SHORT HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 A.D. 1492-1890 
 
 JOHN F. HUKST, D.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "SHORT HISTORY OF THE EARLY CHURCH" 
 
 " SHORT HISTORY OF THE MODERN CHURCH IN EUROPE " 
 
 " SHORT HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION " ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHAUTAUQUA PRESS 
 
 C. L. S. C. DEPARTMENT 
 
 150 FIFTH AVKNUE 
 
 1890
 
 The required looks of the C. L. S. C. are recommended by a Council 
 of six. It must, however, be understood that recommendation does not 
 involve an approval by the Council, or by any member of it, of every 
 principle or doctrine contained in the book recommended. 
 
 Copyright, 1890, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 All right* rttened.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 
 
 OHAPTKIl PAOB 
 
 I. THE NEW CHRISTENDOM 1 
 
 II. THE SPANISH COLONIZATION 4 
 
 III. THE FRENCH COLONIZATION 8 
 
 IV. THE ENGLISH COLONIZATION : VIRGINIA AND 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS 12 
 
 V. MARYLAND, PENNSYLVANIA, AND OTHER ENG- 
 LISH COLONIES 17 
 
 VI. CONTINENTAL COLONIES : DUTCH, SWEDES, HU- 
 GUENOTS, AND OTHER PROTESTANTS .... 21 
 
 VII. THE PROVIDENTIAL PLANTING 25 
 
 VIII. POLITICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE COLONIES. . 28 
 
 IX. CHURCH GOVERNMENT IN THE COLONIES ... 81 
 
 X. EDUCATION 35 
 
 XI. INTOLERANCE IN THE COLONIES 40 
 
 XII. RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE COLONIES 46 
 
 XIII. COLONIAL WORSHIP AND USAGES 49 
 
 XIV. MISSIONS TO THE INDIANS 52 
 
 XV. THEOLOGICAL MOVEMENTS ,57 
 
 1711842
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PART II. THE NATIONAL PERIOD. 
 
 CHAPTER 1'AGE 
 
 I. THE CHURCH AT THE FOUNDING OF THE RE- 
 PUBLIC 63 
 
 II. THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE ... 65 
 
 III. THE REVIVAL AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 
 
 CENTURY 67 
 
 IV. EXPANSION IN THE SOUTH AND WEST. . . ., . 69 
 V. THE LARGE AND EARLIER DENOMINATIONS . . 72 
 
 VI. THE SMALLER EVANGELICAL BODIES ..... 78 
 
 VII. THE QUAKERS . . 81 
 
 VIII. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 82 
 
 IX. THE UNITARIAN CHURCH 85 
 
 X. THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS 87 
 
 XI. UNIVERSALISTS AND OTHER SMALLER BODIES. . 89 
 
 XII. THE MORMON ABOMINATION 92 
 
 XIII. THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORM ....".... 95 
 
 XIV. THE TEMPERANCE REFORM 99 
 
 XV. PHILANTHROPY AND CHRISTIAN UNION . . . .103 
 
 XVI. MISSIONS 107 
 
 XVII. CHRISTIAN LITERATURE Ill 
 
 XVIII. THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL 117 
 
 XIX. THE AMERICAN PULPIT 120 
 
 XX. THEOLOGY OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH .... 123 
 
 INDEX . . 127
 
 SHORT HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 i. 
 
 Colonial 
 
 1492-17'83. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE NEW CHRISTENDOM. 
 
 1. Europe in the Sixteenth Century was in convulsion. 
 The Reformation had already stirred England to its 
 centre by the fearless labors of Wyclif, while Huss of 
 Bohemia had uttered a cry of warning which was heard 
 throughout the Continent and awakened fear in Rome. 
 These reformatory movements reacted on the political 
 life of all the central nations. Not a throne was safe 
 where the new religious revolt was in full force. The 
 entire sixteenth century was a period of universal dis- 
 turbance. The progress of reform provoked violent 
 hostility, and every land was divided into factions. 
 There were three general grades of sentiment. One 
 class, receiving its inspiration from Rome, wished to 
 continue the old order, with the Pope as practical 
 sovereign. Another class, craving liberty and an ac- 
 1
 
 2 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 commodation to the new order, was willing to break 
 loose from the Roman see, but desired to retain many 
 of the Romish usages. The third class saw nothing 
 but antichrist in Rome, and found hope only in casting 
 off every reminder of papal doctrine and custom. 
 
 2. The Transferal of European Conflicts to America was 
 the new order. Whenever a colony came to America, 
 it no sooner settled in its new habitat than it revived, 
 under broader conditions, the struggle in Avhich it had 
 been engaged in Europe. The cavalier of the Virginia 
 Colony surrendered none of his old attachment to the 
 Church of England. The Plymouth Pilgrim was even 
 more intense in his revolt against both Romanism and 
 Protestant Episcopacy than he had been when he was 
 a Brownist at Scrooby, a parishioner of Robinson in 
 Leyden, or a Pilgrim on the Mayflower. In the new 
 world were fought out, in smaller numbers, and by con- 
 testants more dispersed, the issues which had driven 
 the colonists to the Western wilds. 
 
 3. The Religious Motive was supreme in the mind of 
 all the best colonists. To enjoy the free exercise of 
 conscience was the Pilgrim's one passion, whose bright 
 flame no distance from native land, nor stormy seas, nor 
 rigor of climate, nor danger of death by savage hands 
 could quench. Our first settlers came as Christians, 
 lived as Christians, and planted the religious principle 
 as the richest inheritance for their posterity. The 
 Pilgrims, before leaving England, had no thought of 
 separating from the Established Church, but longed 
 for reformation within it ; and they resolved on the 
 expedient of emigration only when James I. deceived 
 them, and said : " I will make them conform or harry 
 them out of the land." "The charter of the first col- 
 ony," says Baird, " that of Virginia, provided that the
 
 THE NEW CHRISTENDOM. 3 
 
 whole settlement should have a Christian character, and 
 enjoined the worship of the Church of England, re- 
 quiring every male colonist of sixteen and upward 
 to pay ten pounds of tobacco and one bushel of corn 
 for the support of the Church. When the Puritans 
 gained ascendency in England, under the Protectorate 
 of Cromwell, Virginia and the Carolinas became the 
 refuge for the Cavalier and the Churchman, as after- 
 wards of the Huguenot and the German Protestant. 
 Georgia was colonized expressly as an asylum for im- 
 prisoned and persecuted Bohemians and the inhabitants 
 of the Italian valleys, and the Colony of Gnstavus 
 Adolpluis was to be a blessing to the whole Protestant 
 world by offering a shelter to all who stood in need of 
 one."
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SPANISH COLONIZATION. 
 
 1. The Earliest on the New American field were the 
 Spanish discoverers and conquerors. When Columbus 
 discovered the little West India island of San Salvador, 
 and raised upon the shore the cross, he dedicated it and 
 the lands beyond to his sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isa- 
 bella. The " Gloria in Excelsis " was sung by the discov- 
 erer and his weary crew with as much fervor as it had 
 ever been chanted in the cathedrals of Spain. The faith 
 was the Roman Catholic. On his second voyage, in 
 1494, Columbus took with him a vicar apostolic and 
 twelve priests, and on the island of Hayti erected the 
 first chapel in the Western World. The success of Co- 
 lumbus in discovering a new world in the west awak- 
 ened a wild enthusiasm throughout Europe. Visions 
 of gold inflamed the minds alike of rulers, knights, and 
 adventurers. To discover and gather treasures, and 
 organize vast missionary undertakings, became the 
 mania of the times. No European country which pos- 
 sessed a strip of seaboard escaped the delirium. To 
 send out a vessel or a fleet to the new world was the 
 fashion of the palace and the capitalist. 
 
 2. Mexico was the first broad field of conquest by 
 the Spaniards. Cortes led the expedition, and in 1520 
 landed at a point which still bears the name of Vera 
 Cruz (the True Cross). He conciliated a tribe which 
 was in rebellion against the Aztec king Montezuma,
 
 THE SPANISH COLONIZATION. 5 
 
 and succeeded in dethroning the king, and bringing 
 the country into subjection to Spain. The colonists, 
 who arrived in quick succession, had among their mem- 
 bers earnest priests, to whom it was a passion to carry 
 the cross into the interior, and to convert, by any 
 means, the aborigines to the Gospel of Christ. From 
 the capital, Mexico, missionaries representing the prin- 
 cipal Roman orders penetrated all parts of the new 
 province, reached the shores of the Pacific, and formed 
 a line of missions up the Pacific nearly to the present 
 state of Washington. 
 
 3. Other fields, more or less dependent on Mexico, 
 were rapidly added to the Spanish domain in America. 
 In 1542 Coronado led an expedition northward into 
 the New Mexico and Arizona of our day, and the mis- 
 sion of the priest continued after that of the military 
 adventurer was ended. The traces of this expedition 
 are still to be seen in the old churches of Santa Fe 
 and Tucson, and in the Roman Catholic faith of the 
 mixed Indian and Spanish population. The conquest 
 of Florida was begun by Pamphilo de Narvaez in 1526, 
 and completed about 1601. A Huguenot colony was 
 established there, but the Spaniards would not allow 
 it to live. They murdered the Huguenots, and estab- 
 lished their own missions on the spot. Texas was or- 
 ganized into a mission by Father de Olmos in 1546. 
 De Soto explored the Mississippi Valley. Vasco Nunez 
 de Balboa and Alonzo de Ojedu explored the Isthmus 
 of Darien, and added the contiguous regions to the 
 same broadening domain of Spain and the Roman 
 communion. 
 
 4. The Evils of Spanish Colonization were manifested 
 in each of these sections. The conqueror was devoted 
 to the Church, and missionaries became willing tools
 
 6 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 to compel obedience to the new Spanish authority. 
 Wherever the natives refused allegiance to the relig- 
 ion of the conquerors, they were persecuted and even 
 put to death. Las Casas, the one humane servant of 
 his Church, reports that in Yucatan alone five millions 
 of Mexican aborigines were slaughtered. The curse 
 of Spanish cruelty in Mexico has never been counter- 
 balanced by beneficence in other departments. The 
 Aztec and other native races have always cherished a 
 violent hostility to the very name of the Spaniard. As 
 if a divine Nemesis had watched over those suffering 
 people for three centuries, the freedom from Spanish 
 rule and the birth of the Mexican Republic have been 
 brought about by descendants of the natives whom the 
 Spaniards persecuted. Juarez, the Washington of Mex- 
 ico, was an Indian, and the first president, Diaz, is in 
 part Indian, while Altamirano and other leading liter- 
 ary characters are of unmixed Indian blood. 
 
 5. All the Spanish Colonies in North America shared 
 with Mexico the same narrow spirit. The Spaniard 
 was in the New World to get what he could ; to en- 
 force his faith ; to carry back gold to enrich the coffers 
 of Spain and the Pope ; to add to his own dignity by 
 grinding down the conquered races. Florida, the Mis- 
 sissippi Valley, the Pacific Coast, the West India Islands, 
 and Central America became a vast feudatory territo- 
 ry, whose treasures were used for filling foreign coffers, 
 and whose people were regarded as little better than 
 slaves. 
 
 6. Scanty Education was imparted to these millions 
 newly added to the Roman faith. Some of the priests 
 translated devotional and doctrinal treatises into the 
 native tongues, in order the better to reach the people. 
 The printing-press was early erected in both Mexico
 
 THE SPANISH COLONIZATION. 7 
 
 and Vera Cruz, but only as an instrument of ecclesias- 
 tical authority. Molina published in Mexico an Aztec 
 and Spanish Dictionary in 1545 the first important 
 philological work printed in America. Small works 
 by Zumaraga were also published in the Aztec tongue 
 in the city of Mexico. Many devotional works in the 
 Spanish language were printed in Spain and Flanders, 
 and introduced into Mexico for the better holding of 
 the increasing Spanish population in willing subjection 
 to the Roman Catholic Church.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE FKENCH COLONIZATION. 
 
 1. Prance Looking Westward. Very soon after the 
 discovery of America the French mariners caught from 
 Spain and Portugal the spirit of discovery, and went 
 westward in search of new lands, to add them to the 
 dominion of France. They explored the regions of 
 the present dominion of Canada, which became known 
 on the map of the world as New France. They thread- 
 ed the Mississippi, and planted colonies at favorable 
 points. They formed friendly relations with the In- 
 dian tribes, and built up a powerful system of colonies, 
 half religious and half political, which grew in strength 
 as time advanced. This w T as the French Roman Cath- 
 olic current to America, which, later, threatened to ex- 
 tinguish the Anglo-Saxon domination. 
 
 2. The French Navigators who came to the Western 
 World were prompted by the spirit of discovery, finan- 
 cial gain, and temporal dominion. They were not will- 
 ing that the Spanish, Portuguese, and English should 
 monopolize either the glory or the advantage of dis- 
 coveries and colonization on the continent. Verrezano 
 led an expedition in 1524 to North Carolina, and went 
 northward as far as Newfoundland. Cartier continued 
 where Verrezano left off, explored the Gulf of St. Law- 
 rence, ascended the river as far as where Montreal now 
 stands, and penetrated the great wilds of Canada. 
 Champlain made still further explorations. He found-
 
 THE FRENCH COLONIZATION. 9 
 
 cd Quebec, and, in 1608, made it the centre of his 
 authority in New France. He entered into friendly 
 relations with the great Indian tribes. Under him the 
 authority of France was established, and a new and vast 
 territory was added to the domains of the French king. 
 
 3. The French along the Great Lakes. The French 
 had only to continue their exploration westward. No 
 European colony stood in their way. Their Jesuit 
 missionaries, who accompanied every exploring expe- 
 dition, organized missions, taught the elements of their 
 doctrines to the new Indian members, and counted no 
 sacrifice too dear to convert the savages to Christian- 
 ity. Montreal was founded, and became the seat of a 
 strong Jesuit missionary force. Detroit was added to 
 the map of the Jesuit world. The Huron tribes, whose 
 northern territory skirted the frozen zone, became a 
 special object of Jesuit zeal. So intense was this new 
 enthusiasm that the northern regions of the present 
 states of Maine and New York became a mission field. 
 Here labored Fathers Druellettes and Jogues, who ex- 
 hibited all the energy of Xavier in braving dangers 
 from savages and the elements. On both sides of the 
 St. Lawrence, and striking far into the interior, and 
 going ever westward, the chain of missions extended 
 along the shores of Lake Michigan, and to the far-off 
 region of Lake Superior. Rome and France divided 
 the glory. Realistic accounts were sent back to Eu- 
 rope, and an intense sympathy was aroused, in palace 
 and hut, in behalf of the evangelization of tribes whose 
 existence the Jesuit missionaries were the first to make 
 known to the European world. 
 
 4. The Mississippi Valley was explored by the French, 
 and wherever the explorers went the Jesuit fathers es- 
 tablished missions. Joliet, the layman, and Father
 
 10 THE CHUKCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Marquette, the Jesuit priest, continued westward until 
 they struck the headwaters of the Mississippi, and de- 
 scended it as far as the mouth of the Arkansas, when 
 they returned to Canada. La Salle, more bold, de- 
 scended the river to the Gulf of Mexico, and proclaimed 
 the valley of the Mississippi a possession of his king, 
 Louis XIV. of France. Iberville sailed from France 
 in 1698 with an expedition, and later, in 1700, estab- 
 lished a French colony near the mouth of the Missis- 
 sippi. In the path of these explorations missions were 
 established at every convenient point. Indians were 
 gathered into the Roman fold along the great river 
 and its tributaries. A chain of missions extended 
 from the gulf directly northward into the interior of 
 Canada, and thence eastward as far as the Gulf of St. 
 Lawrence and the Atlantic Ocean. 
 
 5. The Outcome of the great French colonial system, 
 in its early period, promised largely. The leading 
 Jesuit fathers were heroes in endurance and daring. 
 In the annals of the Christian Church their self-sacri- 
 fice is not surpassed. The accounts which they sent 
 back to France concerning their work, and which pass 
 by the name of the " Jesuit Relations," are among the 
 rarest and most brilliant narratives of missionary op- 
 erations produced by the modern Church. As time 
 advanced, the Jesuit character passed largely-from the 
 spiritual guide into the political agent. No European in 
 America has ever possessed the confidence of the Indian 
 as did the French Jesuit. While the first lesson which 
 the western and the northern Indian was taught was 
 
 O 
 
 loyalty to Christ, in the same breath was taught loy- 
 alty to the king of France. In time the second loy- 
 alty was the stronger lesson. The Indian was urged 
 to hate the English. The Englishman was loathed as
 
 THE FRENCH COLONIZATION. 11 
 
 the Protestant, and therefore the enemy. The colonial 
 missions along the Mississippi now grew in commercial 
 importance. The chain along the Lakes, extending from 
 the northwestern limit of Lake Superior to the Atlan- 
 tic Ocean, was far behind the English advance in New 
 England, the middle, and the southern colonies. There 
 was religious stagnation and political retrogression. 
 
 6. English and French Colonists in Canada had now 
 developed so far, and had come into such frequent 
 collision, that a final solution was soon to be reached. 
 The struggle between the English on the one side and 
 the French and Indians on the other, at Fort Duquesne, 
 the present Pittsburgh, in 1754, resulted in the defeat 
 of the English under Braddock. This gave the whole 
 west into the hands of the French. But the English 
 were not ready to surrender the contest. The war 
 was carried into Canada and along the southern side 
 of the St. Lawrence. Monckton subdued the French in 
 Nova Scotia in 1755. Fort Duquesne, Frontenac, and 
 Louisbourg fell into English hands in 1758. Niagara, 
 Crown Point, and Ticonderoga were now also wrested 
 from the French. The final struggle was for Quebec. 
 Here the English also Avon. Wolfe received a fatal 
 wound, but when told " They run !" he had strength 
 to ask, " Who run ?" The answer was, "The French." 
 He answered, " I thank God ; I die happy." 
 
 This was the end of French dominion in Canada. All 
 the vast dreams of a New France in the Western World 
 were now over. The treaty which followed the fall of 
 Quebec gave all the territory east of the Mississippi 
 to England. This conquest of Canada by the English 
 was second only to the Revolutionary War in its effects 
 on Protestantism in America. Without it, the success 
 of the Revolution would hardly have been possible.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE ENGLISH COLONIZATION : VIRGINIA AND MASSA- 
 CHUSETTS. 
 
 1. The First English Discoveries. England was pro- 
 foundly impressed by the Spanish discoveries in Amer- 
 ica. Her rulers and her sailors were alike anxious, 
 from different motives, to gather into the British do- 
 main whatever treasures and territory the New World 
 might give them. It was a European race for gold, 
 for furs, for land. So far, Spain had the advantage. 
 But the Anglo-Saxon, in all modern history, has been 
 the king of circumstance. Four years after Columbus 
 knelt on the shore of the little island of San Salvador, 
 and raised the cross, John Cabot sailed from Eng- 
 land westward to reach China. Henry VII. gave him 
 authority to discover unknown lands, and incorporate 
 them with the British Isles. While he sailed for Chi- 
 na, he touched the bleak shore of Labrador. On a sec- 
 ond voyage he discovered Newfoundland and the New 
 England coast, and skirted the Atlantic coast down to 
 Florida. Other English discoverers followed in his 
 bold ocean pathway Martin Frobisher, Sir Humphrey 
 Gilbert, Captain John Smith, Sir Walter Raleigh, and 
 Gorges. Sir Humphrey Gilbert was lost at sea, and 
 shortly before his death he was heard to say, " We are 
 as near heaven by sea as by land." Wherever these 
 discoverers went they laid claim to the land in the name 
 of the British crown. It was little concern whether
 
 TI1E ENGLISH COLONIZATION. 13 
 
 Spain or France had already claimed it. The future 
 would decide which was the abler to hold and colonize. 
 
 2. The James River Colony. The first stage in devel- 
 opment was to colonize. The James River Colony was 
 the first attempt at permanent occupation. This col- 
 ony consisted of English cavaliers, devoted adherents 
 of the Established Church. The colonists arrived in 
 Virginia, and settled on the bank of James River, in 
 1603. The easy-going, gentlemanly element predom- 
 inated. Of the one hundred and five colonists, only 
 twelve were tillers of the soil. The leader was John 
 Smith. The Church of England was established as 
 the ecclesiastical body. It was required that each 
 male over sixteen years of age should pay annually ten 
 pounds of tobacco and one bushel of corn for the sup- 
 port of the clergy. Very soon there arose trouble in 
 the little body. John Smith had his enemies, and they 
 were not slow to express their hostility. One of the 
 members of this colony was Sandys, who wrote the 
 first English work ever written in the Western Hemi- 
 sphere a " Translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses." By 
 trouble with the Indians, by depletion through disease, 
 and from other causes, the colonists were reduced to 
 great need, and but for a timely reinforcement would 
 probably have become extinct. The first stage of diffi- 
 culty having passed, the pei'iod of earnest practical 
 work began. John Smith wrote back to England a 
 letter disabusing the public mind of its dream of gold 
 from Virginia by saying, " Nothing is to be expected 
 thence but by labor." Corn was planted, houses were 
 built, tobacco-fields were cultivated, and in fifteen years 
 the number of colonists, increased by later energetic 
 arrivals, numbered five thousand people. 
 
 3. The Plymouth Colony arrived in 1620, at Cape Cod.
 
 14 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 These men were the boldest, most original, and most 
 devout of all the organized colonies which landed on 
 the American shore. The Pilgrims were revolution- 
 ists in the highest moral sense. The little company of 
 Brownists, who were Separatists from the Established 
 Church, sailed from Scrooby, in Lincolnshire, England, 
 for Holland, intending to make that country their per- 
 manent abode. They remained in Amsterdam one year, 
 then went to Leyden, and lived twelve years, where 
 they had a church of three hundred communicants, and 
 finally determined to try their fortunes in the New 
 'World ; or, as Canning has said, " They turned to the 
 New World to redress the balance of the Old." Two 
 of their number Robert Cushman and John Carver 
 were sent to England to secure a patent to unite with 
 the Virginia Colony. A patent seems to have been 
 received, but it did them no good. The Pilgrims left 
 Leyden for England, and set sail from Plymouth in 
 the Mayflower and the Speedwell. The latter vessel 
 proved unseaworthy, and returned. The Mayflower 
 crossed the ocean, and on November 9, 1620, she dropped 
 anchor at Cape Cod. John Robinson had been the pas- 
 tor in Leyden. He remained in Europe, but comfort- 
 ed his flock by sympathetic administration until they 
 sailed and by pastoral letters after their departure. 
 The Plymouth colonists suffered from disease, the in- 
 roads of the Indians, and the scarcity of food. They 
 " knew not at night where to have a bit in the morn- 
 ing." Eight months after their arrival they removed 
 permanently from Cape Cod, and settled on the west- 
 ern side of Massachusetts Bay, where they built a town, 
 and called it Plymouth, after the last place which they 
 had left in England. 
 4. The Colony of Massachusetts Bay was secured by
 
 THE ENGLISH COLONIZATION. 15 
 
 English Puritans in 1629. Probably Charles I. would 
 never have granted this Puritan request but for its char- 
 acter permission to leave his realm. Then, too, he 
 may have been influenced by the fact that James I., in 
 November, 1G20, had granted a charter to forty per- 
 sons for a belt of territory between the fortieth and 
 forty-eighth degrees of north latitude, extending from 
 the Atlantic to the Pacific. This charter had been 
 dissolved, and the new charter for Massachusetts Bay 
 might safely take its place. Winthrop, with a com- 
 pany of eight hundred men, was the Massachusetts lead- 
 er. He said, "I shall call that my country where I may 
 most glorify God and enjoy the presence of my dearest 
 friends." The Massachusetts men consisted of the mid- 
 dle class of English Puritans. Some were lawyers and 
 members of other learned professions. Others were 
 good farmers, men of large landed estates, Oxford schol- 
 ars, and divines. Among the clergy were such intel- 
 lectual giants as Cotton, Hooker, and Roger Williams. 
 5. Rapid Increase. A body of two hundred colonists 
 was already established at Salem. Winthrop's men 
 united with them. Some seven hundred more colo- 
 nists followed in the wake of Winthrop's ships. There 
 was no hope whatever for any favor in England. The 
 whole trend of royal authority was against the Puri- 
 tans. Archbishop Laud was persecuting all non-con- 
 formists, without even the pretence of mercy. The 
 Puritans looked to America as probably their only safe 
 asylum. There was not a Puritan fireside in England 
 where the hope of going to America was not enter- 
 tained. During the ten or eleven years preceding the 
 Long Parliament not less than two hundred ships left 
 England, bearing towards the Western World twenty 
 thousand Puritans. " Farewell, dear England," they
 
 16 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 said, as the English coast faded from their view, while 
 Winthrop's followers wrote back to the less fortunate 
 brethren : " Our hearts shall be fountains of tears for 
 your everlasting welfare, when we shall be in our poor 
 cottages in the wilderness." 
 
