tees retsiisent ieteratenes THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE UNITED STATES THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK - BOSTON : CHICAGO - DALLAS ATLANTA + SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LimitTED LONDON + BOMBAY + CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO The History of Religion in the United States BY 4 ' HENRY KALLOCH ROWE, Pu.D. PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND HISTORY IN THE NEWTON THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION Rew Pork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1924 All rights reserved Coprricut, 1924, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and printed. Published September, 1924. Printed in the United States of America by J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK To JOHN FRANKLIN JAMESON WHO TAUGHT ME TO STUDY AND TEACH HISTORY PREFACE Among the social factors that have shaped America, re- ligion holds a prominent place. It is overshadowed at times by the economic challenge flung by a new continent in the face of Europe. It is subordinated to political issues in the writing of history, to social interpretations in literature. It has never been obtrusive in claiming for itself the center of the stage. Yet nothing in American history is more remarkable than the growth of great de- nominational churches, gaining in membership faster than the rapid gain in population, and the pervasive interest in religion that is evident in American society through all the years of national growth. The history of religion in America never has been writ- ten adequately. As in other countries, it has been treated exclusively as a history of the church and from the clerical point of view, or it has been dismissed by secular his- torians in a few paragraphs. The religious phases of American history deserve broad and sympathetic interpre- tation. In the making of a free and democratic nation, religion has played no mean part; at the same time it has been a conserving, constructive force, holding fast to that which seemed valuable in the past and refashioning it we for a new environment and a new age, and it has made » chief contribution to that idealism which is credited to America even by those who scoff at her worship of Mammon. The significance of religion in American history has been its gradual emancipation from the institutionalism and tradition of the Old World. Coming from Europe, the colonists brought as a part of their heritage the ideas and vii Vill PREFACE forms of a religion that was shackled by tradition among Protestants as well as among Catholics. The power of that tradition could not be shaken off easily. The Euro- pean peoples never have succeeded in large numbers in the organization of free churches or the transformation of religious ideas. In America it became possible to think and act more unconventionally. Three phases of emancipation appeared in succession. The first phase was emancipation from the authority of a state church. This came about, both North and South, by the end, of the colonial period. During the same time the Puritan churches and their dissenting kin abandoned the conventional polity of the Anglican Church out of which they had come. The second phase was emancipation from the formal worship and preaching of the earlier divines, and an inrush of emotional evangelism from the time of Wesley and Whitefield intermittently to Moody and the popular preachers of a half century ago. The third phase was emancipation from the traditional ideas of a Protestant orthodoxy, best represented by Calvin, begin- ning late in the eighteenth century and continuing with much controversy to the present time. This interpretation by no means exhausts the story of the religious process; it does indicate something of its importance. The present writer is attempting merely an essay in interpretation. It is his hope that it may help to create a larger interest in the rich field of the history of American religion. Henry Kattocu Rowe. Newton Centre, Massachusetts, September, 1924, CONTENTS | CHAPTER i IT Tit LY; Vv VI VII THe HerITaGe FROM OVERSEAS MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS . TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM . Tue ConsEQUENCES OF FREEDOM RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM THe Reticgious Minp In THE MAKING . RATIONALIZING RELIGION SocraLizInG RELIGIon SPIRITUALIZING RELIGION THe CHURCHES TENDENCIES TOWARDS UNItTy 104 122 141 158 174 193 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE UNITED STATES THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN' THE UNITED STATES TI. THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS JUTTING into the cold waters of the North Atlantic the island of Newfoundland faces the Old World like the prow of a continent. Against it beat the impatient tides that sweep unchecked over leagues of ocean. Storms strike remorselessly on sea and shore, and thick fogs obscure them without warning. Down the Labrador coast drift the icebergs, sweeping majestically past the island prow to melt into the warm currents from the south. Winter broods long months over the land, and shrouds the dan- gerous sea with Arctic night. So forbidding is Nature’s frown that it seems as if she meant that there should be no thoroughfare to the north. Yet into the icy seas that lie still farther north seafaring Norsemen came as early as the tenth century, made set- tlement in Greenland, and scouted to the mainland on adventure bent. Freebooting adventurers they were, balking at the Arctic no more than at the Mediterranean, ready to trade with the natives if they saw hope of gain, or as ready to fight if it better served their will. They had broken away from the control of European civilization before it had fully laid its hand upon them, but civilization followed them. With it came the ecclesiastical system to which they belonged. Priests of the Catholic church wrestled against Norse superstitions, or in discouragement accommodated their creeds to the simple minds of the settlers. The Pope of Rome appointed a bishop in Green- 1 2 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. land for the cure of American souls. Churches, a cathe- dral, even monasteries were evidences that the medizval faith of Europe was becoming acclimated on the edge of the Old World. But settlements and church alike failed to make permanent conquest of the northern approaches to America. Mismanagement of the trade that had sprung up with settlement, hostility of the native Skraellings, and not least of all the rigor of the climate, combined to bring disaster, and the Norse chapter in American history came to an end. East of Newfoundland lie the Grand Banks, where cod swarmed long before fishermen knew of their whereabouts. But fish was in good demand in European markets, and hardy French and Portuguese sailors could scent the cod as surely as the modern prospector can see traces of oil. Not far from the time when Norsemen ceased to be heard from Jersey and Breton and Portuguese fishermen might have been seen there tossing on the swell of the ocean, if the fog was not too thick to distinguish ship from shore. They dared the long voyage across the Atlantic, braved the perils of fog and shore, dried their catch on the rocks, and packed it away for the voyage home, because they knew that back there millions of good Catholics would patronize the fish market on days when meat was for- bidden, and that the Newfoundland trade would be profit- able, even though it was distant and dangerous. They were good Catholics themselves, and when the fog fell without warning and they had to grope their way blindly over the Banks, they piously crossed themselves and put up a prayer to the Virgin, though in the same breath they swore lustily when their boats ran afoul of one another. From the prow of Newfoundland the continent falls away a thousand miles to Florida. Off that southern shore Columbus, an Italian mariner in the employ of the sov- ereigns of Spain, sighted another island in 1492, and went ashore to raise the standard of the same Cross that the Norse adventurer and the Breton fisherman venerated, THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS 3 and to offer his thanksgivings to the same Virgin. Like the other voyagers, he was an adventurer, but a good Catholic did not forget his religion in the midst of his occupations. After pleasant cruising in the warm south- ern seas Columbus returned, not with a cargo of ill-smell- ing fish, but with a wonderful story of discovery and a promise of gold to the future explorer. While Spaniards listened with mouths agape to the strange tale of western discovery and French housewives were dickering at the market for the salt codfish, the savage Indians of America and their half-barbarous Mexican cousins roamed the woods and fields or went about their occupations in the centers of population, as their fathers had done before them, little dreaming that an ocean high- way had been explored that would bring them into fatal contact with another hemisphere, where men jostled one another in the streets, strove for the prizes of industry, and made gestures of interest in another world on Sundays and holy days. The Indians enjoyed the freedom of broad ranges, fought rather than traded for what they wished, and practiced their own magic arts of religion. Their animistic beliefs were not very different from those of other peoples in the same stage of culture. They had their spirits to venerate, as the Christians had their saints. They had their ceremonies and incantations, and their medicine men to placate the evil spirits that they feared. They had queer interpretations of their experiences and of the powers that seemed to control them, and they looked with anticipation to a future existence in happier hunting grounds. The contacts with America that nad peen made both North and South came at a time when Europe was astir with energy. While fishermen and explorers were trying their fortunes in western waters, and Indians were roam- ing over their ample acres, the people of Europe were entering upon a period of high adventure that was to sweep multitudes of them from their old moorings. They 4. THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. had lived long under the static conditions of medieval life. They had thought in the old grooves. Their orbits of life were contracted. Children were born on the rural manor, grew to maturity without schooling, inherited the hard lot of peasants, worked, drank and gossiped in their small village, and died without ever going more than a few miles from home. Within the limits of a market town artisans plied their crafts, and traders bought and sold, but only occasionally went farther afield to a district fair. In any case they had little interest in the larger social relations. They were governed locally by a lord of the manor, more remotely by a sovereign whom they never saw, but they felt little sense of political obligation, except for the payment of taxes and an occasional service. Aside from their daily routine their almost sole interest was in religion. In their ignorance they were extremely super- stitious. Much of their limited experience they could not understand. They lived in fear of unfriendly super- natural powers. Expecting a future life, they dreaded the untried experience. They believed what the village priest told them about it, and according to him the chances of suffering were vastly greater than the chance of Dliss, and the only way to escape was to follow implicitly the directions of the church. There was only one church, the church that their ancestors had known, the church that for centuries had taken its orders from Rome. The peas- ant and his lord, the town artisan and the village burgher, the laity and the clergy everywhere were parts of an ecclesiastical system that claimed, and most of the time exercised, absolute authority over the minds of kings and serfs. This absolutism was possible because it was neces- sary for present safety and future salvation to belong to the System, for the church controlled the road to Heaven, but the church was growing unpopular, because its meth- ods were sometimes unscrupulous and the tolls laid upon the wayfarers were frequent and heavy. The church, with other institutions of a static social] THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS 5 system, was caught in a wave of progressive change dating from the twelfth century. By the inevitable laws of social causation a new era was in process of creation. The Norse adventurers in Greenland and Vineland were too early to share in it, but their spirit of adventure was akin to it. The Breton fisherman on the Banks did not sense it, be- cause his mind was not in the current of intellectual change, though he was a pioneer on new seas. The Span- iards who accompanied and followed Columbus were defenders of the old medizval order, even while they ex- plored and exploited a new continent. But in Europe kings and scholars, merchants and priests, caught the ground swell of the new era. Sovereigns consolidated their territories; nations came to birth. With increasing power kings were able to tax the merchants for their coin, and to organize armies that were not dependent on the fickle good will of feudal retainers. Money was increasing in abundance with the increase of travel, the expansion of avenues of trade, and the growth of busy centers of popu- lation where manufacturing and commerce naturally in- creased in volume. Thought was stimulated by the con- tacts of keen minds in the universities that sprang up wherever groups of scholars gravitated together. Under the spur of these tendencies men ventured forth on new paths. Kings and their ambitious ministers dreamed and schemed for empire, until Charles of Spain, the most successful of them, had become Emperor of all the Germanies as well as titular sovereign of a vast Span- ish domain. Merchant adventurers organized great trad- ing companies and tapped the resources of lands on the border of civilization. Students ventured into intellectual fields beyond those limited areas of scholastic discussion in which the medieval schoolmen browsed. Priests and even laymen made new ventures of faith beyond the con- fines that had been mapped out by the church. Waldensi- ans in the Latin lands, Anabaptists in middle Europe, Lol- lards in England, dared to question the teaching and the 6 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. ecclesiastical authority of Rome, and early in the sixteenth century Germany was aflame with ecclesiastical revolt under the bold leadership of Martin Luther. Religious revolt cut across the whole fabric of society. Religion was the one thing that all men had in common, the one bond that held them together as it held them to the past. It seemed too sacred to touch, and the church that represented it claimed to be immune to criticism, but the mind of the new age, keen and far ranging, did not spare the foibles and failures of an institution that was hoary with age and respectability, and as part of a social system that was passing Catholicism had to meet the attacks of determined reformers. In the very year when Cortez was pushing the Spanish advance into Mexico Martin Luther with his followers was challenging the church to a trial of strength in Ger- many. Spanish discoverers and Newfoundland fishermen might be content to take the conventional religion of their native lands, but while they were voyaging in the West bold adventurers in the region of faith were making dis- coveries that were to affect the world no less powerfully than the discovery of a new continent. As Columbus, defying the popular opinions of his time, trusted himself to the trade winds that bore him steadily westward, and opened a pathway over the high seas to a New World, so the Saxon monk, standing alone in the German city of Worms before the assembled dignitaries of church and state, dared to defy the conventional religious opinions of his day, and relying on his personal faith in God rather than in the kind offices of the church, blazed a new way to Heaven for half of Europe. The first was the discovery of a larger physical world, the other of a new world of thought and spiritual experience. The geographical dis- coveries of Columbus made Europe and the Mediterranean seem small; the religious discovery of Luther dwarfed the narrow arena in which the mind had trodden the treadmill of its conventional thought. Each of these men had his THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS 14 forerunners, each his broad-visioned successors, but from these two onward the static age of medievalism definitely lay behind. Ahead was the surge of modern life. The new era of thought did not disturb the first Amer- ican pioneers. Gentlemen adventurers were absorbed in facing the dangers and hunting for the treasures that America offered. They mapped its shores, penetrated its hinterland, plundered its natives, and with equal zeal pressed after the spoil of its mines and the elusive elixir of its fountains of youth. They prepared the way for those who would fare forth later and marry the virgin land and sink the roots of their European civilization in its fertile soil. Spanish noblemen took with them their Catholic priests to plant the banner of the Cross alongside the banner of Spain, for their religion was a part of the equipment of their Latin civilization. They had a pious wish to extend their system of ecclesiastical insurance to the pagan natives, and under their auspices Franciscan friars penetrated the far interior of the Southwest as missionaries, but Spanish piety did not prevent fighting with the pueblo Indians of the interior, looting the prop- erty of Peruvian and Mexican chiefs, and condemning the Indians to work in the mines as slaves. A century later French voyageurs into Canada, took with them their Catholic confessors, and devoted Jesuit missionaries pushed into the interior to propagate their faith among the natives of the North. But neither Spain nor France accomplished results, material or spiritual, that were commensurate with the energy of the pathfinders, though they per- formed the useful task of blazing trails both North and South. The failure of Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries to accomplish permanent results was not due to their indo- lence or unfaithfulness. The annals of their missions are filled with heroism as inspiring as any that missionary history affords. They explored unknown territory over an astonishingly wide area, pushed into native villages at the 8 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. peril of their lives, picked up as much as they could of the language and preached to the people, gathered converts for instruction, and tried to explain to unwilling listeners the meaning of the Christian faith. But in the South the harsh demands of the Spaniards alienated the Indians, who honored the Christian religion and