THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 GUIDE MARKS 
 
 FOR 
 
 Young Churchmen, 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD HOOKER WILMER, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 BISHOP OF ALABAMA. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS WHIT TAKER 
 
 2 and 3 bible house 
 
 i88q
 
 Copyright, 1889. 
 By THOMAS WHITTAKER.
 
 ■K 
 SIS 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 This little Tractate is a part of a volume published by 
 the undersigned some two years ago, entitled " The Recent 
 Past," or " Reminiscences of a Grandfather." It treated, to 
 some extent, of matters political. A desire has been ex- 
 pressed for the publication, in separate form, of that portion 
 of the work which treats of matters Religious and Ecclesias- 
 tical, and hence this present issue. It was originally written 
 without any view to publication, and that will account for its 
 personal and familiar style. 
 
 As a matter of course, this little volume has only touched 
 the subject matters treated of in barest outline. It is nothing 
 more than a rivulet, but it flows along towards the great sea 
 of knowledge, where he who thirsts may drink to his heart's 
 content. Rich'd H. Wilmer. 
 
 Easter, 1889. 
 
 550304
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 General Observations 7 
 
 The Church in England ' . 10 
 
 The Church in America 17 
 
 How the Church was Planted in America 20 
 Different Religious Bodies in the United 
 
 States 31 
 
 Roman or Latin Church 36 
 
 The Presbyterian Communion 44 
 
 The Baptists 51 
 
 Immersion 60 
 
 The Methodists 64 
 
 Conclusion of Matters Pertaining to Re- 
 ligious Organizations 70 
 
 Scepticism, Rationalism and Scientism . . 74 
 
 Christian Manliness 94
 
 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 T N a much larger volume, from which these pages 
 ■^ are extracted, I have written of things politi- 
 cal, and have endeavored to impress upon your 
 minds the duties pertaining to your earthly citizen- 
 ship. I come now to speak of a higher and more 
 enduring theme — the "Kingdom of God." The 
 kingdoms of men come to an end; vast empires, 
 that once swayed the destinies of the world, are 
 now known only on the pages of history. They 
 rise, fall and utterly come to naught. They are of 
 the things of time, and perish with time. You, 
 my children, will have a high duty to perform in 
 being good citizens, in upholding law and the ad- 
 ministration of law. It is a part of one's religion, 
 as well as loyalty, to be law-abiding citizens. Our 
 country, now peaceful after a bloody war, may 
 continue so for years ; but there are existing ele- 
 ments of conflict which will become explosive 
 whenever the population becomes dense enough 
 for ignition,
 
 8 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 The Old World is pouring in its tide of popula- 
 tion — peoples of all religions and no religion — all 
 jumbled in a mighty mass. What will become of 
 it all, who can tell ? One thing seems most cer- 
 tain — that human affairs move forward and not 
 backward. The state of the world, at this writing, 
 is doubtless better, on the whole, than at any for- 
 mer period of time, and there is no good reason 
 for supposing that it will take a retrograde move- 
 ment. You will have to adjust yourselves to the 
 era in which you live, keeping a true manhood, 
 whatever the issue: that will bring a man peace at 
 the last: that makes the man. 
 
 But I must pass to the consideration of "God's 
 Kingdom " — the Church of God. " Of that King- 
 dom " — as you have been taught to rehearse — 
 '^ there shall be no end." My great desire is that 
 my children shall have an inheritance in that King- 
 dom, and ever be associated with it, as I and my 
 fathers were. The whole matter, as you may 
 easily suppose, has been my life-long study, and I 
 want you to have the benefit of my thoughts and 
 conclusions thereupon. 
 
 You will find the religious world much divided. 
 I cannot speak of all the existing organizations — 
 for their name is " Legion," — but I desire to put
 
 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. g 
 
 before you, in a general way, the attitude of that 
 Branch of the Church in which I have been reared 
 and of which you have been made members by 
 baptism— the attitude, I say, of this Church to- 
 wards the rest of Christendom. Its name is " The 
 Protestant Episcopal Church," and it may be in- 
 teresting to you to learn that this appellation was 
 suggested by one of your ancestors. The name is 
 not a felicitous one, but has a noble record and a 
 roll of illustrious men. This Church, as all your 
 reading will show, is an offshoot of the Established 
 Church in England, deriving its orders from that 
 Church, also its Liturgy and Usages. We must go 
 a little back to inquire into the history of the Moth- 
 er Church, before proceeding to outline the partic- 
 ular relation of her daughter to the religious world 
 around it in this country.
 
 THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 
 
 n^HE Church of Christ was planted in England 
 ■*■ at a very early day — most probably by one 
 of the Apostles of our Lord. This you will find in 
 any early history of the English Church. Repre- 
 sentatives from the British Church were present at 
 the councils of the Church at a very early day 
 (A.D. 325) ; long before the unhappy division 
 took place which separated the Eastern from the 
 Western Church. 
 
 Rome, being the controlling power of the world 
 for a long period of time, became, naturally, the 
 centre of other influences, religious as well as polit- 
 ical. The Bishop of Rome, sustained by the civil 
 and military power, had no great difficulty in ob- 
 taining ultimate recognition as the Supreme Eccle- 
 siastical power in the west of Europe. England 
 
 held out against her jurisdiction as long as possible, 
 
 10
 
 THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND. j i 
 
 but finally acknowledged the supremacy of the 
 Bishop of Rome in things spiritual. Augustine, a 
 missionary under Rome, went to England, and 
 found the southern part of the kingdom — inhab- 
 ited by the Saxon race — without the Christian 
 faith. The British Church already existed when 
 he put his foot on the coast of England. Little by 
 little, in the course of time, the Church in England 
 came under the domination of the Pope. 
 
 It went sorely against the spirit and temper of 
 our English forefathers to acknowledge fealty to 
 any foreign power, Civil or Ecclesiastical. They 
 fought against it as long as possible, but had at 
 last to yield. It was this spirit of jealousy against 
 the intrusion of a foreign power, which made it so 
 easy at a subsequent period to throw off the yoke 
 which had been to so many, even Romanists in 
 doctrinal matters, a galling servitude. But a new 
 era dawned. Books became multiplied, and 
 knowledge was more generally diffused. The 
 " Great Reformation" took place. 
 
 I must say a word about that great movement, 
 of which all history of that age is full. Henry 
 VIII., the King of England at the time, was far 
 from being a pattern of good morals. He was im- 
 perious and lustful. A decision of the reigning
 
 12 THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Pope of Rome crossed his purposes, and Henry 
 asserted — as he had a right to do — the indepen- 
 dence of the Church in England The claim of 
 the Bishop of Rome to exercise jurisdiction in 
 England had no di\'ine, but simply a human, sanc- 
 tion. The yoke Avas, therefore, thrown off — as it 
 had been put on — b}- human hands. It was a 
 right and lawful thing done, although done by a 
 bad man. This often happens. The wrath and 
 lust of men ate often overruled to work out 
 most gracious purposes. We are often twitted 
 with the taunt that Henry VIII. was the founder 
 of the English Church ; whilst the fact is that it ex- 
 isted centuries before Henry's day, and has existed 
 centuries since. The same Bishops exercised jur- 
 isdiction in England before and after the Reforma- 
 tion. There was no break in the line of Bishops 
 whatever. The Church in England did not cease 
 to be Catholic because she then cast off many un- 
 catholic doctrines and usages, which had become 
 encrusted upon her. Henry VIII. was ever a 
 Roman Catholic in heart and doctrine. No pre- 
 vailing doctrine was changed or modified during 
 his reign. In fact, he won his title of " Defender 
 of the Faith " for fighting against Reformed Doc- 
 trines. God made use of his imperiousness and
 
 THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 1 3 
 
 impatience of will to throw oft' a foreign yoke, 
 which had been wrongly imposed, and reluctantly 
 worn by the great mass of the English people. 
 This emancipation set free the minds of men, and 
 Henry's successors to the throne favored the mighty 
 change which was being wrought in the religious 
 mind, and thus it was, by little and little as light 
 and knowledge were vouchsafed, that the Church 
 in England came out of the wilderness of supersti- 
 tion, cleansed from many corruptions, and stood 
 forth, and now stands, forth, the zealous maintainer 
 of the Faith and Discipline " once delivered to the 
 saints." 
 
 Wherever her influence extends, light and 
 knowledge are diffused ; peoples are elevated ; free- 
 dom is proclaimed ; law is administered, and right- 
 eousness prevails. Take the map of the world. 
 Look at the nations under Roman ecclesiastical 
 rule — Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Ireland and 
 Mexico. What keeps these people in the back- 
 ground ? What makes the difference^ in Ireland 
 between Romanists and Protestants ? Spain was 
 far ahead of England at the era of the Reforma- 
 tion. Englishmen studied in her schools of learn- 
 ing. But Spain extinguished the dawning light of
 
 14 THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 
 
 the Reformation in the lurid glare of the Inquisi- 
 tion and Spain has decayed from that day. 
 
 The spirit of the Roman Church is calculated to 
 undervalue the exercise of reason, and to arrest the 
 spirit of inquiry, which has so stimulated scientific 
 investigation, and made this age so fruitful in knowl- 
 edge. Of course, this spirit may be carried too far, 
 and may lead to mere rationalism. But what may 
 not be carried too far ? You cannot fertilize a spot 
 of land without stimulating the growth of weeds, 
 but you also cannot make the best kind of grain 
 without fertiHzation. So, of the printing press — 
 it brings many bad thoughts to the mind, but it 
 also brings the best thoughts out. It is a bad sign 
 when any man or system avoids the light. " Let 
 there be light," the herald-cry in chaos, and chaos 
 departed when light came. 
 
 The best test of the truth of any system, when 
 you can make a large enough induction, is that fur- 
 nished by our Lord. " By their fruits ye shall know 
 them." As a Church, influencing laws, literature 
 and morals, we do not fear to challenge all Christ- 
 endom. England is what she is, mainly through 
 the Church in England, and, to this hour, she exerts 
 a more enlightening and benignant influence upon 
 the world than any other nation. It will not do to
 
 THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 1 5 
 
 turn from a large survey of her influence, and taunt 
 her with being reformed by such a man as Henry 
 VIII. She was deformed by that monarch. He 
 was the foul spot that disfigured that era ; but, as 
 the rust, he ate away the chain that bound the 
 Church to the court of Rome, and set her free for 
 her glorious mission of evangelization and civili- 
 zation to the remotest islands of the sea. 
 
 Flings at Henry, and twittings about his part in 
 the Reformation, come with a bad grace from the 
 Roman Church, which has preferred men to honor 
 and to the highest places in her gift — even to the 
 so-called chair of St. Peter (when it is doubtful 
 whether the Holy Apostle ever sat in it) — men, I 
 say, in comparison with whom Henry might be 
 canonized as a saint. Read any history of the 
 Popes {e. g. 'Ranke') and you will return to the 
 pages of Henry's life with a sense of relief, bad as 
 that life was. 
 
 When we sum up all that the Church in Eng- 
 land has done in literature, in science, in learning, 
 in works of beneficence, in sacredly preserving the 
 Word of God, in translating it for the people of the 
 world, in disseminating the righteous principles 
 of law and equity, in diffusing a spirit of freedom 
 and, with it, the needful checks and balances of
 
 l6 THE CHURCH lAT ENGLAND. 
 
 government, we may well thank God for our 
 English blood and traditions, and cherish them as 
 the priceless inheritance from our fathers; and, at 
 the same time, next to that imposed by the knowl- 
 edge of salvation, as the weightiest responsibilility 
 that rests upon us.
 
 THE CHURCH IN AMERICA. 
 
 T ET us come down a little in our review to the 
 planting of the American colonies; chiefly from 
 Great Britain were they planted. We encounter, 
 sometimes, a spirit of rivalry and jealousy on the 
 part of some American people towards the mother 
 country — a sentiment always unwholesome and 
 ungracious, but peculiarly so, when directed against 
 our mother land. Our ancestors found nothing 
 precious on these shores, save the soil and the riches 
 beneath it. These were divine gifts and demand 
 unspeakable gratitude. What else did they find ? 
 They brought with them their blood, lineage, lan- 
 guage, laws, literature, Church and thousand-fold 
 traditions, all of which moulded for them their new 
 life and institutions in their newly-found country. 
 The wigwam of the Indian did not furnish forth the 
 equipment with which our forefathers began the 
 battle of life on the American Continent. The 
 principles of liberty and the knowledge of religion 
 
 were not found here, but brought here. The bat- 
 
 17
 
 1 8 THE CHURCH IN AMERICA. 
 
 tie which settled the rights of men had been fought 
 on British soil, and won by our British ancestors. 
 
 The particular form of government established 
 here, after independence was secured, was the out- 
 growth of circumstances in large part ; but the 
 foundations and principles of our government were 
 laid by statesmen who had drank deep at English 
 fountains, and had been trained in the traditions of 
 English sires. Let it never be forgotten by my 
 children, that the sons of Englishmen, and of 
 English Churchmen, were the great men — the 
 giants — who fought the war of the Revolution, 
 and laid the foundations of the American Re- 
 public. 
 
 Time would fail me to enumerate them. Glance at 
 the names of a few in the honored list — Wash- 
 ington, Hamilton, Madison, Marshall and a host of 
 others — " Nomina clara et venerabilia." So it was 
 in the unsuccessful conflict for Southern indepen- 
 dence — Davis, Lee, Johnson, (Joseph E. and 
 Albert Sidney) Hardie and an innumerable host of 
 greater or lesser lights. The same is true of the 
 distinguished statesmen of the Northern States. 
 Nor is this at all accidental. It comes by opera- 
 tion of a law — the law of elective affinity. There 
 is something of combined grandeur and simplicity
 
 THE CHURCH IN AMERICA. 1 9 
 
 in the spirit and services of the Church, which 
 irresistibly, and oft unconsciously, draws to it such 
 men, (not raised in the Church) as Clay and 
 Webster, for example. Besides, the training in the 
 Church tends to the production of such men. The 
 great men among the Methodists (such as Wesley 
 and Whitfield) had Church mothers, and were 
 early taught in the Church Catechism and were 
 baptized, confirmed, educated and ordained in the 
 Church.
 
 HOW THE CHURCH WAS PLANTED 
 IN AMERICA. 
 
