],2^o titles, 
 and it is estimated by Prof. Williston 
 Walker that if completed and brought up to 
 date it, would include not less than 8,000. 
 The following list contains the titles of 
 some leading and easily accessible works 
 which may be relied on to give ample refer- 
 ences to the literature of the subject.] 
 
 History of the Congregational Churches 
 in the United States, by Williston Walker. 
 (In American Church History Series.) New 
 York, 1894. 
 
 Congregationalists in America, by Albert 
 E. Dunning. New York, 1894. 
 270 
 
Bibliography 27 1 
 
 The Congregationalism of the Last Three 
 Hundred Years as Seen in Its Literature, 
 by Henry Martyn Dexter. With a Biblio- 
 graphical Appendix. New York, 1880. 
 
 The Creeds and Platforms of Congrega- 
 tionalism, by Williston Walker. New 
 York, 1893. 
 
 Genesis of the New England Churches, 
 by Leonard Bacon. New York, 1874. 
 
 History of the Unitarians in the United 
 States, by Joseph Henry Allen. (In Ameri- 
 can Church History Series.) New York, 
 1894. 
 
 Unitarianism in America, by George 
 Willis Cooke. Boston, 1902. 
 
 Leavening the Nation, by Joseph B. 
 Clark. New York, 1903. 
 
 History of New England, by John Gor- 
 ham Palfrey. Five volumes. Boston, 
 1859-90. 
 
 Complete History of Connecticut, Civil 
 and Ecclesiastical, by Benjamin Trumbull. 
 New Haven, 1818. 
 
272 The Congregationalists 
 
 Thirteen Historical Discourses on the 
 Completion of Two Hundred Years from 
 the Beginning of the First Church in New 
 Haven, by Leonard Bacon. New Haven, 
 1839. 
 
 An account of Congregational usages both 
 past and present may be sought in 
 
 The Congregational Way, by George A. 
 Boynton. Boston, 1904. 
 
 For a view of the history of the Congre- 
 gational churches in its relation to that of 
 the American churches generally, it may be 
 permitted to refer to 
 
 A History of American Christianity, by 
 Leonard Woolsey Bacon. (In American 
 Church History Series.) New York, 1897. 
 
Index 
 
 Albany Convention, 220. 
 
 Allen, Professor Joseph Henry, 183, 271, 
 
 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 
 
 194, 234. 
 American Home Missionary Society (now known as the 
 
 Congregational H. M. S.), 199. 
 American Missionary Association, 217, 228. 
 Andover Theological Seminary, 162, 185, 208, 
 Antinomian Controversy, 57. 
 Arianism in Eastern Massachusetts, 169, 171. 
 Arminianism reprobated in early New England, 142. 
 Associations of ministers, 107. 
 Awakening, The Great, 1 19-132. 
 Awakening, The Second, 145. 
 
 Bacon, Leonard, 211, 219, 237, 271, 272. 
 Baldwin, Theron, 226. 
 Baptism, conditions of, 77, 89, 112. 
 Baptists, 194, 256. 
 
 Beecher, Lyman, at Boston, 201 ; at Lane Seminary, 213. 
 Belknap, Jeremy, early Unitarian, 159. 
 Bellamy, Joseph, theologian, 137. 
 Berkeley Temple Committee, 217, 235. 
 Bible Societies, 197. 
 Biblical science, 243. 
 
 Boston, churches of, 47, 56, 80, 88, 158; become Uni- 
 tarian, 170; Boston Council of 1^)65, 229. 
 Boynton, George A., 272. 
 
 273 
 
274 Index 
 
 Bradford, Governor William, 31, 42. 
 
 Brainerd, David, 129, 133. 
 
 Brattle Church, Boston, 88. 
 
 Brewster, "William, of Plymouth, 25. 
 
 Browne, John and Samuel, schismatists at Salem, 42, 60. 
 
 Browne, Robert, early Separatist, 24. 
 
 Buckminster, Joseph Stevens, 163. 
 
 Burial Hill Declaration, 230. 
 