 6. The Amalgamation of the Colonies of Plymouth and 
 Massachusetts Bay was only a question of time. The 
 two bodies differed essentially. The Plymouth men 
 had no royal authority; were without charter; cared 
 nothing for it; rejoiced in their independence; were 
 outside of the Church of England ; indeed, carried a 
 free lance from the hour they left Scrooby for Holland. 
 The men of Massachusetts Bay were a political body. 
 The charter was to the Governor and Company of 
 Massachusetts Bay in New England. They had large 
 authority, and could admit new members on any terms 
 they pleased. They professed strong attachment to 
 the king, but enjoyed the liberty of an ocean between 
 Massachusetts Bay and Charles I. 
 
 7. A Serious Question now arose: How would these 
 two colonies stand related to each other? While 
 Massachusetts Bay Colony had royal credentials, and 
 was of greater number, the Plymouth Colony was 
 older ; had been making laws ; expanding ; studying 
 the Indian character ; organizing a church ; developing, 
 under Miles Standish, a military system ; in fact, found- 
 ing a nation. The smaller body gave strength to the 
 larger. Whatever bonds held the Massachusetts men 
 to dear England were now seen to be useless. In due 
 time the two bodies were marvellously alike all were 
 separatists from the Establishment ; all met together 
 in ecclesiastical synods; the civil and the religious life 
 became a unit. Little Plymouth had proved stronger 
 than large Massachusetts Bay.
 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MARYLAND, PENNSYLVANIA, AND OTHER ENGLISH COLO- 
 NIES. 
 
 1. The Colony of Maryland was the only English col- 
 ony of the Roman Catholic faith. Sir Charles Calvert 
 (Lord Baltimore) had been a Protestant, but became 
 a Roman Catholic. England was, therefore, no place 
 for him. He, with a company of the same communion, 
 secured a charter for the founding of a colony in Mary- 
 land. In order to carry out his plan he had the shrewd- 
 ness to see that a colony of Roman Catholics alone 
 would not be tolerated. The first Lord Baltimore 
 died before his charter received the royal seal, but the 
 pledges were made good to his son Cecil, the second 
 Lord Baltimore. Freedom was granted to all Chris- 
 tian faiths. The first Maryland law was : " No person 
 within this province professing to believe in Jesus 
 Christ shall be in any ways troubled, molested, or dis- 
 countenanced for his or her religion, or in the free ex- 
 ercise thereof." This was the first declaration of per- 
 fect religious liberty in the New World. The colonists, 
 about two hundred in number, arrived in 1634. The 
 colony was called Maryland, after Henrietta Maria, 
 the wife of Charles I. The first stage in its history 
 was prosperous. While the Catholics were at the 
 outset in the majority, the Protestants increased so 
 rapidly that they soon gained the upper hand. By 
 the end of the century the Protestants had control. 
 2
 
 18 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 The Church of England became the faith of the col- 
 ony. Laws were even enacted against the Roman 
 Catholics. 
 
 2. Other Southern Colonies were now organized. 
 North Carolina was settled mainly through the Vir- 
 ginia colonists, who went thither, introduced their own 
 usages and laws, and established the Church of Eng- 
 land as the faith of the colony. South Carolina also 
 received colonial settlers from Virginia. It began to 
 be a colonial field about 1670. Its laws were at first 
 very liberal, all faiths being protected with equal favor. 
 But in time the Church of England gained greatest 
 strength, and became the established ecclesiastical sys- 
 tem. Georgia was colonized by the humane Ogle- 
 thorpe in 1732. He brought thither a colony consist- 
 ing mostly of English debtors. At this time one of 
 the most badly treated of all classes in England were 
 the debtors. The mere inability to pay a debt was the 
 ground of grossest inhumanity. These people were in- 
 vited to join Oglethorpe, and they became the basis of the 
 future population of Georgia. Persecuted Protestants 
 from Austria settled later in Georgia. Jews were wel- 
 comed. In Oglethorpe's colony were John and Charles 
 Wesley, who came as missionaries to the Indians. 
 
 3. The First Colonists in Pennsylvania were Swedes, 
 Dutch, and English. But the first charter for a regu- 
 lar colony was granted to William Penn, by Charles 
 II., in 1681. Though Penn was a Quaker, and his 
 faith prevailed among the people whom he led to 
 Pennsylvania, all communions were granted full lib- 
 erty. Penn visited Germany, and large numbers of 
 Germans accepted his invitation and settled in the 
 new colony. Penn's just and humane attitude towards 
 the Indians made them the friends of his colony. He
 
 MARYLAND AND OTIIEK ENGLISH COLONIES. 19 
 
 bought of them the land where Philadelphia now 
 stands. They promised: "We will live in love with 
 William Penn and his children, and with his children's 
 children as long as the moon and sun endure." The 
 Quakers, who were persecuted everywhere else in Amer- 
 ica except Rhode Island, came to Pennsylvania. It was 
 the refuge for all the persecuted along the Atlantic 
 coast. 
 
 4. The Scotch-Irish became an important factor in 
 the new Protestant colonization. It is probable that 
 the Scotch stood next to the Irish in determining the 
 religious quality of the great body of American colo- 
 nists. Charles II., when he became king, forgot the 
 service which the Scotch had done for his succession to 
 the English throne, and immediately began to perse- 
 cute them. They were Presbyterians, and in sympa- 
 thy with the Puritans. That was enough for Charles 
 II., who, being a Stuart, was not bound by a sense of 
 honor or obligation. He abolished Presbyterianism in 
 Scotland, and established the Court of High Commis- 
 sion. Persecution of the Presbyterians in Scotland 
 and the north of Ireland became the order of the day. 
 They saw that their only hope lay in hastening to 
 America. They fled the country in large numbers 
 during the reigns of both Charles II. and James II. 
 They went to no particular colony, but only where they 
 had an opportunity to exercise their rights of con- 
 science. Some went to Maine, but the larger number 
 went to East New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They 
 went westward in Pennsylvania along the Susquehanna 
 valley, entered the Cumberland valley, and continued 
 into Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky. 
 
 5. Other Colonists arrived from various parts of Eu- 
 rope. The Moravians, under the guidance of Zinzen-
 
 20 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 dorf, came to Pennsylvania, organized societies in Phil- 
 adelphia, and made Bethlehem, in Pennsylvania, the 
 centre of their work. Moravians also settled in Con- 
 necticut, North Carolina, and, to a limited extent, also 
 in Georgia. The Salzburger Protestants, driven out 
 of Austria because of their faith, were granted land 
 and all civil and religious rights by Oglethorpe in 
 Georgia, where they aided largely in the development 
 of that colony. Protestant Poles joined in the colo- 
 nial cun-ent to America. Italian Protestants came 
 over, and settled in New York, where the people of the 
 Reformed Church extended hospitality to them and 
 took collections in the churches for their relief.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CONTINENTAL COLONIES : DUTCH, SWEDES, HUGUENOTS, 
 AND OTHEK PROTESTANTS. 
 
 1. The Dutch were among the most daring naviga- 
 tors of this period. Rejoicing in their new indepen- 
 dence, they sailed over distant seas, and took possession 
 of new territory with all the vigor and heroism which 
 they had displayed in enduring the siege of Leyden, 
 and resisting the oppression of Spain. Their present 
 possessions in the East Indies are still a testimony to 
 their success on the Oriental seas. " The Truth of the 
 Christian Religion," by Grotius, written for the hea- 
 then world, was one of the strongest, as it was one of 
 the first, pleas of the times for a universal gospel. 
 America came in for its share of Dutch colonial en- 
 terprise. The discovery of the North River by Henry 
 Hudson gave his country the first claim to Manhattan 
 Island, now the site of New York. The Dutch erected 
 there the first cluster of houses in 1614, which was 
 meant as a trading-station with the Indians. They es- 
 tablished other posts along the coast, but this was al- 
 ways the centre of their trade, which consisted chiefly 
 in the exchange of European articles with the Indians 
 for furs. 
 
 2. Little Dutch communities were established on Long 
 Island, Staten Island, along the Hudson River, west- 
 ward along the Mohawk, and in New Jersey along the 
 Passaic valley. They organized their first church in
 
 22 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 New York in 1619. A church in Albany was erected 
 about the same time. The established religion was 
 the Reformed. The ministers, such as Frelinghuy- 
 sen and others, who were educated and talented men, 
 came directly from Holland. The Dutch language was 
 used in the pulpit, and even continued in some cases 
 down to 1764. When New Netherlands was ceded 
 to the English, the name of New York was given to the 
 town and the colony. The population of the town, at 
 the time of the cession, was about ten thousand. 
 
 3. The Colony of New Sweden was established by- 
 Swedes, who settled on the banks of the Delaware in 
 1638. They brought with them the Lutheran faith, 
 and lost nothing of their Protestant attachment by 
 removing to the New World. Gustavus Adolphus 
 took special interest in the colony at its inception, but 
 was killed on the victorious field of Liitzen before its 
 success was assured. The pastors of the colony paid 
 special attention to the conversion of the Indians. 
 Luther's Catechism was translated into the Indian 
 tongue. Campanius and Acrelius sent back minute 
 accounts of the progress of the colony, and their works 
 are two of the best accounts of American colonization 
 extant. There was early conflict with the Dutch, who 
 asserted their claim to the Swedish territory. Peter 
 Stuyvesant, Governor of New Netherlands, led an ex- 
 pedition against the Swedish Colony in 1655, which, 
 after seventeen years of prosperous existence, now came 
 to an end. But the Dutch ownership was brief. The 
 same Stuyvesant, nine years later, hauled down the 
 Dutch flag, surrendered to the English fleet, and New 
 Amsterdam henceforth became New York. 
 
 4. The French Huguenots were an important part of 
 the great body of incoming colonists. The Edict of
 
 CONTINENTAL COLONIES. 23 
 
 Nantes had been issued in the interest of the Protes- 
 tants, who, in France, bore the name of Huguenots. 
 It was not all they wished or merited, but it guaran- 
 teed certain civil and religious rights. When this Edict 
 was revoked by Louis XIV., it was a signal for violent 
 persecution. As many as half a million of French 
 Protestants were driven out of the country. Some 
 werut to Holland, others to Germany, others to Eng- 
 land, others to the Cape of Good Hope, and still others 
 to America. As early as 1662, we find Jean Teuton 
 applying to the Massachusetts Bay Colony for per- 
 mission to live there. He was granted the privilege. 
 In 1686 a tract of eleven thousand acres of land in 
 Massachusetts was ceded to a Huguenot colony, who 
 settled at Oxford. In 1656 a body of Huguenots was 
 welcomed at New Amsterdam. They founded the 
 town of New Rochelle, on the East River. In 1666 
 there were Huguenots in Maryland, and in Virginia in 
 1671. In 1679 Charles II. of England sent two ship- 
 loads of Huguenots to South Carolina. In 1703 the 
 Huguenots were naturalized as citizens in New York. 
 The Huguenots who came to America, and thus dis- 
 tributed themselves in various parts of the colonies, 
 had neither the ambition nor the taste for political 
 colonization. Their sole purpose was freedom for life 
 and faith. No purer Europeans have ever landed on 
 the American coast than the Huguenots of France. 
 Their descendants have adorned every path of life. 
 In war and in peace their names have been in the 
 front rank of Christians and citizens. 
 
 5. The Germans in Pennsylvania. The German immi- 
 gration to America arose out of the persecution of 
 Protestants in the Palatinate by the troops of Louis 
 XIV. of France. The French soldiers persecuted them
 
 24 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 without mercy. All were stripped of their possessions, 
 and many were killed. Those who escaped had to flee 
 the country. Some fled to Northern Germany, where 
 the Elector of Brandenburg gave them a cordial wel- 
 come to Berlin. Others fled to Ireland. Some settled in 
 England. But the general wish was to reach America. 
 Some settled along the Hudson and the Mohawk. But 
 the most of the Germans went to Pennsylvania, dis- 
 tributing themselves from Philadelphia into the inte- 
 rior of the state. The new colony, founded by Will- 
 iam Penn, received large accessions from the Ger- 
 mans. While they did not become Quakers, they were 
 equally welcomed, and became an important popula- 
 tion of the new colony. Before the Revolution nearly 
 all the Germans coming to America were Protestants. 
 From Maine to Georgia they rapidly distributed them- 
 selves, uniting with the colonies in all their great inter- 
 ests, and helping to plant political liberty and an un- 
 fettered gospel.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE PROVIDENTIAL PLANTING. 
 
 1. When the American Planting began, Europe was 
 undergoing a complete transformation. The old con- 
 ditions were breaking up, and a new departure was at 
 hand. The English language had taken the place of 
 the Norman French in England, and represented the 
 popular drift towards larger political and religious lib- 
 erty. In 1362, the English was ordered in the courts 
 of English law. Wyclif's tracts were in the newly 
 liberated tongue, and gave the people their first taste 
 of truth in a language dear to their hearts. Chaucer 
 was the first poet to present in English verse the com- 
 ing larger life of the Anglo-Saxon intellect. English 
 and Continental commerce was extended all over the 
 face of the world. Caxton had made the printing-press 
 the possession of the Anglo-Saxon race. The people of 
 England now first saw the industrial field opening be- 
 fore them. Agriculture showed signs of becoming 
 what it was in republican Rome the best of all man- 
 ual employments. The eastern coast of England was 
 learning from the Flemish weavers, who were now 
 their guests, those lessons of manufacturing which to 
 this day have made England a large producer for all 
 lands. 
 
 2. Protestants were conquering on the great fields of 
 Germany, England, and Scandinavia. Even when they 
 failed in liberty, their.faith in final triumph failed not.
 
 26 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 The Puritans, burning with shame at the royal decep- 
 tion, looked westward to find their true home. When 
 the colonies in America were planted, both from Eng- 
 land and the Continent, the people who constituted 
 them arrived at the moment of European awakening. 
 They brought the best aspirations of the Old World, 
 and determined to realize them in the New. The hour 
 of American colonization was the fittest one, in all 
 modern times, for the New World to receive the best 
 which the Old World had to give. 
 
 3. The Territorial Distribution of the colonists was 
 not less providential. The territorial successes of the 
 Spanish knights, and Jesuit fathers who accompanied 
 them, were confined to a doubtful settlement in Flori- 
 da, to the great province of New Spain (Mexico), and to 
 a strip of the Pacific coast. The French Roman Catho- 
 lic explorers and their Jesuit fathers were limited to 
 Indian evangelization and an uncertain territory along 
 the St. Lawrence, the northern chain of Lakes, and the 
 Mississippi valley. The great English field of coloni- 
 zation lay between these two. It is the temperate belt 
 of North America the region which nature had fit- 
 ted for the most aggressive mission in Western civiliza- 
 tion. Spain's field has become more contracted as the 
 centuries have passed. She now hold no foot of land 
 on the North American continent. Louisiana passed 
 from her hands into French possession, and in 1803 the 
 French sold it to the United States. This purchase, 
 made to fill the empty exchequer of Napoleon I., 
 placed the Mississippi in the possession of the United 
 States, and made the whole domain from that river to 
 the Pacific a future certainty. The French bade fair 
 to own all Canada. The ownership was at last re- 
 duced to the fortunes of one battle that of Quebec,
 
 THE PROVIDENTIAL PLANTING. 27 
 
 in 1759. Here the English conquered. This culmina- 
 tion of a long and bitter series of wars between France 
 and England made the English the possessors of that 
 immense tract lying between the United States and the 
 polar seas, and extending from the Atlantic to the Pa- 
 cific. The war with Mexico, closing in 1848, gave the 
 United States the great state of Texas, which covers an 
 area of two hundred and seventy-five thousand square 
 miles. The territory now protected by the flag of the 
 United States is a rich inheritance. Every part of it 
 is a witness to the providential guidance of our fa- 
 thers to these shores, and a reminder of the obliga- 
 tion upon their posterity to mould our immigrant pop- 
 ulation into a righteous citizenship.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 POLITICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE COLONIES. 
 
 1. No Uniformity in Authority is perceptible in the 
 first colonial organizations. Each arose out of the 
 exigencies of the time. The caprice of the ruler, the 
 necessity of the emigration because of suffering at 
 home, and the favor of the leaders with the court and 
 the people, were each a factor which determined the 
 nature of the new government. The colonies, when 
 once established in the New World, were simply a 
 group of local governments, a cluster of diverse re- 
 publics, each dependent more or less on the order of 
 the government at home. But in all there was larger 
 liberty than either the colonists or their rulers had an- 
 ticipated. The Atlantic added new and deeper colors 
 to the aspirations for freedom. 
 
 2. There were Four Varieties of Colonial Authority and 
 government. One was the Charter governments. This 
 was the type of Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and 
 Connecticut. Plymouth, without the formality of char- 
 ter, possessed the same authority. Large liberty was 
 allowed, and larger liberty was taken than was granted. 
 While there was a general accounting to the home gov- 
 ernment, these colonies had the power of assessing 
 their own taxes, regulating their ecclesiastical system, 
 and determining their colonial legislature. The gov- 
 ernor had to account to England for his conduct. But 
 the Assembly chose his Council, and the Assembly was
 
 POLITICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE COLONIES. 29 
 
 elected by popular suffrage. This large liberty to the 
 popular will was the one fatal cause of dissolving the 
 subjection of the provinces to England. It bred the 
 Revolution, and the Republic. 
 
 3. The Provincial and Royal Grants were the second 
 form of authority. Here was the closest relation to 
 the British Crown. Both the governor and the coun- 
 cil were appointed by the king. There were two 
 houses of legislature, the council being the upper one. 
 The lower house were elected by the people. New 
 Hampshire, New Jersey, Virginia, the two Carolinas, 
 and Georgia were under this form. The third were 
 the Proprietary Grants. This was a grant to the pro- 
 prietors, who could appoint their own governor and 
 convene the legislative body. But there was provision 
 that no act should be done which would interfere with 
 the original authority of the crown. Pennsylvania, 
 Maryland, and Delaware were under this form. In 
 appearance, this was the most liberal of all the forms 
 of colonial government. But New England was so 
 managed by the people and their governors that they 
 took the most authority. The fourth class consisted 
 of irregular colonies, which had no royal authority 
 whatever, but settled among others who did possess 
 it. The Huguenots, the first Germans, the Salzburg 
 Emigrants, the Moravians, and the few Polish and Wal- 
 densian Protestants belonged to this class. They iden- 
 tified themselves with the interests of the colonists 
 who received them and gave them hospitality. 
 
 4. Religious Liberty under these various forms was 
 very diverse. Pennsylvania and Delaware had it in 
 the fullest sense. The Church of England was estab- 
 lished in Virginia, Maryland, New Hampshire, New 
 Jersey, the Carolinas, and Georgia. But even here
 
 30 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 there were varieties of liberty. In Virginia there was 
 only little, but in Georgia both Jew and Gentile had 
 equal protection from the law. While in New York 
 the Reformed Church was established by the West 
 India Company as early as 1640, there was practical 
 freedom of conscience. When the English became 
 possessors of New Amsterdam, they were tolerant to 
 all faiths. Of all the New England colonies, Rhode 
 Island was the first to declare perfect religious tolera- 
 tion. This was due entirely to the leadership of Roger 
 Williams. He was at first a Puritan, but, adopting 
 Baptist and Independent views, he was dismembered, 
 and, but for timely escape, would have been forcibly 
 exported back to England.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CHURCH GOVERNMENT IX THE COLONIES. 
 
 1. The Church Laws in New England proceeded di- 
 rectly from the civil authority. The support of the 
 clergy, the establishment of churches, and the duties 
 of the governing body were prescriptions of colonial 
 legislation. In the first Court of Assistants for Massa- 
 
 O 
 
 chusetts Bay, on August 23, 1630, the first question 
 was the support of the clergy. In the same year the 
 first church in Boston and Charlestown was organized, 
 and Wilson was ordained to the ministry. There was, 
 considering the population, a rapid increase of churches. 
 In fifteen years after the landing at Plymouth the 
 tenth church was organized. 
 
 2. The Church of England being the established faith 
 for the most of the colonies, there was no sepai-ate 
 colonial legislation for ecclesiastical order. All that the 
 governors and councils and legislative bodies needed 
 to do was to provide for the support of the clergy and 
 the erection of edifices. There was universal scarcity 
 of ministers. One of the great causes of the religious 
 decline in Virginia was the Avant of clerical supplies. 
 All who were- in office had to come over as ordained 
 men. 
 
 3. The New England Synods were the source of eccle- 
 siastical doctrine until a definite order of local church 
 government was adopted. Cotton's book, " The Keys," 
 was the guide. The first New England Synod met in
 
 32 THE CHURCH IK THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 1637. But this was a tentative measure. No platform 
 of discipline or doctrine was established by it. In 1646 
 a request was made to the legislature of Massachusetts 
 that it could call a synod for the purpose of establish- 
 ing a "Platform of Church Discipline." Objections 
 were made, many people fearing tyrannical measures. 
 In 1647 the synod met, by order of the legislature, 
 and Cotton, Partridge, and Richard Mather were ap- 
 pointed to frame a platform. 
 
 4. The Cambridge Platform. In 1648 the celebrated 
 Cambridge Platform was adopted as the report of the 
 committee. The Westminster Confession of Faith was 
 adopted as the doctrinal basis of the synod, and " com- 
 mended to the churches of Christ among us, and to 
 the honored court, as worthy of their due consider- 
 ation and acceptance." It declared that the members 
 of the visible Church are saints ; that their children are 
 holy; that the offices of pastor and of teacher are dis- 
 tinct ; that the special work of pastor is to attend to ex- 
 hortation and of the teacher to doctrine ; that the office 
 of ruling elder is distinct from those of pastor and teach- 
 er ; that church officers are to be chosen by the Church, 
 and ordained by imposition of hands ; that the requi- 
 site for membership is repentance of sin and faith in 
 Jesus Christ ; and that synods and councils must de- 
 termine controversies of faith and cases of conscience, 
 and bear witness against mal-administration and cor- 
 ruption in doctrines and manners. In 1679 another 
 synod confirmed this Platform. As all these synods 
 met by order of the legislature, and were approved by 
 the same body, the Platform itself had all the force of 
 civil law, and was the order in courts of law. 
 
 5. The Reforming* Synod the one of 1679 was held 
 for the special purpose of taking action in regard to
 
 CHUECII GOVERNMENT IN THE COLONIES. 33 
 
 the sufferings of the New England colonists. Probably 
 at no time in the colonial or national history has there 
 been such an accumulation of disasters as at this time. 
 The Indian depredations were widespread and devastat- 
 ing ; storms along the coast had wrecked many vessels ; 
 droughts had cut off the harvests ; pestilence had raged 
 in various localities; and fire had spread havoc in the 
 homes and among industries. The legislature called on 
 the churches to send elders and messengers to meet in 
 synod, and discuss two questions What are the pre- 
 vailing evils of New England? and, What is to be done 
 that these evils may be removed ? The synod concluded 
 that the disastrous phenomena were due to the wick- 
 edness of the people, such as decay of godliness ; spirit 
 of contention ; young people not mindful of the obli- 
 gations of baptism ; profanation of the sabbath ; pro- 
 faning of God's name ; neglect of prayer and scriptural 
 reading ; intemperance ; and forsaking the churches. 
 The synod also declared that the members of the 
 churches must advance in piety, renew their vows, 
 support the schools, and cry fervently for the "rain 
 of righteousness." The result was, that "this synod 
 was followed with many of the good effects which 
 were desired and expected by its friends." 
 
 6. The Final Confession of Faith. The Boston Synod 
 of 1680, of which Increase Mather was moderator, 
 adopted a Confession of Faith. With few exceptions, 
 it was the same as that adopted by the Westminster 
 Assembly, and later by the General Assembly of Scot- 
 land. It was, in fact, only more elaborate, the same 
 Confession as the Cambridge Platform, adopted in 1648. 
 A reason was urged for adopting the European Re- 
 formed Confessions, " that so they might not only with 
 one heart, but with one mouth, glorify God and our 
 3
 
 34 TIIE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Lord Jesus Christ." Henceforth this was the doctrinal 
 basis of the churches of colonial New England. 
 