 'T^HE Church of England clergy in the Colonies 
 (there being at that time no Bishops this side of 
 the water) had been ordained in England, and were 
 under the jurisdiction of the English Church until 
 the close of the Revolutionary War. You will find 
 a full account of the whole matter in " Bishop 
 White's (the first Bishop of Pennsylvania) Mem- 
 oirs," Bishop Seabury was consecrated Bishop of 
 Connecticut by the Bishops of the Church in 
 Scotland. Bishops White of Pennsylvania, Madi- 
 son of Virginia, and Provost of New York, were 
 consecrated by the Bishops of the Church in Eng- 
 land (the Archbishop of Canterbury acting as con- 
 secrator in his chapel at Lambeth). There, the 
 Apostolic succession was derived by this Church. 
 Dioceses have sprung up through the whole land. 
 Several of the States comprehend, at this writing, 
 two or more Dioceses each, — the State of New 
 York at this time five.
 
 THE CHURCH PLANTED I.V AMERICA. 21 
 
 It is often asked, " How is it that this Church, 
 claiming as it does, the elements of a pure Catho- 
 hcity, should have failed to get a stronger hold upon 
 the great body of the people in this country ?" 
 The question is an important one, and demands a 
 fuller answer than this narrative seems to call for. 
 If the failure, referred to, were the result of any 
 want of adaptation on the part of this Church to 
 meet the needs of the great mass of the people, it 
 were di fatal defect. But it is not so. In the mother 
 country, the poor, equally with the rich, meet at 
 her altars. In the rural districts, prince and peas- 
 ant receive together her teachings, and unite in her 
 Liturgy. The manufacturing towns are the homes 
 of dissent. There the social jealousy and the im- 
 patience of subordination and the spirit of vulgar 
 self-assertion most abound, and there Dissent is 
 rife. 
 
 The Roman Church has but little hold upon the 
 native masses in this country, and she imports her 
 poor. I refer to this fact because we are constantly 
 taunted with the reproach of having no poor in 
 our Churches, and shallow people — and most people 
 are shallow — are made to think that the Church 
 careth not for the poor. There is another view. 
 Should the Church have so many poor ? Should
 
 22 THE CHURCH PLANTED IN AMERICA. 
 
 she not enlighten and elevate them ? Should not 
 the hovels of our laborers be made more comfort- 
 able, even if our Churches were less gorgeous ? Our 
 system encourages giving to, and not taking from, 
 the poor. Would not " our Father," who careth 
 for the poor, have it so ? 
 
 I cannot suppress a very suggestive incident. 
 Passing once up the Alabama River, I fell into con- 
 versation with a gentleman of the Roman persua- 
 sion. After some talk, slightly sprinkled with con- 
 troversy, he observed: " I do not think, sir, you 
 can doubt that our priests are more assiduous in the 
 discharge of their duties than Protestant ministers 
 are." " I have not been struck with the fact, if it 
 be a fact," I replied. " Now," said he, taking up a 
 newspaper which he had been reading, "here is an 
 account of a man who was hung near Philadelphia 
 the other day. Who was on the scaffold with him 
 and giving him spiritual direction? None of your 
 Protestant preachers, sir, — a priest, a Catholic 
 priest." "That is exactly where he ought to have 
 been," I suggested. "Why, sir?" "Because it 
 was one of his flock that was to be hung. I have 
 never, myself, refused to attend one of my flock to 
 the scaffold, because I have never been called upon.
 
 THE CHURCH PLANTED IN AMERICA. 23 
 
 The Church should save her sheep from such an 
 ending." 
 
 In this connection, the prevaihng poverty and 
 distress of the Irish people is full of suggestion and 
 instruction. Why is the condition of the Protes - 
 tant portion of the population so strikingly in con- 
 trast with that of their Roman Catholic fellow cit- 
 izens ? The contrast presents itself to the most 
 casual observer, who travels through the country. 
 Yet these people live on the same soil, are under 
 the same sky, and are governed by the same laws. 
 The same problem faces you in Mexico, South 
 America, Portugal, Spain and even in Italy itself — 
 the centre of Romanism. What is the difficulty 
 and what the solution of the problem ? These are 
 phenomena worth the attention of men who give 
 themselves to studies of lesser magnitude. 
 
 The solution to my mind is very easy. " Christ 
 is the Light of the World." He declares of His 
 own words, "they are spirit and they are life." 
 His spirit accompanies His word, and, "Where the 
 spirit of Christ is there is liberty — emancipation 
 from the slavery of ignorance and sin. Now, if 
 men are denied access to this Fountain of Light, if 
 the Holy Book be closed and the light of its 
 teachings excluded, there will be ignorance of
 
 24 THE CIICRCII r LAN TED EV AMERICA. 
 
 spiritual truth — infidelity and superstition, its twin 
 children — unlike, apparently, but sprung of the 
 same origin and bound for the same destiny. 
 
 Romanism and the open Gospel cannot coexist, 
 and Rome knows this, alas ! too well. How could 
 the newly promulgated Doctrine of the " Imm.acu- 
 latc Conception " and its corollary, Mariolatry, have 
 found access to the minds of men, who had learned 
 the truth from the words of Christ, — "Thou shalt 
 worship the Lord thy God, and Him only thou 
 shalt serv^e." 
 
 In what violent contrast appear the teachings of 
 the Scriptures and some of the most notorious 
 usages and teachings of the Roman Church. 
 
 Take a few notable examples of sharp contrast. 
 Christ declared in the Judgment Hall, "My King- 
 dom is not of this world." On the other hand the 
 present Bishop of Rome, the so-called Vicar of 
 Christ, mourns over the loss of his temporal power, 
 and is exercising all the arts of subtle diplomacy to 
 regain his lost dominion. 
 
 Again, when you enter the Palace of the Bishop 
 of Rome, you see the inevitable band of armed 
 mercenaries stationed to guard his person. On the 
 other hand, behold his Master! When one of his 
 disciples — the Apostle Peter — drew his sword to
 
 THE CHURCH PLANTED IN AMERICA. 2$ 
 
 protect his Lord from arrest, he was commanded 
 to put up his sword and rebuked for having drawn 
 it. "Thinkest thou that I cannot pray to My 
 Father, and He shall presently give Me twelve 
 legions of Angels ?" What a contrast between the 
 twelve legions of Angels — "ministering spirits" — 
 who awaited but the bidding of the Lord to come 
 to His succor, and a band of hireling soldiers main- 
 tained to guard the person of His servant ! " Is 
 the servant greater than the Master ?" 
 
 Again, when Cornelius met St. Peter and fell 
 down before him, what does the Holy Apostle 
 say to him ? " Stand up ! I myself also am a 
 man!" What a contrast to St. Peter does the 
 Bishop of Rome — the so-called successor of St. 
 Peter — present when he receives daily the devo- 
 tions and genuflexions of his followers. 
 
 What a picture of like sharp contrast presents 
 itself in the shape of Gospels and Acts of the 
 Apostles, but alas, the Scriptures are a sealed book 
 to the great multitude, and " they know not what 
 they do." All thanks to the Divine Goodness 
 which still pities such ignorance, folly and sin. 
 
 The situation of the Church in these United 
 States is peculiar. Many of the old families — 
 notably in New York, Maryland and Virginia —
 
 26 THE CHURCH I' LAX TED IN AMERICA. 
 
 were, as a matter of course, almost always (except 
 in Maryland, where the Roman Catholic element 
 was unusually large) Church families. In the wild 
 settlements, there is always an undue jealously of 
 social distinctions on the part of the laboring 
 class, and they prefer to congregate among those 
 of their own order, where their means of living, 
 mode of life, style of dress, and topics of thought 
 and conversation, are more alike. 
 
 As an instance. My first parish was along the 
 banks of the James River, beginning about thirty 
 miles above Richmond, and extending some fifty 
 miles towards Lynchburg. The families attending 
 my services at the beginning of my ministrations 
 were almost exclusively from the class of wealthy 
 planters. In the vicinity of my Churches were 
 Baptist and Methodist houses of worship, and there 
 congregated the overseers and small farmers from 
 the hill country. These people knew nothing of 
 Church doctrine or order, but they wanted to asso- 
 ciate with flocks of their own condition and pur- 
 suits. The men wanted to gossip with their fellows, 
 and the wives and daughters wanted their bonnets 
 and gowns to be as good as their neighbors'. The 
 effect of Democratic institutions and the extension 
 or suffrage and the abolishment of privileged orders
 
 THE CHURCH PLANTED IN AMERICA. 2/ 
 
 was wonderfully rapid among the people of this 
 country. 
 
 There is much discussion now-a-days as to the 
 question, " How to get hold of the masses ?" You 
 can't do it at all by any system of operations of a 
 mechanical character. There is a repulsion on 
 their part, and produced by the very spirit of envy 
 and jealousy and self-assertion which the Church 
 tries to put down and eradicate. It can only result 
 from a larger measure of that Divine influence 
 which eradicates self, and inspires a thirst for truth. 
 A minister, who himself is deeply imbued with the 
 Divine gift, and has power and tact, can work won- 
 ders with this repelling prejudice, as he can with 
 the other powers of darkness. And that is our 
 only hope just now, — a faint one, I must confess. 
 
 But, besides this indwelling spirit of social 
 jealousy with its attendant ills, there were peculiar 
 difficulties with which this Church had to contend 
 in her earlier history in this country, — difficulties 
 which laid the foundation of sectism deep and 
 broad. The clergy of this Church were, as a 
 general rule, Englishmen. The Church itself went 
 by the appellation of " The English Church." We 
 had no Bishops, no Seminaries — -everything was 
 English. War with England had filled the whole
 
 28 THE CHURCH PLANTED IN AMERICA. 
 
 country with animosity against everything " Eng- 
 hsh" — Church and State. A tide of odium and 
 unreasonable hate went hke a wave over the whole 
 country, and threatened to ingulf all sacred memo- 
 ries that commonly attach men to the land of their 
 forefathers. 
 
 The Church suffered grieviously for a long time, 
 and has not to this day fully rallied from the shock 
 received. The clergy, many of whom were Eng- 
 lishmen by birth, returned to their native land, 
 thus leaving many parishes vacant. Many of those 
 who remained during the continuance of the Revo 
 lutionary war were incompetent, and, as is the case 
 oftentimes with colonial ministers, were men of little 
 character. A long interval ensued before Bishops 
 were set apart for America. The consequences of 
 all this was disastrous in the extreme. Parishes 
 went rapidly to decay ; legislation confiscated 
 Church property, the gift of the crown or of Eng- 
 lish land owners; popular prejudice ran fiercely 
 against her institutions because they were stigma- 
 tized as "English." The masses of people thus 
 became alienated. Methodism, then vigorous and 
 aggressive, strongly appealed to the passions of the 
 people. The landed gentry of the country still 
 clung to the Church as the Church of their fathers.
 
 THE CHURCH PLA.VTED IN AMERICA. 29 
 
 They had intelligence sufficient to enable them to 
 distinguish between the Church and the action of 
 the British Government, which was so hateful to 
 the colonists. But the zeal of the few remaining 
 adherents to the Church was languid. They were 
 uninstructed from Sunday to bunday; they were 
 rather disposed to fight for the Church than to live 
 for it. With some few and striking exceptions, the 
 state of things was as given here. You may judge 
 of the low condition into which the Church had 
 fallen from an incident which I had from Bishop 
 Meade of Virginia. He, in connection with my 
 father (William H. Wilmer, D.D., afterward 
 president of William and Mary), and one or two 
 other earnest men, made a united effort to revive 
 the Church in Virginia. 
 
 They first united in calling Bishop Moore to be 
 their Bishop. They took steps, also, to raise an 
 endowment for a Theological seminary, and carried 
 it through. The Theological seminary near Alex- 
 andria, Va., is the result of the effort then inaugu- 
 rated, the instruction of students being first given 
 in my father's house in Alexandria. Whilst going 
 through Virginia, soliciting funds for this object, 
 Bishop Meade (who was then a young man) 
 applied among others, to Judge Marshall, Chief
 
 30 THE CHURCH PLANTED IN AMERICA. 
 
 Justice of the United States Supreme Court, for 
 aid. The Judge repHed that of course he would 
 not withhold his contribution. It was his Church, 
 and that of his forefathers, but he thought the idea 
 of resuscitating it in Virginia was hopeless; and he 
 expressed himself as full of regret that a young 
 man of family and talent, as Bishop Meade was, 
 should throw away his life in so quixotic an under- 
 taking. 
 
 The " Old Chief," (as Judge Maashall was 
 familiarly called among his intimates) did not live 
 to see the glorious future, which has opened for the 
 Church in Virginia from the dark and apparently 
 hopeless condition in which he knew it. The 
 clergy of Virginia can now be found in all countries 
 of the world nearly. One of her sons is Bishop of 
 Japan, another was a Bishop of Africa, and he 
 succeeded a Virginian in that Bishoprick; seven- 
 teen of her sons, born on her soil, are, or have been 
 Bishops of Dioceses in the United States.
 
 DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS BODIES IN 
 THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 \TOW I desire to say something about the differ- 
 •'• ' ent rehgious bodies, with which you will 
 come in contact, and to point out their characteris- 
 tics and claims, and to show you your relation to 
 them. It is most important that you understand 
 these things, — first, that you may give an intelli- 
 gent reason for your own position in Christendom, 
 and, also, be prepared to instruct others in matters 
 of so great concernment. That there should be 
 divisions among Christian people is much to be 
 deplored for every reason. Division runs counter 
 to the mind of our Lord, whose prayer ever was, 
 "Father, that they may be one as We are one." 
 Again, it breeds unholy contention and emulation, 
 divides forces, and wastes energies; practically, it 
 divides to a certain extent (and it is to that extent 
 injurious) the Kingdom of God against itself. 
 
 The divided state of Christendom is gloried over 
 in a certain kind of flash oratory, which describes 
 
 the varied hues of a divided Christianity as a beau- 
 
 31
 
 32 DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS BODIES. 
 
 tiful kaleidoscopic picture, where are displayed all 
 the prismatic hues of light, — forgetting that where 
 the colors of the prism are exhibited it is in con- 
 sequence of refraction, and does not present the 
 pure light as it comes from Heaven. Or, as some 
 others delight to view it, they picture the various 
 Denominations as regiments or divisions of the 
 grand army, fighting under one Captain — the great 
 Captain of Salvation. All this sounds very pretty, 
 and is sufficiently captivating to a certain sort of 
 mind, but the lamentable fact is, that these several 
 regiments, or divisions — call them what you will — 
 are spending a large part of their strength and time 
 in fighting and firing into each other. They have 
 to keep three or four ministers in a little village 
 (where the services of one good man would be 
 sufficient) to watch each other and keep the balance 
 of power even. At this moment, two-thirds of the 
 ministers in the small villages might be sent to the 
 heathen, to the great advantage of Christendom. 
 