 Bushnell, Horace, his " Christian Nurture," 78, 238. 
 
 Cambridge, Synods at, 59, 61, 65. 
 
 Cambridge Platform, 65 ; modern departures from, 68. 
 
 Cartwright, Thomas, 15. 
 
 Channing, William Ellery, 163, 202, 205. 
 
 Charter of Massachusetts transferred to New England, 46. 
 
 Christian Connection of Congregational Churches, 257. 
 
 Christian Endeavor Societies, 241. 
 
 Chauncy, Charles, 78. 
 
 Chauncy, Charles, Jr., 128, 158. 
 
 Church instituted at Salem, 38; at Charlestown (Boston), 
 47 ; at New Haven, 49. 
 
 Church principles, 28, 66; of Dr. Emmons, 188, 224, 
 
 Church-building fund, 222. 
 
 City evangelization, 243 ; disqualification for, 245. 
 
 Clark, Joseph B,, 267, 271, 
 
 Codman, John, ordained at Dorchester, 163. 
 
 Colleges, 108, 138, 150, 185, 209, 211, 226, 267. 
 
 Colman, Benjamin, 90, 122, 123. 
 
 Confessions of Faith, 75, 87, no, 230, 233. 
 
 Congregationalism, defined, 9 ; not an imported polity, 
 13 ; gradually evolved, 55 ; formulated in Cambridge 
 Platform, 67; later modifications, 67, 88; modified 
 by Say brook Platform, 94 ; democratic reaction, 97 ; 
 spiritual quickening, 120; fanatical disorders, 125; 
 controlled by civil authority, 53, 126; expansion 
 and activity, 134; theology, 135; not sectarian, 41, 
 ^3' 73» 141 » home missions, 144 ; alliance with 
 Presbyterian Church in Plan of Union, 149; dis- 
 ruption, 157 ; consequent modification into a sec- 
 
Index 275 
 
 tarian polity, 188; foreign missions, 193; organiza- 
 tions for beneficence, 195; conflict with drunken- 
 ness, 203 ; with slavery, 207 ; Plan of Union abro- 
 gated, 221; westward expansion, 222; two con- 
 trasted types of, 223; national councils, 221, 
 229, 231 ; tendency to confederation, 236 ; internal 
 revolution, 238 ; need of adaptation to city evangeli- 
 zation, 243 ; to the administration of large churches, 
 245 r influence extending beyond bounds of sect, 
 255, and of nation, 263. 
 
 Connecticut, adopts system of classical church polity, 92, 
 96; disorders suppressed by legislature, 125; leads 
 in home missions, 144. 
 
 Consociation aimed at in Massachusetts, in proposals of 
 1705, 91 ; achieved in Connecticut, 92, 96. 
 
 Cotton, John, at Boston in Lincolnshire, 45; in New 
 England, 56, 59, 61, 62. 
 
 Councils, national, 221, 229, 231. See also Synods. 
 
 Covenant, in institution of church, 28, 38, 47, 50. 
 
 Covenant, Half-way, 76. 
 
 Dartmouth College, 134. 
 
 Davenport, James, 129, 131, 146. 
 
 Davenport, John, of New Haven, 49, 62, 79, 80. 
 
 Decadence in second generation, 83, and later. III. 
 
 Dedham decision, 167. 
 
 Democracy in state or church disfavored in early New 
 
 England, 27,53; movement towards led by John 
 
 Wise, 98, 106, 141. 
 Dexter, Henry Martyn, 270, 271. 
 Dickinson, Jonathan, 122. 
 Discipline, church, 36, 86, 103. 
 
 Dissenters, Baptist, Quaker and Episcopalian, 106, 143. 
 Dorchester, England, source of Puritan migration, 17, 
 
 45 ; in Mass., 48. 
 Dunning, Albert E., 270. 
 Dwight, Timothy, 137, 146, 149, 185, 204. 
 
 Eaton, Theophilus, of New Haven, 49. 
 