 7. The Saybrook Platform was adopted by the min- 
 isters and delegates of the Colony of Connecticut in 
 1708. The motion for a synod arose from a request of 
 the trustees of Yale College in 1703. The Saybrook 
 Platform was a repudiation of the Savoy and West- 
 minster Confessions of Faith, and embodied a system 
 of ecclesiastical government and discipline. It was 
 passed by the legislative body as a law of the colony 
 of Connecticut, and became the civil constitution for 
 all the churches of the colony.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 1. The Educational Spirit of the first colonists was 
 intense. The Virginia colony numbered among its 
 .members men who had been thoroughly educated, and 
 whose associations and tastes fitted them for an ap- 
 preciation of the value of education to their posterity. 
 The New England colonists, while not from an equally 
 elevated social position in the Old World, were far 
 more devoted to literary pursuits, and were more keen- 
 ly alive to the importance of culture for the well-being 
 of the population. It was the authorship of the Pil- 
 grims which caused their exile in Holland. They had 
 written, and therefore they had to suffer. John Rob- 
 inson, their pastor, was a disputant against Episcopius 
 in the University of Leyden. His writings, which 
 have been preserved, were such as to aid largely in 
 moulding the New England mind in its most plastic 
 period. Brewster was both publisher and author. The 
 records of Winthrop, Morton, and others show the 
 skill with which the first Puritans of New England 
 knew how to use the pen. 
 
 2. Elementary Education. One of the first thoughts 
 of the New England colonists was elementary educa- 
 tion for their children. The first common school was 
 established in New England about 1645, and became 
 the herald of all the common schools in the United 
 States. Instruction was gratuitous, the expenses being
 
 36 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 met by direct tax on the inhabitants of the town. 
 Schools of various grades sprang up in all parts of the 
 New England colonies, though Boston very early be- 
 came the centre. In 1635 an appropriation was made 
 for Pormont as schoolmaster. Six years afterwards 
 the foundation was laid in the same place for the cel- 
 ebrated public Latin School. Academies sprang rap- 
 idly into existence. Here young men were prepared 
 for Harvard, Yale, and similar institutions. 
 
 3. The First Important Educational Movement in Vir- 
 ginia was an undertaking to found the " University of 
 Henrico," for the education of English and Indians. 
 This began within a few years after the settlement in 
 Jamestown. Friends in England took pains to collect 
 funds for the purpose. The Bishop of London gave 
 one thousand pounds sterling for the new institution 
 of learning, and another contributor presented five 
 hundred pounds for educating young Indians. The 
 preacher at Henrico, the Rev. Mr. Bargrave, donated 
 his library. A school preparatory to the University 
 was proposed, to be located at St. Charles City, to be 
 called the East India School, the first gift having been 
 made by the officers and crew of an East India ship. 
 This whole movement failed because of the Indian 
 massacre of 1622. The colonists, however, never lost 
 sight of the founding of a higher institution of learn- 
 ing. Occasionally they had to contend with the op- 
 position of those who governed them. Sir William 
 Berkeley, in 1670, resisted an application of the Lords 
 of Plantation in the following language: "I thank 
 God there are no schools nor printing, and I hope we 
 shall not have them these one hundred years; for learn- 
 ing has brought disobedience and heresy and sects 
 into the world, and printing has divulged them and
 
 EDUCATION. 37 
 
 libels against the best government. God keep us from 
 both !" 
 
 4. Harvard College was the first institution of ad- 
 vanced learning in the American colonies. It was 
 founded in 1639, for the special purpose of a theologi- 
 cal school, for the benefit of posterity, " fearing an illit- 
 erate ministry." The General Court had already voted 
 four hundred pounds for a public school. The Rev. 
 John Harvard, of Charlestown, made a bequest of over 
 eighteen hundred dollars as an endowment to the 
 school. He also donated three hundred and twenty 
 volumes as the beginning of a library. It was called 
 a college, and the name of Harvard, its principal bene- 
 factor, was given to it. The name of Newtown, where 
 it was located, was changed to Cambridge, in honor' of 
 the University of Cambridge, where many of the New 
 England Puritan fathers had been educated. The leg- 
 islature ordered that the income of Charlestown ferry 
 should be granted the college as a perpetual revenue. 
 The Rev. Henry Dunster was appointed the president. 
 The mottoes of the college were : In Gloriam Christi 
 (" For the Glory of Christ ") ; Christo et Ecclesiae (" To 
 Christ and his Church "). The college received its first 
 charter in 1650. That the first idea of the founding 
 of Harvard as a theological school was never lost 
 sight of during its early period may be seen in the 
 fact that during the first century of its history three 
 hundred and seventeen of its alumni became ministers 
 of the Gospel. This institution, and its great success, 
 led to similar ones in other parts of New England. 
 Yale followed in 1701 ; Brown, in 1764 : Dartmouth, 
 in 1769; Burlington, in 1791; and Bowdoin in 1795. 
 
 5. William and Mary College was the first successful 
 attempt to establish an institution of high grade in
 
 38 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Virginia. It was founded in 1693. As Harvard Col- 
 lege grew out of the great success of the pastoral labors 
 of the Rev. Thomas Shepard, so the college of William 
 and Mary grew out of the long and arduous labors of 
 the Rev. Dr. Blair. This institution became the most 
 important educational centre in all the Southern colo- 
 nies. During the entire colonial period it was the 
 place where many of the statesmen and clergy of Vir- 
 ginia were educated. Its power was felt, not only in 
 that one colony, but in the leadership which led to the 
 War of Independence. 
 
 6. The Remaining Colonies were far behind New 
 England in educational measures. New York had its 
 Dutch teachers early, but it was not until 1746 that its 
 first great college Columbia was founded. Prince 
 ton, for New Jersey, was founded in the same year. 
 Dickinson, at Carlisle, was established to meet the 
 wants of the rural population in the valleys of the 
 Cumberland and the Susquehanna. The first provision 
 in Maryland for a school was in 1723. No school of 
 college grade was established in Georgia or the Caro- 
 linas before the Revolution. Much of the instruction 
 given throughout the Southern colonies was private. 
 The planters took care to have good tutors from Eng- 
 land brought over and placed in charge of their sons. 
 The tutors lived on the plantations, in the families 
 where they taught. Governesses were provided for the 
 daughters of the planters. This method of education 
 seems to have been preferred to the schools of higher 
 grade. We cannot infer from the absence of such 
 foundations in the South that education was neglected. 
 For the great" mass of the people there was no good 
 provision. But for the more wealthy there was ample 
 provision in this private system of instruction. The
 
 EDUCATION. 39 
 
 planters had not only their tutors, but they were at- 
 tentive to the introduction of the best works in all 
 departments of European literature. The libraries in 
 the homes of the planters of Virginia and other South- 
 ern colonies, during the colonial period, were in some 
 cases magnificent. Books from the European press 
 were constantly arriving. Besides, many young men 
 went over to Europe for an education. The fashion 
 of young Americans attending the foreign universities 
 seems to have had its origin in the South, and particu- 
 larly in South Carolina, during the colonial period.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 INTOLERANCE IN THE COLONIES. 
 
 1. The Intolerance of the Old World was transferred, 
 with modifications, to the New. The two colonies of 
 Virginia and Plymouth represented the two great 
 rival ecclesiastical bodies of England the Established 
 Church and the Non-Conformists. The Virginia colo- 
 nists were of the Established Church. They had with 
 them a clergyman, Hunt, of that body, and were under 
 his pastoral care. The parish system was adopted, 
 after the established model at home. The hostility 
 in England to the Non-Conformists, of whom the Pu- 
 ritans were the largest portion, was reproduced in 
 Virginia, and exercised without any show of serious 
 opposition. The New England colonists had suffered 
 keenly from the intolerance of Laud and the Crown at 
 home. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 had thrown 
 out of their livings two thousand English Non-Con- 
 formist preachers, for the sole reason that they would 
 not submit to re-ordination and full endorsement of 
 the Book of Common Prayer. The Puritan exile to 
 America was the child of bitter persecution. The 
 colonists had grown into solidarity and strength under 
 the lash. It is not surprising that when these Puritan 
 colonists now enjoyed liberty they should not forget 
 the oppressor's hand, nor have a very kindly feeling 
 towards those who had persecuted them. Their intol- 
 erance was their means for guarding against a new 
 mastery in the New World.
 
 INTOLERANCE IN THE COLONIES. 41 
 
 2. The New England Intolerance was directed against 
 all who differed in religious matters from the colo- 
 nists. The Massachusetts and New Haven colonies 
 were particularly severe against the Quakers. In 1658 
 the General Court of New Haven passed a severe law 
 against the Quakers, as a body " who take upon them 
 that they are immediately sent from God, are infallibly 
 assisted by the Spirit, who speak and write blasphe- 
 mous opinions, despise government, and the order of 
 God in Church and Commonwealth." The penalty of 
 bringing in any known Quakers, or " other blasphe- 
 mous heretics," was a fine of fifty pounds. If a Quaker 
 should come for a business purpose, he should appear 
 before a magistrate and receive license to transact his 
 business, and in case of first disobedience should bo 
 whipped, imprisoned, put to labor, and deprived of 
 converse with any one ; for a second offence, should be 
 branded on one hand with the letter H, imprisoned, and 
 put to labor ; for a third offence his other hand should be 
 branded, and he be put to labor and imprisoned ; and 
 for a fourth offence he should be imprisoned, kept to 
 labor until sent away at his own charge, and his tongue 
 bored through with a red-hot iron. This law continued 
 in existence but two years. Stiles says, that notwith- 
 standing this law no witch or Quaker was ever pun- 
 ished in the New Haven colony. The Massachusetts 
 laws were very severe against the Quakers. The records 
 show that thirty were imprisoned, fined, or whipped ; 
 twenty-two were banished ; three had an ear cut off ; 
 and four were hung. The same colony was intolerant 
 of the Baptists. The first members of that communion 
 were fined and imprisoned. The Maine laws were hot 
 less intolerant. The first Episcopalians in Connecticut 
 were cast into prison.
 
 42 THE CIIUKCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 3. Rhode Island, though established as a colony 
 granting full religious liberty, soon forgot its first 
 principle. Its charter ran : " None are at any time 
 to be molested for any difference in matters of relig- 
 ion." But its first Assembly, in 1663, declared against 
 the admission of Roman Catholics as freemen, or to be 
 chosen as colonial officers. 
 
 4. The Expulsion of Roger Williams from Salem was 
 a notable case of colonial intolerance. He gave great 
 provocation, however, and the wonder is that he did 
 not fare worse than suffer banishment. He was a Pu- 
 ritan preacher, and arrived with the Salem Colony in 
 1631. He demanded that the Church in Boston should 
 repent publicly of the sin of remaining in communion 
 with the Church of England before coming to America. 
 This the Church in Boston refused to do, and Will- 
 iams refused to join the Church. The magistrates re- 
 fused to settle him as pastor. He therefore moved 
 to Plymouth, where he became an assistant pastor. 
 Ho returned to Salem and succeeded Skelton as pas- 
 tor, but his permanent settlement was opposed by the 
 magistrates on the ground that he had taught that " it 
 is not unlawful for an unregenerate man to pray ; that 
 the magistrate has nothing to do in matters of the first 
 table ; that there should be a general and unlimited 
 toleration of all religions; that to punish a man for 
 following the dictates of his conscience was persecu- 
 tion ; that the patent granted by Charles was invalid, 
 and an instrument of injustice which they ought to 
 renounce, being injurious to the natives, the king of^ 
 England having no power to dispose of their lands to 
 his own subjects." As a result, Williams was ban- 
 ished. He fled to Rhode Island, where he founded 
 the present city of Providence, which he so called
 
 INTOLERANCE IN THE COLONIES. 43 
 
 " from a sense of God's merciful providence to him in 
 his distress." 
 
 5. The Real Ground of Williams's Banishment. The 
 case of Roger Williams has produced a large litera- 
 ture and a wide difference of opinion. His manner 
 was unfortunate. A man of gentler method might 
 have escaped punishment. But it is likely that his at- 
 tack on the title of the colony was the vital point of 
 his offending. The New England colonists would al- 
 low no word against their just claim to their colony. 
 They had suffered too much already to be running 
 any risk as to the ownership of their dearly-bought 
 acres. 
 
 6. The Virginia Colony compelled all persons to at- 
 tend the parish worship. Roman Catholics, Quakers, 
 and all Dissenters were prohibited from settling in the 
 colony, and people of every country who had not been 
 Christians at home were condemned to slavery. There 
 seems to have been more leniency at first than later. 
 In 1642, owing to the few clergymen, a petition went 
 from Virginia to the Plymouth Colony to send down 
 some Puritan preachers. Knolls and James were sent 
 in answer to the request. But they were not permit- 
 ted to remain long. Fears of a large influx, and espe- 
 cially of new opinions, seem to have been entertained ; 
 for these men were sent back, and their followers wero 
 scattered. In 1661 there was a rigid enforcement 
 of the laws against Quakers and all others who wero 
 not of the Established Church. When the dissent- 
 ing bodies increased, the same prohibition was ob- 
 served. Moravians, Baptists, Presbyterians, "New 
 Lights," and others were persecuted. In 1747 the 
 Rev. Mr. Davis was sent to labor in Virginia. He was 
 a wise, learned, and skilful man. He was very success-
 
 44 THE CUUBCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 fill. His character and conduct were such as to com- 
 mend him to all the people. He placed the Presbyte- 
 rian Church in Virginia on a secure footing. 
 
 7. Maryland and New York. The original Roman 
 Catholic colony of Maryland underwent important 
 changes from the beginning. The liberty of all to 
 settle there was made use of to such extent that, by 
 1704, the non-Catholics were in the majority. An act 
 was passed by the General Assembly to prevent an in- 
 crease of Roman Catholics. This remained in force 
 until 1776, when full religious liberty was restored. 
 The Reformed Church was the established faith in the 
 early history of New York. Quakers were fined and 
 imprisoned. In 1656 the governor, Stuyvesant, forbade 
 any other meetings than the Reformed. Baptists were 
 persecuted. When the English came into possession 
 of New Amsterdam (New York), they were tolerant 
 of the Reformed Church, and in one case the same 
 building was used for the Reformed and the Episcopal 
 services. But this toleration was limited at first to 
 the Reformed. Members of other communions re- 
 ceived little favor. The first Presbyterian preachers, 
 for example, Mackenzie and Hampton, were fined and 
 imprisoned for preaching in a private house. 
 
 8. The Grounds of Opposition to the Roman Catho- 
 lics are not hard to find. They are the only body 
 which was everywhere opposed, except for a time in 
 Maryland, and all the while in Pennsylvania. The 
 extensive missions in Canada, with the line of mis- 
 sions in the "West extending down to the Gulf, indi- 
 cated a progress among the Indians which no Protest- 
 ant body had met with. The relations of the Roman 
 Catholics with the Indians were of the most cordial kind. 
 The Indians were taught by them to believe that the
 
 INTOLERANCE IN THE COLONIES. 45 
 
 English were their enemies. The Puritans had good 
 ground for hostility to the Roman Catholics in Eng- 
 land ; and, when to this was added the Indian opposi- 
 tion to the New England colonists by the Roman Cath- 
 olic missions, it can occasion no surprise that every- 
 where the Roman Catholic was regarded as not only an 
 ecclesiastical opponent, but a civil enemy. Down to 
 the Revolution there was almost a universal opposition 
 to Roman Catholics on the part of the colonists in 
 New England very decided, but in the Southern colo- 
 nies less. Only after the Revolution were all confes- 
 sions in full liberty of civil and religious rights. The 
 great Roman Catholic immigration then set in, and 
 soon the people of the Romish communion began, by 
 labor and by numbers, to make ample amends for the 
 early proscription.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 EELIGIOUS LIFE OF TUB COLONIES. 
 
 1. The Zeal of the First Colonists was intense and 
 steady. No material embarrassment was permitted to 
 obscure the original idea of colonization namely, an 
 open field for spiritual life. Extensive revivals pre- 
 vailed throughout New England. The later colonists 
 were received by the earlier groups with a cordial spir- 
 itual salutation. The first generation of Protestant 
 American citizens took better care of new immigrants, 
 and more rapidly incorporated them into the religious 
 life of the country, than any succeeding generation has 
 done. Schools were founded, churches were built, and 
 large plans made for the conversion of the Indians. 
 The prevailing idea of the Puritan colonies was, that 
 they had the mission of building up great religious 
 commonwealths, and solving in the New World the 
 religious problems which could not be solved in the 
 Old. This period of religious fervor continued to 1600, 
 when a season of decline began, which continued down 
 to 1720. The decline was induced by the devastating 
 Indian wars, the witchcraft delusion, and the political 
 agitations arising out of the oppressive measures of the 
 British government. 
 
 2. The New England Preachers were able guides. 
 Many of them had come from the English universities, 
 and brought with them great literary skill, an intimate 
 acquaintance with theological controversy, and a prac-
 
 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE COLONIES. 47 
 
 tical knowledge of the dangers of political oppression 
 to religious life. Wilson, Cotton, Shepard, the Ma- 
 thers, Philips, Higginson, and Skelton wielded the 
 colony of Massachusetts Bay at will. The religious 
 spirit absorbed all others. The preacher was the real 
 governor. No public measure had any chance of suc- 
 cess without the clerical support. Brewster in Plym- 
 outh, Hooker in Connecticut, Davenport in New Ha- 
 ven, Roger Williams in Rhode Island, and Hunt and 
 Whitaker in Virginia, were the giants of their time. 
 Political preaching was the order of the day. The 
 Old Testament was searched for parallels of duty when- 
 ever a war against the Indians was to be fought, or a 
 new British aggression was to be resisted, or pesti- 
 lence, famine, witchcraft, or earthquakes were to be 
 wisely interpreted, and guarded against in the future. 
 Books on the current questions were multiplied. The 
 printing-press of New England was the powerful bat- 
 tery ever thundering against evils existing or appre- 
 hended. 
 
 3. The Great Awakening began about 1735. Its first 
 indications were seen in the wonderful effects of the 
 preaching of Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Mass. 
 Whitefield came over from England, and made sev- 
 eral tours through the Atlantic colonies. His preach- 
 ing attracted multitudes, and the numerous converts 
 through his preaching united with the non-episcopal 
 churches. The number converted through his Amer- 
 ican ministration has been estimated as high as fifty 
 thousand. Prince, Frelinghuysen, Finley, and the 
 brothers Tennent of New Jersey, and Davis and 
 Blair of Virginia, and others, contributed greatly to 
 the spiritual result. All the churches had their ear- 
 nest leaders. The effects of the great revival, which
 
 48 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 extended from New Hampshire down to the Carolinas, 
 were immediately seen. A new spirit of toleration 
 thrilled every nerve of the colonial churches. New 
 church edifices were erected. Many young men entered 
 the ministry. Schools of all grades sprang into exist- 
 ence, and large funds were brought from their hiding- 
 places and cast into the Lord's treasury. Religious 
 books multiplied. Even the conservative Benjamin 
 Franklin rejoiced to publish the sermons of Whitefield 
 and Tennent, the Westminster Catechism, and the pow- 
 erful tracts of John Wesley. 
 
 4. The Writings of Puritans in the Old World were 
 promptly introduced into the New. Special pains were 
 taken by the New England fathers to get early copies 
 of the great works which their co-religionists in Eng- 
 land were producing. The works of Baxter were re- 
 produced in Boston, and brought promptly into the 
 early New England homes. The songs of Watts were 
 reprinted in many editions, and were sung in the most 
 distant settlements. Bunyan was beloved, and became 
 a household companion. For Milton's poetry there was 
 little taste; but his political tracts were great favorites, 
 for they were thunderbolts against tyranny. Of all the 
 writers who contributed most to found the republic of 
 the United States, Milton probably bears away the palm. 
 
 5. The Southern Colonies, though visited by White- 
 field, did not share extensively in the great revival of 
 the middle of the eighteenth century. The Protestant 
 Episcopal Church in Virginia did not give a cordial 
 welcome to the revival influences. The preaching in 
 Virginia pulpits was generally formal, and on topics 
 merely moral. Morgan Morgan and Devereux Jarratt 
 were notable exceptions.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 COLONIAL WORSHIP AND USAGES. 
 
 1. The Sermon was the Chief Part in the Puritan 
 service. The preacher was supplied with an hour- 
 glass, and it was not uncommon for it to be reversed 
 twice during his discourse, when a new start was made 
 each time. There was a wide range to the sermon. 
 The Old Testament was a favorite part of the Script- 
 ures for subjects. The formal divisions, extending 
 to great numerical length, were the rule. The people 
 were kept awake, if not by the sermon, at least by the 
 tithing-man, who walked around at fit times with his 
 pole, and touched the offenders on the head. The 
 colonial period was the golden age of political preach- 
 ing in New England. Soldiers about to start against 
 the Indians were addressed in the church. All unu- 
 sual phenomena of nature were recognized in the dis- 
 courses. A comet was not too small an affair to pro- 
 duce several sermons by Cotton Mather, which in due 
 time were clothed with the dignity of print. The 
 Election Sermon was a permanent institution. The 
 Monday Lecture in Boston was only a continuation 
 of the Sabbath. 
 
 2. The Prayer was long. The congregation stood 
 during prayer. There was first an invocation. But 
 the long prayer was second in importance only to the 
 sermon. It was as formal as the sermon, the dif- 
 
 4
 
 50 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ference being that the divisions of the prayer were 
 not announced. The subjects of the prayer were of 
 great number. Few, indeed, we may well imagine, were 
 the public events which were not considered in the 
 course of the " long prayer." In some cases the pas- 
 tor made a halt in his prayer, which it was understood 
 was intended to be improved by the more weary to sit 
 down. Dorchester says he has seen a manuscript vol- 
 ume of sermons of Rev. Thomas Clap (1725) which 
 contains a " Scheme of Prayer," with five general 
 divisions and two hundred and forty sub-heads. Sew- 
 all, in his " Diary," speaks of a fast-day service where, 
 after three persons had prayed, and one had preached, 
 " another prayed an hour and a half." 
 
 3. The Singing was congregational, and the psalm 
 was lined by the ruling elder. The " Bay Psalm Book," 
 printed in 1640, in Boston, was the universal favorite. 
 The first two editions of this work were the Psalms 
 of David as we find them in the Old Testament. But 
 all subsequent editions were metrical. The "Psalte- 
 rium Americanum" came into vogue, and was a great 
 favorite in New England. It contained the musical 
 notes. Great care was taken that the singing should 
 be exceedingly simple, lest an approach might be made 
 to the choral enormities of the Church of England, 
 which to the Puritans was only a younger Church of 
 Rome. 
 
 4. Special Services were held on Thanksgiving and 
 fast days. The law required that all should attend 
 these services, as well as those on the Sabbath, or pay 
 a fine of five shillings for every absence. The services 
 on Thanksgiving and fast days were the great occa- 
 sions of the year. There was a general gathering up 
 of themes which had excited public attention. The
 
 COLONIAL WORSHIP AND USAGES. 51 
 
 * 
 
 preacher had before hirn the great officials of his town. 
 In the churches of the larger towns, the same promi- 
 nence was given to the service. The Governor and 
 his Council were expected to be present. The preacher 
 considered himself unfettered, and he made full use of 
 his liberty. 
 
 5. The Church Buildings in the Southern colonies 
 were modelled after the Church of England edifices 
 in England. While small, there were the tower, the 
 bell, the choir, and all the arrangements found in the 
 smaller churches of England. But in New England 
 there was a shunning of all ornamentation. Every 
 reminder of the Church of England soon became an 
 object to be avoided. The log church, which often 
 served as fort for the gospel and for earthly weapons, 
 was one of the first buildings thought of in the new 
 town. No carpet or stove was present in the sanc- 
 tuary, to remind of the repulsive luxuries of the wealthy 
 across the sea, or to distract from the simple severity 
 of the gospel. Even the Scripture lesson was avoided 
 in New England during the seventeenth century, lest 
 there might slip in a ritualistic tendency. The seats 
 were guiltless of cushions. The female portion of the 
 congregation sat on one side of the church, while tho 
 males occupied the other. The people from the coun- 
 try brought their lunch, and remained until the after- 
 noon service was over.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MISSIONS TO THE INDIANS. 
 