 Time would fail me to enter into all the evils of 
 schism. Yet we find great and good men among 
 all the Denominations. We must not ignore that 
 fact, nor that other great fact — that this goodness 
 which we see in them is the fruit of the Divine 
 Spirit, and the outcome of their union with Christ.
 
 DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS BODIES. 33 
 
 They could not else manifest as they do often, the 
 fruits of the Spirit. These are the actual pheno- 
 mena, with which we have to deal — to deal fairly 
 and honestly. Hence, we are called upon to dis- 
 tinguish between men and their systems and 
 organizations. The latter may be a mistake, a 
 wrong, an injury; and yet, through the frailty of 
 sinful man, good men may be earnestly, however 
 mistakenly, working under them. 
 
 With some men, it is a lust of power, an ambi- 
 tious spirit, a desire to exalt self. Divisions ordin- 
 arily spring from unruled lusts of ambitious men, 
 good men, too, it may be, but not good enough to 
 kill their ambition. With some other men, their 
 denominational connections are the result of ignor- 
 ance and shallowness; they really think they are 
 promoting the purity of the Church by a whole- 
 some rivalry. With the great mass of men, it is a 
 matter of accident or of pure indifference. They 
 do not care or think much about the matter. 
 
 Now, I hold — and have ever taught, both pub- 
 licly and privately — that the divided state of Chris- 
 tendom is an evil of incalculable magnitude, and 
 that it becomes every Christian man to do what in 
 him lies to heal this breach. He cannot do it, in 
 my judgment, by treating the evil lightly; nor by
 
 34 DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS BODIES. 
 
 contention and strife. The evil comes from the 
 Evil One; the counteracting good must come from 
 the Author and Giver of all goodness. All work 
 for whatever good ^nd, if not done in the Spirit of 
 Christ, intensifies the evil sought to be remedied. 
 It adds fuel to the fire, and feeds instead of quench- 
 ing the flames. I hold — and have ever taught and 
 preached it — that each Christian man should, so far 
 as his intelligence goes, seek to know what is the 
 truth in all this matter of a divided Christendom, 
 The very spirit and desire to find out the truth is 
 a good beginning, and will not end there in any- 
 earnest mind. 
 
 The difficulty would not long exist were men 
 earnestly to go to work to find out the truth, with 
 the love of the truth to inspire their search. One 
 has no business to talk about any truth in any 
 other spirit, no more than he would have a right 
 to talk about the properties of angles, etc., unless 
 he had learned something of Geometry. The good 
 in an evil thing is often only apparent on the sur- 
 face, the evil often poisons and corrupts the whole 
 system. 
 
 But I am dwelling too long upon these gener- 
 alities. I must come to a nearer and more tangi- 
 ble view of the subject; only observingat the out-
 
 DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS BODIES. 35 
 
 set, that every man, and every body of men, should 
 give an account of themselves, when they came 
 into being-, and what good purpose they are sub- 
 serving by continuance in being, in a word, the 
 *' raison d'etre." 
 I take up first, the
 
 ROMAN OR LATIN CHURCH. 
 
 I TAKE this Church first, because she is the 
 largest Christian organization in the world 
 and, furthermore, she claims to be the only legiti- 
 mate, divinely-appointed communion of Christians 
 on earth. You will meet the claims of Rome 
 everywhere; in books, newspapers, schools, col- 
 leges, etc, A wonderful piece of mechanism it is, 
 vast, complex, flexible and inflexible power, suited 
 to all temperaments, adjusting itself to all idiosyn- 
 crasies, and, as regards the great " Society of 
 Jesus," especially, politic, daring, or submissive, as 
 the case may call for, to the last degree — alas ! in 
 what painful contrast with the simplicity of " the 
 truth as it is in Jesus." 
 
 Rome is to-day pretty much what Jesuitism is, 
 because Jesuitism, after having fought the world, 
 and even the Bishops of Rome sometimes, and 
 after having been expelled in turn from nearly all 
 the countries of Europe, has achieved its present 
 
 commanding position; gives counsel to Popes, 
 36
 
 ROMAN OR LATIN CHURCH. IJ 
 
 causes doctrines to be promulgated, — new doc- 
 trines — upon the same platform of authority with 
 the ancient Creeds. Rome claims to be exclusively 
 the Catholic Church. 
 
 The Church in England, as I have before written, 
 was at one time under the jurisdiction of the Bishop 
 of Rome; so were all the churches of Western 
 Europe. The Church in England is not so now; 
 but Rome, none the less, asserts her claim, and 
 promulgates decrees and dogmas as by divine war- 
 ranty. Within my memory, she has taken a private 
 opinion of individuals, and elevated it to the dig- 
 nity of a fundamental dogma — " The Immaculate 
 Conception of the Blessed Virgin." — Later still, and 
 in my day, she has promulgated the dogma of the 
 "Infallibility of the Pope," — has done it formally; 
 and her adherents, some of them reluctant, and 
 some recalcitrant for a while, have either formally 
 given in, or preserve a still silence. Strange, — and 
 yet not strange— it is — that the promulgation of 
 infallibility synchronized exactly with the passing 
 away of all her temporal dominion. 
 
 This fact is exquisitely brought out by Mozley 
 in his " University Sermons." I cannot forbear a 
 single extract. He is speaking of the proclama- 
 tion of the infallibility of the Pope at the moment
 
 3 8 ROMAN OR LATIN CHURCH. 
 
 of his stepping down from the throne of temporal 
 dominion. "Is not this," says Mozeley, "the act 
 of a dispossessed monarch, who, upon the eve of 
 the crisis, collects all his greatness about him, and 
 prepares to quit his throne with a rigorous state- 
 ment of his rights first put forth.' .... The 
 claim represents former possession, Rome issues 
 out of her own gates, taking her history with her; 
 she collects her prestige, she gathers up the past, 
 she calls in all the antecedents of her temporal 
 greatness; she stereotypes memory in decrees; 
 she condenses history into dogmas; she surrounds 
 herself symbolically with all the insignia of her 
 secular glory ; . . . , A thousand banners and 
 escutcheons are hid in one of those sentences which 
 makes the statement of her dominion, in order to 
 serve as a support to her in the loss of the fact. . 
 . . . All in vain! The Earth must roll back 
 upon its axis before the moral sense of society re- 
 cants on these questions. Never again, never, 
 though ages pass away, never any more under the 
 heavens, shall be seen forms, and fabrics and struc- 
 tures, and combinations that we have seen. They 
 have taken their place among departed shapes and 
 organisms, deposited in that vast mausoleum which 
 receives, sooner or later, all human creations. The
 
 ROMAN OK LATIN CHURCH. 39 
 
 mould in which they were made is broken, and 
 their successors will be casts from a new mould. 
 The world is evidently at the end of one era, and 
 is entering upon another; but there will remain the 
 Christian Creed and the Christian Church, to en- 
 lighten ignorance, to fight with sin, and to conduct 
 man to eternity." 
 
 Upon what grounds, you may well ask, does 
 Rome build her vast pretensions? Chiefly upon a 
 declaration of our Lord to St. Peter: " Upon this 
 rock I will build My Church,' etc." If the words 
 mean what the Romanists affirm they do mean, 
 there is no declaration that they confer any special 
 or similar authority or privilege upon the Bishops 
 of Rome. For, in the first place, it is a mooted 
 point, whether St. Peter was ever Bishop of Rome. 
 St. Paul certainly was there, and also wrote the 
 " Epistle to theRomans." 
 
 But, besides, you must interpret the meaning of 
 our Lord's declaration in the light of subsequent 
 history. Is there any evidence to show that St. 
 Peter claimed the pre-eminence said to have been 
 conferred upon him in these quoted words, or that 
 it was ever conceded to him by the other Apos- 
 
 *Mozeley's University Sermons, pp. 22-24.
 
 40 ROMAN OR LAT/iV CHURCH. 
 
 tics? The contrary is the fact. Rome is not the 
 "Mother" of Churches. Jerusalem, where the 
 Christian Dispensation of the Church was inaugu- 
 rated, is the " Mother Church." And you will 
 observe that at the meeting of the first Council of 
 the Church (Acts xv.) St. James, the first Bishop 
 of Jerusalem, was the presiding Bishop ; St. Peter 
 merely giving his opinion as a member of the 
 Council. St. Peter gave his opinion, whereas St. 
 James concluded the deliberations of the Council 
 by saying: "Wherefore my sentence is," thus 
 announcing the judgment of that body — The First 
 Church Council. 
 
 How can such a state of things be accounted for 
 from the Romanists' position in regard to the so- 
 called successors of St. Peter? It was many years 
 before a Bishop of Rome claimed anything like 
 supremacy; and the claim was never recognized 
 by the Church Universal. The Oriental Churches 
 never fell under the power of the Bishop of Rome. 
 They exist to-day, and have existed from the be- 
 ginning, apart from his sway. Therefore, it is the 
 most shameless and groundless assumption — that 
 of the claim of the Pope to universal supremacy 
 and, as a corollary therefrom, to infallibility. When 
 you read, as you will, in history, of the counter
 
 ROMAN OR LATIN CHURCH. 4 1 
 
 decisions of the Bishops of Rome, and of the prof- 
 ligate hves of many of them (history records no 
 worse characters than some of them), it is almost 
 amusing, were the consequences less serious, to 
 hear such announcements as are made of the power 
 of the Pope. Flings at the English Church, 
 because of Henry VlII.'s character, come with a 
 bad grace from men who now, as a matter of salva- 
 tion, must believe in the infallibility of a Borgia! 
 Then, too, when you come to the matter of doc- 
 trine, — that of "transubstantiation," the worship of 
 the Blessed Virgin, the Roman Purgatory, etc., — 
 you, who have been instructed in the Word of God, 
 can hardly be drawn away from the ancient faith 
 into the mazes of Roman error. 
 
 The best antidote against all uncatholic doctrine 
 is a thorough acquaintance with the Word of God, 
 as interpreted and accepted by the Universal 
 Church. It is a two-edged sword that guards in 
 all directions the tree of life. Make it, my children, 
 your book of counsel, the guide for time and eter- 
 nity — health for body and soul. 
 
 Yet think not that I join in the popular and un- 
 discriminating tirade against Rome. She has the 
 Faith, though sadly disfigured, and enrolls among 
 her children a goodly fellowship of saints and a
 
 42 ROMAN OR LATIN CHURCH. 
 
 noble army of martyrs, — not, indeed, because of har 
 errors, but in spite of them. In many things we 
 might imitate the zeal and spirit of self-sacrifice so 
 wonderfully illustrated in her communion. Roman 
 Catholicism, in so far as it is true to the Catholic 
 faith, is one thing, and worthy of all admiration. 
 But Romanism as corrupted by new doctrines, and 
 perverted by Jesuitism, which just now is in the 
 ascendant, and dictates, as it is thought, the policy 
 of that Church, is quite another thing. 
 
 Against all these uncatholic features of the Roman 
 Church, this Church of ours entersher solemn pro- 
 test. Hence she is called the " Protestant " Church, 
 because she is so truly Catholic. Her Protestantism 
 constitutes really the negative side of her Cath- 
 olicity. 
 
 We do not profess our faith in " the Protestant 
 Episcopal Church," but in the " Holy Catholic 
 Church." And why ? Because our faith cannot 
 properly rest in any one branch of the Church. 
 Any particular Church may err from the faith. 
 Rome assuredly has; she has erred by unwarranted 
 additions to the Faith ; she imposes uncatholic 
 conditions of communion and fellowship. We 
 cannot fraternize with her, without accepting as 
 true what is not true. Besides, she has excom-
 
 ROMAN OR LA TIN CHURCH. 43 
 
 municated us ; we have never excommunicated 
 her. The schism between us is not of our making, 
 we are ready to meet her, and all Christendom 
 upon the basis of Catholic truth — that which was 
 always, everywhere and held by all — our faith being 
 in the Holy Catholic Church, and, only using the 
 appellation of " Protestant Episcopal " by way of 
 designating a branch of the Church, and because it 
 has a well-known doctrinal and historical signifi- 
 cance ; just as we designate continents and oceans 
 and bays and rivers, to localize and distinguish 
 them, but not to deny and lose sight of the fact 
 that all these several divisions make up the great 
 land and sea, 
 
 "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem," — "They 
 shall prosper that love Thee,"
 
 THE PRESBYTERIAN COMMUNION 
 
 TS a select, learned and most respectable commu- 
 nion of Christian people. Why is it called Pres- 
 byterian ? To indicate the fact that their ministers 
 are Presbyters merely, and that they recognize no 
 office in the Church like that of our Bishops. That 
 Denomination has precedence in Scotland, an exis- 
 tence in England and Ireland, in France and 
 the United States, besides scattered congregations 
 on the Continent and missions among the heathen. 
 Its history dates back no farther than the Refor- 
 mation. There is no satisfactory record of a Church 
 up to that era which was not ruled by Bishops. 
 They claim that their ministerial government was 
 instituted by the Apostles, but admit that it soon 
 merged into the Episcopal form. It will strike any 
 one as very strange that the Apostolic form of 
 government (supposing for the sake of argument, 
 that such was Presbyterian) should have lasted so 
 
 short a time. There must have been a strong ten- 
 44
 
 THE PRESBYTERIAN COMMUNION. 45 
 
 dency to Episcopacy in early Presbyterianisni — 
 such as does not exist now. 
 
 During the ApostoHc era, the Church was, with- 
 out controversy, governed by the Apostles. The 
 first clear intimations of subsequent history give us 
 Episcopal Churches everywhere. If any change 
 ever took place from Fresbyterianism to the Epis- 
 copal polity, as they allege, history docs not record 
 the fact nor the time. The truth is, that all this 
 talk is purely conjectural, imaginary and hardly 
 reasonable. If there is any truth in it, the burden 
 of proof (positive) rests upon themselves. The 
 whole stream of history is against the assertion. 
 The analogy of nature, in its manifold headship, 
 is against it. It is an afterthought altogether. 
 Some of the most learned of the Reformers — nota- 
 bly Calvin — acknowledged the fact of Primitive 
 Episcopacy, and he would have ingrafted the feature 
 upon his system had it been practicable. 
 