276 
 
 Index 
 
 Education, See Colleges and Theological. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 117, 128, 133, 134, 138. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan the younger, 137, 150, 207. 
 
 EHot, John, 108, 109. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, declines to observe the Lord's 
 Supper, 177; gives offense by pantheism, 178. 
 
 Emmons, Nathanael, 137, 186; his ecclesiastical Jacob- 
 inism, 188, 224, 237. 
 
 Endicott, Governor John, 20, 31, 42. 
 
 English Congregationalism, a later growth, 263; its 
 honorable record, 265. 
 
 Evarts, Jeremiah, 205, 208. 
 
 Fellowship of Churches, 43, 53, 106, 141. 
 
 Fmney, Charles Gaylord, evangelist and theologian, 
 
 213, 219. 
 Freeman, James, of King's Chapel, 157, 164. 
 Fuller, Samuel, physician and deacon at Plymouth, 30. 
 
 Gay, Ebenezer, pastor at Hingham, 158. 
 
 Great Awakening, 1 19. 
 
 Griffin, Edward Dorr, of Andover and Boston, 191. 
 
 Half-way covenant, 76, 112, 114. 
 
 Hartford First Church adopts dogmatic test of member- 
 ship, 190. 
 
 Harvard College, 108, 113; seats a Unitarian in chair 
 of theology, 161 ; its temporary decline, 186. 
 
 Higginson, Francis, minister at Salem, 20, 34, 38. 
 
 Hingham Church, Presbyterian tendency, 61, 74; in 
 charge of Ebenezer Gay, 158, and of Henry Ware, 
 161 ; its ancient meeting-house, Frontispiece. 
 
 Home Missionary Societies, 145, 199, 
 
 Hooker, Richard, his " Polity," 15. 
 
 Hooker, Thomas, founder of Hartford, 61, 92. 
 
 Hopkins, Samuel, theologian, 137, 207. 
 
 Hopkinsianism, 157. 
 
 Hutchinson, Mrs. Ann, 56, 60. 
 
Index 277 
 
 Illinois Band, 226. 
 
 Independent, newspaper, 218. 
 
 Indians, American, conversion of, 133, 134. 
 
 Iowa Band, 227. 
 
 Journalism, religious, 147, 218. 
 
 King's Chapel becomes Unitarian, 157. 
 
 Lamson, Alvan, ordained at Dedham, 167. 
 Legislatures controlling churches, 53, 58, 92, 126. 
 License to preach, 107. 
 London, a Puritan centre, 45. 
 
 Massachusetts Company sends settlers to " The Bay," 
 and ministers, 20 ; and brings over its charter, 46, 
 
 Mather, Cotton, 109, 207. 
 
 Mather, Increase, 85, 91, 109, 165. 
 
 Mather, Richard, 62. 
 
 Mayhew, Jonathan, early Unitarian, 159. 
 
 Membership in church, conditions of, 28, 64, 73, 81, 89, 
 104, 112, 116, 142, 189, 224. 
 
 Millenary petition, 14. 
 
 Mills, Samuel John, Jr., 193, 197, 199. 
 
 Ministry, early theories, 34, 40, 52 ; how far abandoned, 
 69, 71, 90, 105, 167. 
 
 Missions, foreign, 193, 268; home, 144. 
 
 Morse, Jedediah, 164; Sidney, 218. 
 
 National Councils, 221, 229, 231. 
 Newbury, Presbyterian tendency at, 61. 
 New Haven, planted and organized, 49; merged in 
 Connecticut, 80, 102. 
 
 Oberlin College and Seminary, 211 ; Council at, 
 
 231. 
 Occum, Samson, 134. 
 Old Calvinists, 157. 
 Old South Church, Boston, 80, 163, 169, 229, 
 
278 
 
 Index 
 
 Ordination, at Salem, 34, 40; English ordination in- 
 valid, 40, 52; definition, 71, 105. 
 
 Orthodox secessions in Eastern Massachusetts, 168; de- 
 velop great vigor, 186; tend to theological excess, 
 191, and to a sectarian polity, 188. 
 