 1. The Conversion of the Indians was one of the early 
 objects of the colonists in America. The Virginia col- 
 ony took the first steps. In 1619 a law was adopted 
 requiring the instruction of Indian children. King 
 Charles I. interested himself in their behalf, and di- 
 rected that collections be taken in all the churches of 
 England for training up and " educating infidel (In- 
 dian) children in the knowledge of God." But the 
 most systematic and successful efforts in the direction 
 of Indian evangelization were made in New England. 
 In reply to a report from Plymouth to John Robinson, 
 at Leyden, he wrote: "Oh, that you had converted 
 some before you killed any !" In 1636 the Plymouth 
 colony adopted an act for preaching the gospel to the 
 Indians of the region. A special building was erected 
 in connection with Harvard College for the education 
 of Indian youth, while young men, the sons of colo- 
 nists, were educated in Harvard for the special work 
 of Indian evangelization. The chief tribes of Indians 
 were the Mohegans, the Narragansetts, Pankunnaw- 
 kuts, Massachusetts, Pawtuckets, Algonquins, and the 
 Housatonics. The most successful of all the Indian 
 schools in the colonies was founded in 1743, at Leba- 
 non, Conn., by the Rev. Eleazer Wheelock. He re- 
 ceived an Indian, Samson Occum, into his own house, 
 and taught him five years. This Indian became a dis-
 
 MISSIONS TO THE INDIANS. 53 
 
 tinguished preacher, and went with the Rev. N. Whit- 
 aker to England, to collect funds for Wheelock's work, 
 which had now developed into a school, where about 
 twenty Indian youths were taught. It was called 
 "Moor's Indian Charity School," from the man who 
 gave a house and two acres of land to Wheelock for 
 the school. Occum and Whitaker collected in Eng- 
 land seven thousand pounds for the school. In 1770 
 Wheelock removed his school to Hanover, N. H., out 
 of which has grown Dartmouth College. 
 
 2. John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians, stands first 
 of all men in devotion to the conversion and education 
 of the Indians. He was born in England, educated in 
 Cambridge University, and came to Boston in 1631. 
 He was settled in Roxbury as pastor in 1632. He 
 very early became interested in the Indians, and urged 
 upon the General Assembly of Massachusetts the neces- 
 sity of instructing them. The grandeur of Eliot's work 
 lay in his own example. He hired a Pequot captive to 
 instruct him in the Indian language, and in two years 
 was able to preach in it. Owing to his representations, 
 a society was established in England, called "A Cor- 
 poration for the Promoting and Propagating the Gos- 
 pel of Jesus Christ in New England." The sum of 
 twelve thousand pounds was raised in England for In- 
 dian evangelization. 
 
 3. Eliot's Evangelistic Labors continued to the end 
 of his life. He was about forty-two years of age be- 
 fore he began the study of the Indian (Mohegan) lan- 
 guage, but used every possible means to perfect him- 
 self in it. With his usual modesty, he lamented to the 
 end of his life his deficiency in mastering it. His first 
 group of Indians was at Nonantum, now a part of 
 Newton, near Boston. He then began to work at Nc-
 
 54 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ponsit, a part of the present Dorchester. He preached 
 a number of yeai'S in both places, without compensa- 
 tion, and prayed in the Indian families. At no time in 
 Eliot's life did his salary exceed fifty pounds. His 
 eldest son preached several years to the Indians at Nat- 
 ick, Pakemit, the present Stoughton, and other places. 
 The first Indian church was at Natick, where, in 1670, 
 there were about fifty communicants. An Indian 
 laborer, William Sbawton, preached at Pakemit, and 
 Tackuppa-willin preached at Hassanamenit, the pres- 
 ent Grafton. Many societies of Indian worshippers 
 sprang up in consequence of the labors of the two Eli- 
 ots. In fourteen towns, within seventy miles of Bos- 
 ton, there were Indian services, where about eleven 
 hundred Indians were under direct pastoral care. By 
 the year 1664 it is estimated that there were in eastern 
 Massachusetts about three thousand and six hundred 
 " praying Indians." The Indians became not only mor- 
 al, but many of them were devout Christians. 
 
 4. The Literary Labors of John Eliot are among the 
 marvels of the colonial period. He learned from ev- 
 ery quarter, and aimed to get at the finest shades of 
 meaning in the Mohegan tongue. He translated Bax- 
 ter's "Call" and Bayley's "Practice of Piety." He 
 wrote grammars and primers and other small works, 
 six in all, which, in literature, bear the name of " Eli- 
 ot's Tracts." These works are now very rare. Cop- 
 ies of them, and, we believe, of all Eliot's works, are 
 to be found in the Lenox Library, New York. The 
 great literary achievement of Eliot was his Indian Bi- 
 ble. The New Testament was published in Boston, in 
 1661, and the Old Testament in 1663. A second edi- 
 tion appeared in 1680-85. This work was printed on 
 type sent over from England by the Corporation for
 
 MISSIONS TO THE INDIANS. 55 
 
 the Promoting and Propagating the Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ in New England. This was the first Bible print- 
 ed in the New World, and is a monument to the philo- 
 logical skill and sublime devotion of John Eliot which 
 will long continue to excite the admiration of men. 
 
 5. Other Laborers in New England were attentive to 
 the spiritual needs of the Indians. In Plymouth Col- 
 ony the Rev. Mr. Bourne had an Indian congregation 
 of about five hundred on Cape Cod and the vicinity, 
 and the Rev. John Cotton had a small congregation 
 on Buzzard's Bay. The two Mayhews, father and son, 
 made Martha's Vineyard the field of their labors, where 
 they began their work about 1649. On the island of 
 Nantucket there were, at the end of the seventeenth 
 century, three churches and five congregations of " pray- 
 ing Indians." The Stockbridge Mission, in Massachu- 
 setts, was under the care of the Rev. Mr. Sargeant, one 
 of the most devoted of all the New England laborers 
 for the aboriginal tribes. He made lengthy journeys 
 to other Indian tribes. He introduced manual trades 
 and agriculture for the boys, and taught the girls the 
 various duties of domestic life. His plan was large- 
 ly that which our government has been too slow to 
 learn that, to build up the Indian character, the In- 
 dians must be taught the exercises and employments 
 of the usual American citizen. 
 
 6. Indian Evangelization in Other Colonies was not 
 neglected. The Reformed Church of Albany organ- 
 ized work among the Mohawks living along the Mo- 
 hawk River about the time when Eliot began in New 
 England. Schenectady became an important centre 
 of missionary work, and the Liturgy of the Reformed 
 Church was published in New York for the Mohawk 
 tribe. The Protestant Episcopal Church of New York
 
 56 THE CHUBCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 published the Book of Common Prayer in the Mohawk 
 tongue in 1715. Moore, Barclay, Andrews, Miles, and 
 the Moravian Rauch were zealous missionaries among 
 the Indians along the Hudson and the Mohawk. Da- 
 vid Brainerd, in 1742, began work among the Indians 
 at Kinderhook, near the Hudson, but his chief labor 
 was on the Susquehanna. His career covered the brief 
 period of about four years; but such was his devotion 
 and courage that, though he was but thirty years old 
 at the time of his death, his name will ever be associ- 
 ated with Eliot as a master-workman in the difficult 
 field of Indian evangelization. What Henry Martyn 
 was to India, David Brainerd has been to the American 
 Indians. Hawley, Forbes, Kirkland, and Spencer were 
 strong and successful laborers among the Six Nations. 
 Hunt, Whitaker, and Thorpe distinguished themselves 
 in Virginia for labors in behalf of the education and 
 conversion of the Indians. But this work came to an 
 end through a massacre of the whites by the Indians. 
 John and Charles Wesley worked for a while as In- 
 dian missionaries in Georgia.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THEOLOGICAL MOVEMENTS. 
 
 1. The Puritan Mind was intensely theological. The 
 experiences of the Pilgrims in the Old World had been 
 such as to make them thinkers on fundamental doctri- 
 nal themes. The Brownists owed their existence as a 
 separatist community to their divergence from the pre- 
 vailing doctrines of the Established Church. The great 
 Arminian controversy in Holland was in progress in 
 Leyden during their residence there. John Robinson, 
 their spiritual guide, was a warm disputant on the 
 Calvinistic side. Their theological tendency was not 
 thrown into the background by their immigration to 
 America. The early Puritan preachers were skilful 
 theologians. The sermon was often a mere section 
 out of dogmatic theology. The future theological in- 
 tegrity of the colonies seems to have been prominent 
 in the minds of all the spiritual leaders, and not to 
 have been forgotten by the civil administrators. The 
 frequent synods busied themselves fully as much with 
 theological adjustments as with measures for parish 
 government. 
 
 2. The Hutchinsonian Controversy arose out of the 
 extreme views of a capable woman, Ann Hutchinson. 
 While she was the leader, she was largely assisted by her 
 brother-in-law, Wheelwright. She was described as a 
 "gentlewoman of nimble wit and voluble tongue, of emi- 
 nent knowledge in the Scriptures, great charity, and not-
 
 58 THE CHUKCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 able helpfulness in cases of need among her own sex." 
 She claimed great attainments in spiritual life, and was 
 very impressive in declaring her extreme views. She 
 held that justification is produced by direct revelation 
 or impression ; that there is at once a perfect union be- 
 tween the Holy Ghost and the justified individual ; 
 that the Holy Ghost dwells in the justified one in per- 
 son; that henceforth such an individual is as incapable 
 of sinning as the Holy Ghost himself ; that the letter 
 of the Scriptures is subordinate, being only a covenant 
 of works ; and that the Spirit must be looked to for 
 the covenant of grace. Her followers carried her 
 views to still greater extravagance : that Christ him- 
 self is a part of the new creature ; that Christ and the 
 new creature are personally one ; that a man is justi- 
 fied before he believes ; that believers are not com- 
 pelled to obey the divine law ; that the Sabbath is the 
 same as other days ; that the soul is not immortal un- 
 til it becomes united to Christ ; that the final doom of 
 the wicked is annihilation ; that there is no resurrec- 
 tion of the body ; and that the ground of all salvation 
 is assurance by immediate revelation. 
 
 3. The Rapid Spread of the Hutchinsonian views was 
 due largely to the great ability of Mrs. Hutchinson 
 herself, and her influence with leading men in the Bos- 
 ton Church, of which she was a member. Many of the 
 leading people adopted her opinions, and were not slow 
 in propagating them. An effort was made to have 
 Wheelwright settled as pastor in Boston, which led 
 to great excitement and serious divisions. Governor 
 Vane, and Cotton, the pastor in Boston, placed them- 
 selves on the side of the Hutch insonians. The General 
 Court met in 1637, and the matter came to a crisis. 
 Vane and those who sympathized with him were in
 
 THEOLOGICAL MOVEMENTS. 59 
 
 the minority. lie was not re-elected governor, but 
 Winthrop, who was orthodox, was elected in his stead. 
 Wheelwright was expelled as " guilty of sedition." 
 The Synod of 1637 declared against the sedition, and 
 Cotton finally came back to the orthodox position, and 
 declared that he "disrelished all these opinions and ex- 
 pressions, as being some of them heretical, some of them 
 blasphemous, some of them erroneous, and all of them 
 incongruous." The respectability of the Hutchinso- 
 nian aberration disappeared with the surrender of Cot- 
 ton, who, as Mather declared, " was not the least part of 
 the country." Mrs. Hutchinson was excommunicated, 
 went to the Rhode Island colony, and united with 
 the co-religionists of Roger Williams. But she had a 
 small following here, and removed farther south, where 
 she was murdered by the Indians. 
 
 4. The Half-way Covenant. The first practice of the 
 New England Church was that only persons professing 
 to have faith in Christ, and to have become regener- 
 ate, were members of the Church, and had the privi- 
 lege of having their children baptized. But many of 
 the descendants of the colonists, and many who came 
 over as new members of the colonies, made no profes- 
 sion of experimental faith. What was their position ? 
 The parents of such adults were anxious they should 
 be received as members of the Church, and that their 
 children should be baptized. Others declared against 
 such action. Then, again, the law of 1631 maintained 
 those who were not members of the Church could not 
 be political freemen : " No man shall be admitted to 
 the freedom of this body politic but such as are mem- 
 bers of some of the churches within the limits of the 
 same." If only those professing experimental religion 
 could belong to the Church, many children could not
 
 60 THE CHURCH IX THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 be baptized, and many adults could not have political 
 rights. Connecticut was the first scene of this impor- 
 tant controversy, but Boston was the place where the 
 matter culminated. The meeting of ministers in Bos- 
 ton in 1657, and the General Synod there in 1662, de- 
 cided in favor of granting membership in the Church 
 to all who owned in person the covenant made in their 
 behalf by their parents, and led a life "not scandal- 
 ous," and gave themselves and their children to the 
 Lord. To the children of such persons the rite of bap- 
 tism should not be denied. This synodal deliverance 
 was called the Half -way Covenant, which produced 
 universal agitation in New England, and was not sup- 
 pressed until the great revival in the middle of the last 
 century. 
 
 5. The Effect of the Half-way Covenant was univer- 
 sally disastrous. Persons who now entered the Church 
 could do so on simple acknowledgment of the baptis- 
 mal covenant and the leading of a moral life. Regen- 
 eration was not necessary. Children of the unregener- 
 ate could be baptized, and the whole family were then 
 connected with the Church. Repentance might be felt 
 to be important, but, not being made a condition of 
 membership, its value was not considered as great as 
 formerly. The general tendency was a lowering of 
 the spiritual standard of church membership through- 
 out New England. 
 
 6. A New View of the Lord's Supper was now ad- 
 vanced. It was held that the Lord's Supper was a 
 means of regeneration, and that unconverted persons 
 might safely be admitted to the sacrament of the 
 Lord's Supper. The Brattle Street Church, Boston, 
 was the first to advocate this new doctrine. The Rev. 
 Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, grandfather of
 
 THEOLOGICAL MOVEMENTS. 61 
 
 Jonathan Edwards, publicly defended it, in 1707, in a 
 sermon in which he declared that " sanctification is not 
 a necessary qualification for partaking of the Lord's 
 Supper, and that the Lord's Supper is a converting 
 ordinance." His views were opposed by Increase Ma- 
 ther and others. But Stoddard's theory was the natu- 
 ral consequence of the Half-way Covenant. It found 
 favor in many parts of New England. The effect was 
 to intensify the disastrous tendency of the Half-way 
 Covenant. The churches were greatly increased by 
 the addition of unconverted members. Some of the 
 churches consisted chiefly of unregenerate people. The 
 conditions of repentance and conversion not being re- 
 quired for admission to membership and to the sacred 
 ordinances, there was the same laxity in receiving un- 
 converted candidates into the ministry. Between the 
 years 1680 and 1750 many such persons became preach- 
 ers, and were settled as pastors. Their sermons were un- 
 spiritual, and their parishioners were cold and formal. 
 The outcome of the whole movement was the great 
 Unitarian secession. Cotton Mather's prediction was 
 fulfilled : " Should this declension continue to make 
 progress as it has done, in forty years more convul- 
 sions will ensue, arrd churches will be gathered out of 
 churches."
 
 II. 
 
 "Rational perfoD. 
 
 1783-1800. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CHURCH AT THE FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 1. The Contrast between the Church in the Old 
 World and in the New, during the one hundred and 
 eighty-six years of the Colonial Period, was marked. 
 The controversies of Protestantism on the Continent, 
 especially in Germany, had a demoralizing effect. The 
 struggle between the Lutherans and the Reformed 
 had thrown the spiritual life into the background, and 
 had given way to the incoming of rationalism from 
 England and France, and thus made the growth of a 
 native German scepticism a lamentable fact. In Eng- 
 land the Wesleyan revival was the only salutary force 
 against the alarming Deism. The religious life in 
 America, while it was always more or less disturbed 
 by European impulses, had grown. Now and then 
 there was an interruption. There were abnormal ten- 
 dencies, such as might be expected in a land where the 
 conditions were new. But the general life had been 
 progressive and salutary. The theological activity, 
 the prevalence of revivals, the building of churches,
 
 THE CHURCH AT THE FOUNDING OP THE REPUBLIC. 63 
 
 and the evangelistic spirit, had produced a strong and 
 aggressive type of ecclesiastical life. The colonial 
 founders of the American Church builded wisely, and 
 made the best possible use of the materials at their 
 command. 
 
 2. There was a General Spiritual Decline in the re- 
 ligious life of the Church from about 1765 until the 
 end of the eighteenth century. The absorbing topic 
 was the struggle for national independence. All spir- 
 itual interests languished. When once the Revolution 
 commenced, it became the passion of the people until 
 it was concluded. Many of the preachers entered the 
 army as chaplains and officers. A large number of 
 congregations were without pastoral care, and were 
 broken up. Some of the churches were converted into 
 hospitals. Money which would have flowed into spir- 
 itual channels was turned into the scanty treasury of 
 the colonies for Washington's army. The peaceful 
 Quakers and Mennonites of Pennsylvania forgot their 
 usual attitude, and eagerly enlisted in the army. When 
 peace came, a new ecclesiastical life needed to be built 
 up. At no time in the history of the American Church 
 was the condition so serious. It was a question, how 
 would Christian people now act, with the boon of a 
 nation in their hands ? Until the beginning of the nine- 
 teenth centuiy it was a doubt whether the national in- 
 dependence would prove a spiritual blessing or a curse. 
 
 3. The Sceptical Tendencies from France became a 
 serious threat. The long residence of Franklin in 
 France, the sympathy of Jefferson with Deism, the 
 popular writings of Thomas Paine, and the helpful- 
 ness of Lafayette and other Frenchmen in our na- 
 tional struggle had the effect of making French in- 
 fidelity popular. William and Mary Coltege, Yale
 
 64 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 College, the incipient Unitarianism in Harvard, and 
 certain unfavorable indications in Princeton College 
 made it appear that unless there was some great spir- 
 itual movement the country might be overspread with 
 scepticism. There were men who saw the danger, and 
 labored earnestly to avert it. Happily, with the begin- 
 ning of the new century there was a great revival, which 
 extended over a larger area than any former one. The 
 infidelity of the time was consumed. The churches 
 found all their energies taxed to take proper care of 
 their new adherents and provide schools for the young. 
 4. The Numerical Strength of the Church at the be- 
 ginning of the National Period was about as follows : 
 
 Ministers. Churches. 
 
 Episcopalians 250 800 
 
 Baptists 350 380 
 
 Congregationalists 575 700 
 
 Presbyterians 140 300 
 
 Lutherans 25 60 
 
 German Reformed 25 60 
 
 Reformed Dutch 25 60 
 
 Methodists 24 11 
 
 Associate 13 20 
 
 Moravians 12 8 
 
 Roman Catholics . 26 52 
 
 Total 1465 1951 
 
 There was a decided tendency in several of these 
 bodies to divide on questions of doctrine and polity. 
 It seems to have been a time when the spirit of na- 
 tional independence invaded the ecclesiastical pale. 
 The air was filled with rumors of division. Some of 
 the churches did suffer serious schisms at this time, 
 Avhich have not yet been healed.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SEPARAT1OX OF CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 1. The Church had been a Part of the Colonial System. 
 The citizen had been taxed for the support of the 
 Church. In Massachusetts Colony only the man who 
 was a member of the Church could hold political office. 
 In Maryland and Virginia and some other Southern 
 colonies the Established Church of England was as 
 fully a part of the system of civil government as in 
 England itself. There was a great variety in the mode 
 of connection between the Church and the colonial 
 government. But the connection was positive and 
 strong. When the Revolution severed the civil bonds 
 with England, a strong tendency towards the separa- 
 tion of the Church from all political government im- 
 mediately set in. The general conscience demanded that 
 the new republic should leave the largest liberty to the 
 individual judgment. The people insisted on placing 
 the support of the Church, in all its departments, upon 
 the voluntary judgment of the adherents. This asser- 
 tion of the voluntary principle in ecclesiastical support 
 and government was one of the most original of all the 
 great phenomena of this stage in our national life. 
 
 2. Virginia was the scene of the first great move- 
 ment to carry into practical effect the voluntary prin- 
 ciple. To the Baptists belongs the honor of being the 
 herald. They began amid the first excitement of the 
 revolutionary struggle. In 17 75, after a struggle of 
 
 5
 
 CO THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 twenty-seven years against the Established Church of 
 Virginia, they presented to the House of Assembly of 
 Virginia a petition " that they might be allowed to 
 worship God in their own way, without interruption; 
 to maintain their own ministers, separate from others; 
 and to be married, buried, etc., without paying the 
 clergy of other denominations." At the first meeting 
 of the Presbytery of Hanover, Virginia, after the com- 
 mencement of the war, that body presented a lengthy 
 and able petition for religious liberty In their move- 
 ment they had the co-operation of the Quakers. In 
 1777 and 1778 the contest between the friends and 
 enemies of the Establishment became still fiercer, and, 
 against the proposal to enjoin a general assessment for 
 the support of all denominations which seemed very 
 likely to be adopted the Presbytery of Hanover pre- 
 sented a remonstrance, in which we find this strong 
 language : " As it is contrary to our principles and 
 interest, and, as we think, subversive of religious lib- 
 erty, we do again most earnestly entreat that our Leg- 
 islature would never extend any assessment for relig- 
 ious purposes to us, or to the congregations under our 
 care." The proposed assessment was abandoned. 
 
 3. Thomas Jefferson, who in matters religious was to all 
 intents and purposes a Frenchman, introduced an act into 
 the Legislature of Virginia in 1785 "for establishing re- 
 ligious freedom." This was adopted, and perfect relig- 
 ious liberty was now brought to pass in the oldest of the 
 colonies. Maryland followed Virginia. Other states 
 adopted similar measures. In New England there was 
 more caution in making the Church separate from the 
 State. The last state to make the Church independent 
 of the civil government was Massachusetts, the separa- 
 tion taking place in 1833.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 REVIVAL AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY. 
 
 1. The Revival of 1797-1803 had several important 
 centres of operation. The movement began almost 
 simultaneously in widely separated regions, and ex- 
 tended until the intervening spaces were covered by 
 its effects. In Connecticut the spiritual outpouring 
 was very extensive, and from there it extended through- 
 out New England. From 1797 to 1803 not less than 
 one hundred and fifty churches in New England were 
 powerfully quickened, and large numbers were added. 
 In Kentucky and Tennessee there was the same great 
 spiritual demonstration. Here was a strong population 
 of the Scotch-Irish element. But these people were 
 surrounded by many who made no profession of re- 
 ligion, by others who were outspoken sceptics, and 
 others who were given up to gross immorality. Craig- 
 head, Gready, Hoge, Burke, and the McGees were lead- 
 ers in the movement. People assembled on week days 
 for worship in the open air. All denominations united 
 in work. Multitudes were awakened and converted. 
 From this revival the Western Church received an im- 
 pulse which has continued down to the present time. 
 
 2. The Colleges shared largely in this revival. Yale 
 had only about a dozen students who professed religion. 
 But there was such a powerful awakening that seventy- 
 five students became Christians, and united with the 
 Church. In Dartmouth and Williams colleges there
 
 68 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 were similar awakenings, and large accessions of stu- 
 dents to the churches. Many of the young men who 
 were converted afterwards entered the ministry. Of 
 the seventy-five in Yale College who joined the church, 
 about one half became ministers. 
 
 3. A Great Impulse towards Evangelization was im- 
 parted by this revival. The Western population had 
 been reached as never before, and the Kentucky and 
 Tennessee region was made the starting-point for mis- 
 sionary work farther west. About this time the entire 
 American Church first saw its great opportunity on the 
 frontier. Young men from the Eastern colleges were 
 enthusiastic in their desire to travel into all parts of 
 the West, found churches and schools, and distribute 
 the Bible and religious books. There was a new 
 faith in evangelistic influence. The old prejudice 
 against Whitefield and his methods had long since 
 passed away, and there was a new and general belief 
 in the reality and power of special spiritual manifes- 
 tation. 
 
 4. Other Advantages to the Church grew out of that 
 wonderful work of grace. Besides the large acces- 
 sions in membership and the great increase in minis- 
 terial candidates, an impulse was given to the produc- 
 tion and circulation of religious literature. Missions 
 for the neglected population at home, especially among 
 the Indians, were revived or organized anew. The 
 founding of Sunday - schools, tract organizations, and 
 the American Bible Society sprang out of the warm 
 inspiration of this great spiritual ingathering.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EXPANSION IN THK SOUTH AND WEST. 
 