 The history of Puritanism in England is a most 
 suggestive one. It originated in a certain school 
 of divines of the Church in England, who were 
 enamoured of a more simple Ritual than that of the 
 Church, and held stronger views of the doctrines 
 of predestination and election, etc., than "The 
 Thirty-nine Articles of Religion " justified. This
 
 46 THE PRESBYTERIAN COMMUNION. 
 
 body of divines holding said views, at last, after 
 many attempts had been made to pacify and har- 
 monize them, went to themselves, established their 
 standards — "The Confession of Faith," etc., and 
 thus took a determinate departure from the histor- 
 ical Church in England and other countries. 
 
 They seemed to delight to run counter to every 
 distinctive and characteristic feature of the Church : 
 — we kneeled, they stood in prayer ; we kneeled 
 at the Holy Eucharist, they sat and partook ; they 
 objected to the surplice, to the sign of the cross in 
 baptism, to the wedding ring, etc. So trivial were 
 the grounds of their dissent, as you will see in 
 any history of the times. But times are changed, 
 and they have changed, as we all have changed 
 somewhat with the times. No more do we hear of 
 the peculiar doctrines of Presbyterianism. 
 
 The great Fatherhood of God, loving all His 
 children, and shining like the sun on all His 
 creatures, has relegated to the tombs all those 
 narrow, harsh, repelling and appalling views of the 
 Deity which came once from Presbyterian pulpits. 
 They still sing " Hark, from the tombs," but the 
 voice of the Easter- tide will drown th-at doleful cry 
 after awhile. 
 
 Some of their best men are beginning to cry
 
 THE PRESBYTERIAN COMMUNION. 47 
 
 aloud for a liturgical worship. After a while they 
 will demand it. Their Sabbaths (Judaical as their's 
 have been) will give way to the " Lord's Day," 
 and they will sing Te Deums and Glorias, as other 
 Christian people have done and will continue to 
 do. 
 
 Why they keep up their distinctive organization 
 it is hard to say. What truth they maintain dis- 
 tinctively cannot be pointed out. What special 
 attraction there is in their mode of worship does 
 not appear. They hold a great deal that is good, 
 but they do not specially hold anything good that 
 the historical Episcopal Church does not also hold. 
 You may say, indeed, with truth, that distinctive 
 Presbyterianism no longer exists save in its minis- 
 terial polity, and that cannot stand the test of 
 history. 
 
 Chillingworth (in his " Apostolical Institution of 
 Episcopacy Demonstrated ") puts the allegation, on 
 the part of the Presbyterians, that " Presbyterianism 
 was ancient and Apostolic, but had run into Epis- 
 copacy " in a helpless condition. He says (p. 509) 
 " When I shall see, therefore, all the fables in the 
 Metamorphoses acted, and prove true stories, when 
 I shall see all the Democracies and Aristocracies in 
 the world lie down and sleep and awake into Mon-
 
 48 THE PRESBYTERIAN COMMUA'ION. 
 
 archies, then will I begin to believe that Presby- 
 terial government, having continued in the Church 
 during the Apostles' time, should presently after 
 (against the Apostles' doctrine and the will ol 
 Christ) be whirled about like a scene in a mask, 
 and transformed into Episcopacy. In the mean- 
 time, while things remain thus incredible, and in 
 human reason impossible, I hope I shall have leave 
 to conclude thus : ' Episcopal government is 
 acknowledged to have been universally received in 
 the Church presently after the Apostles' times.' 
 Between the Apostles and this ' presently after ' 
 there was not time enough for, nor possibility of, so 
 great an alteration." 
 
 "And, therefore, there was no such alteration 
 as is pretended. And, therefore. Episcopacy, being 
 confessed to being so ancient and Catholic, must be 
 granted, also, to be Apostolic. ' Quod erat demon- 
 strandum.' " 
 
 The fact is, that Romanism and Presbyterianism, 
 in some of their characteristics, are both uncatholic. 
 They have more things in common than would be 
 supposed at a first glance. They both undervalue 
 Patristic learning and authority. Presbyterian 
 ministers, although well educated in the general, 
 are proverbially deficient in Patristic lore. They
 
 THE PRESBYTERIAN COMMUNION. 49 
 
 find no comfort in reading the " Fathers," for they 
 ever find "Episcopacy," and "Episcopacy" is 
 most unsavory to them. 
 
 The Romanists, Hkewise, run away from the 
 " Fathers " nowadays. They are always seeking 
 proofs of the Pope's supremacy, and the "Fathers" 
 did not know anything about so novel a doctrine. 
 The English Church with her weighty artillery has 
 driven the Roman controversialists out of their old 
 intrenchments, and they are now seeking a new 
 position of defence in the doctrine of " Develop- 
 ment," which as practically interpreted by them, 
 means, not development of truth revealed, but rev- 
 elation of new truth. Newman and Manning have 
 helped them on this new line, and are now feather- 
 ing the darts aimed at the breast of their once dear 
 Mother, the Church in England. 
 
 The only safety is in Catholic truth, and in the 
 Apostolic order of the Church, which comes to us 
 with the same universality of evidence that the 
 Holy Scriptures themselves do — Catholic Consent, 
 and he who disparages the idea of Catholic con- 
 sent, disparages the very foundation upon which 
 the Canon of Holy Scripture rests for its authen- 
 ticity. 
 
 But the vital matter for men to know, amid all
 
 50 THE PRESBYTERIAN COMMUNION. 
 
 these controversies, is this, — that spiritual life 
 comes from the indweUingof the Divine Spirit, the 
 Lord and Giver of Life. He dwells in men, des- 
 pite many opposing infirmities, errors and sins, else 
 would He not dwell in any one of us. How far a 
 man may go in error or sin, without quenching the 
 life of the soul, is not revealed. We may not ex- 
 pect in this our earthly pilgrimage to live without 
 these clogging errors and faults, but let it be our 
 aim really to live. It matters little what a dead 
 man believes, — there is not much difference in 
 dead things ; — they are all putting on corruption. 
 But there is, on the contrary, a vast difference in 
 living things. The nearer one lives in the truth 
 and up to the truth, the more of a man is he, and 
 the higher his possible usefulness and destiny. 
 
 Therefore, my children, strive to walk in the 
 truth, and with boundless compassion for the igno- 
 rant and erring, — it is not difficult for any one 
 who fully realizes his own frailty and fallibility.
 
 THE BAPTISTS. 
 
 'T^HEY are a very large Denomination in this 
 ■■■ country, but do not exercise the same power 
 with the Methodists, because they lack compact- 
 ness and unity in their organization. They sprang 
 up about the time of the Lutheran Reformation, 
 and in some places they were turbulent and very 
 heady, as Luther testified. They were the rude 
 Reformers of that Day. 
 
 In their polity, they are " Independents " and 
 "Congregationalists;" — each congregation con- 
 taining within itself governmental powers — each 
 congregation an autonomy. They form among 
 themselves what they style " Associations ;" but 
 these are purely voluntary, and are clothed with 
 very limited powers. 
 
 Their boast is, that they possess " no written 
 
 creed ;" they do not baptize children, and they 
 
 regard immersion as the only valid baptism — indeed 
 
 as alone baptism. They ignore the question of the 
 
 ministry pretty much, and attach a supreme im- 
 
 51
 
 52 THE BAPTISTS. 
 
 portance to two things — " No children baptized," 
 and " adult believers alone to be baptized, and by 
 immersion." They have among them some quite 
 distinguished and learned men, but as a Denomina- 
 tion, viewed in the large, their preachers and people 
 are much less informed than the majority of the 
 other sects. Of late, they are earnest promoters 
 of education. They are exclusive, — would be 
 called very High Church among us, — but by their 
 fraternizations with other Christian people in 
 preachings, etc., they get credit among the un- 
 thinking for a liberality which is not deserved ; for 
 they will not commune with their fellow Christians, 
 and they will repel them from their communion- 
 tables. The Holy Scriptures they profess to take 
 as their sole guide, and ignore all idea of the 
 Catholic Church as an interpreter of divine truth. 
 Hence, they have no written creed, and glory in 
 the fact ; although they hold certain opinions as 
 unquestionably true ; and it is hard for any one to 
 see what is the difference between a spoken and a 
 written Creed. The Creed of every man is what 
 he believes to be true ; and whether he writes it 
 down, or lets it float in speech, it is none the less a 
 Creed; although, being unwritten and unrehearsed, 
 it is more liable to easy change. What idea ean
 
 THE BAPTISTS. 53 
 
 you form of one's faith, when he says, " I believe 
 in the Holy Scriptures ?" 
 
 The arguments of the Baptists are plausible to a 
 certain extent among the ignorant; and they be- 
 guile — not to deny much knowledge among their 
 learned men — a great multitude of ignorant and 
 really good people. 
 
 I cannot pretend to go at length into the matters 
 of difference between us and them. There are a 
 great many good and satisfactory books, which, if 
 you should ever happen to need, you can consult. 
 Among them I name one, written by Dr. Hodges, 
 an old friend of mine, entitled, "Baptism, tested by 
 Scripture and History," — an argument, in my judg- 
 ment, unanswerable. I merely touch a few points. 
 
 The Baptists reject infant baptism, alleging two 
 principal objections — (first), that the Scriptures do 
 not in so many words " command children to be 
 baptized," and (second) that children are incapable 
 ot receiving any benefit therefrom. Whereas, on 
 the contrary, — as you will see more at length in the 
 book referred to — children are always treated of in 
 Holy Scripture as belonging to the Church. They 
 were circumcised into it tmder the Jewish Dispen- 
 sation, and, when families and households were 
 brought into the Christian fold, they were baptized
 
 54 THE BAPTISTS. 
 
 as "households." Furthermore, our Lord gave it 
 as a reason why His disciples should not bar the 
 approach of children to Himself, that " of such is 
 the Kingdom of God," which is the Church of 
 God ; and we know of no way of becoming mem- 
 bers of the Kingdom of God save by baptism. 
 
 Besides, the comparative silence of Scripture (if 
 Scripture can truly be said to be silent in regard to 
 the matter) is very significant. We do not com- 
 monly say much about settled and indisputable facts. 
 The relation of the children to the Church was so 
 universally recognized as a fact, a fact not disputed, 
 that there was little occasion to refer to it in the 
 Gospels and Acts of the Apostles. Yet there is 
 just that mention of it and the implication of its 
 existence that we should expect to find, — the 
 Shepherd's tender care of the little ones of His fold. 
 His taking them in His arms, His declaring them 
 "blessed," His provision for their nurture in His 
 parting injunctions to His disciples, "Feed My 
 lambs." 
 
 In addition to this weighty testimony of Holy 
 Scripture, we have the universal custom of the 
 Church, not seriously disputed for centuries — a fact 
 of deep significance to every one who understands
 
 THE BAPTISTS. 55 
 
 that he receives the Holy Scriptures themselves 
 upon the same testimony. 
 
 Think of a flock of sheep without any lambs in 
 it. It would be absolutely ludicrous, were it not at 
 the same time so painful. The Gospel did little for 
 the Jews, if it took the men and the women into 
 the Church, and left the children out; and that, 
 too, when the Lord of the Kingdom says that " of 
 such is the Kingdom." Really, to one acquainted 
 with all the grounds of, and reasons for, infant 
 baptism, as appearing from the Scripture alone, it 
 is difficult to understand how a thinking and learned 
 man can be a Baptist. Yet there are such men 
 who are conscientious Baptists. Then, when you 
 add to this the whole force of Catholic consent 
 through ages, it becomes a wonder greater still. 
 Where in ancient history do you find Baptist 
 Churches ? 
 
 But the main difficulty in the mind of a Baptist 
 is in the thought that " children can receive no 
 benefit from baptism." This difficulty arises alto- 
 gether out of a misconception of the nature of 
 baptism. The Baptist regards the sacrament as 
 involving too exclusively what nia7i has to do in 
 the matter. We, on the contrary, regard it chiefly 
 as something that God does for man. It is not
 
 56 THE BAPTISTS. 
 
 simply the profession of one's faith, but a reception 
 into the Kingdom, — into the family of Heaven. 
 Our birth of the flesh is our entrance into creation ; 
 it puts us among God's creatures, in the great 
 Kingdom of Nature, whereas, our Baptism is our 
 introduction into God's family, and is, therefore, 
 properly and significantly styled our " Regenera- 
 tion, our new birth, our second birth, our adoption 
 and incorporation into the mystical body of our 
 dear Lord." 
 
 Now, we all admit that children can become 
 citizens of another Kingdom than that in which 
 they were born. They can be made partakers of 
 all the privileges of citizenship, in so far as minors 
 can exercise them, or they can be exercised in their 
 behalf They can receive the benefit of all pro- 
 perties given, and they can have the protection 
 of the law, and the right of having guardianship, 
 etc. In a word, they can have all the substantial 
 benefits of citizenship, whilst yet they are all un- 
 conscious. What man would reject an inheritance 
 for his child because the child could not understand 
 the value of the gift ? 
 
 Furthermore, when they shall have reached 
 years of discretion, they can say whether they will 
 confirm and ratify the deed of their parents, and
 
 THE BAPTISTS. 5/ 
 
 confirm the citizenship given them by their parents, 
 and thus give a deep significance to their confirma- 
 tion. All this the Baptist ignores, — honestly, I 
 doubt not, but still actually. He took up his 
 Bible, and went to work to make out a scheme of 
 Church Polity for himself anew, never sufficiently 
 considering that the Church already existed — a 
 Church that had brought to him the very Scrip- 
 tures which he was using, as if a new revelation, 
 not only separating himself from its government 
 and guidance, but from its communion, and the 
 church members from communion with himself. 
 He thus created a schism in the body, and estab- 
 lished a sect in its very idea schismatical. If the 
 Baptist idea of the Church be well founded, then, 
 for centuries, Christ had no Church on earth: and 
 then, of course, the Church had failed for that long 
 period of time; and yet of that Kingdom there was 
 to be "no end." 
 