 Palfrey, John Gorham, 271. 
 
 Parish system of New England, 54, 102, 126, 166, 168. 
 
 Park, Edwards Amasa, 137. 
 
 Park Street Church, Boston, 189, 208. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, disfellowshipped by Unitarians for 
 heresy, 179. 
 
 Payson, Edward, his doctrine of human nature, 192. 
 
 Philip's war, 85. 
 
 PhilHps, George, of Watertown, 53. 
 
 Pierpont, James, of New Haven, 109 ; Sarah, 1 18. 
 
 Pilgrims of Plymouth, 19, 23, 25, 27. 
 
 Plan of Union, 150, 152, 198, 200 ; abrogated, 220, 221. 
 
 Platform, Cambridge, 65 ; Saybrook, 94. 
 
 Plymouth, church at, is divided, 160. 
 
 Presbyterian Church, aided by New England, 149 ; in- 
 fluenced by it, 151, 190, 200. 
 
 Presbyterianism of early New England churches, 28, 53, 
 55, 105, 140, 152. 
 
 Princeton College, 138. 
 
 Proposals of 1705, 92. 
 
 Puritanism in England, not Congregationalist, 13; prin- 
 ciples of, 14, 16. 
 
 Reforming Synod, 85, iii. 
 Robinson, John, 26, 29. 
 
 Salem, settled and organized, 20, 23, 33. 
 
 Savoy Confession, 87, no. 
 
 Saybrook Synod, 93 ; platform, 93. 
 
 Scrooby, church at, 25. 
 
 Sectarian division not intended by early Congregation- 
 
 alists, 41, 63, 73, 142 ; sectarian polity a later 
 
 growth, 225. 
 
Index 279 
 
 Separatism, 16, 20, 24, 51, 62. 
 Separatists in Connecticut, 130, 143. 
 Shipherd, John J., 212. 
 Skelton, Samuel, pastor at Salem, 34. 
 Slavery, 207, 215, 220, 222. 
 Smalley, John, theologian, 137. 
 Smith, Ralph, Separatist minister, 41. 
 Society, ecclesiastical, 104. 
 Stoddard, Solomon, 81, 113, ii7» "P- 
 Sturtevant, Julian M., 226, 237. 
 Synods, 59,65,85, 114, 126. 
 
 Taylor, Nathaniel W., 137. 
 
 Tennent, Gilbert, 125. 
 
 Theological education, 137, 162, 185, 187. 
 
 Theology of New England, 134. 
 
 Transcendentalism, 176. 
 
 Trumbull, Benjamin, 271. 
 
 Unitarianism, its brilliant beginning, 170; its biblical 
 methods; doctrine of human nature, 172; adhered 
 to Congregational principles, 173; failed of the 
 duty of parish churches, 174; sterility ; usefully in- 
 fluential, 176; disturbed by Western Issue, 180; 
 initial success, 182; narrowly Hmited, 183; slow 
 growth ; forward movement, 252. 
 
 Vane, Sir Harry, at Boston, 57. 
 
 Voluntary societies for beneficence, 196; ready check on 
 abuses, 235. 
 
 Walker, Williston, 65, 270, 271. 
 
 Ware, Henry, 161. 
 
 Ware, Henry, Jr., 17S. 
 
 Washington Band, 227. 
 
 West, The, 144- . . 
 
 Western Reserve, home missions in, 144; university, 
 
 268. 
 Westminster Confession, 75, 1 10. 
 
28o Index 
 
 Wesley, John, 122. 
 Wlieelock, Eleazar, 134. 
 Wheelwright, John, 56, 5S, 60. 
 White, John, of Dorchester, 17, 45, 49. 
 Whitefield, George, 122. 
 Williams, Roger, 60, 109. 
 Williams College, 185, 193. 
 Wilson, John, of Boston, 47. 
 Winthrop, Governor John, 46, 57, 59. 
 Wise, John, 98, 106, 152. 
 
 Yale College, 113, 139, 146, 185. 
 
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