its missionaries only as long as they were kept in awe of political authority, and in the North the savages tortured and killed the Jesuit fathers in spite of the efforts of the missionaries to tame them. Meantime other persons were making intellectual ex- plorations in Europe. With zeal equal to American explorers German, Dutch, and English adventurers along the new reaches of thought sloughed off the restrictions of the philosophy, science and theology of the Middle Ages, and struck out boldly in new directions. Humanism flourished in the schools of the growing towns. Books were multiplied by means of new printing devices. Fresh delight came from the pages of the pagan classics, and a new insight into the meaning of religion from the pages of the New Testament. Pioneers broke new paths for the feet of pilgrims to the Holy City. Luther and Calvin and Knox and Cranmer mapped out the confines of the new faith and the channels of grace, and denied the divine rights of a Catholic church that claimed a monopoly of religion. The seventeenth century focused these two ventures, the spiritual and the temporal, upon the Atlantic coast of North America. The high tide of European thought and activity swept across the ocean, as the waters at their flood dashed against the prow of the continent at Newfoundland. The ventures were prophetic of a new energy and inde- pendence that were to characterize the people of the New World. Time was to reveal a wealth of material resources that have made the Spanish mines seem pygmies, an indus- try and invention that have surpassed the wonder of the discovery of America, and a moral and religious develop- THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS 9 ment that has gone far beyond the adventuring thoughts of sixteenth century pioneers. The American explorations of the sixteenth century were succeeded by the colonizing enterprises of the seven- teenth. Spain and France, both Catholic nations, had tried to transplant their Latin civilization and their old faith into the new regions and had failed, save on the borders north and south. Their methods were not efficient. They were to find spheres of activity where they could develop their own institutions, but they were not to share permanently in opening up those temperate regions of North America that awaited the dynamic activity of the Teuton and the Celt. In the new century the Protes- tant Dutch and Swedes and English, aided by many Ger- mans, French, and Scotch-Irish, made their successful attempts along the coast from Maine to Florida. Holland on the Hudson and Sweden on the Delaware established commercial enterprises which might have been permanent, if each had been unmolested, but the Dutch absorbed the Swedes and then had to yield to the superior power of the English, for they ventured their undertakings at a time when England was driving forward for the same prize. England had gained a new national unity during the long reign of Elizabeth, and a remarkable energy, coupled with an increasing fund of commercial capital to apply to new economic opportunities, made it possible for her to succeed where her rivals failed. Enterprising capitalists organized commercial companies to exploit the latent wealth of America, planned colonies as bases of trade, and found colonists both from the British Isles and from the Conti- nent who for economic, social, or religious reasons were willing to expatriate themselves three thousand miles away. Religion had a part in the colonization of America, but it was not the dominant factor. In certain colonies it, was the primary concern of the majority of the emigrants, but even in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, where the 10 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. &. religious factor was strongest, many persons did not share the spiritual concern of the promoters of the colony, and even the church leaders felt the inducements to material ain. : No one social factor is the key to the interpretation of the history of America. Economic necessity, social pres- ' sure, the spirit of adventure, the scourge of persecution, all were among the driving forces that urged men and women overseas, sent them out along the advancing fron- tiers, and determined the nature of their occupations and environment. Religion was prominent among these fac- tors, because it was so dynamic an element in the Euro- pean life of the period. As the medieval man of whatever social grade regarded religion as his most vital concern, inasmuch as eternity was infinitely longer than earthly . time, and submissively obeyed the word of the:priest, so the modern man, emancipated from sacerdotal thraldom and sure that the Protestant path was the only way to Heaven, was prepared to sacrifice everything else, if neces- sary, for the satisfaction of his soul. Religious differences were the cause of bitterness in communities, even in house- holds. They caused civil strife and foreign wars. The losers felt the heavy hand of persecution, and they took flight abroad. ven where persecution amounted to little more than denunciation of heresy or the prevention of unconventional religious practices, dissenters felt the irk- someness of the situation, and were glad to expatriate themselves, especially if there was a fair prospect of eco- nomic gain at the same time. The history of the Protestant Reformation makes it plain that human motives are always mixed. Those who called themselves Protestants accepted the new thought, sometimes because their emotions responded to a revolu- tionary preacher, sometimes because they found new Bible teachings that appealed to their reason, sometimes because their neighbors were accepting the change, sometimes be- cause they hated the priest or disliked to pay for the old THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS 11 ecclesiastical system. Princes and merchants supported the religious revolution in some cases because they saw hope of larger revenues for themselves if the tribute of the faithful stopped flowing to Rome. Expediency counted with them more than conviction. Individuals there were who so delighted in their emancipation from the control of the priest that they objected to all law. They did not hesitate to modify the forms of their creeds, their organi- zations and their worship, and then they conceived of the modification of government and the social order. In their new freedom from overhead authority and under the influence of popular demagogues they yielded to the ferment of ideas and broke into social as well as religious revolution. Large numbers of men and women got a genuine new vision of personal religion; though they threw off the authority of the old ecclesiastical system, they did not lose their loyalty to God, and they found in the Bible | the guidance that they had been accustomed to look for from the priest. They were peaceable and orderly. Both kinds of Protestants were to be found among the Ana- baptists of Germany in the sixteenth century, and again among the Puritans of England in the seventeenth cen- tury, but the disorderly sort gave an excuse to the political authorities to interfere with the freedom of the Protestant movement, and to bring it under national authority. The regulators tried to stabilize religion by standardizing doc- trines and practices through church councils, organizing ecclesiastical systems as virtually departments of state, and insisting on conformity to the will of the sovereign. Within a century from Luther’s declaration of religious independence at Worms the nations of northern Europe had completed this standardizing process by nationalizing religion. When, therefore, the Dutch emigrated to New Nether- land they took with them their Reformed church; when Sweden sent her colonials to Delaware, they transplanted their Lutheranism; when England established her first 12 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. permanent settlement in Virginia, the Church of England was a part of the establishment. When England at a later time appropriated the territory of her rivals, she extended over it her ecclesiastical authority. This arbitrary method was in harmony with the autocratic methods of govern- ment that prevailed, but it did not tend to vitalize religion, and it provoked dissent. The religious history of the colonial period in America can be understood only as these two factors of authority and dissent are kept in mind. The conservative principle of ecclesiastical standardization and authority received recognition in most of the colonies. Although Catholicism had lost prestige in Europe, and was to have an incon- spicuous place in the English colonies of America, the Catholic principle of external authority in religion sur- vived in the Church of England. Hence in most of the colonies the people supported the church that was estab- lished for all; yet in the same colonies was an insurgent element that magnified its right of dissent. Mingled with the practical undertaking of subduing a new continent is the effort of either party to subdue the will of the other to a religious principle. The care of religion appears as a function of govern- ment from the beginning of successful English coloniza- tion in Virginia. The Company under whose auspices the venture was made was not indifferent to the religious interests of the settlers. The initial settlement at James- town had its Anglican chaplain, and before his departure from England to the governorship of Virginia Lord Dela- ware was admonished “to look not at the gain, the wealth, the honor, but at those high and better ends that concern the kingdom of God,” and to “take the devil prisoner in open field and in his own kingdom.” The observance of religious obligations by the settlers was made compulsory. Citizens were expected to be members of the colonial church, and provision was made for church lands and the support of ministers. But it was not the religious motive THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS 13 that sent the first settlers to Virginia. The men of social rank who became owners of estates, and the indentured servants and other laborers or handicraftsmen, were will- ing to give nominal adherence to the church, and to attend its services when not too inconvenient, but religion did not claim precedence among their interests. The Virginia council requested the assistance of the Bishop of London, and his spiritual jurisdiction was recognized thereafter. The official church in Virginia was handicapped by lack of a sufficient. number of ministers and by the poor quality of most of those who came out from England. This was due partly to the meager support offered by the Virginia people. Citizens were not deeply religious and were glad to escape from clerical admonitions. They paid salaries in tobacco, often of a poor quality and value. Ministers were left dependent on the good will of their local vestries as there was no bishop’s authority to check up conditions. Jt was unfortunate also that the Church of England was not insistent upon spiritual qualifications as prerequisite to ministerial ordination. ‘Too many men were in orders to provide themselves with an easy living. Some of the most worthless of them drifted to the colonies. It is not strange that Virginia parsons were charged with being fonder of English sports than of studying Sunday sermons. If a man was conscientious, his parish was likely to prove too large for efficient oversight. The result of all these conditions was that people, scattered on their plantations, went to church infrequently, and religion was generally neglected. Indifference to religion and the meager supply of clergymen continued until the Revolutionary war, when Episcopacy narrowly escaped destruction along with the government of the mother country. The colonial church of Virginia greatly needed a bishop who could have proper oversight of the local parishes and could discipline the clergy. That was one of the valuable assets of the episcopal system. Occasional efforts were made to secure such appointment, but the opposition of x 14 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. clergy or government prevented. In lieu of a bishop James Blair, a Scotchman, went out in 1689 to represent the Bishop of London with the title of commissary. It was his job to visit and inspect parishes and tone up the char- acter of religion. He fitted admirably into the local situ- ation, and proved to be one of the most useful men in the colonial churches of America during a period of more than fifty years. Very early he saw the need of a training school for prospective clergy; his influence brought about v the founding of the College of William and Mary, and he was made its first president. The student body was small; especially was it difficult to induce young men to enter the ministry when it was necessary to make an expensive and uncomfortable voyage to England for ordination. In Maryland the reputation of the Anglican clergy was worse even than in Virginia. As late as 1753 a visiting clergyman wrote to the Bishop of London: “It would really, my lord, make the ears of a sober heathen tingle to hear the stories that were told me by many serious per- sons of several clergymen in the neighborhood of the parish where I visited.” They had such an ill reputation in other colonies that an unusually bad minister was referred to scornfully as a ‘Maryland parson.” Thomas Bray, who * became commissary, sailed to the colony from England with intentions similar to those of Blair in Virginia. Before leaving he had collected parish libraries for the clergy, and once there he attempted to purify and strengthen the churches, but unfortunately ecclesiastical circumstances shortly compelled his return to England. His most permanent contribution to religion in America _was his influence in the organization of two missionary “ agencies in England, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which were useful in the spread of knowledge and in missionary activity among negroes and Indians as well as among colonists in America. The character of the Anglican clergy in the colonies THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS 15 that were established farther south was more exemplary. They worked hard at teaching school as well as conducting church services, and gave moral and spiritual counsel to negro slaves and Indians as willingly as to white citizens. This fact made the official church of the royal colonies in that section less obnoxious, and the people were more generous in their support. The Church of England rep- resented to them the institutional life and civilization of the mother country. But the experience of the South generally with the Church of England was not favorable to a church establishment. There were times when colonial officials meddled, and such interference was always pos- sible. The governor was supposed to be the patron of the church, and he gave it social standing. The legislature could tax the people for the support of the church, and this benefit was not shared by dissenting bodies. Yet the church lost more than it gained from these connections and privileges. Especially did it suffer from the absence of a bishop to confirm the young people in church mem- bership and to ordain a native clergy. Far better would it have been to throw the colonial churches on their own responsibility, permitting them to grow vigorous through self-reliance. As it was they were kept in leading strings with very ineffective guidance. In the absence of a satisfactory colonial church dis- senting groups began to collect from an early time. » Various representatives of English Puritanism made their way to the Southern colonies. Puritanism should be re- membered as a movement of dissent before it crystallized into an institution with authority. Presbyterians and Baptists went into Maryland and Virginia, and found footing in the Carolinas. Quakers ventured into Virginia about the time they suffered in Boston. They were fined and imprisoned, but persisted. George Fox journeyed in the Southern colonies, and people listened appreciatively to men who had the spirit of religion in them. Quarterly and yearly meetings provided permanent organization. 