 Such are the conclusions necessarily and actually 
 involved in the position of the Baptist. He does not 
 sufficiently consider (and in this he is not alone) that 
 the Church antedates the written Word of the New 
 Testament, and that these Scriptures were written 
 to meet the wants of an existing Church. The 
 Epistles were addressed to the various Churches.
 
 58 THE BAPTISTS. 
 
 The Gospels are histories of our Lord's deeds and 
 words, and, of course, were written after the events 
 which they record ; and therefore it is that we have 
 to go to the Church to find out what is the Word 
 of God. These are very simple facts, but unknown 
 to, and unwcighed by, great numbers of men, who, 
 in some other respects, are quite intelligent and 
 well informed. 
 
 The ultimate fate of the Baptist, as regards the 
 preservation of "the faith," it would be hard to 
 predict. His want of a fixed Creed and Liturgy 
 deprives him of a great security against error. 
 His congregational character bereaves him of a 
 great deal of good, and restraint and guidance that 
 comes from mutual helpfulness. His extravagant 
 reliance upon individual interpretations of Scripture 
 opens the way to an unlimited number of sects, 
 between whom there exists only the one tie — of 
 immersion in water and " infants rejected." 
 
 The name of the Baptist sects is becoming 
 " Legion." The " Campbellites " or ('* Disciples," 
 they claim to be called) is one of their most 
 prominent oft'-shoots ; as yet but Httle known in 
 the world at large, but numerous and aggressive 
 wherever they have made a lodgement. Individ- 
 ualism bursts into full bloom under their favoring
 
 THE BAPTISTS. 59 
 
 auspices. Every man can be a preacher, and every 
 woman, if she claims the privilege. With no estab- 
 lished creed, and unlicensed power to interpret 
 Scripture, there must be as many actual creeds as 
 there are divergent opinions ; with no protection, 
 that appears, from the most fatal heresy. The at- 
 mosphere around them in some localities will keep 
 them orthodox longer than their system would 
 warrant. 
 
 My children, adhere steadfastly to a communion 
 which holds a fixed faith, and breathes it in every 
 note of prayer and praise.
 
 IMMERSION. 
 
 TDERHAPS, I ought to say a word about what the 
 Baptists claim for " immersion." I feel that 
 I am touching what is a matter of small moment 
 in itself, but yet I must recognize it as having im- 
 portance, because so much is made of it, to the 
 prejudice of many tender consciences and weak 
 minds. To a Churchman it can hardly become a 
 practical question, for his first concern would be to 
 know if the minister proposing to baptize him had 
 any commission thereto. The Baptists are always 
 arguing the point of "how to baptize;" leaving out of 
 view the question, "Who is empowered to baptize?" 
 Yet the matter of immersion troubles some people, 
 and huge volumes of immense research have been 
 evoked by the water controversy. To me it 
 appears like the question, "How much wax is to 
 be put upon your seal, in order to give validity to 
 its impress?" It tends, moreover, to withdraw the 
 mind from the sacramental idea to the material one. 
 
 It is a small matter, it would seem, whether the 
 60
 
 IMMERSION'. 6 1 
 
 water goes over the subject, or the subject goes 
 under the water. 
 
 It makes one sick to think how men can wrangle 
 over such questions. They surely have never 
 divined the true idea of a Sacrament, which is " the 
 outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual 
 grace." One may as well contend that one must 
 eat a full meal in order to receive the Lord's Sup- 
 per, as to argue that you must be drenched in order 
 to be baptized. 
 
 Without entering at large into the question, 
 which would take me quite beyond my limits, I 
 content myself with saying that the quantity of 
 water is quite an immaterial part of the Sacrament 
 (the Church manifests her characteristic wisdom 
 and benignity in allowing both modes) ; that the 
 practice of affusion seems to have been, as I fully 
 believe it was, the primitive mode ; that there arc 
 accounts in Scripture of baptisms, where immer- 
 sion was scarcely possible; that affusion can be 
 practiced everywhere, among all nations, in all 
 climes and localities ; that immersion, in some 
 climes and localities and seasons, is inii)racticab]c, 
 and that, therefore, it is more reasonable to sup[)osc 
 that, where an ordinance was to be of universal 
 obligation, the mode of its administration would
 
 62 IMMERSIOM. 
 
 properly be one of universal practicability; it being 
 in accord with the analogy of God's dealings to 
 accommodate the Divine requirements to human 
 necessities ; that baptism, being made (equally with 
 the Sabbath) "for man," the mode thereof would 
 likewise be adapted with the same wise and benig- 
 nant accommodation to all men, in all climes, and 
 under all circumstances. 
 
 Looking at the whole matter from this larger 
 view-point, the insisting upon a special mode of 
 receiving men into Christ's Kingdom, — which is 
 never decorous, as in the case of woman ; some- 
 times harsh, as amid the rigors of winter; sometimes 
 impracticable, as in countries where little water is 
 to be found — is not a reasonable thing, and is not 
 in harmony with the genius of the Gospel of our 
 Lord. 
 
 Strange it is that some good and reputed great 
 men take quite the opposite view. They see 
 nothing in the Scripture accounts but immersion, 
 immersion; whether in the crowded streets of Je- 
 rusalem, where thousands were unexpectedly bap- 
 tised, or in the jail at Philippi at midnight, they 
 always imagine full fountains and overflowing 
 streams. Even in the peoples flocking to " Enon, 
 near to Salem, where much water was," the prac-
 
 IMMERSION. 63 
 
 ticability of immersing appears to be the first mov- 
 ing cause to these brethren, who look at all these 
 accounts through a water lens. They never stop 
 to ask, how little water would suffice to baptize 
 many men ? — (a good - sized Baptistery would 
 suffice — ) and how much water would be required 
 to quench the thirst of a thousand camels upon 
 which the people went to " Enon ?" ; ten camels 
 requiring more for their satisfaction than would a 
 thousand men for baptism by immersion. 
 
 The Baptist theory cf essential immersion — 
 stands out in the whole scheme of Redemption, not 
 grand indeed to my vision, but solitary and pecu- 
 liar, often harsh, and, in some instances, impracti- 
 cable. Happily it has made itself exclusive. The 
 worst thing about it is, that it often becomes the 
 " fetich " to the ignorant white and black man. It 
 satisfies his senses to the full. He is all over a 
 Christian when dipped. In a great number of 
 cases, it ends the whole matter. His teachers do 
 not believe or tell him any such thing, I am well 
 assured, but the extravagant stress which they put 
 upon the "dipping,' — a process which separates 
 him from all other Christians, and all other Chris- 
 tians from himself — naturally produces the result 
 in weak and ignorant people.
 
 THE METHODISTS. 
 
 npHE Methodists constitute a very large and in- 
 ■'■ fluential body in the United States, and exist 
 as a Denomination in Great Britain and her Depen- 
 dencies, and have missions in foreign lands. Their 
 government is Episcopal, made so by the assump- 
 tion of the Episcopal functions on the part of t'vo 
 of their Presbyters, who had been sent out to the 
 American Colonies by John Wesley, the founder 
 of the sect. 
 
 Much controversy has arisen as to the intentions 
 of John Wesley. There is evidence enough to 
 show that he did not intend to form a Sect in Eng- 
 land, apart from the Church in England where 
 there was a National Church established; and, yet, 
 there is also evidence to show that he did contem- 
 plate the organization of a distinct Sect in the 
 American Colonies; although he disapproved of 
 the assumption of the Episcopate by Drs. Coke 
 
 and Asbury, his superintendents in the Colonies; 
 64
 
 THE METHODISTS. ;65 
 
 and held it up — as it deserved to be — to ridicule. 
 He writes — " Call me a knave, dear Franky (Dr. 
 Francis Asbury — ,) but not a Bishop."* 
 
 "London, Sept. 20, 1788. 
 
 "There is, indeed, a wide difference between the 
 relation wherein you stand to the Americans, and 
 the relation wherein I stand to all the Methodists. 
 You are the elder brother of the American Metho- 
 dists; I am, under God, the father of the whole 
 family. Therefore, I naturally care for you all, in 
 a manner no other person can do. Therefore, I, 
 in a measure, provide for you all ; for the supplies 
 which Dr. Coke provides for you, he could not 
 provide, were it not for me — were it not that I not 
 only permit him to collect, but support him in so 
 doing. 
 
 " But in one point, my dear brother, I am a 
 little afraid both the Dr. and you differ from me. 
 I study to be little, you study to be great ; I creepy 
 you str7it along; I found a school, you a college; 
 nay, and call it after your own names ! Oh, be- 
 ware ! Do not seek to be something ! Let me be 
 nothing, and Christ be all in all. 
 
 "One instance of this, your greatness, has given 
 me great concern. How can )'ou, how dare you, 
 suffer yourself to be called a ^ Bishof? 
 
 * Extract from Wesley's Letter to Asbury, September, 20,1788. 
 (see Moore's Life of Wesley, vol. 2, p. 285.)
 
 66 THE METHODISTS. 
 
 " I shudder, I start at the very thought. Men 
 may call me a knave, or 2^ fool; a rascal, a scoun- 
 drel, and I am content ; but they shall never, by 
 my consent, call me a Bishop ! For my sake, for 
 God's sake, for Christ's sake, put a full end to 
 this ! Let the Presbyterians do what they please, 
 but let the Methodists know their calhng better. 
 Thus, my dear Franky, I have told you all that is 
 in my heart ; and let this, when I am no more seen, 
 bear witness how sincerely, 
 
 "I am your affectionate friend and brother, 
 
 John Wesley." 
 
 Wesley had the sense and churchmanship to 
 know that he, a Presbyter, could not make a Bish- 
 op. But Wesley's intentions, — whatever they ma)- 
 be claimed to be, or proved to be, — are of no mo- 
 ment ; for the question is one of authority, not of 
 Wesley s intention. 
 
 The founders of Methodism were men of zeal, 
 earnestness, and power. They preached with unc- 
 tion some of the great truths of the Gospel, and 
 encouraged the emotional element to a great and 
 enthusiastic degree. The low condition of piety 
 in the Church of England at the time greatly fa- 
 vored the growth of the sect. Had the English 
 Church acted with the wisdom and forecast, which
 
 THE METHODISTS. ^"J 
 
 have marked her more recent administration, Meth- 
 odism might have been utiHzed and controlled. 
 The Church of England greatly needed a stimu- 
 lus. But unwise councils prevailed ; and the Meth- 
 odists, especially in the United States, took a de- 
 terminate movement away from the Apostolic 
 Church. Wesley himself never left the ministry of 
 the Church. 
 
 His followers very early took ground against do- 
 mestic slavery; and the pressure of this question 
 had divided the body into "Methodists North," and 
 "Methodists South" before the breaking out of the 
 civil war. So great was the mutual repulsion on 
 the part of the two bodies thus divided, that they 
 have never yet been able to come together in legisla- 
 tive union, notwithstanding the fact that slavery — 
 the original cause of the division — no longer exists. 
 Unhappily, the Methodists have become, in the 
 Northern States, too much of a political power, and 
 candidates for the Presidency find it to their inter- 
 est to play into their hands. As they have gained 
 in political power, they seem to have declined in 
 piety and religious zeal (I refer now to the Metho- 
 dist Church North), and are gradually losing some 
 of their strictest notions of certain matters pertain-
 
 68 THE METHODISTS. 
 
 ing to dress, amusements and the like, — the ulti- 
 mate fate of all Puritanism, 
 
 Their organization is one of great power, and 
 through their varied functionaries, they manage to 
 move the whole body of the Communion by the 
 will of a few leaders. Two of their conferences 
 thanked Congress for impeaching President Andrew 
 Johnson before his trial took place. In some particu- 
 lars they aremorelike theChurch in Englandand her 
 daughter in America, than any of the Denomina- 
 tions, They still retain a considerable portion of 
 the Book of Common Prayer, in a mutilated form, 
 and they use it at funerals, marriages, baptisms, 
 and celebrations of the Lord's Supper ; thus show- 
 ing, that, when they wish to draw especially near 
 unto God, they resort to the use of a form. But 
 yet, at the same time, it is the fashion of some of 
 their preaching to declaim vehemently against the 
 use of forms in worship Such is man's inconsis- 
 tency. 
 
 They cannot be said to have any "distinctive de- 
 nominational principles," — as do the Baptists, — 
 but owe their growth and extension to their zeal 
 and diligence, which I have ever admired in them, 
 and am glad to recognize at all times. 
 
 Their founders, — Wesley, Whitefield, etc., — were
 
 THE METHODISTS. 69 
 
 men of power ;and they were all brought up in the 
 Church in England, and taught by Church moth- 
 ers in the Church catechism, baptized, confirmed 
 and ordained in the ministry of the Church in Eng- 
 land, 
 
 Some years ago, a party rose up among them 
 which protested against having Bishops, and also 
 claimed that laymen should have a voice in their 
 legislative bodies. It is surprising that, with the 
 last named claim to popular favor, the "Protestant 
 Methodists" — for such is their name — should not 
 have had a larger following ; but they have never 
 become a large body ; and now that the Episco- 
 pal Methodists have admitted to some extent lay 
 representation, they appear to have lost much of 
 their original prestige, and will probably die out.
 
 CONCLUSION OF MATTERS PER- 
 TAINING TO RELIGIOUS OR- 
 GANIZATIONS. 
 
 A WORD riiore just here in regard to the Pro- 
 ' testaril Episcopal Church — the Church of my 
 forefathers, so far as any records go. My descend- 
 ants will find, as I have found, that the Church of 
 their fore-fathers presents to them all that man 
 needs to enable him to live a religious life, and at 
 the same time to maintain that individuality and 
 freedom of thought without which religion can 
 have no charm and no enduring power. She gives 
 us the Ministry in unbroken line from Apostolic 
 days, and the Catholic Creeds, and none other, as 
 the doctrinal conditions of communion. She gives 
 us for our rule of life the commandments of God 
 and the precepts of Christ. She leaves it to "So- 
 cieties" to add to the Faith and the Law. She 
 provides a mode of Avorship, simple, majestic and 
 
 reverential, wherein all men's needs are provided 
 70
 
 REl.IGIO US ORGAN IZA TIONS—CONCL USION. J I 
 
 for, and the great and good God is worshipped "in 
 the beauty of hoHness." 
 