 1. The Roman Catholic Pre-occupatiou in the West 
 and South gave abundant promise of a permanent pop- 
 ulation of adherents to that communion. From the 
 head-waters of the Mississippi down to the Gulf, and 
 along the tributary rivers, there had been settlements 
 of the Jesuits, which preserved the Roman Catholic 
 spirit after the most of the missions had been broken 
 up. The Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon Buona- 
 parte, in 1803, designed to replenish his exchequer for 
 carrying on his war with Spain, brought into the Union 
 the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkan- 
 sas, and Missouri. The population was in large part 
 French, with a Spanish admixture, and the Roman 
 Catholic faith predominated everywhere. Florida came 
 into the Union, by cession from Spain in 1819. Here, 
 too, the pre-occupation had been Roman Catholic. 
 There was a universal dearth of Protestant popu- 
 lation and spirit. The first Protestant society in St. 
 Louis, for example, was organized as late as 1818. The 
 vices of the Continent, such as Sabbath desecration, 
 prevailed exclusively in this new territory. 
 
 2. The Protestant Current Westward did not take 
 the shape of a religious movement. It was simply the 
 expansion of the solid and permanent population east 
 of the Alleghanies. Many of the settlers went as small 
 groups, and some of them as individual adventurers.
 
 70 THE CHURCH IX THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 They built huts, made a clearing, and in due time 
 were joined by others. The population was Protestant, 
 and partook of the national American feeling. Log 
 churches were built, with such ministerial supply as 
 the scanty means afforded. Many settlers went from 
 Virginia and North Carolina into Tennessee and Ken- 
 tucky. In time this emigration extended across the 
 Mississippi into Arkansas and Missouri. There were 
 large bodies, such as the land companies of the latter 
 half of the last century. Among these were the Ohio 
 Company, the Transylvania Company, and the Missis- 
 sippi Company. The Western Reserve, in the northern 
 part of Ohio, was filled by families from New England. 
 The churches in the East, and especially the Home Mis- 
 sionary societies, sent out ministerial agents to travel 
 through the new regions, and especially the valley of the 
 Mississippi, who brought home reports of the spiritual 
 destitution, and made successful appeals for its relief. 
 3. The Denominations taking the lead in the great work 
 of Western and Southern evangelization were the Bap- 
 tists, Presbyterians, and Methodists. The Presbyterians 
 entered Mississippi about 1800, and Indiana about 1805. 
 The Baptists organized work in Illinois in 1796, in 
 Missouri about the same time, in Indiana in 1802, 
 and in Arkansas about 1818. The Methodists entered 
 Indiana in 1802, and Arkansas in 1815. The Baptists 
 and Methodists began in Wisconsin in 1836. Down to 
 1805 there were no settlements of native Americans 
 in New Orleans. As late as 1801 there were no Chris- 
 tian people in the old town of Detroit, " except a black 
 man who appeared pious." In due time all the larger 
 religious bodies of the East sent ministers into Michi- 
 gan and other northwestern regions. The Congrega- 
 tionalists were among the first to expose the spiritual
 
 EXPANSION IX THE SOUTH AND WEST. 71 
 
 destitution of the great West, and have been among 
 the most heroic in relieving it. The Protestant Episco- 
 pal Church, being strong in Virginia and other southern 
 states, extended itself in the Southwest. The Metho- 
 dists were early in Texas. Their itinerants, however, 
 went over all the new region, and organized their infant 
 societies as a part of the general ecclesiastical system. 
 No denomination can claim the chief honor of this won- 
 derful evangelization in the South and West. The great 
 religious currents moved along the parallels of latitude 
 westward with a steadiness and persistency which be- 
 long to the rarer spiritual- phenomena of modern times. 
 4. The Moral Significance of the Western and South- 
 ern occupation by the Protestants of the United States 
 is great. We are too near the scene, and the time is too 
 recent, to comprehend the vastness of the achievement. 
 Centuries must elapse before the transformation can be 
 seen in all its meaning. The western and southern parts 
 of the field of the American Church are now sources of 
 supply for the East. Let the harvests of the Missis- 
 sippi valley fail one season, and there is not a church 
 treasury in the land which is not seriously distiirbed 
 by it. The churches in the West which needed help 
 thirty years ago have already pushed out their forces 
 to the Pacific, and have helped to develop the coast 
 from Washington down to San Diego. The national 
 life has been saved by the West. Without the West- 
 ern legions which followed the United States flag in 
 the Civil War, with the devotion of Crusaders, the 
 Union would to-day be only a memory. Our religious 
 literature, the pulpit, our denominational treasuries, 
 have all been enriched beyond calculation by the con- 
 tributions which the West has made with liberal hand 
 and sublime faith.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE LARGER AND EARLIER DENOMINATIONS. 
 
 1. The Protestant Episcopal Church. The founding 
 of the Virginia Colony at Jamestown was the first 
 act towards the establishment of the Church of Eng- 
 land in America. Special attention was given to the 
 church services and the support of the clergy. In 
 1619 the colony was divided into seven parishes. In 
 1785 the first General Convention of the Protestant 
 Episcopal Church of the United States was held in 
 Philadelphia. Seven states were represented. The 
 Prayer Book ordered by the convention was published 
 in the following year. It showed traces throughout 
 of the liberal spirit of the new Republic. The omis- 
 sions from the Book of Common Prayer already in use 
 were remarkable. Among them were the Nicene and 
 Athanasian creeds; the descent into hell, of the creed; 
 absolution ; and baptismal regeneration. The bishops 
 were made amenable to the lower clergy. The Prayer 
 Book received no favor in England. The bishops 
 were so opposed to it that some of the more import- 
 ant omissions were restored. But absolution in visi- 
 tation of the sick and the Athanasian Creed were not 
 restored. The Parliament, by a special act, ordered 
 the ordination to the episcopacy of William White, 
 Samuel Provost, and Dr. Griffith, in 1 787. The Thirty- 
 nine Articles were ratified in 1832. The Protestant
 
 THE LARGER AND EARLIER DENOMINATIONS. 73 
 
 Episcopal Church has been distinguished for its edu- 
 cated clergy, its steady growth, and liberality. 
 
 2. The Congregationalists are the direct descendants 
 of the Pilgrims. The Plymouth Colony, colonists who 
 came over in the 3f<n/flowcr, and landed at Plymouth in 
 1620, established Puritan principles. This colony was 
 rapidly reinforced by the arrival of others. A colony 
 landed at Salem in 1629, and another in Charlestown 
 in 1635. The Cambridge Platform, which contained 
 the doctrinal basis for American Congregationalism, 
 was adopted in 1648. The first teachers, as well as 
 the first preachers to the New England colonists, had 
 been educated in the Cambridge University. The courso 
 of study in Harvard was largely theological. The first 
 object was to educate preachers of the gospel, and a 
 general literary education was subsidiary. The first 
 generation of Congregational ministers was distin- 
 guished for its learning. John Cotton, Increase Ma- 
 ther, and Cotton Mather gave tone to the whole body 
 of New England clergy. The literary fertility of the 
 times was remarkable. Besides, the Congregational 
 clergy were distinguished for their wise and brave 
 leadership in all national and social questions. This 
 field they have never left. They have been among 
 the strongest and earliest champions for the freedom 
 of the slaves. They are equally distinguished for their 
 literary and theological productions, for the part they 
 have taken in educating the freedmen, and for organiz- 
 ing churches and founding institutions of learning in 
 the newer portions of the West. 
 
 3. The Reformed Church was established by the Dutch 
 colony on Manhattan Island, in 1623. The first regu- 
 lar preaching was by Machselius, who arrived from 
 Holland in 1628. A close connection with the Church
 
 74 THE CHUKCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 in Holland was retained during the colonial period. 
 The Dutch language was long preserved in the churches, 
 and the clergy were brought over from the mother 
 country for the prominent pulpits in New York, Al- 
 bany, and other places. It was not until 1771 that an 
 independent organization of the Church was effected. 
 This was brought about chiefly through the agency of 
 the Rev. Dr. J. H. Livingston. In 1822 a secession 
 took place, under the name of the "True Reformed 
 Dutch Church." The alleged ground was a departure 
 in doctrine and discipline from the original purity of 
 the Church. The theology of the Reformed Church 
 is Calvinistic, and is based on the Confession of Dort 
 and the Heidelberg Catechism. The clergy have al- 
 ways been distinguished for their learning and popular 
 ability, while the membership have been characterized 
 by rare intelligence and purity of life. 
 
 4. The Baptists. Roger Williams, after being ex- 
 pelled by the Pilgrims, founded the Baptist Church in 
 America, in 1639. He organized the colony of Rhode 
 Island, which became a refuge for people of various dis- 
 senting creeds. Providence was the chief town. Bap- 
 tists settled along the eastern shore of Maryland and 
 in Virginia, but in the latter colony they were severely 
 persecuted. Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Dela- 
 ware were the only states where they enjoyed relig- 
 ious liberty. When the national independence was 
 achieved, the Baptists grew rapidly in strength and 
 numbers. Their later history has been a steady prog- 
 ress. They are distinguished for zeal and culture. 
 Among the smaller Baptist sects are the Anti-mission, 
 the Free, the Seventh-Day, the Church of God, or 
 Winnebrennarians, the Disciples of Christ, or Camp- 
 bellites, the Tunkers, and the Mennonites.
 
 THE LARGER AND EARLIER DENOMINATIONS. 75 
 
 5. The German Reformed Church arose in connection 
 with the Reformed (Dutch) Church. It was organized 
 in 1741, and was Calvinistic. The connection with 
 the Reformed continued until 1792, when it became a 
 separate organization. Its original members were Ger- 
 mans, who came from Switzerland and the Palatinate, 
 and were attached to the Helvetic Confession and Hei- 
 delberg Catechism. The territory where it is most 
 strongly established is Eastern Pennsylvania. Its cler- 
 gy have been carefully educated, and its authors have 
 taken an honorable place in American theology. 
 
 6. The Lutheran Church. There were three Lutheran 
 currents in the colonies. First, the New York current; 
 second, the Swedish current along the Delaware ; and, 
 third, the German current of Pennsylvania. The Ger- 
 mans were early settlers in New York, and they estab- 
 lished the Lutheran Church shortly after their arrival. 
 Their first pastor was the Rev. Jacob Fabricius (1669), 
 and they built their first church, a log hut, in 167). 
 Their next settlement was on the Delaware, in 1676. 
 The Rev. H. M. Muhlenberg, who arrived from Ger- 
 many in 1742, became the leader of the Lutheran 
 Church in the United States. The first Synod was 
 held in 1748. 
 
 7. Pennsylvania and Ohio are the two states where 
 the Lutherans have been strongest, but their Church 
 is growing rapidly in Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, and 
 other states where there is a large German immigra- 
 tion. Three Lutheran schools exist : The strict, or 
 old Lutherans, who adhere to the theology of the Lu- 
 theran fathers ; the moderate Lutherans of the Penn- 
 sylvania Synod, who have undergone variations from 
 the original theology of the Lutherans of Germany ; 
 and the Evangelical Lutherans, who are strictly or-
 
 76 THE CHURCH IX THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 thodox, and derive their theology from Gettysburg. 
 The chief variation of the American Lutherans from 
 their brethren in Germany is in the American op- 
 position to consubstantiation and private confession. 
 
 8. The Presbyterian Church took its origin from per- 
 sons of Presbyterian faith who came to the colonies 
 from Scotland and the north of Ireland in the latter 
 part of the seventeenth century. From 1660 to 1685 
 three thousand emigrants arrived in America, as fugi- 
 tives from persecution, the most of them settling in 
 Pennsylvania. Some of them settled on the eastern 
 shore of Maryland. Here, near the village of Salisbury, 
 Maryland, the first Presbyterian church in America was 
 built. No toleration was allowed the Presbyterians in 
 New England. The Scotch-Irish element, which has 
 become renowned in the ecclesiastical history of the 
 United States, has contributed such families as the 
 Alexanders, the Duflields, the Hodges, and the Brcck- 
 enridges to the American Church. The Philadelphia 
 Presbytery was formed in 1706, and the first General 
 Assembly was held in 1789. In 1838 the Presbyte- 
 rian Church was divided into the New and the Old 
 Schools. In 1870 the two Schools united. No Ameri- 
 can Church has surpassed the Presbyterian in the cult- 
 ure of its members, the abilities of the clergy, in devo- 
 tion to education, in zeal for missions, in munificence, 
 and in devotion to its theology. 
 
 9. The Moravian Church in America arose from the 
 personal visit of Count Zinzendorf in the year 1741. 
 Ills first attention was directed to the conversion of 
 the Indians in Pennsylvania. A district west of the 
 Delaware became the centre of the work of the Mora- 
 vians. The towns of Bethlehem and Nazareth were 
 settled by them. They had a flourishing congregation
 
 THE LARGER AND EARLIER DENOMINATIONS. 77 
 
 in Philadelphia, and others in other parts of the coun- 
 try, notably at Salem, North Carolina. The early 
 character of the Moravians for missionary zeal and 
 excellent schools has been well sustained. 
 
 10. The Methodist Episcopal Church was established 
 in New York in 1776. The first society was organ- 
 ized by Barbara Heck, Philip Embury, and Captain 
 "Webb. Richard Boardman and Joseph Pilmore were 
 sent out by John Wesley in 1769, and Francis As- 
 bury and Richard Wright arrived two years later. 
 The first Conference was held in Philadelphia in 1773, 
 when the Church consisted of ten preachers and one 
 thousand one hundred and sixty members. During 
 the Revolutionary War the Methodists made no ma- 
 terial progress, and Asbury, suspected of being a Tory, 
 was compelled to live in concealment. The Methodist 
 Episcopal Church divided in 1844 on the question of 
 slavery, the new Church taking the name of the Metho- 
 dist Episcopal Church, South. In 1866, the centen- 
 nial celebration was held throughout the Church at 
 home and in the mission fields. Contributions, chiefly 
 for education, were made, amounting to about eight 
 millions of dollars. An (Ecumenical Methodist Coun- 
 cil was held in London in 1881, where delegates were 
 present from nearly all the branches of the Methodist 
 family.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE SMALLER EVANGELICAL BODIES. 
 
 1. The Multiplication of Ecclesiastical Organizations 
 has been one of the characteristics of American religious 
 life. The many sects in the United States have arisen 
 largely from the cosmopolitan character of the immi- 
 grant population. The various Protestant countries of 
 Europe which sent their colonists here were themselves 
 divided in their Protestant attachments. It is not sur- 
 prising, for example, that there should be both Luther- 
 ans and Reformed here for the German Protestants 
 were divided into these two great classes. The seeds 
 of all the larger and of nearly all the smaller bodies in 
 this country are to be found either in well-defined form 
 in the Old World, or in the theology which the colonists 
 and their successors brought with them. 
 
 2. The Presbyterian Subdivisions are numerous. The 
 Associate Church arose from a secession from the 
 Church of Scotland in 1733. The seceders founded 
 an Associate Presbytery, which became an important 
 body in Scotland. In less than twenty years after the 
 secession a number of Scotch Presbyterians in Penn- 
 sylvania sent over to the Associate Presbytery for 
 ministers, who came and organized the new American 
 Associate Church. By 1801 they had four presbyte- 
 ries. The Associate Reformed Church was organized 
 in 1782, and the Reformed Presbyterian Church in 1 798. 
 All three of these churches have adopted the Calvin-
 
 THE SMALLER EVANGELICAL BODIES. 79 
 
 istic theology. The Cumberland Presbyterians arose 
 from the great revival of 1800 in the Cumberland 
 Mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee, chiefly through 
 the labors of the Rev. James McGrady. Several young 
 men offered themselves for the ministry ; but the Pres- 
 byterian Synod of Kentucky refused them ordination, 
 on the ground of their opposition to the doctrine of 
 election in the Westminster Confession. The result 
 was a secession, and the formation in 1810 of the Cum- 
 berland Presbyterian Church. 
 
 3. The Baptists have also their Subdivisions. The 
 Seventh-Day Baptists have churches in many parts of the 
 country, chiefly in New York, Rhode Island, Ohio, Vir- 
 ginia, and some of the Western States. The Disciples 
 of Christ, or Campbellites, arose from the labors of 
 Dr. Alexander Campbell, about the year 1812. Their 
 chief numerical strength is to be found in Northern 
 Ohio and several of the Western States. The Free 
 (Will) Baptists originated in New Hampshire in 1780, 
 chiefly through the labors of Benjamin Randall. Their 
 principal strength is in Maine and other New England 
 States. The Quakers and Mennonites are Baptists in 
 theology, and are descendants of German and Dutch 
 immigrants to Pennsylvania. There are other Baptist 
 subdivisions, such as the Anti-mission Baptists, the 
 General Baptists, and the Church of God (Winnebren- 
 narians). 
 
 4. The Smaller Methodist Churches are not less nu- 
 merous than those of the Baptists and Presbyterians. 
 The Methodist Protestant Church is a secession from 
 the Methodist Episcopal Church, on the ground of 
 objection to Episcopacy. It took organic shape about 
 1828. The United Brethren in Christ were organized 
 about 1789. Their founders were from the German
 
 80 THE CHURCH FN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Reformed, the Lutherans, and the Mennonites. The 
 Evangelical Association, arising through the labors of 
 the Rev. Jacob Albright, was organized about 1800. The 
 African Methodist Episcopal Church was formally estab- 
 lished in 1816. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion 
 Church is of later origin. Both these churches have 
 their chief constituency in the Southern States, among 
 the colored people. The larger Methodist churches of 
 Canada have united, and bear the general name of the 
 Methodist Church of Canada.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE QUAKERS. 
 
 The Friends, or Quakers, arose as a religious body in 
 England about the middle of the seventeenth century. 
 Their founder was George Fox. He visited the Ameri- 
 can colonies, and established societies in many places. 
 He and his followers avoided controversy, and quietly 
 pursued their course. The laws of all the colonies ex- 
 cept Pennsylvania and Maryland were adverse to them. 
 But, driven from one place, they went quietly to an- 
 other, without murmuring. One of their early advocates 
 in this country was George Keith. He afterwards left 
 the Quakers, and united with the Church of England. 
 The first colony of Quakers was founded in America 
 about 1661 ; but others followed in quick succession. 
 A powerful impulse was given to this new sect by the 
 example of William Penn, who was the son of an 
 English admiral. Penn was pure and wise, and of re- 
 markable strength of character. His sense of justice 
 was worthy of any Christian age. 
 6
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
 
 1. The First Great Opportunity of Roman Catholi- 
 cism in the United States was the colonial missions 
 of the French and Spanish along the St. Lawrence and 
 the Lakes, the Mississippi valley, Florida, and the Pa- 
 cific coast. The Canadian Romanism is the best of all 
 these types. The missions of the Mississippi valley 
 failed, and Protestants began on a soil fully ready for 
 them by virtue of the failure of their Roman Catholic 
 predecessors. The Pacific coast had its chain of mis- 
 sions, which have also failed. 
 
 2. The Second Great Opportunity of Roman Cathol- 
 icism in this country has been successful, namely, the 
 cultivation of the vast Roman Catholic immigration 
 from Ireland and other Catholic countries. In 1790, out 
 of the 3,200,000 of the country, only 30,000 were Ro- 
 man Catholics. There were but 26 priests. In New 
 York there were but 100 Roman Catholics, and of 
 them only 40 were communicants. There was but one 
 church, St. Peter's, on Barclay Street. There were but 
 40 Roman Catholics in Boston, and no church until 1803. 
 The Roman Catholic population to-day is about 12,000,- 
 000. In 1790 the population was two out of every 
 220 of the population ; now it is two out of every 11. 
 There was not one school in 1790 ; now they are num- 
 bered by the thousand. Instead of one bishop the 
 estimable Carroll with his 30 priests, in 1790, there
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 83 
 
 are 13 archbishops, 75 bishops, 8000 priests, 2000 
 theological students, 7000 churches, and 3000 chapels 
 and stations. With all this great increase there has 
 been an immense loss of Roman Catholic population. 
 Had the Irish immigrants and their immediate de- 
 scendants remained Catholics, there would now be 15,- 
 000,000 Irish Catholics in the United States. But the 
 fact is there are but 7,000,000 a loss of over one half. 
 There is a shrinkage of 2,000,000 in the Catholic im- 
 migration from Germany, Italy, and other countries. 
 
 3. The Ecclesiastical Organization began in 1789, with 
 the consecration and appointment of the Rev. John 
 Carroll as Bishop of the United States. He was a 
 native of Maryland, a devoted patriot, a man univer- 
 sally respected, and in every way adapted to lay the 
 new foundations of the Roman Catholic Church in the 
 United States. He saw the scanty supply of priests, 
 and labored for their multiplication ; he gave an im- 
 pulse to the erection of churches ; he developed the 
 growth of religious orders and communities ; he sought 
 to reproduce here the European care of the sick and 
 the poor. The spirit which Carroll infused, the strength 
 of his character, and his amazing foresight have entered 
 into the whole subsequent history of Romanism in the 
 United States. The other two great Roman Catholic 
 bishops, who, each in his day, was the leader of his 
 faith in this country England (1820) and Hughes 
 (1838) have only followed in the footsteps of the 
 great Carroll. The Jesuits have made the whole Uni- 
 ted States one vast mission field. They derive their 
 authority directly from Rome. 
 
 4. The Educational System of the Roman Catholic 
 Church has been compelled to undergo in the New 
 World a modification entirely new in its history. The
 
 84 THE CHURCH IX THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 laws of the states favored public schools. The Roman 
 Catholics were compelled to send their children to the 
 public schools, or provide schools at their own expense. 
 In New York the effort was made to have their own 
 schools, and to have an appropriation of the public 
 school funds. The first formal effort was made by 
 Bishop Hughes in 1840. This failed, but the Public 
 School Society agreed to eliminate from the text-books 
 such passages as are objectionable to the Roman Cath- 
 olics, and to have read in the schools only such passages 
 of the Scriptures as are translated in the same way in 
 both the Protestant and Roman Catholic versions. In 
 1853 the Public School Society of New York ceased to 
 exist, nnd the Board of Education was established in- 
 stead. There had been no division of the school fund. 
 Parochial schools, in antagonism to the public schools, 
 were organized in New York and other parts of the 
 country, and the demand was made that the public 
 school fund should be divided in their favor. In 1853 
 this demand was made in eight states of the Union ; 
 but in no case was it granted. At present there are 
 about 2697 parochial schools attended by 537,725 chil- 
 dren, the general direction being given to parents to 
 withdraw their children from the public, schools 
 throughout the United States. The Plenary Council 
 of 1884 directed that Roman Catholic schools should 
 be maintained by all the parishes in the country, and 
 the priests were directed, under threat of expulsion, 
 to found such schools where extreme poverty did not 
 prevent their support.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE UNITARIAN CHURCH. 
 
 1. The Unitarians arose from tbe conflict between 
 the evangelical and non-evangelical parties within the 
 Congregational Church of New England. When Stod- 
 dard, of Northampton, favored the admission of the 
 unregenerate to Church membership and the Lord's 
 Supper, and the right of their children to baptism, the 
 foundation was laid for the large Unitarian defection. 
 The first Unitarian congregation was King's Chapel, 
 Boston. It had been an Episcopal church. The Rev. 
 Mr. Freeman was appointed reader in 1782. He in- 
 troduced a liturgy into his church, from which the 
 doctrine of the Trinity was omitted. He was refused 
 ordination by the American bishops, but in 1787 he 
 was ordained by his church-wardens. Freeman was 
 the first who preached Unitarianism publicly. The 
 first openly Unitarian book was Ballou's work on " The 
 Atonement," published in 1803. The most notable 
 case of open rupture was the election of Dr. Ware, in 
 1804, as professor in Harvard College, and the election 
 of Kirkland as president in 1812. In the same year 
 the " Memoir of Lindsay," by Belsham, was published 
 in London, which was the first revelation to Americans 
 of the steady disintegrating force which had long been 
 operating upon the body of New England evangelical 
 theology. The Boston Congregationalists so far went 
 over to the Unitarian fold that only two churches re-
 
 86 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 mained firm to the old landmarks. The American 
 Unitarian Association, which is the organic centre of 
 the body, was founded in 1825. The Unitarian church- 
 es are bound together by a great variety of theological 
 sentiment. There has never been any basis of faith 
 which has been thoroughly satisfactory. The theo- 
 logical strength of Unitarianism lies in its marvellous 
 power of objection. 
 