16 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. At a later time Methodists were welcomed before they had separated frei the Church of England. They had spirit- ual fervor, but they belonged to the church of their fathers. There were several Huguenot groups; a company of Ger- mans settled above the falls of the Rappahannock formed a useful frontier guard; Georgia had a mixed population of Continental sectarians as well as Englishmen. Against the opposition of the ecclesiastical system of the Southern royal colonies the principle of dissent maintained itself, - sometimes quietly, again vigorously, until the Revolution, when in the stronghold of Virginia itself the established principle of authority in religion yielded to the principle of freedom. Meantime other experiments were being staged in an effort to compromise between the Old World principle of a state church and the New World doctrine of ecclesiastical independence. II. MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS Tue principle of overhead authority in religion fast- ened itself generally upon the English colonies in the North as in the South. It proved difficult, even for the Puritans, to throw off at once the inherited ideas of centuries. The Puritans who settled Massachusetts Bay were the progressives of the English Reformation. Not content with the changes that had been made in the forms of the national religion, they were determined to purify the church further by eliminating such survivals of Cathol- icism as the use of the cross in worship, the surplice in the dress of the clergy, and the ring in marriage. A few went so far as to become Independents in religion. But most of them were not so radical in purpose as to wish to disestablish the national church. Some of them preferred presbyters to bishops, but most of them would conform, whatever failure might happen to their program. Puritan- ism is important in history, therefore, as an attitude of / protest against abuses in a system that was regarded as essentially good rather than a definitely planned secession from the system. The story of the process by which Eng- lish Puritanism became transformed into New England Congregationalism is illustrative of the slow emancipation of the American mind from its English inheritance. Puritanism has been defined so many times that it seems superfluous to coin new phrases, but it is important 4 to remember that it was of greater consequence as an, attitude than as an institution. As an instrument of gov- ernment it proved a failure both in England and America. As a moral censorship it was too stern, and provoked an unwholesome reaction. As an interpretation of religion 17 18 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. it was too narrowly theological, and too out of sympathy with an abounding life. But as an attitude of mind towards the ecclesiastical system that had been taken over without substantial change from Catholicism, it was a healthful ferment in old English society. The Puritan attitude was not that of the bulk of Eng- lishmen. In every day life most persons were far more interested in making a living than in discussing religious doctrines and practices, and claiming a right to their own opinions. Religious leaders might dispute about the merits of Calvinism, Arminianism, or Socinianism, or the origin and efficacy of presbyterianism and episcopacy, but Tom and Will and Dick were well satisfied to leave such abstruse topics to the college-bred clerics, and to find their diversions at the alehouse when the day’s labor was at an end. If they were conventionally reverent and sociably minded, they foregathered in the churchyard on Sunday and at the stroke of the bell took their places in the parish church to make the sign of the cross and join in the responses as far as memory served, but except for super- stitious practices when they were afraid of a calamity religion meant little in the experience of every day. The genesis of the Puritan protest can be traced to the Continent. Puritanism had its strength in the sturdy middle class of independent English farmers and pros- perous townsmen. The landed aristocracy was religiously conservative, as it was politically. The working people of England were never much affected by Puritanism. It was especially the religion of the class of people who were making money by trade, and whose children were to become capitalists. Merchants in the eastern counties of England did business with the Continent, and through eastern and southern seaports an exchange of ideas took place as of merchandise. Religious refugees sailed for safety at Geneva or Amsterdam, when persecutions broke out at home. Others on occasion fled from the Continent. for haven in England from the tyranny of Catholic Aus- MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS 19 tria, Spain, or France. Exponents of the Protestant theology came across the Channel from Strassburg or Basle or Geneva, and remained to teach at Cambridge University. | The Puritans were sermon tasters and liked to hear foreign preachers. They were inveterate Bible readers, and they had their English version prepared by English refugees at Geneva. The canny merchant trading wool for the manufactured goods of the Low Countries never overlooked his economic gains, but his religious belief swayed his mind. Whatever his business traits, his atti- tude towards God was humble and sincere. Rejecting the sovereignty of Rome, he had substituted the Genevan doc- trine of Calvin regarding the sovereignty of God. He believed all men sinners before God, bound in the grip of Satanic power, and if a man would escape the evil he must be continually on the alert to break loose from the hold of temptation and sin. The sins that troubled him were not the social sins of greed and injustice and harsh atti- tudes of man to man, but the frivolity and superficiality of life, and the unresisted inclination to self-indulgence. In his belief the divine will had elected a few to be saved from general condemnation in the day of judgment, and it was comfortable to feel that he was among the chosen, but he must be on his guard continually, must take life with all seriousness, and must strive to know the will of God. He was awed by his sense of personal responsibility to God. What the Catholic lightly relegated to the priest the Puritan felt weigh heavily upon his own soul. Help- less though he was to righten himself with God, he was, as he thought, under the sternest obligation to examine himself and by rigorous self-analysis to scourge his fallen nature. This belief in the difficulty of righteousness and the omnipresence of evil, even among the elect, gave to the Puritan a soberness of spirit that has seemed morose- ness. It is'a mistake to think that he was always solemn, that he never relaxed, even in the privacy of the family 20 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. circle, but life was serious, and he could never forget that goodness was rare and difficult. He inclined to exalt his own virtues in contrast to the vices that he saw around him. He exaggerated small failings, either in individuals or in the church. Nothing was petty that fell below the divine standard, as he understood it. To believe unquestioningly in the divine rightness of one’s own opinions, whether in religion or politics, is to In- vite bigotry to enthrone itself in one’s nature. Convinced that the person or the institution that did not agree with him was wrong as well as mistaken, the Puritan spent his energy trying to effect the ecclesiastical changes that seemed urgent. He disliked especially the forms of wor- ship in the Anglican Church. With its doctrines he had no quarrel. Though he found himself in opposition to the king or queen, he did not curb his own will. The divinity that hedged a king was as nothing to the divinity that spoke to his own conscience. Such opinions carried into politics were to justify to the mind of the Puritan the execution of King Charles I. As yet the Puritans confined their program to protests and petitions. After these proved ineffectual most of them with ill grace ac- cepted their ecclesiastical defeat, and accommodated themselves to the Church from which they could not bear to separate. Some persisted in their opposition until they won temporary success under Cromwell. Others clung to the fiction that they were still good Anglicans and loyal Englishmen, but they were ready to consider the advisa- bility of emigrating overseas in order to have their own way, when agitation seemed futile in England. To them, as to thousands of later European emigrants, America loomed as the hope of the future. While the larger part of the most determined Puritans were coming slowly to this position, a few hundred persons took the extreme action of withdrawing from the Church of England and organizing their own independent con- gregations. ‘They had not only become convinced that it MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS 21 would be impossible to purify a church whose membership was as inclusive as the nation, but as they read the Bible that was to them authoritative they became satisfied that there was no more sanction for Anglicanism than for Catholicism. There was no hierarchy or ritual in the New Testament, no episcopal cathedral in Galilee. They believed that the true church of Christ was composed of the few who were genuinely Christian, and that it was their duty to separate from the large majority. Soon several Separatist congregations emigrated to Holland. Two of these groups made history. One was the congregation in Middleburg. Its minister was Robert Browne, formerly an Anglican clergyman. He published a book that he called “Reformation without Tarying for Anie,” and in it he set forth the fundamental principles that became basic in English and American Congregation- alism. For him the church was ‘‘a company of redeemed believers, joined in covenant.” It was a voluntary, like minded group. It was independent of outside control, with the privilege of choosing its pastors and directing its affairs. Like the Church of England, it recognized the potential participation of the children of members, and baptized them, expecting them to enter into full member- ship when they came to years of understanding. The Con- gregational church had no place for episcopacy or an his- torical succession of the clergy. Logically it meant the separation of church and state, and the establishment of full religious autonomy. Browne did not remain true to his own principles, returning later to the Anglican fold from which he had come, but he had set forth so clearly the fundamental principles of a new and free organization of religion that they gained permanent root. Browne’s followers were known for a time as Brownists, later as Congregationalists from the independence of the local congregation. The second of the groups was the Pilgrim church at Leyden, of which John Robinson was the minister. Its 22 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. §. principles of organization were the same as those of the Brownists at Middleburg. Doctrinally the members were Calvinists. Services of worship differed from the Anglican church out of which its members had come. Prayers were not read; hymns were sung without organ accompaniment ; the Scripture was read and paraphrased. The sermon was expository of biblical teaching and applied to personal conduct. To these Pilgrims fell the distinction of making the first settlement of independent churchmen in America. It is not necessary to distinguish sharply between the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth and the Puritans who settled more numerously about Boston as members of the Massachusetts Bay colony. The Pilgrims who had come from Scrooby by way of Leyden were of a little lower social grade than the Puritans of Boston, but they had moved farther on the road to independency. The temper of the Pilgrims was milder than the temper of the Bay, though it may be that they had less provocation. Yet both were alike in their condemnation of the old ecclesi- astical order, and they came to agree upon a new Con- gregational fellowship, even as they blended at length into a single colony. On the edge of winter in the year 1620 the Mayflower landed at Plymouth its single shipload of men, women, and children, only a third of whom had come from Leyden. Some were friends from England, others were servants, still others were on fortune bent, and were out of sympathy with the religious purpose of the Pilgrims. Realizing this, the controlling element of the new colony in the absence of a charter of government had drawn up a com- pact which all were required to sign, that they would obey the established authority of the colony. Bravely they endured the long winter, though half of their number succumbed to its hardships. Spring brought reénforce- ments, and gradually they gained a foothold on the soil, but they were always few in number, apparently little more than a forlorn hope in the march upon the wilderness. MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS 23 Tenacity of purpose is a well-recognized trait of the Eng- lish character, but to that was added the strength of con- viction that the Pilgrim enterprise had the approval of Heaven. Deprived of their religious leadership in the absence of Robinson who had delayed his emigration, the colonists relied on Brewster, their church elder, and on Bradford, their capable governor. Sunday after Sunday they climbed the hill to the log church, which was at once meeting-house, fort, and lookout, lived as good neighbors and Christians during the week, and acknowledged no ecclesiastical authority but their own suffrages. Thus was Congregationalism planted in the New World. From being a protest and a separation it had become a con- structive affirmation and an enduring fellowship. Viewed contemporaneously the landing of a few men and women on a wintry shore in America might seem in- consequential. Judged in the light of history it was an event of major significance. It marked the beginning of religious independency and an important contribution to political democracy in a land that has come to stand dis- tinctively for those principles. It gave courage to the larger company of Puritans to venture the settlement of Massachusetts Bay and to adopt Separatist principles. From both of these sources issued a spiritual force that had much to do with fashioning the character of the American people. Plymouth was not the only colony that was founded in those days primarily because of religious convictions, but it was the first English-speaking colony of the sort to persevere to success, and the qualities that stand out in the Pilgrim character have been dominant qualities in the American church and state. The story of the normal Puritans and their more rad- ical variety of Pilgrims makes plain the important part that religion played in the settlement of New England. It was religious leaders who directed affairs in the infant colonies. Bradford wrote of the Pilgrims: “A great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation 24 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. for propagating and advancing the Gospel of the kingdom of Christ, in those remote parts of the world, though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for the performing of so great a work.” Yet it was also the poverty and longing for homes in an English land that accentuated the religious impulse of those who had expatri- ated themselves. Material interests were bound up with religious con- cerns in the larger Puritan migration to the settlements about Massachusetts Bay. The initial attempt was a fish- ing station near Cape Ann. A Puritan minister of the Anglican church at Dorchester, England, Reverend John White, was interested in establishing a permanent colony, and with others obtained a grant of land from the Plym- outh Company of English merchants. Salem became the advance guard, of an extensive Puritan migration, which within a few years dotted the shores of Massachusetts Bay with settlements that contained several thousand colonists. Their enterprise was chartered by the king as the Massa- chusetts Bay Company. Presently this Company trans- ferred its business organization to America, and made it the constitutional basis of colony government. The first governor of the colony was John Winthrop. Winthrop was a landowner who illustrates the changing economic and social conditions at a time when prosperity was passing from the landed class to the merchants, Land- owners like Winthrop found themselves struggling to keep up the social standards of living of their peers. Small farmers and artisans, who were landless but sturdy work- ers, found their neighbors interested in emigration, and with them followed such leaders as Winthrop. In several instances whole parishes transferred congregation and pastor to a new location in America. Reverend John White, the promoter of the colony, who published hig Planters Plea at the time of emigration, wrote concerning the major purpose of colonization “I should be very uns willing to hide anything I think might be fit, to discover MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS 25 the uttermost of the intentions of our planters in their voyage to New England. . . . As it were absurd to con- ceive they have all one mind, so were it more ridiculous to imagine that they all have one scope. Necessity may press some; novelty draw on others; hopes of gain in time to come may prevail with a third sort; but that the most, and most sincere and godly part, have the advancement of the gospel for their main scope, I am confident.” © The exact form that Puritanism was to take in the Bay Colony was not sensed at once. The church at Salem was organized at first to include all good citizens, like the Church of England. Higginson, its minister, exclaimed on leaving England: ‘We do not go to New England as Separatists from the Church of England, though we can- not but separate from the corruptions in it; but we go to practice the positive part of church reformation, and propagate the gospel in America.” But almost immedi- ately the leaders of the church felt that they had not drawn the lines of church membership closely enough. Sympa- thetic with the principles of Robert Browne, they reor- ganized the Salem church on a voluntary basis, accepting as members only those who could give evidence of regen- eration and were willing to bind themselves by the obli- gations of a church covenant. The ministers of the church were chosen and reordained by the reorganized church. The Plymouth church, recognizing its kinship of faith and organization, extended the hand of Congregational fellowship. Thus the second Congregational church in America came into existence. Restriction of church membership to a few who were the most spiritually qualified, and a tendency in the Puritan settlements to make membership a prerequisite to the privileges of citizenship, did not augur a cordial welcome to all comers. To interpret the Puritan movement as intended to es- tablish a free community church would be a mistake. It was soon apparent that Puritanism was a straight and 26 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. narrow way, and that those who could not conform must be content to be silent partners in the enterprise or with- draw from the colony. As early as 1631 a record of legis- lation reads: “To the end the body of commons may be preserved of honest and good men, it was ordered and agreed that for time to come no man shall be admitted to the freedom of this body politic, but such as are mem- bers of some of the churches within the limits of the same.” Five years later the General Court voted not to permit any new churches without the express approval of the magis- trates. The leaders were extremely sensitive to any criti- cism of their conduct. The colony expelled Roger Wil- liams, though a minister, because he criticised their land tenure and because he declared the interference of magis- trates with religion to be a wrong principle; and the next year banished Anne Hutchinson, though a woman of great popularity, because she had ventured to question the teaching of certain of the colonial ministers. Manage- ment of colonial affairs was in the hands of a small oli- garchy so influenced by the ministers that the government has been called a theocracy. Those who could or would qualify for Congregational church membership constituted a small minority of the population, yet in 1638 all inhabi- tants were taxed for the support of the church as well as the commonwealth, and Sunday observance was regulated carefully. With the growth of the colony more persons came who were not in strict sympathy with the policy of the Com- pany, but the policy was not changed. Johnson in his Wonder-working Providence in 1624 warned all intru- ders as to the temper of the possessors of this New England Canaan: “All who intend to transport themselves hither, may know this is no place of licentious liberty, nor will this people suffer any to trample down this Vineyard of the Lord, but with diligent execution will cut off from the city of the Lord the wicked doers . . . for it is no wrong to any man, that a people who have spent their estates, MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS 27 many of them, and ventured ‘heir lives for to keep faith and a pure conscience, to use by all means that the Word of God allows for maintenance and continuance of the same.” Hven the Indians were forbidden “to pawaw or perform outward worship to their false gods, or to the devil, in any part of our jurisdiction, whether they be such as dwell here, or shall come hither.” Quakers were extremists who went beyond even the Congregationalists in their religious independency. They