 In her legislative action, there is guaranteed, as 
 far as human sagacity can guarantee anything, safe- 
 ty and protection for all who come within the reach 
 of her authority. The Constitution and Canons of 
 the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United 
 States are, in my judgment, and that of wiser men 
 than Iam,the justest and most conservative body of 
 laws and canons that have ever been framed by 
 man. Every order and estate of men in the 
 Church is cared for, and thus Class legislation is 
 impossible under her system. 
 
 Her whole history has been marked by so much 
 wisdom, moderation and conservatism, that wise, 
 moderate, and conservative men have been drawn 
 to her by elective affinity. What a record is the 
 roll of her children ! 
 
 Her teachings are especially adapted to enlight- 
 en the ignorant, to raise up the lowly, and keep 
 down the proud. Hence, the multitude love to go 
 where they can be exalted, I desire no higher 
 honor than to have my name registered in her roll. 
 I ask no greater security for my children than that 
 they may be found faithful and loyal in her ranks. 
 I have no higher ambition than to be found at the
 
 J 2 RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS— CONCLUSION. 
 
 last day among her true followers. For my breth- 
 ren and companions' sake I wish her prosperity. 
 "Above my chief joy, I prefer Her, — Jerusalem, 
 my Mother ! " 
 
 Let me say a word just here. There are some 
 few in our communion, who manifest an undisguised 
 aversion to the Protestant character of our Church. 
 The desire to drop the name of "Protestant" is with 
 some, I fear, the indication of this aversion. If I 
 thought this was the underlying rt';//w//.y of all who 
 favored the change, I should strive to retain the 
 name at all hazards ; because the conflict then 
 would be for principle, and the name would be the 
 flag around which every true son of the Church 
 should rally. 
 
 There are some in our midst who decry the "Re- 
 formation," and disparage the great "Reformers." 
 I have only one word for them. As I view the 
 matter, they are not honest to their vow,"to preach 
 the Gospel as Christ has commanded and this 
 Church has received the same." We have a pure 
 and majestic ritual ; let us not ape any other sys- 
 tem. Some scientists think that men descended 
 from the monkey. I have not witnessed that phe- 
 nomenon, but every now and then, I am satisfied 
 that I have seen a man descend to the monkey. I
 
 RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS— CONCLUSIOX. "] ^ 
 
 heard the Bishop of Sodor and Man make a speech 
 at Wolverhampton, England, some twenty years 
 ago. He concluded by saying,"Finally, my breth- 
 ren, beware of monks and monkeys." For my 
 part I would rather see a man a monk than a mon- 
 key ; and I occasionally suggest to some youthful 
 specimens of the latter species, "If you don't like 
 the 'Reformed Church,' the 'unreformed' Church 
 has its doors open to receive you. Go he me ! In 
 the name of truth, sincerity and decency, so far as 
 in you lies, be what you purport to be. Use the 
 language of the Bible and of your mother, the 
 Church, and speak not in dubious and long since 
 discarded phraseology of 'masses,* "etc. 
 
 Sometimes, when I hear of a certain kind of 
 priests bewailing the Reformation, and using such 
 phrases a& "wretched Latimer," etc., the doubt 
 will rise in my mind whether such men would not 
 prefer to have piled additional fagots about the 
 stake, rather than to have gone up with those glo- 
 rious martyrs in chariots of fire to Paradise.
 
 SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM 
 AND SCIENTISM. 
 
 T HAVE thrown these three together for con- 
 venient handling, and not at all to ignore 
 or confound the distinctions between them. Just 
 now they seem to be playing into each other's 
 hands ; and by their "flocking together," they seem 
 to be in some sort "birds of a feather." The ram- 
 pant spirit of rationalism in common life, in the 
 public press, and, sad to say, in the pulpit and at 
 the altar, allies itself with a vaunting scientism,and 
 together they have engendered a spirit of scepti- 
 cism, which threatens the very existence of the 
 faith itself When do you find the spirit of a New- 
 ton and Bacon, accepting alike — with a childlike 
 mind, — the only safe mind, — the teachings of Rev- 
 elation and the conclusions of a stern inductive 
 philosophy ? 
 
 Bacon truly and grandly said that " the entrance 
 into the Kingdom of God and into the realms of 
 science demanded the self-same spirit — ' that of the 
 
 child.' " 
 74
 
 SCEPTICISM, I^A TIONAIISM AND SCIENTISM. 73 
 
 I wish above all else, — for my children — that 
 they shall believe in Christ. If there is no reality 
 in Christ, then our life goes out in darkness; — I 
 leave my children without the Sun, and I take my 
 leap in the dark. But you will perhaps say, "What 
 must I believe ?" " There is so much diversity 
 of opinion." " What is Truth ?" I answer, Christ 
 is — "The Truth;" "Christianity — a term not 
 known to Revelation — is but vague and uncertain ; 
 "Christ" is one and the same, "yesterday, to-day 
 and forever:" — of this more anon. 
 
 If you take a superficial view of the distracted 
 condition of Christendom, you will be tempted at 
 times to think that there must be some serious 
 cause for uncertainty, where there is so much dixcr- 
 sity of opinion. Not so — a deeper view will bring 
 you to a sounder conclusion. Let me illustrate 
 my meaning. Suppose that a dozen men arc 
 called to the witness-stand to testify in a given 
 case. They all differ, we will suppose, in their 
 testimony upon certain immaterial points of evi- 
 dence ; but upon certain other points, vital and 
 fundamental, as all confess, they all agree. What 
 conclusion would you come to? Naturally and 
 reasonably, I think, to this conclusion ; viz. — that 
 the matters upon which they are all agreed arc
 
 ^6 SCEP IICISM, RA TIONALISM AND SCIENT/SM. 
 
 fully proven, and not less fully proven because of 
 their diversity of statement of certain other particu- 
 lars, — indeed, more satisfactorily proven because 
 of that diversity, — the diversity going to show 
 that there was no collusion among the witnesses. 
 
 Now apply this illustration. Nearly all Chris- 
 tian people, of whatever name, are agreed upon 
 the matters of faith set forth in the Creeds of the 
 Church. (The exceptions are so small as to be 
 inappreciable in a large and comprehensive view 
 of Christendom). Now these Creeds contain the 
 vital facts of the Christian faith,— the Fatherhood 
 of God, the Incarnation and Atonement of Christ, 
 and the Personality of the Holy Spirit, the Life- 
 Giver, Sanctifier and Comforter. The truths set 
 forth in these Creeds are so vital and all-pervading 
 that a belief in them entitles such believer (so far as 
 his faith is concerned) to Baptism and membership 
 in Christ. The Christian peoples affirming this faith 
 are divided among themselves in many points, — 
 points of religious opinion, Ritual, Polity and Us- 
 ages, — but they are one in ''The Faith." Christen- 
 dom presents from this point of view an undivided 
 front. The main line of the Church Militant is un- 
 broken, notwithstanding a few divisions have been 
 routed and scattered, or captured. What then be-
 
 SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM AND SCIENTISM. yy 
 
 comes of the argument used by infidels and scof- 
 fers that they know not what to beheve, in view 
 of the divided condition of Christianity? If they 
 will accept only the faith in which Christendom is 
 united, and accept it as rational beings should ac- 
 cept such a faith, they will be good Christians. 
 
 Moreover, as it regards morals, — all Christians 
 are united in accepting the law of God, interpreted 
 by.Christ,as the rule of a Christian man's life. Let 
 any man live up to those precepts of Christ, which 
 all Christendom accepts, and he will live a godly 
 and Christian life. 
 
 How strong, then, and hitherto unassailable, is 
 the line held by the Church Militant, — "the blessed 
 company of all faithful people." I might pause 
 here to note how weak, lamentable, foolish, and 
 wicked a thing it is for any Christian man to do 
 anything to weaken the strength of this line by 
 needless and ambitious divisions, but this is aside 
 from my present purpose. 
 
 Infidelity, in every age of the world, has planted 
 itself for the overthrow of Christianity — as yet, 
 without any serious break of the line of Christian 
 truth. Every argument that the wit of man and 
 the malice of the Adversary could devise has been 
 levelled against it, — so far without success. lu'ory
 
 ^S SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM AND SCIENTISM, 
 
 new discovery in science has been peered into to 
 find a weapon with which to attack the intrench- 
 ments. The Heavens have been scaled, the Ocean 
 sounded, the bowels of the Earth have been ran- 
 sacked, with the same hostile intent. Jews, Turks, 
 infidels, heretics, and scientists have made common 
 cause against that system which will yield to none, 
 and would fain save all. Yet The Faith still sur- 
 vives and triumphs. A wonderful and sublime 
 spectacle it is indeed, inspiring and strengthening 
 the faith of all who declare that of "this Kingdom 
 there shall be no end." 
 
 Modern scientism, with the same intent, has 
 gone to work, with a diligence, eloquence, and re- 
 search, worthy of a better cause, to batter down 
 the walls hitherto impregnable. Its highest 
 achievements, were it to accomplish its purpose, 
 would be to deprive man of God's Fatherhood, 
 quench the light of revealed truth, destroy all hope 
 of immortality, and range the race of men among 
 the brute creation, — an animal only of a higher 
 order. 
 
 It is a matter of profound interest to inquire, 
 whence this spirit was evoked which would bring 
 such a blight upon the fair creation ? If it were 
 the necessary conclusion of science, which it is not
 
 SCEPTICISM, RA TIONALISM AND SCIENTISM. 79 
 
 one would think it would be reached at least with a 
 sigh or a moan. But there are men,who can render 
 the whole world Fatherless without a sigh; extin- 
 guish every hope beyond the grave without a pang ; 
 and dissolve the faith of centuries without a tcar,alas! 
 I have no quarrel with science. Christianity has 
 none. Her sphere never traverses the orbit in 
 which science has its being. Science, truly so- 
 called, is the handmaid of revealed truth. It is the 
 "oppositions of science, falsely so-called," which 
 as even in past ages we have to encounter now. 
 Where Science stops, having reached its uttermost 
 verge, and finds forces and powers which elude in- 
 vestigation, and baffle all inquiry, there Revelation 
 begins, and discloses to faith the Divine Father- 
 hood in the Great Creator, in whom all things"live, 
 move and have their being." 
 
 The present favorite theory of what are called 
 "advanced" scientists, is that of revolution, not de- 
 velopment, which latter is always in manifest work- 
 ing. Under this theory of evolution not only the 
 lower creation, but man himself, mind and all, is the 
 product of an endless series of growths from an 
 original germ, — they call it "Protoplasm." There 
 would be no serious objection to this theor}-, if it 
 had any adequate proof to sustain it ; but, so fan
 
 8o SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM AX D SCIENTISM. 
 
 it is announced and heralded without sufficient cre- 
 dentials. 
 
 Now, no scientific theory can claim our accep- 
 tance until it has received what we may call " cath- 
 olic (universal) consent." The same rule, you will 
 observe, holds in regard to scientific truth as to re- 
 vealed truth. The theory of evolution has not re- 
 ceived universal acceptance, even among scientific 
 men. Astronomy is a science— ha.s its fixed laws, 
 and prevails by catholic consent. It is not yet so 
 with Evolution : it is still under trial and investiga- 
 tion. The scientist, as does the sectarian, flies ofi* 
 from the "catholic system" of established truth, 
 and attaches himself to a " school " of thought 
 Like the sectist, he parades his individuality, and 
 founds a sect in philosophy. Meanwhile, you can 
 afford to wait for the Conclusions of Science. Re- 
 ceive them as true, and adjust yourselves to their 
 logical requirements. 
 
 If the theory of Evolution was true, they have 
 only removed the difficulty a step farther back. 
 They have not quit themselves of the necessity of 
 an original Creator. For whether the Creator, by 
 virtue of His omnipotent power, created all things 
 after the genera in which they now exist, or crea- 
 ted the original material, out of which all things
 
 SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM AND SCIENTISM. 8 1 
 
 were successively evolved, there is equally a neces- 
 sity for an original creative act. Therefore, Evo- 
 lution — if it were true as a theory, and proved to 
 be true by induction— could not affect the truth of 
 the being of a God, — the first truth in natural as 
 in revealed religion. 
 
 Therefore, in so far as the existence of a God 
 is concerned, they, the theorists, may safely go on 
 with their theories, but they will ever find, and 
 find it pretty soon, a force, a life, or whatever they 
 may choose to call it, permeating all things, ex- 
 plaining all things, — itself inexplicable. They call 
 it the " unknowable. " They have reached the 
 end of their line; it has run itself out, but they 
 have not touched bottom. Yet they vaunt them- 
 selves upon having found the " unknowable." One 
 would think they would be touched with some- 
 thing of humility and reverence, but I have failed 
 to see that spirit — rather that of vanity, — strange 
 that man's vanity should be inflated by the discov- 
 ery of his ignorance ! 
 
 Practically, however, the theories of the modern 
 scientist have tended, in a great many minds, to 
 obliterate the sense of a God, and to diminish faith 
 in all Divine Revelation. This is its practical out- 
 come among great numbers, showing, I think, how
 
 82 SCEPTICISM , RATIONALISM AND SCIENTISM. 
 
 easily people will become credulous when they have 
 no faith ; how, having not the truth, they will 
 clutch at its caricature. I have read much of the 
 writings of these men. They seem to be what we 
 call smart men; they do not strike me as profoimd 
 men. They do not impress me as Plato and Aris- 
 totle and Shakespeare and Bacon impress me. 
 They seem, in comparison, to theorize and chatter. 
 I have great sympathy with a modern writer who 
 is reported to have said, " I am content to find 
 my ancestors in the Garden of Eden. Let those 
 who prefer otherwise, seek theirs in the "Zoologi- 
 cal Gardens." 
 