 2. William Ellery Channing was the strongest, most 
 symmetrical, and most gifted character produced by 
 the American Unitarians. His sermon in Baltimore, in 
 1819, on the ordination of the Rev. Jared Sparks, was 
 powerful in crystallizing Unitarian sentiment. It pro- 
 duced a number of replies from the evangelical clergy, 
 notably Woods of Andover and Miller of Princeton. 
 The greatest strength of Channing lay in his capacity 
 to go beyond his chosen theological field. His power 
 as a theologian was moderate. But when he advocated 
 temperance and human liberty he became a hero of 
 whom the whole country might well be proud. 
 
 3. The Literary Spirit of the Unitarians has always 
 been very prominent. Harvard College passed into 
 their control. They early began to cultivate the liter- 
 ature of the Continent, and to introduce its better pro- 
 ductions into this country. Their chief writers have 
 exerted a strong influence on the young American 
 mind. Their literary criticism, their unswerving sym- 
 pathy with the cause of the slave, and their rapid re- 
 flection of the advanced thought of Europe, have given 
 to their writings a hearing and respect well worthy of 
 the genius which produced them.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 
 
 1. Transcendentalism, as an intellectual movement, 
 is one of the minor outgrowths of the Unitarian reac- 
 tion. It regards knowledge as not limited to things 
 ascertained by the senses, but going beyond them and 
 numbering among its ascertained things such ideas 
 as are claimed to be taught by the intuitions. The 
 letter of the Scriptures, therefore, is not sufficient to 
 satisfy the transcendentalist. His larger book is the 
 leaves of his innate self. He thinks, and what he 
 thinks becomes his chief guide. The Transcendental 
 Club of Boston had its first meeting in 1836, and from 
 that time had a marked effect on the aspiring literary 
 rnind of New England. 
 
 2. Theodore Parker appeared before the public in 
 1837 as a Unitarian pastor in West Roxbury. After 
 1848 he ceased to be regarded as even a Unitarian. 
 He had drifted far out of the conservative limits of 
 the Channing School, and was an open assailant of the 
 inspiration of the Scriptures, the divinity of Christ, 
 and, indeed, of the divine framework of the Christian 
 religion. He had studied in Germany during the dom- 
 ination of German rationalism, and brought over to 
 America the anti-scriptural influences which he there 
 absorbed. His violence of language, his want of respect 
 for the phenomena of Christianity, and his defence of 
 the most destructive criticism of the German ration- 
 alists, threw him out of the limits of all conservative
 
 88 THE CIIUKCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 minds. His words were sword-strokes. He was as fear- 
 less in his declarations against the crime of slavery as a 
 Crusader in his march against the Saracen. He had no 
 system. His writings are varied. He proves but little, 
 though he asserts much. Theology, humane pleadings, 
 literary criticism, are combined in strange mixture. He 
 was a man of large heart, of tender sympathies, and as 
 he approached the end, in Florence, whither he had gone 
 for his health, a reverence and calmness came over him 
 as a breath of peace and gentleness from the Crucified. 
 3. Ralph Waldo Emerson stands easily at the head 
 of the transcendental column. He had drunk in the 
 old New England theology from ancestral days. For 
 eight generations his family had been preachers. In 
 1830 he became pastor of the Second Church in Bos- 
 ton. But in 1831 he ceased his pastoral care, and 
 henceforth became a writer and a lecturer. He lived 
 without a theological system, and died without a fol- 
 lowing. With a warm poetic sympathy, with a tender 
 regard for the slave and all in need, and with a gentle- 
 ness of spirit worthy of Epictetus, he passed through 
 a long career of authorship and observation. All men 
 were his friends, because he was the friend of all. His 
 literary method explains his want of coherence. He 
 put his thoughts, as they came to him, in scrap-books. 
 His writings present all the characteristics of disjunc- 
 tion. His theology and philosophy lay in his supreme 
 faith in the majesty of the intuitions. To the written 
 word of Scripture he gave but little weight. He was 
 Carlyle's great American admirer and interpreter, but 
 without Carlyle's orthodox quality. He is a man to 
 admire, because of his noble qualities of heart and the 
 brightness of his genius. His placid personal life is 
 a beautiful picture. One cannot contemplate it with- 
 out admiring it.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 UNIVEESALISTS AXD OTHER SMALLER BODIES. 
 
 1. The Universalists hold the doctrine of universal 
 salvation. They first appeared in New England, about 
 the middle of the eighteenth century. The most prom- 
 inent apostle of the doctrine was the Rev. John Mur- 
 ray, who came to this country from England in 1770. 
 The Rev. E. Winchester united with them. A third ad- 
 vocate, the Rev. Hosea Ballou, gave increased strength 
 to the movement about 1790. The General Conven- 
 tion of 1803 adopted a basis of faith the Holy Script- 
 ures as a revelation of the divine character and human 
 duty and destiny ; one God, revealed in Jesus Christ, 
 by one Holy Spirit, who will restore the world to holi- 
 ness and happiness ; holiness and happiness are con- 
 nected ; believers ought to practise good works, for 
 they are good and profitable to men. There is variety 
 of view as to the time when final happiness of the un- 
 righteous takes place. 
 
 2. The Swedenborgians began their organization with 
 the preaching of the doctrines of Swedenborg, or The 
 Church of the New Jerusalem, in Philadelphia, by the 
 Rev. James Glen. In Boston, Samuel Worcester was 
 active in propagating Swedenborgian views, about 
 1817. The General Convention was organized in 1818. 
 The congregations are chiefly in New England, Ohio, 
 and Pennsylvania. There is a large measure of in- 
 dependent views in the separate congregations. The
 
 90 THE CHUBCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 theology in one may differ considerably from that of 
 another. 
 
 3. The Shakers in America owe their origin to James 
 Wardley, who had been a Quaker, but separated from 
 that body. He began to preach the extravagant and 
 superstitious notions which underlie the Shaker system. 
 The great exponent of Shakerism was Ann Lee, who 
 married a man named Standley, and came to this country 
 in 1774. She preached gross extravagances, and called 
 herself "Ann the Word." The Shakers called them- 
 selves the Millennial Church, and established them- 
 selves as a community at Watervliet, near Albany. 
 They believe in physical contortions as manifestations 
 of spiritual power ; that the millennium has already 
 begun ; that they have apostolic gifts ; that baptism 
 and the Lord's Supper ceased with the apostolic age ; 
 and that the judgment has already commenced. Of 
 their history, they thus sing : 
 
 "Hail, thou victorious gospel! 
 
 And that auspicious day, 
 When Mother safely landed 
 
 In Hudson's lovely bay ; 
 Near Albany they settled, 
 
 And waited for a while, 
 Until a mighty shaking 
 
 Made all the desert smile." 
 
 4. The Christians are of threefold origin Metho- 
 dist, Baptist, and Presbyterian. The Rev. James 
 O'Kelley, in 1793, withdrew from the Methodist Epis- 
 copal Church in North Carolina, on account of objec- 
 tions to the polity of that Church. His views of the 
 Trinity underwent a change about the same time, and 
 he and his followers called themselves Republican 
 Methodists. About ten years later, Dr. Abner Jones, 
 of Vermont, and the Rev. Elias Smith, of New Hatnp-
 
 UNI VERBALISTS AND OTHER SMALLER BODIES. 91 
 
 shire, withdrew from the Baptist Church. They were 
 followed by other Baptists in New England and in other 
 states, the basis of their movement being an opposi- 
 tion to all creeds. About the same time the Rev. B. W. 
 Stone, of Kentucky, with others, withdrew from the 
 Presbyterian Church, and called themselves " Chris- 
 tians." These three movements, being in the main 
 alike, amalgamated, and took the general name of 
 "Christians." The Christians do not admit the deity 
 of the Holy Ghost or of Christ, at the same time calling 
 Christ "the only-begotten Son of God." They have 
 no general unity of doctrine, their main bond being an 
 opposition to all creeds. They have exerted no gen- 
 eral influence on the life of the country. 
 
 5. The Rappists and Others. In 1803 George Rapp 
 came over to the United States from Germany, bring- 
 ing with him a small colony. The colonists settled 
 at Economy, near Pittsburgh, where they established 
 themselves. They then went to Indiana, but after- 
 wards returned to Economy, where they have remained 
 to the present time. The Hicksite Quakers arose from 
 Elias Hicks, a Friend, in 1827. They reject the doc- 
 trine of the Trinity. The Millerite movement was un- 
 der the leadership of William Miller, who in 1831 pro- 
 claimed the second advent of Christ. He was joined 
 by others, who held camp -meetings and revival ser- 
 vices, and published several journals and special ap- 
 peals, in New England and New York. They fixed on 
 April 23, 1843, and other dates, for the destruction of 
 the world, but, the prophecies failing, the most of the 
 Millerites became discouraged, and drifted into differ- 
 ent forms of scepticism and superstitition.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE MORMON ABOMINATION. 
 
 1. The Mormon Antecedents are not admirable. To 
 Vermont belongs the responsibility of producing the 
 two great Mormon leaders, Joseph Smith and Brigham 
 Young. The beginnings of the Mormon system are 
 so ridiculous, so enveloped in either superstition or 
 gross imposture, that they merit universal contempt. 
 Joseph Smith, the first apostle, claimed to be the au- 
 thor of the " Book of Mormon," published in Palmyra, 
 New York, in 1830. Sidney Rigdon had become a 
 Mormon preacher and joined Smith the year before. 
 In 1830 the first church was organized in Manchester, 
 New York. The leaders claimed miraculous powers. 
 In 1831 the whole body removed to Kirtland, Ohio, 
 where they established a colony and built a temple. 
 Brigham Young joined them in 1832, and in 1835 be- 
 came one of the twelve apostles. The bank which 
 they had founded now failing, the colony removed to 
 Missouri, and then to Nauvoo, Illinois, and finally, in 
 1845, to Utah. 
 
 2. The Origin of the Book of Mormon seems to have 
 been a piece of literary trickery. Solomon Spalding, 
 a Dartmouth graduate, was at one time a minister of 
 the gospel, but retired from the ministry, and removed 
 to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1812. He died four 
 years later. His tastes were antiquarian. He studied 
 the mounds of Eastern Ohio, and conceived the idea of
 
 THE MORMON ABOMINATION. 93 
 
 writing a book, claiming to be the work of a mound- 
 builder, and to have been found in an ancient mound. 
 He called his fiction, "Manuscript Found," but died 
 before its publication. In 1812 he placed his manu- 
 script in a Pittsburgh printing-office, with which Sid- 
 ney Rigdon was connected. This man copied it, and 
 returned the manuscript to Spalding, whose death oc- 
 curred soon afterwards. This book was changed so as 
 to admit the doctrine of the ne\tf sect. In lack of a 
 Bible which favored their views, the Mormons patched 
 up Spalding's "Manuscript Found" to such an extent 
 that, under the title of the " Book of Mormon," it be- 
 came the basis of their creed and the fountain of their 
 abominations. In all literary history no greater train 
 of social corruption has ever followed a piece of liter- 
 ary imposture. It has been translated into many mod- 
 ern languages, and is made the book of final appeal by 
 all Mormons. 
 
 & The Growth of the Mormon Body is largely due to 
 the great immigration of its dupes from England, 
 I Scandinavia, and other parts of Europe. In 1837 Orson 
 Hyde and H. C. Kimball went to England as mission- 
 aries, and succeeded in persuading a number to come 
 to this country and unite their fortunes with the Mor- 
 mons. Missionaries have been going to Europe ever 
 since, and have induced many to come to America and 
 become Mormons. In their missionary appeals to the 
 European peasantry they hold out the inducement of a 
 home and property. To unsuspecting and uneducated 
 persons, who have long been looking to America as 
 their home, and have been kept at home for the want 
 of passage money, the offer to pay all expenses to Utah 
 has been too flattering to be resisted. The illusion is 
 kept up until their arrival. From Utah the Mormons
 
 94 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 have extended into New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, 
 Idaho, and Wyoming. They are generally good farm- 
 ers, and have developed much territory which they 
 have brought to great fruitfulness. The alleged Mor- 
 mon population is 138,000, which is probably far be- 
 neath the actual number. 
 
 4. The Edmunds Law, prohibiting polygamy and im- 
 prisoning all men guilty of it, has been the first suc- 
 cessful step to establish the laws of the United States 
 over this abnormal community. AVith the legal pro- 
 scription of polygamy it is likely that the crime will be- 
 come less a part of the Mormon system. Probably the 
 Mormons will in due time formally throw overboard that 
 one cardinal feature and retain the rest. They know 
 how to adapt themselves to circumstances. The Mor- 
 mons prosper chiefly by raising the cry of persecution. 
 
 5. The Antidote to Mormonism has been provided. 
 Various evangelical bodies have sent their missiona- 
 ries to Utah, who labor in the midst of that Mormon 
 stronghold. The first missionary to Salt Lake was a 
 Congregationalist, the Rev. Norman McLeod, in 1864. , 
 The Episcopalians, the Presbyterians, and the Method- 
 ists followed in rapid succession. The method of work 
 has been to establish services and found schools. There 
 are now about three hundred preachers and teachers 
 engaged in the gigantic undertaking of uprooting Mor- 
 monism. Their work is difficult, but the recent ad- 
 vance has been decided. No part of our country makes 
 stronger appeal than this for money and for workers. 
 No one who goes into a distant land to combat hea- 
 thenism has a more difficult task than he has who set- 
 tles down among the Mormons, and sets up the banner 
 of the cross with a view to eradicate the most glaring, 
 disloyal, and corrupt monstrosity which has ever in- 
 flicted itself upon our American civilization.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORM. 
 
 1. American Slavery was the outgrowth of European 
 cupidity. In 1619 a Dutch frigate stopped at James- 
 town, Va., and sold fourteen negroes to the colonists. 
 Others were brought afterwards, and sold at various 
 times during the century. By the year 1670 there 
 were two thousand slaves in Virginia. But this col- 
 ony did not stand alone. Slavery existed in all the 
 colonies. Newport, R. I., was the American centre of 
 the slave trade with the West Indies and Africa. It 
 was the custom to make slaves of the Indians capt- 
 ured in war. 
 
 2. The Colonial Protest against slavery became verr 
 decided as the number of slaves increased and gave 
 signs of becoming a permanent institution. No strong 
 voice was raised in justification of the system. It 
 seems to have been always regarded as an evil an un- 
 fortunate necessity growing out of the colonial need 
 of labor. But many opposed its growth, and lifted 
 their voice against the condition of the slaves. By tho 
 year 1700 there was a strong sentiment throughout New 
 England against it. John Eliot, the apostle to the In- 
 dians, in 1675 presented a memorial to the Governor 
 and Council of Massachusetts against selling captured 
 Indians into slavery, and against the wretched condi- 
 tion of the enslaved Africans. The Quakers of Phila- 
 delphia presented to their Yearly Meeting, in 1688, a
 
 96 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 strong protest against "buying, selling, and holding 
 men in slavery." All Quakers stood boldly against the 
 sin, and declared that it ought to be crushed. William 
 Penn's " concern for the souls of the blacks " pervaded 
 the entire body of his co-religionists. John Wesley, 
 while a missionary in Georgia, protested against slavery. 
 
 3. The Opposition to Slavery at the time of the na- 
 tional independence was universal. It was considered, 
 as in the earlier period, a great misfortune, which 
 ought to be removed at the earliest possible moment. 
 In Virginia its abolition was publicly advocated. In 
 Tennessee and Kentucky the public press waged a bit- 
 ter warfare for its extermination. Pennsylvania was 
 the centre of the crusade. The Pennsylvania Aboli- 
 tion Society, organized before the Revolution, was re- 
 established in 1784. Franklin, Benezet, Rush, Hop- 
 kins, and others labored earnestly for the arrest and 
 extirpation of slavery. All the great Revolutionary 
 leaders Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, 
 Jay, and the rest stood as a unit against it. In ad- 
 dition to Pennsylvania, other states had their aboli- 
 tion societies that of New York being organized in 
 1785, Rhode Island in 178.9, Connecticut in 1790, and 
 New Jersey in J792. 
 
 4. All the Churches took the same view of the sin 
 of slavery. Elias Neare, of New York, labored from 
 1704 to 1708 for the conversion and instruction of the 
 negroes in that city. In Virginia it was considered 
 proper that the negroes should be instructed, and 
 measures were adopted for that end. John Wesley 
 sent over to the Rev. Mr. Davis, of Virginia, books 
 for the benefit of the colored people in that clergy- 
 man's needy parish. An important literature against 
 slavery sprang up. Anti-slavery writings of the Old
 
 THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORM. 97 
 
 World found a ready sale in the New. John Wes- 
 ley's "Thoughts on Slavery" was republishcd here, 
 and found many readers throughout the colonies. 
 Slavery had, as yet, no strong apologist. 
 
 5. The Quiescent Period extended from about 1800 
 to 1830. A general sentiment of indifference pre- 
 vailed. In the South there were so many slaves, and 
 they seemed to contribute so largely to the mate- 
 rial progress of that section, that the system was re- 
 garded as a necessity. In the North the agitation was 
 not carried on with the former activity. No plan was 
 proposed which assumed the shape of practical possi- 
 bility. The most feasible plan seemed to be the de- 
 portation of slaves to Africa. The American Coloni- 
 zation Society organized the colony of Liberia, on the 
 west coast of Africa, in 1817, and many humane men 
 advocated the scheme. But the chief service of this 
 worthy institution was to create sympathy with the 
 negroes. As to making Africa a home for the Ameri- 
 can negroes, in due time the plan was proved to be im- 
 practicable. The African negro, though at first an un- 
 willing guest in America, nevertheless likes his home 
 too well to think of leaving it, except to aid in the 
 evangelization of Africa. The war with Mexico, in 
 1847, resulted in the large accession of Texas as slave 
 territory. Efforts were made to make Kansas a slave 
 state. The public mind became aroused to great ex- 
 citement on both sides. The political parties took up 
 the question with avidity. The firm friends of the 
 liberation of the slave triumphed in Kansas, and it was 
 admitted as a free state. John Brown, who had led 
 in the movement in Kansas, began a liberating move- 
 ment in Virginia, where he was arrested and hung as 
 a fomenter of insurrection. 
 7
 
 98 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 6. The Emancipation of the Slaves during the Civil 
 War, by the act of President Lincoln, sustained by the 
 Union armies and the general sentiment of the North- 
 ern States, put an end to the long struggle in behalf 
 of the freedom of the slave. The question once in 
 politics, it remained there until settled by the sword. 
 Boston was the centre of the agitation in the North. 
 Anti-slavery movements were conducted in different 
 sections of the country. Benjamin Lundy labored in 
 Western Virginia, from 1815 to 1830, by speech and 
 pen. The Rev. J. Dickey, of Kentucky, about 1824, 
 was engaged in the same work. William Lloyd Garri- 
 son began in Vermont the publication of his Journal 
 of the Times, in 1828. Boston became, later, his great 
 field of agitation. Gerritt Smith, Joshua Leavitt, G. B. 
 Cheever, Lyman Beecher, A. A. Phelps, Oliver John- 
 son, Theodore Parker, H. W. Beecher, and Wendell 
 Phillips are only a few of the great names which illu- 
 minate the pages of the history of the anti- slavery 
 struggle as it approached its culmination. Whittier 
 has been the great minstrel to reflect in verse the aspi- 
 ration of the slave for freedom. 
 
 7. The Present Condition of the liberated slaves and 
 their children is one of the most serious questions for 
 the American Church to solve. The four millions of 
 liberated slaves have grown into seven millions. The 
 churches of the North have organized important meas- 
 ures for their education, which are constantly increas- 
 ing. There is a universal acquiescence in the extinc- 
 tion of slavery. The South itself regards it as a provi- 
 dential deliverance. Slavery always was a national 
 expense.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. 
 
 1. Intemperance during the Colonial Period was a com- 
 mon vice. It was a heritage from the Old World. 
 Public opinion, even in the clergy, was seriously direct- 
 ed towards its extirpation. It was regarded an evil 
 which might in time be removed. But the -day seemed 
 remote, and the manner of the solution of the great 
 question was a problem too deep to engage serious 
 thought. Moderate drinking was common to all class- 
 es. The time for enriching the coffers of the producer 
 by chemical admixtures to alcohol had not yet come. 
 The colonial tippler was at least safe in drinking una- 
 dulterated liquors. But no man who lives by an un- 
 holy traffic remains satisfied without lessening his ex- 
 pense in producing his ware. We are now in the midst 
 of the reign of poisonous compounds. That the evil 
 of intemperance was known and recognized in the co- 
 lonial times may be seen in a ^resolution of the first 
 Congress (1774) : "Resolved, that it be recommended 
 to the several legislatures immediately to pass laws 
 the more effectually to put a stop to the pernicious 
 practice of distilling, from which the most extensive 
 evils are likely to be derived, if not quickly prevented." 
 Tliis was bold and fearless action. No Congress since 
 then has had the moral courage to pass a like motion. 
 
 2. Early Leaders in the Temperance Reform were not 
 wanting. The Quakers were a unit in support of it.
 
 100 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 The Methodist Episcopal Confeixmce of 1783 asked 
 this question : " Should our friends be permitted to make 
 spirituous liquors, sell and drink them in drams ?" To 
 this it gave answer : " By no means: we think it wrong 
 in its nature and consequences; and desire all our preach- 
 ers to teach the people, by precept and example, to 
 put away this evil." The Presbyterian General As- 
 sembly of 1811 made a similarly strong declaration 
 against intemperance. The Congregationalists took 
 equally strong action in the same year. Dr. Rush's 
 book, "The Effects of Ardent Spirits on the Human 
 Mind and Body," published in Philadelphia in 1785, 
 was one of the first American works to prove the dele- 
 terious physical and mental effects of alcoholic liquors. 
 It was widely circulated, and exerted a great influence 
 in directing public attention to the growth of intem- 
 perance and in organizing measures for its suppression. 
 Jeremy Belknap, of New Hampshire, was a strenuous 
 advocate in the same good cause. 
 
 3. Organizations for the eradication of intemperance 
 began to be formed shortly after the national inde- 
 pendence. The first temperance organization was 
 formed by about two hundred farmers of Connecticut 
 in the year 1789. In 1811 the Massachusetts Society 
 for the Suppression of Intemperance was founded. 
 This society had the support of the strongest men of 
 all denominations in New England. Societies model- 
 led after this one multiplied in various parts of the 
 country, but chiefly in New England. The Washing- 
 tonian movement, beginning in 1840, required a pledge 
 of total abstinence. Multitudes gave it their cordial 
 support, and many intemperate people were reclaimed 
 throughout the country. But the interest soon de- 
 clined. Other associations arose. The National Tern-
 
 THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. 101 
 
 perancc Society has been a powerful organization for 
 the diffusion of temperance literature and the organi- 
 zation of temperance movements throughout the coun- 
 try. The Roman Catholic Total Abstinence Society, 
 established in 1870, has exerted a powerful influence 
 in continuing in this country the movement begun by 
 Father Matthew in Ireland. The most aggressive of all 
 the associations in this country has been the Woman's 
 Christian Temperance Union, which began with the 
 Woman's Crusade in Ohio in 1874. The president of 
 this association is Miss Frances E. Willard. 
 
 4. Constitutional Prohibition is the latest and most 
 radical method of suppressing intemperance in the 
 United States. Maine was the first state to prohibit 
 the manufacture and sale of all intoxicants. Kansas 
 and Iowa followed in the same path. Rhode Island 
 adopted the amendment, but there was never any dis- 
 position on the part of the officers to carry it out. By 
 shrewd political management the amendment has been 
 reversed, and now, in the state made immortal by the 
 career of Roger Williams, the saloon has full liberty 
 of destruction. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, 
 Texas, and several other states have i-ejected the amend- 
 ment by a popular vote. The manufacturers of intox- 
 icating liquor have bent their energies against consti- 
 tutional prohibition in every state where the question 
 lias been submitted to the popular decision. 
 
 5. The Friends of the Saloon have spent money with 
 a lavish hand, have subsidized the press, have employed 
 voluble speakers, have misrepresented the operation of 
 the prohibitory laws in states where the constitutional 
 amendment prevails, have presented the bribe of politi- 
 cal support to men who will oppose prohibition, and have 
 offered the tempting snare of supporting high license.
 
 102 THE CHURCH IX THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Many friends of temperance look upon local option as 
 the best remedy for intemperance. In the Southern 
 States it is the favorite remedy. But this is merely 
 temporary. The territory where liquors are prohibited 
 can easily be reached by the stealthy arm of the ven- 
 dor from the adjoining territory where it is free. Fre- 
 quent elections make local option a dream rather than 
 a permanent possession. Many friends of temperance 
 look upon high license as the best method of restric- 
 tion. This delusion may prevail for a time. A sin is 
 no less a sin because the doer offers a large price for 
 the privilege of committing it. He whose itching 
 palm takes the price is no less a sinner even though 
 the impersonal offender bears the great name of the 
 United States.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PHILANTHROPY AND CHRISTIAN UNION. 
 