rejected an ordained ministry, abandoned the sacraments, and gave an inner illumination of the spirit precedence over the letter of Scripture. In their enthusiasm for their peculiar ideas they tended to become fanatics. They acted unconventionally in the Puritan meeting-houses, and some- times interrupted the service of worship. Against them the “Standing Order” in Massachusetts was especially severe, whipping and maiming and banishing them after the judicial methods of that time. In spite of great provo- cation the authorities resorted to the death penalty only after they had exhausted every other remedy to quell the disturbers of the peace. The Puritans were fearful that such disturbers would focus the attention of the English Government on their settlements, and that they would lose their large measure of political independence, so dear to them but so rigorous toward others. They were few in number. Most of their fellow Puritans had emigrated to the West Indies rather than to New England, and they felt the precariousness of their situation. Their fears were justified by King Charles the Second’s message in- terfering with religious persecution, and by the revoca- tion of the charter of the Company twenty years later. The better sense of the people triumphed, as it did later in the frenzy over witchcraft. The Quakers became a less disturbing element as the colony grew larger, and small incidents did not bulk so large, but their sufferings, how- ever deserved, serve to show the intolerant disposition of a group of people who were more progressive than the rank 28 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. and file of Englishmen, but who could not, even in a new environment, get rid of traditional ways. The unlovely side of Puritanism made its adherents disliked by their contemporaries. In England they were treated after the Stuart restoration as dangerous disturbers of the realm, and restrictive laws were passed against their religious practices. In the colonies which they con- trolled they were disliked for their narrowness and sever- ity by those who did not agree with them. In the South, where they were in a minority, they were persecuted mildly from time to time. It is the nobler side of the Puritan nature that has ap- pealed to their American descendants and successors. To him who appreciates its real significance Plymouth Rock on the sandy shore of Massachusetts is a greater shrine than the Caaba at Mecca in the sands of Arabia, for it marks the triumph of a principle that is basic for social construction. The religious devotion of the Arab wor- shiper may have been as great, and his superstitious rey- erence of the stone far greater than that of the descendant of the Pilgrim, but Plymouth Rock is a reminder that, in a time when most people built their political and religious faith on the shifting sands of a royal will, there were a few who rested their unchanging purpose on the sovereign will of God, and guided by him ventured to build their church and commonwealth. He who feels kinship with the Puritan spirit believes that from Plymouth Rock, as from the rock that Moses smote at Sinai, has flowed a stream of pure religion that has carried its beneficent waters through America’s mountain passes and across her plains to the distant western sea. The critical student modifies such eulogy, and inclines to become an iconoclast. The impartial student of his- tory must try to put himself in the Puritan’s place in England, fare with him in discomfort on a sea journey of many weeks, share his loneliness and homesickness, his hardships and diseases, even near-starvation. He must MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS 29 not overlook his real kindness of heart, his fidelity to con- science, his willing sacrifice of personal comfort for what he conceived to be God’s will for him. If in his public relations the Puritan was unyielding, even disagreeable ; if he treated those who differed from him harshly, and provoked the scorn and hostility of others by his air of cocksureness and studied disapproval; it is necessary to remember that he was a child of stern reaction against a time-honored system, feeling his way towards a better age of nobler principles and convictions, and taught to believe that he must view every life and every institution in the light of eternity. Certain it is that to plant a state and a church on the inhospitable frontier of the British nation was no easy task. A rude clearing paved the way for a settlement, and as each settlement grew it threw off offshoots into the neighborhood. So the Pilgrims worked up the coast of the Old Colony, and Puritans went inland from Boston to Dedham. and Watertown. Every settlement clustered about the meeting-house as its center. The meeting-house was not only the rallying place of religion, but also the political gathering place for the town. Like the first houses it was of the rudest description, plain and un- adorned and almost square, built of logs and thatched, with rude benches for the people and a simple desk for the pul- pit. As the dwelling houses improved so did the meeting- houses, and by degrees they assumed the form that later became known as colonial architecture. There were “chief seats in the synagogue’; care was taken to preserve proper rank in society. Through the open windows came the sweet-scented breath of June days, and through cracks in the walls sifted the snows of winter, but the worshipers recked not of discomfort. In the coldest weather they sat in churches warmed only by foot-stoves and listened patiently to long sermons and prayers. Minister and teacher took each his turn in sermonizing and expounding Scripture Sunday morning and afternoon. A mid-week 30 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. lecture in the daytime was the precursor of the mid-week prayer meeting of a later day. The clergy were men of strong purpose, and many of trained ability. Narrow- > minded they may have been, but they kept their flock in the narrow way of a single purpose. In home and church they talked and prayed, and instructed the children in the Puritan tenets. In council and assembly they formulated church polity and doctrine, and defended their outspoken opinions in print with convincing arguments. On the officers of the state they exerted so strong an influence that government was the expression of the will of a cleri- cal aristocracy. ‘To perpetuate a trained ministry Har- vard College was founded at Cambridge before the colony of Massachusetts Bay was ten years old, the first of a line of Puritan institutions that was to extend across the con- tinent. The Puritan home was only less important than church and college to the perpetuation of the religious heritage. The family altar was as vital to family prosperity as the Lares and Penates of the Roman. Cradock’s letter to Governor Endicott of Salem in 1629 gave direction in these words: “Our earnest desire is, that you take special care in settling those families, that the chief in the family (at least some of them) be grounded in religion, whereby morning and evening duties may be duly performed, and a watchful eye held over all in each family.” The rigid observance of Sunday came to be regarded as a necessary part of the Puritan system, a protest against the laxity of English custom and an acceptance of the Jewish Sab- bath as a model for Sunday. The Old Testament fitted well the Puritan need for a guide in the midst of enemies. Indians were devils in the flesh, and a world of invisible demons was no less real. And the Puritan feared God even more than the devil. Yet with his fear was a trust in God’s wisdom and justice, a confidence in the immuta- bility of his purpose, a faith in human destiny, and a joy and peace in believing that sweetened and softened the MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS 31 stern and bitter aspect of early New England life. Even in such an experiment station as Massachusetts Puritanism was demonstrating the value of a religion that was based less on tradition than on profound personal convictions of individual religion. III. TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM By the year 1635 two regions of America had been planted with English colonies. In both of them religion ‘was a social factor. To Virginia the official, conventional religion of the mother country had been transplanted ; few settlers protested against it. In Massachusetts the adven- ture towards religious independency had begun, only to be checked by the old spirit of overhead authority. From these two centers, Virginia and Massachusetts, as well as from the mother country, the colonies of England ex- panded, and with colonial growth went on the expansion of religion. , Expansion is an historical characteristic of American “ religion. With the growth of the colonies churches mul- tiplied. With the westward extension of the nation mis- sionaries followed the frontier. By and by messengers of the Cross went to the other side of the world. Along with growth in numbers and expansion of interest came a richer content and a broader interpretation of religion. The causes of this expansion were various. Migration, evangelization, education, all contributed. Men of insight and enthusiasm pointed out the way. First of all religion had to be freed from the control of tradition, to be liberal- ized in its organization, its practices and its beliefs. It had to be freed from its dependence on the state. Then through experiments in organization it must find a work- ing basis for efficient activity, through stern and vigorous thinking it must fashion for itself true and helpful ex- pressions of its faith, and through vigorous persuasion it must enlist and set to work the multitudes which it touched in ever widening circles. In these various directions ten- 32 TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 83 dencies towards liberalism became evident from the early days of colonization. The first important event was the protest of Roger Wil- liams against the functioning of the Massachusetts magis- trates in the department of religion, and the subsequent settlement of Providence under his leadership. Important as was the Massachusetts experiment to be in the process of religious emancipation, the rise of insurgency and the establishment of Rhode Island as an asylum for the per- secuted was even more significant. With all its value the Puritanism of the first generation in Massachusetts was only a half-way house from the Anglican Establishment to American independency in religion and democracy in church and state. It is to Williams and his unruly fellow citizens that the credit belongs for getting a permanent foothold for religious independency in America, a prin- ciple that was to extend its influence until in the next century the American nation established freedom in re ligion as a constitutional right. At the head of Narragansett Bay outside the jurisdic tion of Massachusetts Roger Williams and the sympa- thizers who followed him into the wilderness purchased land of the Indians and named their settlement Provi- dence in recognition of the Divinity that was rough-hewing their destiny. Consistent with his contentions at Boston, Williams scrupulously purchased land from the Indians, and from the first kept civil and religious matters distinct. He and his associates did not handicap the colony with a fundamental law that should bind its infant limbs, but by general agreement they arranged that the heads of families should meet every two weeks, and by majority vote take whatever action might seem to be needed by the commu- nity. Three other settlements were soon made, one by Mrs. Hutchinson and her friends at the mouth of Narragansett Bay. Each managed its own affairs by democratic town government. Not until 1644 was a colonial government inaugurated by permission of the Parliamentary Commit- 384 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. tee on the Colonies in Great Britain, and even then a refer- endum was provided for, giving each town a right to de- cide whether or not to accept a law passed by the colonial legislature. The same democratic freedom was practised in religion. There was nothing to prevent Williams and several of his followers, when they became convinced of the correctness of the Baptist contention that baptism as the door to church membership shall be restricted to those who have reached years of intelligence and experience, from mutu- ally administering the ordinance of baptism by immersion and organizing the first Baptist church in America. There was nothing to hinder Williams after a few months from moving beyond his companions to the point where he felt dissatisfied with the manner of his last baptism. With perfect freedom of action he withdrew from church fellow- ship and called himself a Seeker. This did not prevent his continued residence in the colony, his active participation in its affairs, and his frequent usefulness as peacemaker among those who abused their freedom to quarrel, whether over politics or religion. In spite of his vagaries Roger Williams was through a long life a valued leader of the colony. Among American pioneers he stood almost alone in his time for those principles of freedom and democracy that are now so ingrained in American thought and life. Bancroft’s estimate that Williams for his discovery of high moral principles should be classed with Newton and Kepler and Copernicus among the modern benefactors of mankind is not extravagant. The new colony was not liked by its neighbors. Com- plete freedom in either religion or politics did not seem to most of the Puritans a sufficient principle for constructing a system of colonial organization. It was not positive, definite, reliable enough to be a corner stone. The his- tory of the colonies about Narragansett Bay illustrated its ineffectiveness. Men of all creeds were admitted, and naturally some were oddly persuaded in their religious TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM — 35 convictions and tended to be unruly. Intoxicated with an individual freedom that was almost unique in civil so- ciety at that time, they became fanatical, turbulent, and even dangerous to the existence of the settlement. But the leaders in the colony believed that freedom is a necessary preliminary to the growth of vital religion, and maintained their policy unflinchingly. The people of the Providence colony were clearing the way for achievement in religious progress. Henceforth, except later on for Catholics, there was to be at least one spot where men and women should be free to think, to worship, to organize and to disagree, as they believed themselves taught by Scripture or the in- ner light. After their rude pioneering it became easier for the people of America to foster true liberty, build de- nominational organizations on the basis of voluntary rather than compulsory association, and help fashion the democ- racy that became so conspicuous a characteristic of the American nation. Massachusetts and Connecticut did not invite the Nar- ragansett Bay settlements to join them in defense against the Indians, though it was Roger Williams who more than once gave friendly warning of approaching danger to those colonies. They would have liked to absorb the law- less towns on their borders, and might have done so had not a charter been secured for the associated towns by John Clarke, minister at Newport. This charter affirmed the principle of religious liberty in the quaint language that, as it was in the hearts of the King’s faithful subjects “‘to hold forth a lively experiment” of ‘full liberty in religious concernments,” it was his royal pleasure that “no person within the said colony at any time hereafter shall be molested, punished, disquieted or called in question for any differences of opinion in matters of religion,” pro- vided they did not use their liberty as a cloak to license and lawlessness. For one hundred and eighty years this charter served as the constitution of the colony. Rhode Island is the first colony where the Baptists ap- 86 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. 8. pear in any appreciable numbers. Now and then the Massachusetts records reveal the presence of those who were unwilling to have their infant children baptized, only to be punished for their obstinacy. Even the first head of Harvard College, Henry Dunster, fell into what Mather called the errors of Antipedobaptism. But the civil government of Massachusetts was so uncivil to such sec- taries that most of them went elsewhere. Rhode Island offered convenient sanctuary. John Clarke, who obtained the charter, was the organizer and pastor of the Baptist church in Newport, one of the early towns of the Rhode Island colony. His services to the colony place him second only to Williams among its pioneers, and his services to the Baptists have given him prominence in their annals. The English-speaking Baptists were a variety of the Independents who believed with the founder of Brownism in the freedom of the churches to manage their own affairs. They were joined with the Congregational groups in church membership until in their interpretation of the New Testament they decided that it was not proper to baptize small children, who could have no conscious ex- perience of personal religion. By thus stressing individual experience and action they lost the religious solidarity of the family, but they conserved the sense of personal re- sponsibility. English-speaking Baptists were congrega- tional in polity with few exceptions, and most of them were Calvinistic in doctrine. Another variant from Massachusetts Puritanism was Thomas Hooker. He was pastor of a group of emigrants who landed in Massachusetts and settled near Boston at first, but, dissatisfied with the quarrelsome spirit that just then was vexing the colony and desiring room to expand, soon trekked across country to the valley of the Connecticut River. There they established several vil- lages which became the colony of Connecticut. They were Puritans, but more liberal than their Massachusetts breth- TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 37 ren. Hooker, as minister at Hartford and mentor of the colony, reminded the people when they were planning their government that the foundation of authority lies in the free consent of the people, a principle kept in sub- ordination by the Massachusetts authorities. The govern- ment was duly constituted in 1639 with an instrument of government which James Bryce has declared ‘‘the first written constitution known to history, creating a govern- ment.” The constitution established the authority of the state in matters of religion and assessed the entire com- munity for the support of the Congregational church, but freemen were given suffrage without religious qualifica- tion, and a really democratic spirit forestalled trouble- some problems of toleration. It was worth much to the colony that Hooker was a man of broad opinions and good temper, for the New England ministers were