 But one thing they do ; — and for that, all good 
 and true men must hold them accountable; if at 
 no other bar, at the bar of decorum and reason. 
 Their influence goes to destroy alike the sense of 
 God, and to lower the dignity and responsibility 
 of man. The revealed Word — which I cannot 
 throw away for the sake of an unproven theory — 
 the revealed Word, I say, proclaims that at crea- 
 tion, God made man, and made him as He made 
 nothing else ; did not evolve him by gradual pro- 
 cesses from lowest germs, but made him after His 
 own image, and endowed him after His own like- 
 ness. I cannot throw away that truth, with all
 
 SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM AND SCIENTISM. 83 
 
 that it involves of human dignity and possible im- 
 mortality, for an undemonstrated theory. Surely, 
 what St. Paul said of the heathen of his day is 
 true of the heathen now in our midst, "they did 
 not like to retain God in their knowledge." O 
 my children ! Come not ye in their assembly ; 
 unite not your honor to such as these. These 
 men are not blessing their race by any moral 
 earnestness. They are not founding your homes 
 for the destitute, the widow and the fatherless. 
 They are prating; — " ever learning and never able 
 to come to a knowledge of the truth." Learn the 
 principles of Science, (as Newton and Bacon taught 
 them), and you will never be beguiled by theories 
 of scientism. 
 
 Evolutionists of the most advanced school tell 
 us that man, starting from the simplest forms of 
 matter, — mind itself being but " a mode of brain 
 motion," — as they assert, and evolving by gradual 
 processes, is moving on to perfection ; that thus, 
 finally, all evils will be rectified, all disorders ad- 
 justed, all rights recognized, and the regeneration 
 of society fully accomplished. The antagonisms 
 and discontent of the laboring classes, the struggles 
 of woman for what she claims as her rightful co- 
 ordination in human affairs, etc., all these arc
 
 84 SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM AND SCIENTISM. 
 
 triumphantly pointed to as indications of the pro- 
 gress of society towards its perfect consummation. 
 In all such prognostications, the influence of the 
 Christian religion is by some disparaged, by some 
 ignored, and by others utterly repudiated as a su- 
 perstition, barring the way to a more rapid pro- 
 gress. These men glory in the fact that they have 
 nothing to do with anything save " phenomena;" 
 and, by that expression, they mean the phenom- 
 ena ot the material world, counting nothing real, 
 save that which is material. 
 
 Yet there are phenomena in the world of mind, 
 which cannot rationally be ignored, and which must 
 be considered, classified and explained. There are 
 questions which force themselves upon the mind, 
 and which must be answered in some way. They 
 demand an answer. Such a question is this, for ex- 
 ample, "What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is 
 He ? " It will not do to say that this question is 
 irrelevant to the scientific mind. He stands face 
 to face with this undeniable and pregnant fact, that, 
 only in those parts of the Earth, where the Christ- 
 ian religion prevails, is there any marked advance- 
 ment, even in science and in the industries and 
 arts of life ; and that the only heathen nations 
 which are now manifesting signs of awakening life
 
 SCEPTICISM, RA TWNALISM AND SCI EN T ISM. 8$ 
 
 — as China and Japan — are those which have felt 
 the quickening influences of contact with Christian 
 peoples. This question, and other questions of sim- 
 ilar import, cannot be contemptuously thrust aside, 
 and relegated to the "domain of metaphysical in- 
 vestigation." They are matters of fact (great 
 problems to be solved) — as much so as any in the 
 domain of physics ; and are quite as worthy of ob- 
 servation as the anatomy and habits of bugs and 
 reptiles. 
 
 The indifference of some so-called wise men to 
 the study of "Final causes" is to me an astound- 
 ing phenomenon, and causes one often to doubt 
 whether every man is indeed a truly rational be- 
 ing. I met with a disciple of this school some time 
 ago. Such men abound nowadays ; — smart, indeed, 
 but not very profound ; dealing with the surface of 
 questions, and contemptuously ignoring all consid- 
 eration of the final causes of things visible or invis- 
 ible. We fell into discourse upon religious mat- 
 ters. I urged upon him the importance of consid- 
 ering such matters. He replied that he had "no 
 faith whatever in Christianity ; that he had read 
 volume upon volume on Christian evidences, but 
 they had made no impression on his mind, "and con- 
 cluded by saying "that it was not worth while for
 
 86 SCEPTICISM, RATIONAIISM AND SCIENTIST. 
 
 US to argue the matter,because there "was no com- 
 mon ground from which we could start." I then 
 asked him if he "did not think it the duty of every 
 man to try to bring himself, by culture and labor, 
 to his highest possible perfection ? " ''Unquestion- 
 ably," he replied. "Well then," said I, "here is a 
 ground we can both start from. Now, in the effort 
 to bring your character to its highest perfection, 
 must you not have some rule, standard or model 
 by which to work ? The artist who wishes to make 
 a representation of some object in nature, say a 
 tree, or horse, seeks out the best specimen of such 
 object, and aims to reproduce it, does he not ?" 
 "Yes," he said, "assuredly." "Then," I urged, "in 
 trying to bring yourself up to your highest capa- 
 bility, would you not, for like reason, cast about 
 you for the best specimen of human character, in 
 order that you might have the advantage of a mod- 
 el to work by ? You would not reasonably look 
 within yourself for the ideal man. The effort to 
 make yourself a better man implies, that, as yet, 
 you know yourself to be an imperfect one. In 
 makingyourself the ideal, you would be only re- 
 peating and reproducing yourself, would you not?" 
 "No," said he, "I would not look to myself, I 
 would take some better specimen than myself for a
 
 SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM AND SCIENTISM. 87 
 
 model. I would properly take the best man that 
 I knew, and try to imitate his virtues." "Now," 
 I urged, "who is the best man that ever lived ?" 
 "I know of but one man without sin," he very rev- 
 erently said. "Who was that man ?" "Jesus 
 Christ." "Then, does it not follow from what you 
 have admitted, that, in the effort to perfect your 
 character, you should set before you for imitation 
 Jesus Christ?" "I see no way of evading the con- 
 clusion," he admitted, "but I did not anticipate 
 reaching such a conclusion." 
 
 There is no way by which the above conclusion 
 can be evaded, save by denying the supreme ex- 
 cellence of Christ : and to this depth the dreariest 
 infidelity has rarely fallen. Surely the man of sci- 
 ence, the sociologist, the philanthropist, can join in 
 with the devout believer, in his most exalted mood, 
 and all with one acclaim crown Him the Christ, 
 Chief of all, "///r One among ten thousand, the One 
 altogether lovely.'' 
 
 In this connection, let me further press this 
 point, — viz,that \hQsc\eni\sis, even from their stand- 
 pohit, are bound to meet the great question of ques- 
 tions, "What think ye of Christ; whose Son is He ?" 
 For if it be true, as they afiirm, that man has been 
 evolved from the lowest forms of matter, and is to
 
 88 SCEPTICISM, A' A TIOXALISM AND SCIENTISM. 
 
 ascend by continued evolution, to his highest per- 
 fection, how did it happen that the most perfect 
 specimen of manhood appeared at the beginning 
 of the Christian era? — assuredly not the most ad- 
 vanced era in history. According to the accepted 
 system of the philosophers of this school, Christ 
 should have appeared at the culminating point in 
 evolution, and not at the inauguration of His era. 
 How came He to antedate the final consumma- 
 tion ? He has certainly done so. Every advance- 
 ment in morals and social order at the present day 
 is but an approximation — as yet, faint indeed — to 
 the style of human life which He set forth in His 
 teachings and exemplified in person. All the be- 
 neficence of this, the most beneficent age of the 
 world — in its care for the diseased, the destitute,and 
 the outcast— finds its spirit and impersonation in 
 Him, Who "went about doing good." He is the 
 luminous point in all history. His influence is the 
 greatest known. His birth constituted a new era 
 in time. All that man in the times before him 
 knew of the rights and humanities of life was in 
 Christ renewed, enlarged, illuminated ; with much 
 added that they knew not of All that man has 
 truly taught since, and is now truly teaching, of 
 the relative duties of life, can be found in His pre-
 
 SCEPTICISM, RATIO N'ALISM AND SCIENTISM. S9 
 
 cepts and exemplified in His sublime life. The ob- 
 servance by all men of the Christian rule of life 
 would bring about, confessedly, a millennial age. 
 Prophets converge in Him; Apostles radiate 
 from Him. At this hour, the better part 
 of the world, as it moves on and forward, 
 looks back to Him for guidance, as oarsmen, pro- 
 pelling the boat, ever look back, as they row, to 
 their helmsman. When human nature shall have 
 reached its possible perfection, it will be because it 
 has been more and more imbued with the spirit of 
 Christ. Wars between capital and labor, jealousies 
 of caste, social antagonisms, and all wrongs will 
 cease when men shall belike Christ, when the laws 
 of trade shall be superceded by the law of love, and 
 every man shall "love his neighbor as himself." 
 " Love worketh no ill ; therefore love is the fulfill- 
 ing of the law." 
 
 Now, let the men of science answer the ques- 
 tion concerning Christ, "Whose Son is He?" 
 They cannot answer it from their standpoint. Their 
 doctrine of Heredity furnishes no clue to His 
 parentage. From what they know they must let 
 that question rest in still silence. 
 
 But take the Christian view, — that, nut by nat- 
 ural generation, but by a supernatural Incarnation
 
 90 SCEPTICISM, RA TIONALISM AND SCIENTISM. 
 
 — the Word of God becoming flesh — He, the Son 
 of God — that is His Heredity — came among men, 
 — then all these questions, which cannot otherwise 
 be explained, are fully answered. St. Philip said 
 to the Master, " Lord, show us the Father, and it 
 sufficeth." Yes, it sufficeth, — it covers the whole 
 area of human need. The cry of Philip is the cry 
 of sufifering Humanity, "Show us the Father." The 
 answer which came back from Christ, responsive to 
 this cry, is the crowning knowledge to poor strug- 
 gling and weary man. " Have I been so long time 
 with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip ? 
 " He that hath seen Mc, hath seen the Father.'' 
 
 Would you, my children, become acquainted with 
 God, your Father, and be at peace? Then study 
 Him, not only in the realm of Nature, where He so 
 gloriously manifests His power and wisdom, but 
 seek to know Him, as mirrored in His only-begotten 
 Son, our Lord Jesus Christ — the Brightness of the 
 Father's Glory — the express Image of His Per- 
 son." 
 
 Let nothing shake your faith in this foundation, 
 which is elect and precious, — which has stayed the 
 hopes of millions in past ages, and affords the 
 only refuge and footing for the generations to 
 come.
 
 SCEPTICISM, RATIOA'ALISM AXD SCI EN T ISM. 9 1 
 
 "Let no man deceiv^e you with vain words." Let 
 no pretentions to profoundness in the smart men 
 of the age for a moment beguile you. I have ever 
 found profound men to be men of faith. They see 
 deep enough to know that behind and below all phy- 
 sical phenomena, there is a great, first and intelligent 
 Cause in whom all things live, move and have their 
 being. " He that formed the eye shall He not see ?" 
 Such men, instead of staggering at the mysteries of 
 Revelation, accept them in childlike faith, as the 
 crowning proof of the exceeding love and gracious- 
 ness of the Father, Who did not create a world 
 in which He could not send His Word to His chil- 
 dren — aye more, send Him to take upon Himself 
 their nature, to talk with them, and to tell them of 
 duty and danger; how to live and how to die, and 
 thus how at last to find their way home to the 
 Father's house, that they may dwell with Him for- 
 ever. 
 
 What a contemptible and dreary conception of 
 the great and good Creator must they have, who 
 cannot reckon it possible that He can guide and 
 bless His children, hear their prayers when they 
 cry unto Him. A wise man would not make a 
 machine which he could not guide and control ac- 
 cording to his will. Yet do these modern scicn-
 
 92 SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM AND SCIENTISM. 
 
 tists deny to the Almighty the power and wisdom 
 which dwells in the creatures of His hands. 
 
 We are living, my children, in the midst of a 
 mighty conflict between the spirit of faith and 
 the spirit of unbelief It is the same old battle 
 that has been waged from the beginning; only 
 now intensified by the wider diffusion of knowl- 
 edge and the increased activity of thought— the 
 same conflict, on a larger field and by greater 
 numbers. 
 
 In such a conflict as this every true man must 
 take sides, for or against — there should be no neu- 
 trality with such issues impending. " If the Lord 
 be God, follow Him!" " If Baal," or Babel, or 
 what not, "follow it." Be something real and 
 sincere — be a Man. 
 
 But, whatever be the issues of the hour to our- 
 selves personally, one thing is most certain. — 
 "The Foundation of the Lord standeth sure, hav- 
 ing this seal," " The Lord knoweth them that are 
 His." These being rooted and grounded in faith, 
 are not "driven about by every wind of doc- 
 trine ; " having heard and done the words of 
 Christ, they stand unshaken amid the storms of 
 controversy, because builded upon the Rock of 
 Ages.
 
 SCEPTICISM, RA TIONALISM AND SCIENTIST. 93 
 
 The faith of Christ is much more than a system 
 of truths — it is a conscious hfe. It is not open to 
 speculation but rests secure in deep personal con- 
 viction. This maybe no sufficient evidence to an- 
 other, but it is full proof to one's self He can 
 proclaim with a full heart and unclouded reason — 
 and until he can thus speak, he has not gone 
 down to the foundation laid deep in the soul's 
 consciousness — that which wells up within him as 
 he daily looks up to Christ and finds peace, com- 
 fort and strength flowing into his heart, " My 
 Lord and my God ! " 
 
 Until one reaches this consummation, he may 
 be ever theorizing, ever controverting and " ever 
 learning," not coming to a knowledge of the 
 truth — even the knowledge of God, " whom to 
 know aright is Life Eternaiy
 
 CHRISTIAN MANLINESS. 
 
 AT the commencement of the original volume, 
 I quoted the words of King David to his son 
 Solomon, " Be thou strong therefore, and show 
 thyself a man." 
 
 I do not know any closing words which would 
 be so apposite as those which tell you what it is 
 to be a man, and what it is to show one's self a 
 man. 
 
 The ideal of manliness which each one forms to 
 himself, will depend upon the degree of intellect- 
 ual and moral elevation to which he may have at- 
 tained. To the mind of the savage, the success- 
 ful hunter or the daring warrior presents the 
 highest type of manliness. 
 
 He is the savage lord, and rules his tribe by 
 
 dint of a strong arm, and takes leadership as a 
 
 lion among lions. Hence the names by which 
 
 the savage chief is called, — "The Lynx-Eyed," 
 
 the "Swift- of- Foot," the "Wolf-of-the-Prairie," 
 
 the " Sitting-Bull," etc. Such are the names 
 
 which give expression to the savage idea of man- 
 94
 
 CHRISTIAN MANLINESS. 95 
 
 liness, — names which link him in with the brute, 
 whom he would fain emulate in swiftness, fierce- 
 ness and force. 
 