 1. The Philanthropic Spirit is one of the most nota- 
 ble of all the developments of the American Church. 
 The early introduction of the voluntary principle as 
 the basis of financial support has become a prominent 
 factor in the growth of the philanthropic spirit. The 
 needs of the Church have required the voluntary gifts of 
 the people. The United States have really done but lit- 
 tle, compared with the wealth at command, for the larger 
 humane work of the country. The vast asylums for 
 all the helpless classes have, for the most part, grown 
 out of the spirit of beneficence in the individual citi- 
 zen. The first gifts of the colonists were for educa- 
 tion. These were humble and small, but they were 
 the foundation of that immense giving for educational 
 purposes which has placed the American Church far 
 beyond the Church in other countries. 
 
 2. The Education of the Freedmen has been recognized 
 as one of the most urgent benevolent causes of the last 
 thirty years. All the larger ecclesiastical bodies have 
 poured down into the Southern country vast sums of 
 money for the education of both the white and colored 
 people. The Peabody Fund, founded by the late George 
 Peabody, has been a source of great help. The Slater 
 fund is every year extending its beneficent work. The 
 general government took the freedmen under its own 
 care at first, by establishing the Freedmen's Bureau.
 
 104 THE CHUliCII IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 But this did not meet the want. The churches came 
 in and took its place, and have carried the work far 
 beyond the limits which he government had designed. 
 The Fisk University, in Nashville, is a notable typo 
 of an institution founded by Northern beneficence for 
 the education of the colored people in the South. The 
 Vanderbilt University, founded by the late Cornelius 
 Vanderbilt, of New York, is a type of the beneficent 
 spirit of the North operating for the benefit of the 
 whites in the South. These are, however, only portions 
 of the immense sums and the large educational insti- 
 tutions which the South owes to the benevolent spirit 
 of Northern citizens. Beyond all calculation is the 
 power of these golden threads of fraternal love to heal 
 the divisions engendered by the War for the Union. 
 
 3. The Treatment of the Indians by the United States 
 is one of the darkest chapters in our national history. 
 The military spirit has predominated in the national 
 management of the aborigines, and the general judgment 
 has been " the only good Indian is the dead Indian." 
 We have crowded the Indians into reservations, and 
 then managed to deprive them again of these. The deal- 
 ings with the Indians have been managed on the basis 
 of might giving right. The only relief to the dark 
 picture of the government's management of the Indian 
 problem has been the humane policy of the churches. 
 All the early colonial legislation was friendly. The 
 king's instruction to the first colony Virginia was : 
 "To provide that the true word and service of God be 
 preached, planted, and used, not only in the said colony, 
 but also as much as might be among the savages bor- 
 dering upon them, according to the rites and doc- 
 trines of the Church of England." Whether by the 
 authority of the original charters, or the voluntary
 
 PHILANTHROPY AND CHRISTIAN UNION. 105 
 
 legislation of the colonial governments, the Indian was 
 treated well. The point made by Roger Williams, 
 that the Indian was the real owner of the soil, thorough- 
 ly pervaded the better colonists all along the seaboard. 
 But our later treatment has been in antagonism to all 
 our colonial antecedents. The seal of Massachusetts 
 Colony had as its device the figure of an Indian, with 
 the Macedonian cry, "Come over and help us." We 
 have "come over," and cheated and killed. Our wars 
 with the Indians have arisen from Indian depredations 
 produced by the Indian's knowledge that he had been 
 treated unjustly. The wars have been crimes, as fully 
 so as the partition of Poland by Prussia, Austria, and 
 Russia. 
 
 4. Christian Union has been one of the most beauti- 
 ful phases of our American ecclesiastical life. Until 
 about 1860 the controversial spirit asserted itself. The 
 Unitarian controversy in New England, and the long 
 conflict between the Calvinistic and Arminian types 
 of theology, pervaded the Northern churches, and 
 reached some parts of the South. But the spirit of 
 ecclesiastical fraternity and wise co-operation now be- 
 came prominent, due in large measure to the great re- 
 vival of 1857-59. There had already been beginnings. 
 The Evangelical Alliance, which Avas founded in 1846, 
 has been a powerful agency in bringing the evangeli- 
 cal churches of the United States into close relation- 
 ship. The Young Men's Christian Association, found- 
 ed in 1851 after the model of the London Society for 
 Improving the Spiritual Condition of Young Men en- 
 gaged in the Drapery and other Trades, in 1844, has 
 brought together a great number of active men for 
 earnest work in caring for young men in every part of 
 the United States. There arc now about three thou-
 
 106 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 sand branches of this association throughout the world. 
 The Sanitary Commission, a voluntary association for 
 the care of the wounded and suffering during the 
 Civil War, was purely secular, but comprised voluntary 
 workers from many communions. The Christian Com- 
 mission, also voluntary, consisted of persons who com- 
 bined Christian sympathy with physical care of the 
 suffering during the war. About twelve million dol- 
 lars were contributed voluntarily by the people of the 
 North for the carrying on of the work of these two 
 branches of united Christian work. 
 
 5. Christian Co-operation is constantly advancing. In 
 city missionary work, in societies of young people for 
 Scriptural instruction, in the larger place assigned to 
 the laity in evangelistic effort, one can easily see how rap- 
 idly the spirit of unity in work is increasing in every part 
 of the American Church. The present danger is, that 
 many will forget their denominational attachments, 
 and think that any one religious body which furnishes 
 the first field of work is as good as any other.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 MISSIONS. 
 
 1. The Missionary Spirit of the American Church has 
 been prominent ever since the beginning of the pres- 
 ent century. The great revival at that time began 
 early to take the form of an intense activity in behalf 
 of the unevangelized. The expansion of our popu- 
 lation in the West revealed such widespread wants in 
 great regions of the country that it seemed as if the 
 demand made upon the Church was far greater than 
 could be supplied. But the heroism displayed by indi- 
 viduals, representing the leading evangelical churches, 
 soon put at rest all misgivings as to the power of the 
 Christian people of the land to extend the blessings 
 of the gospel to every part of the national domain. 
 
 2. Missions to the Indians were among the first to re- 
 ceive attention. In 1840 there were about one million 
 eight hundred thousand Indians in the United States 
 and Canada. Seventy thousand of these were half civ- 
 ilized, or in such close relation to our white population 
 as to be under Christian influence. Among some of 
 these tribes the churches sent missionaries, established 
 schools, and published books in the Indian languages. 
 Occasionally an Indian preacher of great popular abil- 
 ity visited the churches in the East, addressed popular 
 audiences, and secured a greatly increased interest in 
 behalf of the spiritual condition of his people. There 
 were two influences at work in relation to the Indians
 
 108 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the hostile attitude of the general government, which 
 regarded the Indians as an expensive incubus on the 
 nation ; and the sympathy of the churches, which re- 
 garded the Indians as worthy of spiritual care. The 
 process of decrease of the Indians went steadily on. 
 Their languages became fewer, some being spoken by 
 such decreasing numbers as almost to disappear. The 
 American Bible Society published the Scriptures in a 
 number of the Indian languages, while some of the 
 churches published catechisms, hymns, ^nd other prac- 
 tical books. The churches were in advance of the Bible 
 Society as to time. Some of the parts of the Scriptures, 
 as John's gospel in Mohawk, were published by individ- 
 ual churches. 
 
 3. Home Missions. The foreign populations have 
 presented a difficult problem. Thus far only a scanty 
 provision has been made to reach their wants. The 
 Germans, French, Scandinavians, Poles, and other im- 
 migrants are still receiving but slight attention coin- 
 pared with the great need. The first Home Missionary 
 Society was organized by the Congregationalists in Con- 
 necticut in 1774. The Presbyterians of New York and 
 New Jersey followed in 1789 and 1796, and the Con- 
 gregationalists of Massachusetts organized the Massa- 
 chusetts Home Missionary Society in 1799. The polity 
 of the Methodist Episcopal Church requiring an itiner- 
 ant ministry, the labors of many of its preachers were 
 purely missionary, without the name. The Western 
 field was one great territory for home missionary work. 
 The Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society was or- 
 ganized in 1819, but its labors for the first thirteen 
 years were confined entirely to the home work. All 
 the churches exhibited a profound interest in mission- 
 ary work. The Protestant Episcopal Church organ-
 
 MISSIONS. 109 
 
 ized its Boai'd of Missions, for both foreign and homo 
 work, in 1820 ; the Baptists organized their Home 
 Missionary Society in 1832. Some of the churches 
 have Women's Home Missionary Societies which sup- 
 plement, in a wise and successful way, the regular 
 work of the churches with which they are connected. 
 The field which these latter societies have chosen has 
 been chiefly in the South, on the frontier, and especial- 
 ly in Utah. 
 
 4. The Foreign Field for American Missions is very 
 broad. From the time when the American Board of 
 Commissioners of Foreign Missions sent out their first 
 group of missionaries Judson, Newell, and their 
 wives to India, in 1812, there has been a constant 
 advance in missionary interest in all the churches. The 
 field is now very broad. There are five separate parts : 
 the Protestant countries of the Continent, the Ro- 
 man Catholic countries, the Greek Catholic countries, 
 the Mohammedan countries, and the Heathen coun- 
 tries. Scandinavia, German} 7 , Switzerland, and Italy 
 have become special fields. Bulgaria and Turkey, with 
 Constantinople as the centre, have received great at- 
 tention. 
 
 5. Robert College, founded on the bank of the Bos- 
 phorus by the late Christopher Robert, has been a 
 powerful agent in Christian education for the polyglot 
 population of Turkey. Greece, Syria, Egypt, and the 
 coast of Asia Minor have shared in the beneficent la- 
 bors of American missions. Missionaries have gone 
 eastward from Turkey as far as the valley of the Tigris 
 and Euphrates, and have almost touched the great 
 band of workers in India. India is one great network 
 of Christian missions, many being organized and sup- 
 ported by the churches of the United States. Already
 
 110 THE CHUBCII IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 a vast native Christian population has been developed, 
 with native preachers, teachers, and medical helpers. 
 Burma, with Judson as the great apostle, has become 
 a prosperous field. In Singapore there are American 
 missions and schools. Up the China coast there arc 
 others, while all over the eastern part of China, and 
 now in Japan and Korea, men and women from 
 America are preaching, teaching, gathering in or- 
 phans, and founding schools. The gospel in the 
 Sandwich Islands is a special triumph of American 
 Christianity. Alaska, our latest northwestern posses- 
 sion, is now becoming a prosperous missionary field. 
 The honor of seeing its importance, and being the 
 first to cultivate this field, belongs to the Presbyterian 
 Church of the United States. 
 
 6. The New Africa. The latest phase in African 
 evangelization is to be found in the opening for the 
 gospel in the regions explored by the immortal David 
 Livingstone. Stanley, with the view of aiding the 
 project of the king of Belgium in founding the Congo 
 Free State, by his travels and the interest awakened 
 by his books describing them, has contributed greatly 
 to the interest in the New Africa on the part of the 
 whole Christian world. Many of the leading churches 
 have already established missions along the Congo. 
 Bishop William Taylor, though now advanced in years, 
 is at work in that newly opened region with all the 
 enthusiasm which marked his earlier labors in Califor- 
 nia, Australia, South Africa, South America, and India.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 1. The First Publications of the Colonial Writers were 
 largely religious. Even such works as Morton's " Me- 
 morial," which was designed to describe the early his- 
 tory of the Plymouth Colony, dealt much in religious 
 matter. Such accounts as were sent back to England, 
 describing the colonial history, gave so much prominence 
 to ecclesiastical and religious matters that one would 
 suppose the writers were dealing with the annals of a 
 church rather than of a colony. The writers, however, 
 were for the most part preachers, and often learned 
 theologians, and the matter which they furnished was 
 welcome to the whole Protestant world of Europe. 
 Eliot's Indian Bible, while it could not be read by an 
 individual in Europe, and by very few in the colonies, 
 aroused a profound foreign interest in American eccle- 
 siastical life. The colleges of Harvard and Yale were 
 centres of a Christian literature. The professors were 
 mostly preachers, and many of the young men who 
 studied under them went into the New England 
 pulpits, and themselves became valuable contributors 
 to the new religious literature of the colonies. 
 
 2. Elementary Religious Works were produced at an 
 early period. The "New England Primer," during 
 the eighteenth century, was the little manual which 
 was regarded in New England as necessary for every 
 child's instruction. The catechism prepared by Rich-
 
 112 THE CIIURCII IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ard Mather and John Cotton, entitled "Spiritual Milk 
 for Babes," appeared in many forms and for many 
 years, and was incorporated in the "New England 
 Primer " of later date. It was made a part of a primer 
 for the colony of Connecticut, and published about 
 1715. The "New England Primer" absorbed the 
 necessary parts of other elementary works, and was 
 published in the various colonies. It was edited by 
 many competent hands, and adapted itself to the po- 
 litical changes of the colonies. At one time it was 
 strongly anti- Catholic. It was loyal to the British 
 king, when it was necessary so to be. But in due time 
 it produced Washington's portrait as its frontispiece. 
 The " New England Primer Improved " was the later 
 and final form. It contained hymns by Watts, easy 
 spelling and reading lessons, prayers, acrostics, the 
 Shorter Catechism, and the celebrated " Dialogue be- 
 tween Christ, Youth, and the Devil." The picture of 
 John Rogers at the stake, surrounded by his wife and 
 children, was always a necessary illustration. The 
 couplets, beginning with 
 
 "In Adam's fall 
 We sinned all," 
 
 and closing with 
 
 " Zacclicus he 
 Did climb the tree 
 His Lord to see," 
 
 were never omitted, as needful exposition of the truth 
 to accompany the quaint illustrations. The "Psal- 
 terium Americanum," edited by Cotton Mather, was 
 used for worship extensively. The "Whole Book of 
 Psalms," published in 1G40, a literal reprint of the re- 
 ceived version, was as near an approach to the P,salter
 
 CHRISTIAN LITEKATUHE. 113 
 
 of the Established Church as the prejudices of the 
 Puritan fathers would allow. The great basis of the 
 New England faith was the Westminster Catechism. 
 It was the universal guide. Every pastor went ac- 
 cording to it in the colonial period. It was regarded 
 as the great modern triumph of Christianity in Europe. 
 Sermons were preached upon it, and books were pub- 
 lished in exposition of it. Samuel Willard, for exam- 
 ple, covered a space of nineteen years, by delivering 
 two hundred and fifty lectures on the Shorter Cate- 
 chism. His works were published after his death in 
 a ponderous volume the first folio produced by the 
 American press. Sermons were a favorite form of re- 
 ligious literature. Watts's " Psalms and Hymns " 
 went through numerous editions. Religious biography, 
 such as the "Journal of Whitefield," and others, was 
 in general demand. Reprints of Baxter's practical 
 works were common. Only a short time elapsed be- 
 fore a good practical work in England found its way 
 to Boston, and came out from the press of Kneeland, 
 Bumstead, or some other printer of that place. The 
 fruits of the colonial press now appear exceedingly 
 primitive, but they formed an essential part of the re- 
 ligious foundation of the country, and prove to us the 
 early determination of the colonists to develop a relig- 
 ious literature of their own. 
 
 3. The Periodical Religious Press. In no country has 
 the religious press so prominent a place as in the United 
 States. The first religious periodical was Thomas 
 Prince's Christian History, published in Boston. As 
 with all other departments of Christian activity at the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century, so to the publi- 
 cation of religious periodicals a remarkable impulse 
 was given. The Connecticut Evangelical Magazine
 
 114 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 began in 1800, the Massachusetts Missionary Magazine 
 in 1803, and the Panoplist (Boston) in 1805. Others 
 followed in rapid succession. While religious month- 
 lies were the first which came into use, in a short time 
 there were religious weeklies. The Boston Recorder, 
 established by the Congregationalists in 1816, was the 
 first. In due time all the various religious bodies had 
 their organs. After a while special religious interests 
 were represented by periodicals, such as Tract and other 
 societies. Many Sunday-school publications are now 
 of periodical character, and great pains are taken to 
 present in them the very latest and best productions 
 of the Christian thought of both Europe and America. 
 Most of the very best theology we have now appears 
 in the religious periodicals of the United States. Re- 
 searches in Christian archaeology and the history of the 
 Church are represented by special periodicals. 
 
 4. Christian Hymnology has been cultivated by Amer- 
 icans with no little interest and success. Even in the 
 colonial times the rigors of the New England climate 
 and the general privations which the new settlers had 
 to contend with did not prevent the production of de- 
 votional hymns. There was a severity in the theology 
 which has not been reproduced for a century or more, 
 but the spirit of real poesy was not wanting. Wig- 
 glesworth's " Day of Doom " was a vigorous statement 
 of Christian doctrine in verse. But the golden age of 
 American hymnology has been since the beginning of 
 the national period. Among the most notable hymns 
 produced in this country, and now sung by Christian 
 congregations in many parts of the world, may be 
 mentioned the following: 
 
 Timothy Dwight: 
 
 "I love thy kingdom, Lord;"
 
 CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. 115 
 
 W. B. Tappan: 
 
 "There is an hour of peaceful rest;" 
 and 
 
 '"Tis midnight; and on Olive's brow;" 
 
 Bishop A. Cleveland Coxe: 
 
 " O where are kings and empires now ?" 
 Thomas Hastings: 
 
 "How tender is thy hand;" 
 John Picrpont: 
 
 "O Thou to whom in ancient times;" 
 William Hunter: 
 
 *My heavenly home is bright and fair;" 
 
 Henry Ware, Jr. : 
 
 "Lift your glad voices in triumph on high;" 
 
 George. P. Morris: 
 
 "Man dieth and wastcth away;" 
 
 Nathaniel P. Willis: 
 
 "The perfect world, by Adani trod;" 
 Mrs. Lydia II. Sigourney: 
 
 "Blest Comforter Divine;" 
 
 Bishop George W. Doane: 
 
 "Softly now the light of day;" 
 George W. Bethunc: 
 
 "When time seems short and death is near;" 
 
 William A. Muhlenbcrg: 
 
 "I would not live alway;"
 
 110 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Samuel F. Smith: 
 
 "The morning light is breaking;" 
 and 
 
 "My country, 'tis of thee;" 
 
 William C.Bryant: 
 
 "When the blind suppliant in the way;" 
 and 
 
 "Deem not that they are blest alone;" 
 and 
 
 "O Thou, whose own vast temple stands;" 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes: 
 
 "Lord of all being, throned afar;" 
 and 
 
 "O Love divine, that stooped to share;" 
 
 John G. Whit tier: 
 
 "It may not be our lot to wield;" 
 and 
 
 "We may not climb the heavenly steeps;" 
 
 Mrs. Elizabeth P. Prentiss: 
 
 "More love to thee, O Christ;" 
 
 and Ray Palmer: 
 
 "My faith looks up to Thee."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 
 
 1. The Religious Training of the Young in the colo- 
 nial period was carefully conducted. The secular school 
 gave special attention to the reading of the Scriptures 
 and religious instruction. More attention was paid in 
 the home to the religious education of the young than 
 at any subsequent time. Schools had not multiplied, 
 and the New England colonists were very jealous of a 
 personal supervision of the early religious instruction 
 of their children. The General Court of Massachu- 
 setts Colony, in 1641, made legal provision for the 
 catechizing of the children. Scripture selections were 
 committed to memory. Then there was an intimate 
 acquaintance with the exact language of the Bible, 
 which has probably never been surpassed, except in 
 Scotland. 
 
 2. The First Attempt in America to establish the 
 Sunday-school, with instruction by voluntary teach- 
 ers, was made by the Methodists in Virginia, in 1784. 
 This was temporary, but afterwards revived in other 
 parts of the country. A Sunday-school Society was 
 founded in Philadelphia, in 1790, with Bishop White, 
 of the Protestant Episcopal Church, at the head. The 
 special object was the instruction of the poor, but it 
 cannot be doubted that all classes soon received the 
 benefit of the movement. In 1823 a measure was 
 adopted for extending the Sunday-school system in
 
 118 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 many parts of the country. Out of this effort the 
 American Sunday-school Union was developed, which 
 still exists, and which, by its publications and evangel- 
 istic force on the frontier, and in the neglected portions 
 of the cities, has gathered multitudes of children within 
 Sunday-schools. 
 
 3. All the Churches saw the necessity of establish- 
 ing the Sunday-school and making provision for its 
 extension. There is now no church of any numerical 
 strength which does not have the Sunday-school, and 
 does not regard it as an essential part of its system of 
 aggressive work. In the cities and the sparsely set- 
 tled parts of the country alike, the method has been to 
 found a mission-school in a neglected region. Out of 
 the school has developed the church. Many of the large 
 and flourishing churches throughout the country have 
 grown out of these humble beginnings, and are now 
 sufficiently strong to organize Sunday-schools and mis- 
 sions themselves. 
 
 4. The International System of Sunday-school Instruc- 
 tion is a notable advance on all the previous methods 
 of Sunday-school work. As earl} r as 182C the Ameri- 
 can Sunday-school Union recommended a uniform sys- 
 tem of Sunday-school instruction ; but this failed to 
 receive the support of the general Christian public, and 
 was abandoned. The present International system was 
 adopted in 1873. The lessons are arranged by a com- 
 mittee representing the various religious bodies of the 
 United States. Not only is the instruction thus uni- 
 form, but many of the better methods of Sunday-school 
 work are now shared alike by all the great religious 
 bodies. The adoption of the "International Series of 
 Sunday-school Lessons" has been one of the strongest 
 forces for bringing into closer fellowship all the great
 
 THE SUNDAY-SCUOOL. 119 
 
 ecclesiastical bodies of the United States. The work- 
 ing together for the spiritual building up of the young 
 has of itself a subtle power to make men forget their 
 points of doctrinal divergence. The Chautauqua As- 
 sembly owes its origin to the Rev. John H. Vincent, 
 now Bishop Vincent, and the Hon. Lewis Miller. It 
 began in 1874, and has steadily developed since then. 
 It has its branches in various parts of the United States 
 and foreign lands. 
 
 5. The Sunday-school Literature has grown to be a 
 large and important department of our general relig- 
 ious literature. Its great development has been within 
 the last three decades. The adoption of the " Interna- 
 tional Lessons " has contributed to the increase of ex- 
 pository books. The different churches have published 
 their own commentaries on the lessons ; while works 
 on collateral topics, such as sacred geography, history, 
 and archaeology, have multiplied to a remarkable de- 
 gree. The rich literature which the new impulse in 
 Sunday-school teaching has produced is one of the 
 greatest triumphs of the Church of the present cent- 
 ury. Many of the denominational publishing houses 
 have, each, a large Sunday-school department. Some of 
 the best religious literature of the American Church 
 has appeared under the name of Sunday-school publi- 
 cations. The American Sunday-school Union is itself 
 a large publishing house, and has contributed to our 
 permanent literature many of its very best works, not 
 only by the republication of excellent foreign works, 
 but by productions of our native authors.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE AMERICAN PULPIT. 
 
 1. The Preachers of America have not been behind 
 their brethren of the Old World in any of the great 
 characteristics which distinguish a capable and success- 
 ful ministry. The first preachers in the colonies were 
 men of remarkable gifts. Their education was superior, 
 and they thought intensely. They were the real found- 
 ers of the New England commonwealths. The legisla- 
 tion seems to have been largely directed by them. But 
 for the inspiration which they gave to the cause of ed- 
 ucation, the great institutions of learning would never 
 have come into existence at so early a period. Harvard 
 College was the direct result of Shepard's preaching. 
 Yale, Princeton, Bowdoin, and Brown are monuments 
 to the preachers' power to establish educational advan- 
 tages. Their support was often very scanty a piece of 
 land and a few hundred dollars. Much of the salary was 
 often paid in produce. It was a time of " high study 
 and low living." The young ministry in the colonial 
 time were in the habit of getting their theological 
 training in the homes of older pastors. Before Ando- 
 ver was established, it was quite common to study 
 with the experienced pastor. Bellamy, Smalley, Hart, 
 West, Emmons, Somers, Hooker, Charles Backus, and 
 President Timothy D wight were examples of the 
 clergy who educated young men for the ministry in 
 their own homes. Tyler educated thirty theological
 
 THE AMERICAN PULPIT. 121 
 
 students in his house in the short space of five 
 years. 
 