revered everywhere as expert counsellors in civil as well as ecclesi- astical matters, and in Massachusetts their conservatism proved the chief hindrance to social and spiritual progress. On the foundation laid in 1639 the Connecticut settle ments prospered without the tempestuous experiences of the less balanced men and women who were attracted to Rhode Island, but they fell short of the distinction that came to the smaller colony as an oasis for heretics of every sort in the desert of contemporary intolerance. On Long Island Sound the colony of New Haven was founded in 1638 as a Bible Commonwealth on a basis more rigid even than that of Massachusetts. Its founders had touched at Boston on the way out from England in the midst of the Hutchinsonian controversy, and preferred to go on farther to make their own settlement. Disagree- ments troubled them, and in 1662 the colony was merged with Connecticut under an English charter that proved as permanently satisfactory as the liberal charter of Rhode Island that was granted the next year to the settlers on Narragansett Bay. In the middle part of the Atlantic seaboard strip, be- 88 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. tween the royal Episcopal colonies of the South and the Puritans of New England, a third group of colonies found room. Grants of territory were made to proprietors, who were friends or creditors of Charles I or his sons Charles and James, and they threw open their lands on liberal terms to settlers of various religious persuasions. The first of these colonies to be delimited was Maryland. Its proprietor, Lord Baltimore, was a Catholic, liberal enough to appreciate the importance of a broad religious policy for the development of his property. Though his first colonizing expedition included two Jesuit missionaries, most of the company of emigrants were Protestants, and the policy of toleration of all religious convictions was adopted. The Catholic clergy zealously propagated their faith until they boasted that they had converted most of the Protestants and had made a good beginning among the Indians, but the colony was not destined to remain Catholic. It was not long before an influx of Puritans who were expelled from Virginia came across the Poto- mac. Presently they obtained control of the Maryland government, put the Catholics in subordination, and en- tered upon an inexcusable course of political intolerance. After a time the colony came under the control ecclesi- astically of the Church of England, and lost what spiritual vigor it had through the scandalous conduct of a clergy without energy or character. Before Maryland was assigned to Lord Baltimore the Dutch had settled at New Amsterdam. With the transfer of the colony to England the Duke of York became its proprietor. Naturally the Church of England was estab- lished, and all citizens were required to pay taxes for its support. The religious policy of general tolerance made possible the settlement of various Protestant sects, but after the fall of James II, a Catholic king, Catholics were treated as undesirable citizens in New York. Northern New Jersey has always been connected closely with New York. For a time it was part of the Dutch TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM = 39 territory, but it was near enough to New England to feel the Puritan influence, and after the transfer of Dutch America to England in 1664 scattered Puritan settlements were made from New England. New Jersey became a proprietary colony under Quaker dominance, and enjoyed religious toleration that forecast Penn’s policy in Penn- sylvania. Hundreds of Quakers found admittance, and organized their system of meetings. As in Maryland and New York, a period of proprietorship was followed by a change of political status to a royal colony, and the Church of England naturally enjoyed special privilege until the Revolution. All kinds of Christians were tolerated except Roman Catholics. Among the proprietary colonies none maintained so consistently liberal an attitude towards settlers as the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania. The early Friends, or Quakers, had moved far along the path of unconvention- ality in religion and had come to grief as a consequence, but their founder, George Fox, was a spiritually minded man, whose influence could be trusted to rub off the sharp corners of a militant Quakerism. William Penn, the King’s creditor, was another wise and capable leader. By the time he had settled his father’s accounts with roy- alty and had secured his patent from the King for a large area in America, the Friends were steadying down, and Pennsylvania was to become a model colony. Zeal and determination, when refined by persecution and turned into useful channels of activity by wise ad- ministration, proved an asset to the new colony. Penn was unselfish enough to surrender his personal rights of control and progressive enough to plan a democratic gov- ernment for the territory over which he was proprietor. His fellow Quakers were prompt to avail themselves of the opportunity that he offered them in America, and with commendable generosity he advertised a welcome to oppressed sects on the Continent, promising a free govern- ment and liberty to think and worship in their own way, 40 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. besides plenty of land on easy terms. It is not strange that such a combination of good fortune should have at- tracted thousands of dissenters in Europe. Among the first was a company of Mennonites, a quiet, inoffensive Dutch folk. They resembled the Quakers in their detes- tation of war and in some of their habits, and were well suited to help establish the colony. There were Quakers, too, from the Continent, German Dunkards with their queer practices of footwashing and trine immersion, and Pietists who deplored the decline of spirituality in the established church of the Fatherland. Most numerous of all were the Palatines who fled from the ravaging armies of the French king, Louis XIV, carrying fire and sword through the Rhine valley. Most of these refugees ac- quired the nickname of Pennsylvania Dutch. Living segregated in their own communities, they maintained. rigidly their religious convictions and preserved their peculiar customs. They farmed their acres thriftily and traded among themselves, until they gained a reputation second to no region in the country for excellence of char- acter and for material prosperity. These groups of refugees tended to become self-centered, and to perpetuate their folkways from generation to gen- eration. Quite different were the Moravians who settled | later about Bethlehem. In the spirit of the early Chris- tian disciples they looked out upon the world as a mission field, even before they had well established themselves in Europe, and with more consecration than training went willingly to the hardest, most discouraging parts of pagan lands. Such a people, though they did not arrive in America much before the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury, gave a religious tone to their part of the province at a time when the Quakers had grown increasingly worldly as they waxed prosperous. Between the arrival of the minor groups and the later Moravians occurred an extensive migration of Lutherans and members of the Reformed churches of western Ger- TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 41 many, not to mention a sprinkling of Catholics. Time would fail to tell of the Irish and Welsh Quakers and Baptists, the Schwenkfelders, and the Seventh Day Ger- man Baptists. There was room for them all. Pennsyl- vania was ample in area, possessing a fertile soil and a climate not too rigorous, and the colony grew rapidly in population and wealth. When William Penn outlined his plan of government he provided for religious freedom, and when the colony was organized the people through their representatives were given large powers of self-government. The Great Law of 1682 was strict in its rulings against profanity, crime, adultery and bigamy. It required all government officials to be professing Christians, and all citizens to be believers in God, but otherwise it permitted liberty in re- ligion. “It is enacted,” ran the law, “that no person now or at any time hereafter living in this province, who shall confess and acknowledge Almighty God to be the Creator, upholder and ruler of the world, and that professeth him or herself obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly under the civil government, shall in any wise be molested or prejudiced for his or her conscientious per- guasion or practice, nor shall he or she at any time be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place, or ministry, whatever, contrary to his or her mind, but shall freely and fully enjoy his or her Christian lib- erty in that respect.” Under this law Pennsylvania was a city of refuge for many who were sorely oppressed. By the time William Penn was getting his colony started and the Duke of York was making his Dutch sub- jects docile, the germ of liberalism was developing in Massachusetts. The first evidence of it was the adoption of the Half-way Covenant. From the early reorganization at Salem the churches of the Bay Colony had limited full membership to those who could show proper spiritual qualifications. This re- sulted in far smaller numbers in the churches than the # 49 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. 8. number of inhabitants in the colony. Since church mem- bership was prerequisite to voting, dissatisfaction was felt among certain of the settlers, but that feeling did not disturb the church leaders. That which troubled them was a lack of religious interest in the young people who had been baptized in infancy and were expected to take the places of their parents in the privileges and obligations of church membership. By 1660 there was danger that the churches might perish, unless spiritual regeneration should be waived as a qualification necessary for member- ship. Then, too, many of the colonists were moving out to the advancing frontiers of settlement, depleting the forces of the local churches, Land was reserved for relig- ious purposes, and new churches were built in the growing sections as fast as convenient, but their membership was small. Under these circumstances a church synod, meet- ing in 1662, set wider ajar the door to church member- ship. Those who had been baptized in infancy, if they “owned the covenant”? made for them by their parents, even though they had no such definite experience of re- pentance and faith as had been required of their parents, were permitted to present their children for baptism, and so a sort of ecclesiastical succession was provided for, but the membership of the Covenant did not carry with it par- ticipation in the communion or in the suffrage. The Half-way Covenant in thus making it easier to qualify for church membership helped to fill up the churches, but it resulted, as its opponents foresaw, in lowering the rigorous standards of Puritanism and in hastening the decline of religious interest that had begun already and was lamented by the Puritan clergy. The Half-way Covenant was abandoned generally about the middle of the eighteenth century. The acceptance of the Half-way Covenant marks not only a weakening of the theocracy but also a decline of religious interest in the New England churches. The leaders of the first generation were passing away. Hooker TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 43 had ceased his earthly labors in 1647; two years later Win- throp ended his useful life; in 1652 died John Cotton, “more lamented, probably, than any other of the fathers of New England, as his influence had doubtless contributed more than that of any other to settle the details of New England institutions.” The earnest men and women who had toiled with them in the occupation of the New Eng- land Canaan, and who had listened appreciatively to their pulpit ministrations and followed their political leader- ship were most of them beneath the sod by 1662. Those who followed them felt the deteriorating influence which accompanies life in a new settlement. Lack of the com- forts of life, of adequate educational opportunities, of the . refinement of an older civilization, produced a ruder type of men in both pulpit and pew. An ambition for exten- sive landed possessions led to scattered settlements, to a weakening of the old bonds, and to a prolonged influence of frontier life. Political questions absorbed attention, economic disturbances troubled them, and war with its horrors and its demoralization left its mark upon the settlements. Not least important of all was the tendency, illustrated by the Half-way Covenant, to make certain forms take the place of genuine religious experience and worship, to be content, as had the churches of Europe, with a nominal adherence to the church, a tendency which the first colonists would have opposed ardently. All these in- fluences produced a religious decline. Disregard of the claims of the church, Sabbath-breaking, intemperance, licentiousness, and a lack of the homely virtues, became gradually conspicuous. They were lamented frequently by writers of the last quarter century before 1700. “That there is a great decay of the power of religion throughout all New England,” wrote Increase Mather, “ig lamentably true... . If the begun apostasy should proceed as fast the next thirty years, as it has done these last, surely it will come to that in New England except the gospel itself depart with the 44 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. order of it that the most conscientious people therein will think themselves concerned to gather churches out of churches.” Some years earlier Torrey of Weymouth, in an election sermon at Boston, said: “There is already a great death upon religion, little more left than a name to live. . . . As converting work doth cease, so religion doth | die away.” Increase Mather said to Harvard students in 1696: “It is the judgment of very learned men, that, in the glorious times promised to the church on earth, Amer- wea will be Hell. And although there is a number of the elect of God to be born here, I am very afraid, that, in process of time, New England will be the wofullest place in all America; as some other parts of the world, once fa- mous for religion, are now the dolefullest on earth, perfect pictures and emblems of Hell, when you see this little academy fallen to the ground,—then know it is a terrible thing, which God is about to bring upon this land.”’ Such doleful statements continued to be heard for fifty years in all parts of New England. In 1679, when this tendency became plain, the General Court at the suggestion of eighteen prominent ministers called the Reforming Synod to attempt to find a remedy. This body recognized the unfortunate conditions, enume- rated thirteen prevalent evils, and prescribed therefor twelve remedies to strengthen the ecclesiastical founda- tions. A part of the work of the Synod was the prepara- tion of a revised confession of faith, which in the form of the Savoy Confession of England was adopted at a second session of the Reforming Synod in 1680. But the medicine prescribed produced only temporary effect. Contemporaneous with this period and a vigorous de- fender of Puritan standards was Reverend Increase Mather. Through a long life in church, college, and state he tried to stem the tide of religious indifference, much of the time seconded by his equally eminent son, Cotton Mather. It is not inappropriate to call the period the TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 45 Age of the Mathers. In his early days Mather was intoler- ant of other sects. “I believe,” he said, “that antichrist hath not at this day a more probable way to advance his kingdom of darkness than by a toleration of all religions and persuasions.” But as he ripened with the years his mind broadened, until in 1718 with his son Cotton he joined in the ordination of a Baptist minister in the town of Boston. The most serious incident of the period was the loss of the first charter of the Bay colony. The numerous com- plaints of oppression that had gone to England induced the English king, Charles II, to abrogate the charter in 1684, and with it threatened to fall the laboriously reared system of Puritan institutions. In the end there was little change, though it required religious toleration in the state and freedom of the franchise regardless of church membership. For sixty years church and state had been almost synonymous. During most of that time the powers of government had been invoked to maintain the undis- turbed reign of orthodoxy. But other denominations had been making headway for some time. Baptists and Friends had both secured a foothold in Boston, and with the abrogation of the old charter came Episcopacy to vex the people of the Old South church until King’s Chapel was ready for its use. Equality was not yet, but the last decade of the century marks the end of an era. It was a changing theology that produced another stage in the growth of liberalism. In the eighteenth century the New England churches became interested in discus- sions about Calvinism. Hitherto their main concern had been with questions of church membership, discipline and forms of organization. Though they had organized on a Congregational basis, they were semi-presbyterian in the local churches in Massachusetts, and in Connecticut were consociations of churches. They thought better of it after a time, but polity entered into their debates and their experiments. With doctrine they were only slightly con- 46 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. 