 Now, take up your histories of people who 
 have emerged from a state of barbarism, and you 
 meet with names of leaders of men, which give 
 expression to higher ideas of greatness and excel- 
 lence, — "The Wise," "The Good," and "The 
 Just." 
 
 Always you may "mark the elevation ot a peo- 
 ple by the titles of those to whom they pay the 
 highest honor. There is an immense stride from 
 the "Sitting-Bull" to Aristides "The Just." 
 
 If we come into what we call civilized life, and 
 begin our observation low down in the strata 
 of society, in the atmosphere of saloons and gam- 
 ing tables, you will find the successful pugilist the 
 manliest in the ring; muscle, wind and pluck 
 crown the victor, and encircle him with the girdle 
 of honor. Here, in such an atmosphere, grow up 
 the boys, who, with open-mouthed admiration, 
 are learning their lesson of manliness, — to "swear 
 like men," "fight like men," and to " take their 
 liquor like men." 
 
 Now, come from these dregs, which lie at the 
 bottom of all our social life, — where riot and de-
 
 9.6 CHRISTIAM MANLINESS. 
 
 baucheiy and brute force reign supreme, — and 
 look into a more advanced, but still unregenerate, 
 condition of society. 
 
 What, in popular estimation, is it, to show one's 
 self a man? Is he esteemed manliest, who, like 
 his Maker, is long-suffering, forbearing and forgiv- 
 ing ? Or is it he who maintains the so-called 
 point of honor to the last extremity, who will sac- 
 rifice every law, human and divine, at the shrine 
 of his heated passions, or the' demands of a vicious 
 public opinion, and vindicates his manhood by 
 trampling under foot the law of God? See how 
 this spirit flames out in our children scarcely 
 fledged! See how in their childish brawls they 
 foreshadow their ideas of a coming manliness. 
 
 We are not following the leadings of a sickly 
 sentimentalism in setting forth a standard of high- 
 er manliness. Where must we look to find the 
 most exalted types of humanity ? Who was the 
 noblest of the sons of men ? There is but One. 
 He stands alone, unapproachable and incompara- 
 ble. In His presence the most unblushing infi- 
 delity stands admiring, if not adoring — Him, the 
 Incarnate Word, dwelling among men in the same 
 fleshly tabernacle, environed by the same atmos- 
 phere, and encompassed by the same temptations.
 
 CHRISTIAN MANLINESS. 97 
 
 He who does not feel the supreme necessity of 
 the presence of such an one on earth, not only to 
 reveal God to men, but also to make manifest the 
 ideal man, has learned but little in regard to per- 
 fecting his own nature, and comprehends but little 
 of man's greatest needs. I am not now talking to 
 you of theology or creeds. I am speaking of the 
 Man of History, the Man of Every Age. 
 
 Take the greatest man of this era, — the Caesar 
 Augustus, who ruled the then known world. The 
 chief distinction of that illustrious emperor — all 
 that now survives of his memory — is the fact 
 of history that, while he reigned, Christ was born. 
 His only fame now is the same with that of the 
 manger and village of Bethlehem, — they indicating 
 the place where, and the time when, Christ was 
 born. They all — prince, village and manger — 
 serve alike but as landmarks in the track of time 
 to point out the beginnings of that Kingdom of 
 which there shall be no end. 
 
 Without prestige of birth, and with "no-wbere 
 to lay His head," of obscure lite and ignominious 
 death, followed by disciples of no repute. He yet 
 gave birth to a new era in time ; and, among ci\'il- 
 ized peoples, the centuries do now date from His 
 Nativity. We cannot discourse of men, and leave
 
 98 CHRISTIAN MANLINESS. 
 
 out of \aew the "Son of Man." As well speak of 
 mountains, and fail to note that which stands loft- 
 iest ; as well speak of the solar system, and take 
 no note of the sun. 
 
 Men may say what they will of creeds and sys- 
 tems of theology and philosophy. They may de- 
 ny Deity and deify matter ; but they cannot blot 
 out from history, nor dislodge from the hearts of 
 men, the Christ of History, — Him, "the Son of 
 Man." No wonder that at the inauguration of 
 His mission, the Heavens were opened,and a voice 
 from the "Excellent Glory" proclaimed "This is 
 My beloved Son." Had the Heavens been silent 
 the very stones must have cried out. 
 
 There was a deep necessity for the advent of 
 such a Man. The Divine image in men had been 
 defaced, almost obliterated. There were still up- 
 on earth the strong man to think, strong to work, 
 strong to fight; but where could you look to find 
 the man who realized in his own life the Divine 
 Image, — the God-mirroring man. 
 
 I cannot dwell at length upon that wonderful 
 life of Christ's on earth, and, show, as I would 
 love to show, how strong He was to do good, and 
 how strong to resist evil ; how sublimely forgetful 
 of self, and how self-sacrificing in His care for oth-
 
 CHRISTIAN MANLINESS. 99 
 
 ers. I touch a single feature of that wondrous 
 character — His forbearance under provocation and 
 reproach. I single out this particular feature of 
 the manliness of Christ, because it is just here that 
 His example stands out in the most striking con- 
 trast with the maxims of the world and the pas- 
 sions of men. For, advanced as we may be in 
 morals and self government, society is as yet at an 
 immeasurable distance from the precepts and ex- 
 ample of the Son of Man. True it is that we do 
 not, except in our Territories and new settlements, 
 decide questions of title to land, etc., by the strong 
 hand ; but an unregulated public opinion still 
 condones, if it does not justify, the appeal to arms 
 in the duel or street brawl. Still it is true to a re- 
 markable extent, that men are called upon to 
 "show themselves men," and vindicate their man- 
 liness by the exhibition of brute force. The duel 
 is passing away before the advance of Christian 
 civilization, — chiefly, I fear, because of the political 
 disabilities which a participation in it involves, but 
 there is springing up in its place the street-brawl, 
 in which men find satisfaction for their angry pas- 
 sions. The daily record of these bloody encoim- 
 ters is a blot tipon the civilization, not to sa\- the 
 Christianity, of the age. The duel had a touch of
 
 lOO CHRISTIAN MANLINESS. 
 
 chivalry, and originally of pity in its character; 
 for in olden times, it was an appeal to God "to 
 show the right." The modern street brawl is an 
 unmitigated shame. The rules of ancient chivalry 
 allowed that a combat might honorably terminate 
 by the presence on the field of a lady, or a priest 
 or the King, — the presence of the latter represent- 
 ing the supremacy of the Law. Is the omnipres- 
 ence of the King of Kings no reality to one who 
 has sworn fealty to that Sovereign ? 
 
 Whence comes that imperious law which holds 
 our men to such a fearful issue, which compels 
 them, as I have often known, to stifle the best feel- 
 ings of their hearts, to insult the majesty of human 
 law, and to put their sacrilegious hands upon that 
 prerogative which God Himself proclaims "is 
 Mine?" If I know whence it is, it must be be- 
 cause men imagine that their honor — their manli- 
 ness — is involved. Is this indeed so ? Waive all 
 consideration of the reason, the good citizenship, 
 the piety of it, if possible, does manliness require 
 it? 
 
 By what rule shall we try this question ? Which 
 way shall we go to find it ? Shall we go upward, 
 and regard man after that Divine likeness in which 
 he was made ? Or shall we go downward, and
 
 CHRISTIAN MANLINESS. lOI 
 
 seek in the resemblance which he bears to the 
 lower creation, the source of that unruled passion 
 which impels him, upon every provocation, to re- 
 sort to brute force in deadly combat? 
 
 Here we find it, — low down in the unreasoning 
 passion and brute instinct w^iich locks the beasts 
 of the field in deadly conflict ; in the venomous rep- 
 tile, which strikes its fang into whatever crosses its 
 path or purpose; in the savage state, where one's 
 manliness is measured by his unrelenting hate to 
 an enemy, and his manly prowess by the number 
 of scalps that hang on the wall of his wigwam. 
 
 The young Arab— so the story goes — begins to 
 attain the stature of a man. At the accepted time 
 his father taunts him with being "a woman.'' 
 The young Savage understands too well that he it 
 now called upon to " show himself a man." All 
 the brute within him is stirred. He takes the in- 
 strument of death, waits until the shades of night 
 have fallen, and prowls about the tent of some 
 hereditary foe. When his practised ear catches the 
 breathing of assured sleep, he leaps the enclosure, 
 puts his weapon to head or heart; a sure thrust or 
 firm pull makes him "a man!" Next morning 
 his tribe greets him "a man!" Woman will 
 smile upon him now, and listen to his vows (has.
 
 I02 CHRISTIAN MANLINESS. 
 
 she ceased even now to smile upon such men?); 
 and he takes his first degree in savage manHness. 
 
 We have gone low down in the scale of crea- 
 tion; let us go upward, and see how this matter 
 looks from another and higher standpoint. 
 
 More than eighteen centuries ago, there was a 
 child born in an obscure village of the East. A 
 wonderful lineage was His — " conceived by the 
 Holy Ghost, and born of a virgin" mother. As 
 He grew in stature, He "grew in wisdom and in 
 favor with God and man." When He was anoin- 
 ted for His holy mission, God the Father sealed 
 Him, the Divine Spirit descended upon Him in 
 the form of a dove. He came as the Prince of 
 Peace to a world in revolt. Lest the symbol of 
 the dove should fail to herald His mission, there 
 came a voice from the " Excellent Glory," and 
 made proclamation, "This is My Beloved Son, in 
 whom I am well pleased." 
 
 What was the manliness of Him who was thus 
 ushered into the world in the form and with the 
 nature of man ? Surely we may learn something 
 from One with whom the Heavenly Father was 
 "well pleased." "When He was reviled. He re- 
 viled not again ; " " when He suffered, He threat- 
 ened not." Any man can revile again, when re
 
 CHRISTIAN MANLINESS. I03 
 
 viled, but how sublime the forbearance which would 
 rather save than destroy an enemy! 
 
 When He was at last hunted down by those who 
 would drown in death the voice they could not an- 
 swer, there was one act of private vengeance, — a 
 follower of His smote a servant of the high priest 
 and cut off his ear. The crowd around thought, 
 doubtless, that there was one manly man among 
 the disciples; and yet this very man, a few mo- 
 ments later, denied his Master at the taunt of a 
 girl. Christ bore it all; told his follower to put up 
 his sword; stretched forth His hand and healed the 
 wounded servant; lifted up His voice in prayer for 
 His murderers; in His sublime pity sought an ar- 
 gument for them, " Father, forgive them ; they 
 know not what they do." 
 
 We gaze upon this sublime compassion as it 
 merges into the Infinite pity, and the conviction 
 becomes overwhelming, that this Son of Man was 
 no creation of men's imagining. The mind cannot 
 conceive of that of which it has no experience, and 
 for which it has no analogy. The old mythologies 
 create for us men and women like ourselves, with 
 all our little prides and passions. We greet the 
 Christ with an adoring wonder. At infinite dis- 
 tance we strive to follow Him. We wouki fain sit
 
 J04 CHRISTIAN MANLINESS. 
 
 at His sacred feet, and strive in our poor way to be 
 like Him. He is the true man. "Ecce Homo." 
 
 Now go with me from the lowest grade of hu- 
 man nature, — the savage in his war paint, nursing 
 his hate as a virtue; having no word for forgive- 
 ness; because not knowing what it is. Trace this 
 nature as it emerges from the barbarous into the 
 Christian life (and there are men who fear God, 
 and love their fellow-men) ; trace it through all its 
 gradations of excellence until you reach the " Son 
 of Man," the "lost Image" of God the Father, 
 and say, "What is it to show one's self a man ?" 
 
 But men will plead — what will they plead ? 
 The necessity of self defence ; the needful limita- 
 tion of forbearance, where it ceases to be a virtue ; 
 the weakness of resolve, and the irresistible force 
 of public opinion. Yes, I am not insensible to the 
 force of such appeals. I know too well what hu- 
 man weakness, under strong temptation, may al- 
 low a man to do. But, whatever may be our 
 imperfections, let us not lower the perfection of 
 the Christian standard. Plead, then, whatever you 
 will, of human imperfection, for not being as you 
 ought to be in the way of forbearance, but take 
 care that you plead not manliness! For the sake 
 of Him, the manliest,^the man that would not
 
 CHRISTIAN MANLINESS, 105 
 
 hurt His fellow-men, but would die, and did die, to 
 do them good,^ — do not plead vianlincss ! If I 
 have wronged another, it is manly in me to con- 
 fess and repair the wrong. He is not a true man 
 who will not confess his fault. If another has 
 wronged me, oh ! it is more than common manli- 
 ness — it is almost divine^ — to forgive. 
 
 The life of Christ was not a long life, — thirty 
 years of household duty, three of public adminis- 
 tration. Learn, then, this great truth, - that the 
 value of life must be reckoned, not only by its 
 length, but by its depth and breadth ; as I have 
 before said, " not only by its extent, but by its in- 
 tent y 
 
 He accumulated no earthly treasure, but He has 
 left us heirs of all things. 
 
 He gained no fame in His day, and yet He 
 founded a kingdom which shall know no end. 
 
 His own people rejected Him, and yet genera- 
 tion after generation rise up and call Him blessed. 
 
 No tongue, save that of a malefactor, confessed 
 Him when He died ; and yet, now, myriads of all 
 tongues, and climes, and ages do bow at the men- 
 tion of His name. 
 
 The moral, then, of the whole, my children, — 
 and with this I close the volume, — is this: Give
 
 Io6 CHRISTIAN MANLINESS. 
 
 not much heed to the opinions or judgments of 
 the present hour. A supreme tribunal will re- 
 view present decisions, and, mayhap, will reverse 
 them. 
 
 The moral of the whole is this : — That is the 
 longest life which in its aims and achievements 
 reaches the farthest, and that is the manliest life 
 which is the most self-sacrificing and unselfish. 
 That is the life cTf Christ, " the Way, the Truth 
 and the Life."
 
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 -■ MIL r -rj, 
 RECEIVED 
 
 JUN 8198& 
 
 Form L9 — 15»n-10,'48(B1039)444 
 
 CJaVEI .V)-^ CALIFORNIA
 
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 BR 
 515 
 
 BR515 .W68g 
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 L 009 619 270 3