 2. The Leaders of Thought and Reform in all our crit- 
 ical periods have included preachers in their num- 
 ber. In the War of Independence many of them were 
 among the most powerful advocates of separation 
 from the mother country. They aroused the people 
 to enthusiasm amid all the sanctities of the Christian 
 Church, and kept the people under the spell of their 
 influence until the war was over. Without the clergy 
 at that time the independence of the United States 
 could not have been achieved. The same fact ap- 
 plies to the great Civil War of 1801-65. The 
 churches were often the places where regiments were 
 convened before marching southward, and where the 
 soldiers listened to strong appeals from the pulpits to de- 
 fend the national union. No army has ever been more 
 fully supplied with chaplains than the Federal army. 
 They shared the dangers of the field and the prison, 
 and in some cases took the places of officers on the 
 field of battle. In the creation of the strong senti- 
 ment for the abolition of slavery, the pulpit had its 
 full share of work. Men forgot the errant theology of 
 Channing and Parker and others in the might of their 
 appeal for the universal brotherhood of man. In the 
 promotion of revivals, the type furnished in the colonial 
 times by Whitefield, Frelinghuysen, the Tennents, Ed- 
 wards, and others have been perpetuated ever since. 
 Nettleton, Payson, Finney, Lord, Lyman Beecher, and 
 others have swayed multitudes by the power of their 
 appeals to lead a Christian life, and whole churches and 
 great organized movements have grown out of them. 
 Moody, without the formality of clerical orders, has been 
 a mighty preacher of the Word for twenty years. liar-
 
 122 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 rison, Small, and others have done great service in gath- 
 ering in the multitudes. Cable, the litterateur, is teach- 
 ing thousands the way of life by his Bible instruction. 
 3. Homiletical Literature. Among the most numer- 
 ous publications of the early American press were ser- 
 mons. A great many of Cotton Mather's three hun- 
 dred and eighty-eight publications were single sermons, 
 and the same holds true of many of his contempo- 
 raries and successors. The sermon, often as elaborate 
 as though written by the logical Barrows, might fitly be 
 called a theological treatise. It soon found its way into 
 print. The clerical wisdom of first producing in the 
 pulpit, and then giving the sermon to the larger public, 
 was an early gift of the Puritan settlers. As the press 
 had much to do with the birth of Puritanism, so it 
 was liberally used to sustain and propagate it. The 
 sermon in print was highly appreciated in all the great 
 crises of the earlier American history. Franklin re- 
 garded it as a good investment to print the sermons 
 of Whitefield, William Teunent, and others. Pres* 
 ident D wight published his theological system in 
 the form of sermons, in four octavo volumes. The 
 most influential of all printed sermons in America have 
 not been produced here, but are the work of Fred- 
 erick W. Robertson, of Brighton, England. Among 
 the most notable of American preachers who have re- 
 cently passed away are Bushnell, Simpson, William 
 Adams, and Henry Ward Beecher. Among living 
 preachers may be mentioned Richard S. Storrs, Phil- 
 lips Brooks, Theodore L. Cuyler, T. DeWitt Talmage, 
 Parkhurst, G. Dana Boardman, Charles F. Deems, J. A. 
 Broadus, John P. Newman, Charles H. Fowler, and 
 David Swing.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THEOLOGY OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH. 
 
 1. The Early American Theology was serious and fun- 
 damental. The doctrinal differences of the Old World 
 had caused the Puritan emigration. The thinking re- 
 volved about the foundations of Christianity. Never 
 was so much theological meditation, fortified by ap- 
 propriate Scripture proofs, produced amid such hum- 
 ble surroundings as in our early New England colo- 
 nies. The echoes from the Westminster Assembly 
 were heard throughout New England, and produced 
 their effect in the log-house of the humblest colony. 
 Theological terms were well understood, and the finer 
 points had their discriminating judges in men clad in 
 homespun. 
 
 2. The Scriptural Period was the first stage in our 
 theology. The Bible was uppermost in every mind. 
 A doctrinal tenet which was purely speculative, and 
 had no direct Scriptural proof, passed as of little value. 
 The Westminster Catechism, the Savoy Confession, 
 and the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of Eng- 
 land were the universal bases of belief. These were 
 claimed to be derived directly from the Bible, and 
 stood next to it in the love of the people. The 
 Scriptures were read daily in the domestic circle, 
 and often the head of the family used the original 
 Hebrew and Greek. Scriptural themes were frequent 
 in academic use. Cotton Mather's address, on taking 
 
 * c^
 
 124 THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 his degree as Bachelor of Arts, was based on "The 
 Divinity of the Hebrew Points." " We record," says 
 an author, " at our country's origin a favorable im- 
 pulse to the employment of our native good sense 
 in theological investigation ; for our fathers made an 
 open renunciation of all prescriptive systems, and took 
 the Bible alone for their text-book." 
 
 3. The Liberalizing Period came as a result of the 
 introduction of the Half-way Covenant. Many per- 
 sons coming into the Church without profession of re- 
 generation, a large amount of loose theology came in 
 with them. Less attention was given to the confes- 
 sions. The Bible was regarded as of less importance 
 than in the earlier time. Many people looked upon the 
 severer thinking of their fathers as good enough for 
 the beginning of colonial life, but not suited to the more 
 advanced period. The reaction against the Scriptural 
 letter opened wide the door for a too liberal theological 
 tendency. The result was the Unitarian revolt. 
 
 4. The Controversial Period was the next stage in our 
 theology. While the great revival at the middle of 
 the eighteenth century did much to restore the old 
 theological firmness, the tendency now was to a dis- 
 cussion of great Scriptural themes. Jonathan Ed- 
 wards, of Northampton, by his work on " The Free- 
 dom of the Will," opened the door to a line of contro- 
 versy which has broken out afresh, at intervals, ever 
 since. His work was the best philosophical structure 
 ever reared on the Calvinistic theology, whether in the 
 Old World or the New. The Congregationalists were 
 most affected by this controversy. While the Presby- 
 terians were agitated by the discussion, they were never 
 diverted from a line which they early chose the liter- 
 ary qualifications of their ministry, a thorough Chris-
 
 THEOLOGY OF THE AMERICAN CHUKCH. 125 
 
 tian experience, and a zeal in occupying new territory. 
 The favorite theological text-books of the pre-revolu- 
 tionary period had been Ames's " Medulla," "Wolleb's 
 " Compendium," and Willard's " Body of Divinity." 
 But some other works came in to take their place. 
 The writings of Edwards, who is the real founder of 
 "New England Theology," took the place of these 
 primitive works. The three authors who built on the 
 Edwardcan foundation were Bellamy, in his " True 
 Religion ;" Srnallcy, in his " Distinction between Nat- 
 ural and Moral Inability ;" and Hopkins, in his " Re- 
 duction of Disinterested Love to a System of Theol- 
 ogy." 
 
 5. The Unitarian Period was the next in order of time. 
 The opponents of the Trinity took their theology from 
 the unevangelical writers of the Old World. One of the 
 most powerful men in bringing on the Unitarian re- 
 volt was Chauncey, of Boston, who, in his "Season- 
 able Thoughts on the State of Religion in New Eng- 
 land," published in 1743, took ground against the great 
 revival. His long pastorate of sixty years was of dis- 
 integrating force, and he died an Arian. Mayhew, 
 of the West Church, Boston, exerted a similarly evil 
 influence in leading off many towards the Unitarian 
 fold. The "Monthly Anthology," which was com- 
 menced in Boston in 1803, was the organ of the 
 Unitarian philosophers. Moses Stuart and Leonard 
 Woods were among the leaders of the evangelical op- 
 position to the rising Unitarianism. 
 
 6. The Hopkinsian Theology was a toning down of 
 the strict Calvinism of Edwards and his school. The 
 leaders were Hopkins, Bellamy, the younger Edwards, 
 West, Spring, and Emmons. They differed from the 
 elder Calvinism as to the nature of human depravity,
 
 126 THE CHURCII IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the imputation of Adam's sin, the nature and extent 
 of the atonement, and the natural inability of the un- 
 regenerate to become Christians. They were warm 
 advocates of revivals, benevolent institutions, and mis- 
 sionary movements ; and they founded the Theologi- 
 cal Magazine (New York), the Evangelical Mag- 
 azine (Connecticut), and the Missionary Magazine 
 (Massachusetts). The strict Edvvardean Calvinists and 
 the Hopkinsians were two distinct classes at the be- 
 ginning of the present century. Each operated on the 
 other favorably. In due time they approached and 
 amalgamated, though without any formal action. The 
 union of the Calvinistic Panoplist with the Hopkinsian 
 Missionary Magazine, in 1808, was one of the public 
 evidences of the union. 
 
 7. The Irenical Period is the latest stage in American 
 theology. While each of the great religious denom- 
 inations has its theological system, and has developed 
 its systematic theology from the basis of its Confession, 
 there has been a notable absence of the polemic spirit. 
 The Edwardean theory of the Will lias been ably an- 
 swered by Whedon, from an Arminian point of view, 
 but without acrimony. The universal tendency now is, 
 in treating doctrinal theology, not to pull down an- 
 other, but to build up one's own system. Everywhere 
 the spirit is constructive. Many of our younger theo- 
 logical writers have studied in German universities, 
 
 O 9 
 
 and in some instances have brought over with them 
 some views which would have been in better place 
 if left in the Fatherland. As they advance, however, 
 they indicate a disposition to lay aside some of the 
 superfluities called " Higher Criticism," and to adapt 
 themselves to the sphere of ascertained Scriptural truth.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Africa, the New, 110. 
 
 Alliance, the Evangelical, 105. 
 
 American Church, the missionary spirit of the, 107. 
 
 American Sunday-School Union, the; its origin and its publications, 118, 
 
 119. 
 
 Anti-Slavery Reform, the, 95-98 ; its advocates, 96-98. 
 Awakening, the great, in the Northern colonies, not felt so much in the 
 
 Southern colonies, 47, 48. 
 
 Baltimore, Lord, first and second, 17. 
 
 Baptists, the : lead in inaugurating voluntary church support, G5, 66 ; their 
 
 work of evangelization, 70; their founding, spread, zeal, and culture, 
 
 and their smaller sects, 74, 79 : the Free (Will), 79. 
 " Bay Psalm Book," the, 50. 
 
 Berkeley's, Sir William, opposition to schools in the colonies, 36, 37. 
 Bible Society, the American, founding of, 68. 
 Book of Mormon, origin of, 92, 93. 
 Brainerd's, David, work among the Indians, 56. 
 
 Cambridge Platform, the, 32. 
 
 Carolina*, the, a refuge, 3; colonized from Virginia, 18. 
 Carroll, John, 83. 
 Cavaliers, the, 2, 3, 13. 
 Channing, William Ellery, 87. 
 Chautauqua Assembly, the, 119. 
 Christendom, the New, 1-3. 
 Christians, the, threefold origin of, 90, 91. 
 
 Church, the, at the founding of the Republic, 62-64 ; numerical strength 
 of, at the beginning of the National Period, 64 ; a part of the colonial 
 system, Go. 
 
 - government in the colonies, 31-34. 
 
 of England, the, 29, 31, 72. 
 
 the German Reformed : its origin, members, territory, and clergy, 75. 
 
 the Lutheran : its origin, leaders, territory, schools, and theology, 
 75, 76. 
 
 the Methodist Episcopal : its beginnings, leader?, first Conference, 
 division, Centennial and CEcumenical Council, 77 ; its smaller bodies, 
 79, 80 ; favors temperance, 100.
 
 128 INDEX. 
 
 Church, the Moravian : its origin, territory, missionary zeal, and schools, 
 76, 77. 
 
 the Presbyterian: its origin, first General Assembly, division into 
 
 New and Old School, reunion, culture, zeal, and theology, 76 ; its sub- 
 divisions, 78 ; Reformed, 78; Cumberland, 79 ; favors temperance, 100. 
 
 the Protestant Episcopal : work of, for the Indians, 55, 56 ; growth 
 
 in Southwest, 71 ; its founding, growth, and characteristics, 72, 73; 
 first General Convention of, 72. 
 
 the Reformed, 30, 44 ; effort for the Indians, 55 ; its founding, 73 ; 
 
 secession from, of the True Reformed Church, 74; its theology and 
 clergy, 74. 
 
 the Roman Catholic, 82-84; its colonial missions, a failure, 82; its 
 
 care for its immigration, a success, 82, 83; its numbers a shrinkage, 
 82, 83 ; its organization and educational system, 83. 
 
 and State, separation of, 65, 66. 
 
 the Unitarian : its origin, leaders, and literary spirit, 85, 86. 
 
 Club, the Transcendental, of Boston, 87. 
 
 Colleges, affected by the revival of 1797, 67, 68; a result of preachers' 
 
 labors, 120. 
 
 Colonization Society, the American, 97. 
 
 Columbus : his religious faith, and the effect of his discovery, 4. 
 Commission, the Christian, 106; the Sanitary, 106. 
 Congregationalists, the : the descent, clergy, theology, literary fertility, 
 
 and educational enterprise, 73 ; Unitarians sprung from, 85. 
 Congress, the First, resolution of, against distilling liquors, 99. 
 Continental Colonies, the, 21-24. 
 Controversial period, the, of American theology, 124. 
 Controversies in Old and New World contrasted, 62, 63. 
 Cooperation, Christian, 106. 
 Cortes conquers Mexico, 4, 5. 
 Cotton, John, 55, 58, 59, 73; Catechism of Richard Mather and, 111, 112. 
 
 Dartmouth College, grows out of an Indian school, 53. 
 
 Decline, the spiritual, at Revolutionary period, 63. 
 
 Denominations, the leading evangelistic, 70 ; the larger and earlier, 72-77 ; 
 
 the smaller, 78-80; the multiplication of, 78. 
 Disciples of Christ, the, 79. 
 Dunster, Henry, 37. 
 Dutch, the, 21, 22. 
 
 Edmunds Law, the, 94. 
 
 Education, 35-39; the educational spirit of the first colonists, 35; elemen- 
 tary, 35. 3G; colleges founded, 37, 38 ; prominent in New England 
 and Virginia, 36-38; in Southern colonies largely private, 38, 39; 
 gifts for, 103 ; of the Freedmen, 103. 
 
 Edwards's, Jonathan, " The Freedom of the Will," 124. 
 
 Eliot, John: his studies, labors, and literary work, 53-55; memorial 
 against slavery, 95.
 
 INDEX. 129 
 
 Emancipation, Act of, 98. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, his position, descent, and spirit, 88. 
 English, the : their colonization, 12-20 ; their discoverers, 12. 
 Europe, religious and political convulsions of, during the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, 1, 2. 
 
 Evangelical Association, the, 80. 
 
 Evangelical Magazine, the Connecticut, 113, 114, 126. 
 Evangelization stimulated by the revival of 1797-1803, 68. 
 Expansion in the South and West, 69-71. 
 
 Florida, conquest of, 5. 
 
 France looking westward, 8. 
 
 Freedmen, the present condition of the, and their children, 98; education 
 
 of, 103, 104. 
 French, the: their colonization, 8-11 ; the outcome, 11; their navigators, 
 
 8, 9; along the Great Lakes, 9; collision with, and conquest by, the 
 
 English in Canada, 11, 26, 27. 
 
 Georgia, an asylum, 3, 18. 
 
 Germans, the: in Pennsylvania, 23, 24; driven from the Palatinate, 23. 
 
 Grotius's "The Truth of the Christian Religion," 21. 
 
 Half-way Covenant, the, 59, 60 ; its effect, 60, 124. 
 
 Hanover, Presbytery of, remonstrance of, against a general assessment, 66. 
 Harvard College, 37 ; special work at, for Indians, 52 ; comes under con- 
 trol of the Unitarians, 87. 
 
 Henrico, University of, first important school in Virginia, 36. 
 Hopkinsianism, its leaders, doctrines, organs, and influence, 125, 126 
 Huguenots, the, 3, 5, 22, 23. 
 
 Hutchinson, Ann, her views, their rapid spread and decline, 58, 69 
 Hutchinsonian Controversy, the, 57, 58. 
 Hymnology, Christian, 114-1 1C. 
 Hymns, twenty-five notable, by nineteen authors, 114-116. 
 
 Independence, the spirit of, invades the churches, 64. 
 
 Indians, the: visited and converted by the Jesuits, 10; their relations 
 with William Penn, 18, 19; with the Dutch, 21; missions to, 52-56, 
 68, 76, 107, 108; Eliot's Bible for, 54, 111 ; treatment of, by the United 
 States, 104 ; books for, 108. 
 
 Intemperance during the Colonial Period, 99. 
 
 International Series of Sunday-School Lessons, 118, 119. 
 
 Intolerance in the colonies, 40-45. 
 
 Ironical period, the, of American theology, 126. 
 
 James I. drives out the Pilgrims, 2. 
 James River Colon)', the, 13. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, introduces an act " for establishing religious freedom," 66. 
 Jesuits, the: their missionaries, 9, 10, 83 ; their " Relations," 10 ; influence 
 over the Indians, 10. 
 9
 
 130 INDEX. 
 
 Lee, Ann, 90. 
 
 Liberalizing period, the, of American theology, 124. 
 
 License, high, a delusion, 102. 
 
 Literature, Christian, 111-116 ; of the Sunday-school, 119 ; homiletical, 122. 
 
 Livingston, J. H., 74. 
 
 Lord's Supper, the, a new view of, 60. 
 
 Maryland, the colony of, 17, 44. 
 Massachusetts Bay, the colony of, 14, 15. 
 Mather, Cotton, 61, 73, 123, 124. 
 
 Increase, 61, 73. 
 
 Methodists, the : their work of evangelization ; 70, 71 5 first Sundav-school, 
 
 117. 
 
 Mexico, conquest and conversion of, 4, 5. 
 Millerite movement, the, 91. 
 
 Missionary Magazine, the Massachusetts, 114, 126. 
 Missions, 107-110; to the Mormons, 94; Home, 108, 109; Foreign, five 
 
 great fields, 109 ; organization of societies, 108, 109. 
 Mississippi Valley, the, 9, 10, 26, 69. 
 Molina's Aztec and Spanish Dictionary, 7. 
 " Monthly Anthology," 125. 
 Moravians, the, 19, 20. 
 Mormon abomination, the, its antecedents, book, growth, and antidote, 
 
 92-94. 
 
 New England, church laws in, 31; intolerance in, 40-43; preachers of, 
 
 able political guides, 46, 47; "Primer," 111, 112. 
 New Sweden, colony of, 22. 
 
 Oglethorpe, 18, 20. 
 Option, local, 102. 
 
 Panoplist, the, 114, 126. , 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 87, 88. 
 
 Penn, William, 18, 19, 81. 
 
 Periodical religious press, the, 113, 114. 
 
 Philanthropy and Christian Union, 103-106. 
 
 Pilgrims, the, 2, 14. 
 
 Plymouth Colony, the, 13, 14 ; amalgamation of, with Massachusetts Bay, 16. 
 
 Political framework of the colonies, 28-30 ; four varieties of authority, 28, 29. 
 
 Prayers, long, in Puritan service, 49, 50. 
 
 Preachers, the, of America, 120, 122. 
 
 Presbyterians, the, in Virginia, 44; their work of evangelization, 70. 
 
 Prince's, Thomas, "Christian History," 113. 
 
 Prohibition, constitutional, 101. 
 
 Protestantism : how affected by the conquest of the French in Canada, 11, 
 
 26, 27 ; rapid growth of, in Maryland, 17, 18 ; vigor of, 25, 26. 
 Protestants, the : the current westward, 69, 70 ; Poles and Italians, 20. 
 Providential planting, the, 25-27.
 
 INDEX. 131 
 
 "Psalterium Americanum," the, 50, 112. 
 
 Pulpit, the American, 120-122. 
 
 Puritans, the, 15, 1(5, 40; writings of, 48; theologians, 57. 
 
 Quakers, the, 19; persecution of, 41; co-operate with Presbyterians for re- 
 ligious freedom, 66 ; origin and leaders, 81 ; Hicksite, 91 ; protest 
 against slavery, 95, 96 ; favor temperance, 99. 
 
 Recorder, the Boston, the first religious weekly, 114. 
 
 Reform, preachers as leaders of thought and, 121. 
 
 Reforming Synod, the, 32, 33. 
 
 Religious liberty, diversity of, among the colonies, 30 ; an act for es- 
 tablishing, in Virginia, 66. 
 
 Religious life, the, of the colonies, 46-48. 
 
 Religious motive, the, supreme with colonists, 2, 3, 46. 
 
 Revival, the, of 1797-1803, 67, 68 ; advantages of, 67, 68. 
 
 Revolution, the close of, a critical time for the Church, 63. 
 
 Rhode Island, 42, 74. 
 
 Robert College, 109. 
 
 Robinson, John, 14, 52. 
 
 Roman Catholics : first on the field, 4 ; missionaries in Mexico, 5 ; publi- 
 cations of, in Spanish, 6, 7; in Maryland, 17, 44; grounds of opposi- 
 tion to, 44, 45; in the West and South, 69; and the public schools, 
 84; their parochial schools, 84. 
 
 Rush's, Dr., " The Effects of Ardent Spirits," etc., 100. 
 
 Saloon, the friends of the, 101, 102. 
 
 Salzburgers, the, 20. 
 
 Saybrook Platform, the, 34. 
 
 Sceptical tendencies from France, 63. 
 
 Scotch-Irish, the, 19, 76; driven to America, 19; revival among, 67. 
 
 Scriptural period, the, of American theology, 123. 
 
 Sermon, the, the chief part of Puritan service, 49; the printed, as a form 
 
 of literature, 122. 
 Shakers, the, 90. 
 Significance, the. moral, of the Protestant occupation of the West and 
 
 South, 71. 
 Slavery, American, the outgrowth of European cupidity, 95; protest 
 
 against, from colonies, 95, 96; opposition to, at Revolutionary period, 
 
 96 ; the quiescent period, 97. 
 Smith, Joseph, 92. 
 Spanish, the : their colonization, 4-7 ; their greed and cruelty, 5, 6 ; evils 
 
 of, in Mexico and other colonies, 5, 6. 
 Sunday-school, the, 117-119. 
 Swedenborgians, the, their organization, General Convention, and territory, 
 
 89, 90. 
 
 Swedes, the, 22 ; conflict of, with the Dutch, 22. 
 Synods, the, of New England, 31, 32.
 
 132 INDEX. 
 
 Temperance Reform, the, in first Congress, 1774 ; early leaders iu, organ- 
 izations, constitutional prohibition, 99-102. 
 Territorial distribution providential, 26, 27. 
 Texas, 5, 27. 
 
 Thanksgiving and fast-day services, 50, 51. 
 Theological movements, 57-61. 
 Theology of the American Church, 123-126. 
 Transcendentalists, the, 87, 88. 
 Transferal of European conflicts to America, 2. 
 
 Union, Christian, 105. 
 
 Unitarian period of American theology, 125. 
 
 Unitarians, the: their origin, 61, 85; philanthropy and culture, 87; the 
 
 effect of the Half-way Covenant, 124. 
 United Brethren in Christ, the, 79. 
 Universalists, the, and other smaller bodies, 89-91. 
 
 Virginia, first charter of, 2, 3 ; ecclesiastical rival of Plymouth, 40 ; intoler- 
 ance in, 43, 44 ; first to adopt the voluntary principle, 65. 
 
 Ware, Dr., election of, to professorship in Harvard, 85. 
 
 Washingtonian movement, the, 100. 
 
 West, the, the churches of, their wonderful growth and vigor, 71. 
 
 Western Reserve, the, 70. 
 
 Whedon's answer to Edwards on " The Freedom of the Will," 126. 
 
 Wheelock's, Eleazar, school for the Indians, 52, 53. 
 
 Wheelwright's connection with Hutchinsonianism, 57-59. 
 
 Whitefield, George, 47. 
 
 " Whole Book of Psalms," the, 112, 113. 
 
 Willard's, Samuel, lectures on the Shorter Catechism, 113 ; his " Body of 
 
 Divinity," 125. 
 
 William and" Mary College, 87, 38. 
 Williams, Roger, 30 ; his expulsion from Salem, 42, 43 ; real ground of his 
 
 banishment, 43 ; founder of Baptist Church in America, 74. 
 Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 101. 
 Worship and usages, in the colonies, 49-51. 
 
 Young, the religious training of the, 117. 
 
 Young, Brigham, 92. 
 
 Young Men's Christian Association, 105. 
 
 Zinzendorf, Count, 76. 
 
 THE END.