8. cerned after the Cambridge Synod had adopted the West- minster Confession of Faith in 1648. The last years of the seventeenth century saw the organization of a church in Boston on a more liberal doc- trinal basis. No relation of Christian experience was necessary for admission to membership, and the minister of the new church had been ordained in England, lest the Massachusetts ministers should judge him too liberal to receive their approval in an ordination council, Already in England there was a distinct drift away from the think- ing and the discipline of Geneva, and in its place a cold, formal type of religion known as Arminianism was com- ing into vogue. The changed atmosphere was felt in the circles of ministerial education. Harvard College was so progressive in ideas as to make Increase Mather unaccep- table as its president, and his son, Cotton, felt Satan ter- ribly shaking the churches of Massachusetts. To combat this tendency and to arrest the decline of religious interest it was necessary to warm the hearts of the people re- ligiously and to champion the Calvinistic faith. The apostle who assumed that task was Jonathan Edwards. Of devout ancestry, born in 1703 and trained at Yale College, and influenced by a religious experience that was to him very definite, Edwards became while still a young man the minister of the church at Northampton in the Connecticut river valley, the most influential clerical po- sition in Massachusetts outside the Boston district. He succeeded his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, who had ‘ favored admitting all exemplary persons to the Lord’s Supper as a means of divine grace, and had so faithfully warned them to make their peace with God that an unusual interest in religion permeated the town. From this van- tage point the youthful minister began preaching heart- searching sermons that were so superheated with the fires of eternal punishment that in terror for their souls the people of the village yielded to his warnings and sought admission to membership in the church. The events in TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 47 Northampton were not isolated occurrences. In many lo- calities a similar revival of interest in personal religion was producing a new religious atmosphere. It was natural that the new interest in religion should lead to a new interest in theology, for theology is an at- tempt to interpret religious experience. Were the Cal- vinistic ideas of the fathers correctly thought out and sub- stantiated by God’s Word, or did the newer Arminian doctrines that were flourishing in England come nearer the truth? Was sovereignty absolute, or was it conditioned by the attitude of the human creature? Was Christ “very God of very God,” or was the Arian tenet of the inferior- ity of the Son rather to be accepted? Arianism had been making its way in England as a natural result of un- spiritual Arminianism, but was as yet scarcely perceptible in America. Edwards became the chief of interpreters, as he was the prince of revivalists. By philosophical as well as theo- logical writings he refuted the propositions of the Armin- ian writers in England, whose publications were being read in America. Discussing the freedom of the human will, he softened the severity of the Calvinistic doctrine of election by explaining that man had a natural though not a moral ability to repent of his sins, and he was therefore responsible to act upon that natural ability. To use means of grace without repentance in order to get into right relations with God was sinful. Edwards’s champion- ship of a slightly modified Calvinism gave him a solid reputation with the Congregationalists of New England, but his teaching about the misuse of the means of grace made him unpopular in the church that had been educated in the ideas of Stoddardeanism, and led to his resignation as pastor. The erstwhile minister of Northampton presently be- came a frontier guardian of religion and missionary to the Indians at Stockbridge in the Berkshire Hills of west- ern Massachusetts. There he had leisure to think and to 48 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. write. The result was an extended discussion of original sin and of the nature of virtue. In these writings Ed- wards gained for himself in England as well as in America a high reputation as a philosopher, and he vindicated a form of Calvinism that proved so acceptable to the Con- gregational churches that it became known as the New England theology, supplanting the “Old Calvinism” with a “New Divinity.” Jonathan Edwards holds an unrivaled place among the Puritan divines of New England. Combining the severe piety of the first generation of the fathers with the mystical fervor of an eighteenth century prophet, he per- formed for the churches the service of clarifying their theology and spiritualizing their religion. He preached what was in his heart as well as in his brain. In his own experience a sovereign God had gripped his soul and at- tached it to himself by bonds that could not be broken. He agonized to bring men to an understanding of a similar experience. By his evangelistic emphasis he made a permanent impression upon his contemporaries. By means of his remarkable powers of argumentation he suc- ceeded in reéstablishing the Calvinistic faith, which had been sorely wounded by the prevalent Arminianism. Dy- ing in the prime of life, as he was about to assume the presidency of Princeton College, he left behind him an inheritance of thought and feeling that profoundly affected the succeeding period of New England history. Edwards partially humanized Calvinism at the same time that he vindicated it, and he was followed by a galaxy of lesser theological lights, who contributed their addenda to his thought through several generations. But none of them can be said to have liberalized Puritan orthodoxy. It remained for certain Massachusetts preachers to show a decided tendency towards theological liberalism. Charles Chauncy opposed the revivalism that Edwards had initiated, and controverted his orthodox writings with numerous sermons and essays. In opposi-— TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 49 tion to the prevailing belief that man depended on God for his salvation Chauncy urged the necessary and rational course of striving to obtain salvation. Believing in the authority and infallibility of the Bible, holding to the current governmental theory of the atonement, he was in most respects a normal Congregationalist, but he antici- pated a universal restoration of all men after prolonged suffering in hell, and he was typical of not a few who were drifting to new moorings without a very definite idea of whither they were bound. Still more independent was Jonathan Mayhew, pastor of the West church in Boston. With lips and pen he treated lightly certain of the fundamental doctrines, shock- ing the conservative people of the churches. Bellamy, one of the doctrinal heirs of Edwards, denouncing’ liberal tendencies cried: “Come along to Boston, and see there a celebrated doctor of divinity, at the head of a large party! He boldly ridicules the doctrine of the Trinity, and de- nies the doctrine of justification by faith alone, in the sight of all the country, in his book of sermons.” Unitarianism was in the making. Liberal thought was surging in the veins of restless thinkers in religion, as it was in politics in those years before the Revolution. The tendency of the times was in his favor. The Revolutionary struggle absorbed attention for a few years; then religious liberty was to take the field and maintain the same prin- ciples in the realm of the spirit as of the State. Another phase of the tendency towards liberalism ap- pears in the struggle for ecclesiastical equality. It was an Old World tradition, accepted unquestioningly by most of the American church people, that church and state should be in close relation. The church was the mentor of the state, and the state the protector of the church. Legislatures interested themselves in ecclesiastical affairs, and passed laws for the support of the churches. All citizens were taxed for the building and maintenance of meeting-houses in the local parishes, and for the support 50 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. §. of a minister, whether in Puritan New England or Epis- copal Virginia. It was a long time before any exception was made for those who belonged to dissenting churches, and non-church members could not expect to escape church taxes. ‘There was grave dissatisfaction. There was con- certed agitation among the Baptists in Massachusetts just as the Revolutionary conflict was breaking out. In a memorial to the provincial assembly and to the Conti- nental Congress they argued the same principle of inde- pendence that the colonies were demanding from Great Britain. Why should they be taxed for the support of another church any more than the American colonies should be taxed for the benefit of the mother country? The churches in association appointed an agent to collect grievances, and if necessary to carry their complaint to the highest authorities, but the policy of the colony was not altered. The constitution that was adopted in 1780 by the inde pendent State of Massachusetts preserved the Congrega- tional church establishment, but dissenting congregations were permitted to divert to their use the contributions of their members that were paid to the parish for church support. Still there were legal technicalities that vexed dissenters for thirty years longer. The Puritan Estab lishment did not give up its union with the State until 1833. In Virginia an intolerant policy towards dissenters of all sorts was long maintained. Although the Episcopal ministers were unpopular, the persons were few whose convictions led them to separate from the churches of the established faith, but Baptists, Presbyterians and Quakers increased in numbers. As in Massachusetts, the approach of the Revolution led to a memorializing of the legislature of the colony in behalf of the separation of church and State, the petitioners expressing the hope that “in this enlightened age, and in a land where all of every denomi- nation are united in the most strenuous efforts to be free,” TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 51 the legislature would agree to remove “every species of religious as well as civil bondage.” Taking the position of Roger Williams, they affirmed that governments should be restricted to civil functions, that religion was a per- sonal affair and one’s duty to his God could only “be di- rected by reason and conviction.”’ Remonstrances came _ from the other side, pointing out the value and prestige of the Establishment, and the colonial assembly spent a long time discussing the matter. The immediate result was the exemption of dissenters from ecclesiastical taxes, and the repeal of all laws enforcing attendance at the parish churches. Religious freedom became complete in 1785, when Thomas Jefferson championed the cause of religious equality, declaring that any restriction upon perfect religious liberty was infringement upon a natural right. Other colonies North and South followed this ex- ample of disestablishment, abolished religious qualifica- tions for the suffrage, and removed from their statute books laws against such obnoxious persons as Catholics, which for a time had blotted the fame even of Rhode Island’s broad tolerance. Most important of all was the adoption of the first clause of the Bill of Rights appended to the Constitution of the new nation forbidding the estab- lishment of any national church. This broad policy did not mean that the nation ceased to be Christian, but it established as a fundamental principle the sacred right of freedom to think, to speak, and to worship according to the impulse of the inner spirit. IV. THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM THE winning of religious freedom established the prin- Jciple of voluntarism in American ecclesiastical circles. By the Old World system both the Catholic and Protestant churches of Europe had their assured income from lands and taxes. Gifts were expected, but they were only inci- dental to the larger permanent incomes. In America the whole future of religionwas intrusted to the personal interest of men and women whose first concern would naturally be the support of their own families, and whose absorption in winning a competency from the new conti- nent might make it seem doubtful if they would give gen- erously for so intangible a thing as religion. Voluntarism proved a stimulus to church activity. It is a healthy principle that a church must exert itself in order to live, and endowments and establishments fre- quently cut the nerve of generosity. Voluntarism was a ‘principle in harmony with the sturdy, self-reliant char- .acter of colonists inured to hardship and depending on their own resources. It was in accord with the genius of America, and no other principle could have endured in American churches. To Europeans accustomed to look to Government for every needed church equipment, it seemed remarkable that church members, and even those outside of the churches, should so generously contribute to the building of meeting-houses, should pay willingly the salaries of the ministers, should found and endow academies and col- leges, should raise sums of money to send missionaries to the frontiers of their own land and to lands on the other side of the world which they had never seen, and should 52 THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 53 cooperate heartily both with money and effort in various kinds of philanthropy. What seemed so strange became a matter of course to Americans, and in spite of the rapid growth of population and the expansion of the country westward the churches kept pace with the need. Voluntarism is not merely a matter of church support. It was almost as novel a principle in regard to membership . in the churches. With an established church, as in Eng- land, it was the natural expectation that membership would be coextensive with citizenship. From the begin- ning it was not so in the most virile American colonies, and it became an established principle among American Protestants that religion was a personal matter, and that the responsibilities of church membership should be as- sumed only after a voluntary act of initiation into such membership. Where baptism had been administered in infancy the child grown to adolescence took upon himself the obligations assumed by others, owning the covenant that had been made for him or accepting confirmation at the hands of a bishop, and thus publicly acknowledged his purpose and his church relation. Persons not thus baptized decided for themselves when, if at all, they would apply for baptism and church membership. The working out of the voluntary principle has demon- strated its sufficiency. A heartfelt loyalty to the church of one’s choice, a willingness to serve in the ecclesiastical ranks that has made great lay movements possible, a gen- erosity unparalleled in church history, are among the results that the principle has wrought. Churches are tempted sometimes to resort to strong measures to obtain greatly needed funds, but it is not necessary to demand tithes or to lay assessments. The missionary enterprise of evangelical Christians in this country is a stupendous undertaking, when it is realized that the societies that direct it are voluntary, that its directing boards are un- paid, and that its resources are the generous hearts of its constituents. Greater sums are devoted to the support of 54 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. local churches, but they too are the voluntary gifts of the members, yet for generations ministers have labored, Sunday school teachers have instructed, and workers have toiled for little or nothing because of their love of the church or of their particular enterprise. Voluntarism is so obvious a principle, as it is exhibited in American churches, that its significance is overlooked, but it is one of the revolutionary principles adopted by modern ecclesiastical organizations. It does not work easily among people brought up to the state church sys- tem, as in the case of foreign-speaking churches gathered among converts to Protestantism who have migrated hither. It requires training in stewardship even among those who have been reared to accept it in principle. But it is the only principle that agrees with a republican goy- ernment, with an intelligent citizenry, and with religious liberty in faith and organization. For these reasons it seems certain to endure. A second consequence of emancipation was democracy in the churches. Democracy has become so familiar in church as in state that it is not easy to realize how revo- lutionary it was as compared with the European practice to give the management of ecclesiastical affairs to the people. Throughout the Middle Ages the people had | nothing to say about the conduct of church matters. That belonged to a separate class of ordained clergy. In the Protestant countries of Europe the hold of the clergy re- mained strong. Aristocratic control by bishop or pres- byter was the order in the state churches of Holland, Scan- dinavia, England, or Scotland. Congregationalism had hardly been conceived when the seventeenth century opened. In Massachusetts the Congregational ministers presumed to dominate the local congregation, and even to direct the action of the colonial legislature, when pos- sible, and in Connecticut they went so far as to organize a semi-presbyterian consociation of churches, but the trend of the times was in favor of the laity sharing in ecclesi- THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 55 astical legislation and administration. In the colonial South the clergy were dependent upon their vestrymen, so that local control of ecclesiastical affairs was in the hands of laymen. In the North in Congregational and Baptist churches one man had as good a right to speak and vote and hold office as another, and ministers gradually lost their masterfulness. In both denominations the right of the local churches was guarded jealously, and the or- ' ganization of district and national assemblies was long delayed. Later on new groups, like the Campbellites, or- ganized themselves on a voluntary basis and refused to accept the authority of any person or clerical body that was not responsible to the people. In such bodies as the Episcopal Convention or the Methodist Conference, organ- ized as soon as circumstances warranted, there was larger measure of superintendence, but even there the people were the court of last resort, and the principle of democracy grew in favor. As time went on the members of the churches demanded full lay representation in the ecclesi- astical assemblies, and obtained the privilege of speaking and voting and holding office. Democracy is practised with as keen a relish in church circles as in the old New England town meetings, so ex- pert a school in the training of a democratic people. It is in America that laymen in the churches have developed their movements, even among the Catholics, and in the most democratic groups women have enjoyed equal rights. with men in most instances, and even have found their way into pulpits as well as on governing boards. The result has been that every variety of Protestant religious organization that has counted for much in this country, no matter what its polity or ecclesiastical tradition, is organ- ized democratically. Authority may be delegated for various purposes, but the ultimate control rests with the individual members of the churches. Democracy, like voluntarism, is in narmony with the government and social life of the people in America, but 56 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. it does not agree with the ecclesiastical traditions that have come down from the European past, and since the church is a conservative institution it would not have been strange if there had been more of aristocratic government in the American churches. But as the pure democracy of the town. meeting-and the representative democracy of the colonial assembly fostered.-political liberty, and in turn were made permanently possible by the full realiza- tion of political liberty, so the pure and representative democracies of the.Protestant churches stimulated re- ligious liberty and were a permanent consequence of that liberty. A third consequence of religious liberty was_denomina- tionalism. Though not undeveloped elsewhere, and tend- ing to perpetuate the distinctive features of its European origins, it is as characteristic an American product as voluntarism. Condemned as denominationalism has been for its two hundred varieties of churches, for its rivalries and jealousies, its proselyting and overchurching, its spirit of bigotry and its perpetuation of outgrown issues, de- nominationalism must be recognized as the inevitable out- come of the principle that every person has a right to choose his religious affiliations, and that like seeks like according to the law of social psychology. Denomination- alism was impossible when uniformity was enforced, as it was generally until the days of American settlement. It grew rapidly in the fertile soil of religious indepen- dency. Individualism has always been conspicuous as an American trait. It strengthened with the process of the disintegration of old institutions consequent upon eman- cipation from the old tyrannies. It has produced denomi- national variety, and has split up denominations into smaller units, with independent organization, though with a family likeness. But there is a point beyond which the disintegration of religious organization does not go. Seekers, because they could not find any body of Chris- tians that suited their ideas, might separate from all de- THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM = 57% nominations, but the normal person prefers companion- ship in religion, and those who have similar convictions and purposes have united in religious as in political and social groups. In the absence of political restraint a single local church learned to know others of its sort, and to value mutual counsel and codperation. Loosely organ- ized bodies were slow to yield to the centripetal forces, but the values that denominationalism exhibited in the experiences of years made it the inevitable consequence. It was the fellowship and counsel of the other churches that made single bodies unite in association or conference. Under the impulse of the missionary passion they organ- ized their voluntary societies, first for domestic and then for foreign missions, and thus learned the value of co- operation for a common purpose. A denomination like the Episcopalian. nad an in- herited tradition and a closely knit organization that gave it a relatively keen appreciation of the denomination; the denominational consciousness was relatively easy of at- tainment by the Presbyterians; but others came to de- nominational consciousness only when a common enter- prise like foreign missions awoke them to their likemind- edness. Denominationalism in America has resembled nationalism. Reluctance to accept overhead authority made the community and state hold on to their inde pendence as long as possible, but the larger interests of the people as a whole made closer association and organization necessary. As in the nation so in the denomination a spirit of loyalty developed that strengthened the bonds of the churches of a given name, while it weakened inter- denominational codperation. The denominational emphasis was costly. It estab- lished too many churches in a limited territory and made no provision at all for the needs of the people in certain neighborhoods. It produced envy, jealousy, unhealthy rivalry. It reacted unfavorably upon public opinion out- side the churches. But it was the product of the spirit 58 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. of the times, with its emphasis upon independence and group rights. It was particularly strong on the frontier, where its effects were unfortunate. Instead of a multitude of weak Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian enterprises, there might have been one or two strong, evangelical churches, located strategically in each community, but it required long experience to make that plain. These three consequences of religious liberty—volun- tarism, democracy, and denominationalism—are signifi- cant characteristics of American Christianity. ‘They are not exclusively American products, but they have had fullest opportunity for experimentation and fullest vin- dication here, where religion is most free and has un- limited scope. They are not likely to cease to function, for they are in harmony with the American spirit. That they will be supplemented on occasion, as, for example, by interdenominational conferences, there is every rea- son to expect.. That they require a high degree of educa- tion in the rank and file and skilled leadership, if the churches are to be efficient, is unquestionable. but, whether for good or ill, they are the outstanding elements in the American ecclesiastical system. One other consequence of religious freedom and equal- ity was evangelism. Since an individual did not enter — automatically into church membership under a voluntary system, it was necessary to persuade him to qualify for admittance. The pulpit therefore appealed to those who had not made profession of religion, and at certain seasons made special effort for a religious revival. In the Protestant, especially the Puritan, churches of that time the pulpit was the preacher’s throne. In gown and bands the Puritan preacher stood in his lofty eyrie perched above the heads of the people, and with grave dignity spoke with an authority that was seldom dis- puted. In revival services the preacher came nearer to the level of his audience, sometimes spoke in the open air after the fashion of Wesley and Whitefield, the Eng- THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 59 lish revivalists, and drove home his message with pun- gency. Frontier evangelism became necessary with the advance . of settlement. From the early years of colonization new territory was opened continually. One of the strong in- ducements to colonization was the opportunity to occupy larger areas of land than was possible at home, and as the lands contiguous to the villages were taken up settlers moved out upon unused acres that stretched away into the woods and over the hills, even if they required clearing and the erection of buildings. The Indians were a de- terrent, but in the intervals of peace the people ventured out, and, after King Philip’s War in New England and the seventeenth century massacres in Virginia had passed, the settlers moved farther afield and planted an increasing number of small colonies up to the falls line of the rivers. To these infant settlements religion found its way. Its natural hold upon the expanding territory was tenuous, but always a few persons were religiously minded, and new churches were organized with the encouragement of the older organizations wherever it seemed expedient. For a time land was granted only to settlers of satisfac- tory respectability and character, but in the long run the demand for land was too strong for the maintenance of restrictions. In New England the influence of the Puri- tans lingered with their descendants, yet it was inevitable that physical weariness and mental absorption in the la- borious task of carving estates out of the wilderness, to- gether with the rude customs and moral laxity that are always characteristic of frontier settlements, should weaken the appeal of religion. Even where there were churches, their influence was less than that of the older settlements. In the South, where meeting-houses were less easy of access and the character of the clergy was less religious, the interest in religion was slight. In an offi- cial letter a Virginia governor wrote to the British Lords of Trade in 1717 that the frontier foik were “so little 60 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. concerned about religion that the children of many of the inhabitants of those frontier settlements are twenty, and some thirty years of age before they are baptized, and some not at all.” The Carolina frontier attracted the more shiftless people of Virginia, and they were usually irreligious and lawless. Sometimes they were guilty of getting the Indians drunk and then robbing them, thus arousing the ire of the natives against all white men. With advancing settlement this worthless element drifted farther west out of the reach of ministers and churches. It was in the newer settlements of the seaboard colo- nies that the revival of religion had its fittest setting, but. the older towns shared in the Great. Awakening that. fol- lowed the outbreak of religious intensity at Northampton under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards. The prince of evangelists of that period was George Whitefield of England. His methods did not suit the Anglican Church in which he was reared, and like John Wesley he went his own independent way. Convinced of a personal re- ligious experience that came to him quite apart from eccle- siastical influence, he did not hesitate to carry his gospel to the common people in the fields, when he was not. wel- come in the churches. He gave a great impulse to Method- ism, though he did not agree with Wesley in theology. Together they introduced a vital religion to the working people, which Puritanism had failed to do, and helped to save England from the excesses which eventuated in the Revolution in France. Whitefield crossed the Atlantic and used his remark- able oratorical abilities in a preaching tour along the coast. ‘Ihe magnetism of his words and his presence drew immense audiences to hear him wherever he went, Crowded out of the meeting-houses, at first because they were too small and later because many church leaders thought he was too strenuous and sensational, he preached out of doors. People-rode many miles across country to hear him, leaving the plow in the furrow, as minute THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 61 men went to war in the Revolution... The excitement that attended the preaching of Edwards was repeated wherever Whitefield went. A later journey was less successful, and the evangelist felt himself opposed by ministers and churches who did not like his kind of religion. Whitefield was succeeded by Tennent and Davenport, men of the Middle colonies, who were sometimes inju- dicious in their criticisms of their opponents. In some sections an unfavorable reaction set in. So unrelenting was the opposition on the part of some churches that a division occurred in the ecclesiastical ranks. ‘New Light’? sympathizers with the revivalists seceded and organized Separatist churches in Connecticut and Massa- chusetts, especially in the newer settlements, or joined the Baptists who were more evangelistic than the Congrega- tionalists and Presbyterians. These groups became centers of religious ferment, and in several instances their church associations became agencies for the support of itinerant evangelists. In the neighborhood of Philadelphia William Tennent founded the “Log College’ for the training of evangelists, men who would not otherwise be at all accep- table to Presbyterians,a body. that had strong scruples against an uneducated ministry. That school became a source of supply for religious exhorters over a large area in the Middle and Southern colonies. One of the fruits of the revival period was Princeton College, founded by the progressive Presbyterians in 1746 for high grade ministerial education. Pastors of parish churches felt an obligation to itinerate at intervals among the remote. settlements. As earlier evangelists in colonial days had gone among the Indians of Massachusetts from Martha’s Vineyard to the Berk- shire Hills, and had gathered them into Christian villages and churches, so in the last half of the eighteenth century zealous preachers visited Cape Cod, pushed up into the granite hills of New Hampshire, and travelled along the inlets and the rocky shore of Maine. Such men went 62 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. at their own charges, rode their own horses, and lodged as hospitality offered. Certain New Light evangelists from New England took the long journey to the South, planted revivalist churches and set the people on fire. When the demands became greater than could be met by temporary absences of settled ministers, associations of. churches assumed the responsibility and sent out evan- gelists for periods of three months or longer, from New England to the pioneer settlers and Indians of New York and the Canadian border, and even to the South from Pennsylvania. These men endured hardships on starva- tion salaries because of their religious devotion. The Revolutionary war and the French Revolution with — its hostility to organized religion had an unfortunate reaction on the religious interest of the American people. Experience proved that war is never productive of spiri- tual fervor. During the progress of the Revolution the war furnished a common topic of conversation during the week, and supplied the theme of many a pulpit dis- course on Sunday. It proved the patriotism of most. of the ministers and churches, but it did not stimulate that feeling of good will towards God and man that is so essential an element in vital religion. From France and from the writings of such a patriot as Thomas Paine, in- fluences productive of unbelief in religion affected young men in the colleges, and even. some of the statesmen in the country. Lyman Beecher, a student at Yale College in the closing years of the century, testified to the lack of religious interest there and against the irreligious tendency President Timothy Dwight found it desirable to champion the fundamentals of religion in the classroom. Ecclesias- tical apologists disputed with local infidels at the popular village forums and local preachers denounced infidelity from their pulpits, but intellectual arguments seldom converted an unbeliever to a genuine faith. By the end of the century a need of vigorous constructive preaching was apparent everywhere. | THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 63 The popular revival of religion that was noticeable after the turn of the century soon gave evidence of the impor: tance of evangelism, and widespread revivals recurred intermittently to the Civil War. In the older settlements local ministers aroused the people without the help of peripatetic revivalists. Meeting-houses were thronged by attentive audiences. The appeal of the minister was less sensational than it had been sixty years earlier. His argument was built around the idea.of.the exceeding sin- fulness of man and his need of a soul salvation that could be obtained only through faith in the efficient sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. His effort was to arouse the will of the individual and so bring him to a point where he would confess his sins and find a joyful hope of forgiveness, when he would be received on confession of faith into church membership. The popular movement began among the Baptists, who were most insistent on a transforming religious experi- ence. It was at this period that their preachers made such an impression upon the people of the South, whites and blacks alike, that their type of religion has been domi- nant in that region ever since. ‘The Baptists were ably seconded by the Methodists, who in England had_per- petuated the warm Arminian theology and fervent preach- ing of John Wesley, and who at the time of the Revolu- tion commenced in free America a movement that ad- vanced with little interruption until the Methodists be- came the most successful exponents of a vigorous, efficient religion. At their first coming they were not received cordially in the older settlements, and they resorted to private houses where they gathered a few sympathizers. In most cases they organized_classes of the few who ac- cepted their message, and then the itinerant. preachers passed on to carry their gospel to other villages. Their first chapels were built on the outskirts of the towns. The growth of Methodism at first was slow but steady. Al- ways some persons thirsted for a religious faith and 64 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. experience that the Episcopal or Congregational church did not give, or who were repelled by the hard Calvinism of the Presbyterians or Baptists,.or by the insistence of the latter on immersion. as necessary to admission into the church. By the end of the century Methodism had _ won a recognized place even in the older parts of the country. In the newer portions of the South and West revivals were of a more emotional type. Evangelism had its most sweeping successes in the backwoods settlements where fervent, if ignorant, preachers easily aroused excitement among people who had little to divert them and who were easily stirred to an. interest. in a religion that had con- trolled their ancestors. The people of the interior were largely Scotch-Irish in origin. They themselves or their immediate ancestors had lived in the north of Ireland where Scotch people had settled as colonists, and had prospered until economic misfortune and religious perse- cution had driven thousands of families overseas. Some of them had attempted to find homes in New England, but the Congregationalists did not like their Presbyteri- anism and were not cordial. Others of them found places of settlement in New York and New Jersey. Still others went to Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. By far_ the largest numbers found their way into the interior of Pennsylvania and flooded the back country, flowing south in a steady stream between the Blue Ridge and the Alle- ghanies. This race that had brought Irish moor and fen under cultivation, and had built up manufacturing indus- tries in the northern towns that rivaled those of manufac- turers in England, was destined to prove itself of superior value as an element in the complex of races that was to build America, but for a time the Scotch-Irish created an immigrant problem. They did not harmonize with the tidewater aristocracy of the lower counties of the South. Political disturbances occurred. They were useful for a time as a buffer against the Indians, and during the THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM = 65 Revolution they were a tower of strength to the new republic, but they were an independent people, and the frontier intensified their natural characteristics. In_re-~ ligion they were strong in doctrines, but less.exact in-their conduct under frontier conditions. Their psychology has survived in the mountain whites of the mountain pockets of the Southland. They did not fit in with the Episco- palians of the lower counties, and in the end they had a prominent part in the disestablishment of the Anglican Church and in the adoption of the principle of religious freedom. They inherited Scotch Presbyterianism, but their uncouth preachers were not liked by the older, better trained Presbyterian clergy, and the time came when the revivalist sympathizers withdrew from the main body and organized their Cumberland Presbytery, as New Light Congregationalists in New England became Separatists. Like other frontier folk, the Scotch-Irish needed religious inspiration and leadership, and they received it from the camp meeting evangelist. The camp meeting affords a fruitful study in the psy- chology of religion; it is one of the most interesting ex- amples of the vagaries of the social mind. In spite of its extravagances it had profound effects religiously and morally. The Cane Ridge camp meeting is the best ex- ample of many assemblies in the new Southwest. In a clearing near the Cane Ridge meeting-house an immense tent was spread and a platform erected, and the meeting began. The people, glad of any event that would bring them together, and with religious natures intense and unrestrained, gathered in large numbers and yielded readily to the influence of the preacher. Homes and set- tlements were deserted, fields were left unworked, in vehi- cles of every sort and on horseback they came from all directions and camped for days around the tent. Con- tinuous excitement prevailed. There was hardly time to eat or sleep. The meetings continued often all night. The grove lighted with camp fires, and the songs and 66 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. groans of sinners and saints, created a weird scene, and made realistic the pictured scenes of the other world and the judgment. Naturally under the continued strain of excitement weak nerves gave way and muscular contor- tions exhibited themselves. Men and women rolled on the ground, foamed at the mouth, jerked their heads, arms, and legs, or even went mad with fear. With the prevail- ing belief in the deadliness of sin and the horrors of hell, the exhorters had weapons as powerful with their hearers as the anathema and excommunication of the Roman Catholic church of the Middle Ages. It required a brave mind and unusual strength of will to resist the tide of emotion that swept over the thousands of people camping at Cane Ridge, and few resisted successfully. Camp meetings of this popular sort were common in the newer parts of the country; like political rallies they filled a social need in spite of their crudities. Evangelism of the saner type proved so successful as a means of church growth that ministers of the popular denominations employed evangelistic methods, and de- pended from time to time on religious spellbinders to stir the impulses of the people. Intermittent revivals of na- tional scope continued up to the Civil War. Certain evangelists, like Finney and Knapp, and later Moody, gained a national reputation. They were especially suc- cessful at times of public discouragement and distress, such as happened during the hard times of industrial de- pression. ‘They drew the people in masses to their meet- ings, and often numbered their converts by the thou- sand. Such intensification of the religious impulse had its reaction with many in a loss of interest after a few months, and it would require renewed effort at the next revival period to stir the “‘backsliders,” but many were won to a permanent allegiance to the churches, and re- mained steady in their purpose and support. Even the Roman Catholics in time adopted the revival method in their preaching missions. Parish priests made THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM = 67 the preliminary preparations, and then two or more fathers of a special order, gifted in the art of persuasion, visited the parish church and held a series of meetings for several weeks with frequent sermons and practical talks, closing with the solemn reconsecration of the con- eregation. ‘These missions proved effective in keeping the people tuned to their religion, and resulted frequently in attracting individual Protestants into the Catholic church. Evangelism on the advancing frontier soon developed into what is known technically as home or domestic mis- sions, and it stimulated an interest in the English mis- sionary enterprises that had been undertaken in India and the Pacific Islands, until the American churches had definitely entered upon an organized foreign mission enterprise of their own. The Evangelical Awakening of the early nineteenth century broadened the minds of the rapidly growing churches. They began to understand something of the obligations of Christian people. They felt a new interest in the unfortunate and oppressed, and before long were experimenting in philanthropy. They saw the necessity of more and better schools for the training of ministers and of their own young people, and presently they conceived new ways of religious edu- cation through the Sunday School. All these were conse- quences of an active interest in a free, voluntary re- ligious organization, not outwardly imposed, but valued the more because it was popularly sustained. The broad- ening out of religion makes the nineteenth century signifi- cant in the history of the American churches. Still another consequence of freedom was the develop- ment of religious organization. In the early part of the nineteenth century a national consciousness grew out of the merging of provincial interests in a national gov- ernment. Centrifugal forces pulled sections apart at times until the issue between nationalism and sectionalism was fought out in the Civil War, but after President Washington’s administration there was a new sense of 68 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. the value of the nation and a feeling of loyalty to it. Similarly a denominational consciousness was growing among religious people with the increasing settlement of the country, the easier intercommunication that followed, and the expanding interests that so many people held in common. ‘The religious denominations were not free from differences of personal opinion, group animosities, and the influence of sectional feeling in the nation, but local churches were associating themselves for fellowship and active effort. About the time of the organization of national govern- ment several of the prominent religious bodies completed a national organization. The severance of America from England compelled a reorganization of the Episcopal Church, and after some difficulty it was able to secure properly consecrated American bishops. The Methodist Church, Episcopacy’s thriving daughter, organized itself episcopally for its American career. The Presbyterians, who had brought presbyteries into existence, now com- pleted their organization with a General Assembly. All these were accomplished within the space of five years (1784-9). The Catholic Church in America received its first bishop in the same period. | Congregationalists and Baptists were local in their organization. However strict the Puritan governments might be in maintaining ecclesiastical standards in colo- nial New England, Congregationalists rejected both episcopacy and presbytery, and after experimenting with advisory synods, abandoned the idea even of associations of churches. Following the example of the London Missionary So- ciety of England, Congregationalists and Presbyterians joined in a “Plan of Union” for missionary purposes in 1801, but no Congregational church was bound by it, and after the experience of a few decades the two denomina- tions went their several ways. Yet the spirit of inde- pendence, strengthened by the victory of the principle THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 69 of voluntarism, which might naturally be expected to pre- vent any close association of churches, gave way before the growing conviction that the churches had a common missionary task. Both Congregationalists and Baptists organized voluntary societies to extend evangelistic enter- prises among the settlements, and in the second decade of the new century both denominations organized for foreign missions. It could not be foreseen at that date that foreign mis- sions would become one of the greatest civilizing forces of. modern.times; that in India and on its outlying frontiers hundreds of thousands of converts to Chris- tianity would be gathered into churches, and the churches of different denominations within a century would be leading the Christian world towards ecclesiastical. fed- eration and unity; that the closed doors of China and Japan would be opened to the teacher and the physician, and that Christian schools and churches would weaken the hold of Buddhism and Shintoism upon the Orientals; that Africa and the islands of the Pacific would: sur- render their savagery and paganism, and become trans- formed here and there into civilized regions; and that within a century the missionary leaders would be talk- ing about evangelizing the whole world within a genera- tion. What the church people of those days saw was the picture of millions of heathen perishing eternally without a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and in pity they were willing to give their money and their lives to the work of rescue. The conception of religion of that day was narrow. Christianity was the only religion that was true; all others should be destroyed. Divine grace had sent Christ into the world, had ordained that a few should put faith in him as a Savior of their souls, but that the large majority would perish in their sins. The great task of the church was to bring saving faith to those whom God should call. Preaching was the means of appeal to indi- 70 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. viduals and congregations, and churches provided and maintained the preachers. The sermon was the chief factor in all the attempts at evangelizing the people of the American frontier and of the foreign mission areas, and as soon as the people gave evidence of an experi- ence of saving grace in their hearts they were admitted to church membership. In this way there was a double gain, to the individuals and to the churches. When the interest of the churches had broadened to include foreign missions among their activities, they had not gone beyond the evangelizing emphasis. But circumstances forced upon the missionaries and the sus- taining boards a larger task. It did not require much experience to prove that preaching and gathering con- verts into churches was only the initial step in a process of Christian culture. On the foreign mission fields of the Kast Christian converts must be segregated from their pagan neighbors and taught how to live sane, moral lives, and their children must be provided with Christian schools that they might be brought into the Christian faith and prepared for Christian service. Some of them must be trained as Christian pastors, teachers and work- ers, so that institutions of higher grade were provided. Physically wretched, the people needed physicians and hospitals. Orphaned or uncared for children needed rearing in Christian homes. Ignorant of the rudiments of modern industry or agriculture, and even of decent home life, the masses of the people needed patient instruc- tion from those who shared in a higher civilization. Be- cause of these needs the missionary enterprise broadened to include the applications of Christianity to Eastern life. Vigorous opposition to these larger conceptions of Christian obligation was felt by the missionary societies. Prominent among such opponents were the Primitive Baptists of the Southwest. Only a moderate proportion of the churches of the various denominations took an ac- tive interest in missions. The societies were. merely volun- THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 71 tary associations of individuals who were interested enough to contribute to missionary support. Yet in spite of some opposition and more indifference American churches contributed to foreign missions with increasing generosity and intelligence, and the missionary enterprise became a factor of great importance in denominational organization. V. RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER THE spur that drove the missionary overseas sent his fellow out definitely upon the advancing frontier of America. By the frontier is meant the edge of settlement as emigration moved west from the Atlantic seaboard. It was continually shifting, not always with regularity, but always with motion forward. Before the Revolution was - over migration had crossed the Appalachian ridge and ~ established a new frontier in Kentucky and Tennessee, and shortly afterward in southern Ohio along the Ohio River. This new frontier had been advanced beyond the Mississippi by 1830, and three and a half million per- sons were living beyond the Alleghanies. After that the advance was over the prairies instead of through the forests. This migration to the West was chiefly Southern, much of it from the Southern highlands. The plantation sys- tem of the coast plains with its landed aristocracy and its slave economy did not agree well with the disposition and ideals of the free settlers of the interior. With few~ impedimenta they moved easily farther west, and they earried their idealism and religious peculiarities with them. Meantime New England emigration was getting a slow start. The development of the coast fisheries, the rapidly expanding commerce, and then the growth of the manufacturing industries that were to make New England famous, absorbed the attention of most of the people. A few New Englanders settled early in Ohio. The open- ing of the Erie Canal, combined with commercial decline and financial stress, set the Yankee in motion. He filled Jap western New York, opened up the Western Reserve 72 RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 73 in Ohio, and pushed on into the Lake region of the Mid- } dle West, taking with him his community life and his | discipline of character, and to some extent his ecclesiasti-/ cal organization. Before the middle of the nineteenth century the frontier edge had passed to the Missouri River, and within ten years settlers from North and South were fighting out the slave issue in Kansas. By 1880 the frontier line ran through northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, through South Dakota, and up the western rivers. Before that time it had leaped the Rockies and advanced to the Pacific coast in California and Oregon. By 1890 go - much of the interior had been entered that the Govern- ment declared that the frontier could be said scarcely to exist any longer. A hundred years had seen the suc- cessful penetration of the continent from the Alleghanies to the Pacific Ocean. The western movement was undertaken partly from a love of adventure, partly from an economic motive. The industrious New Englander found better lands in the Mohawk valley and by Lake Erie. His success in ex- ploiting them attracted a stream of migrating followers. The Southerner in the bluegrass fields of Kentucky and the rich river bottoms of the Ohio valley found more room for expansion than Virginia and Carolina could give him. Land speculation lured some. Economic dis- turbances consequent upon the Revolution drove others afield. The opening of the country north of the Ohio with a free government according to the Ordinance of 1787, and the purchase of the vast territory of Louisiana west of the Mississippi in 1803, attracted settlers with the limitless opportunity of expansion. Few migrations in history can compare with the ex- odus from the East to the West in America, and the supplementary migration from Europe to the American West. The changed environment deeply affected the life and character of the emigrants. Whole families were 74 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. torn up by the roots, and sometimes the transplanting was not a success. It continued over so long a time and so large an area that it affected the destinies of a continent. America has been vitalized by the swift life currents of the frontier. The story of its settlement has thrilled every patriot with red blood in his veins. The trek of the pioneer across the mountain range that barred the coast plain from the hinterland; the fording of streams on the other side, and the threading of forests and slopes that formed the second line of advance; the fight with the red man who added to the terrors of the borderland, and who watched with misgiving the progress of the advance guard of civilization; the building of a hut in a clearing by a stream or spring; the emergence upon the prairie, and the erection of a sod house for the family until time and the crops made a better home possible; the far gleam of the western moun- tains and the beckoning of the lands beyond to those whose restlessness drew them on toward the setting sun—these make up a story that is one of the epics of history. The effects of the migration were felt.in the East. In the South they were not so serious as in the North. With its large plantations and negro labor the South was as well off without its surplus population. In New England and the Middle colonies the loss was not keenly felt as long as families continued large, and only a few from each community yielded to the western fever. When these conditions changed, coupled with the attraction of the erowing cities, the decline of Eastern rural communities became marked. In a single decade one Rhode Island county lost more than a thousand of its inhabitants, a New Hampshire county lost nearly six hundred, and half of the counties in Vermont showed a decline. In 1860 Indiana and Michigan together contained fifty thou- sand persons who had been born in New England, Ohio and Wisconsin each had as many, and [Illinois boasted RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 75 more than sixty thousand—a total of nearly two hundred and twenty thousand persons. This numerical loss to New England was a significant gain to the Middle West. In that section, which was destined to become the dominant part of the nation, the New England qualities that had shaped the colonial char- acter of the North were sown for a generous harvest. Rich in community institutions and strong in its moral fiber, New England life was a healthy strain, and it generated a sturdy stock for the building of the new America. Not less significant was the contribution of the Scotch-Irish who were most numerous among the early pioneers. They gave to the first period of migration the strong individualism and will power that was so necessary for the front line of continent conquerors, just as the Yankees provided the elements that were necessary for building enduring settlements. The importance of the West in American history can hardly be overestimated. Economically the values of the West are immeasurable. The mines, the forests, the agri- culture, the lake and river and railroad traffic are im- pressive reminders. Politically the West has had a com- manding influence. Ohio long ago wrested from Vir- ginia the honor of producing Presidents of the nation, and mountain and prairie senators and congressmen dispute with the East the leadership of public affairs. Upon American social life the broad, free temper of the West- erner has made its permanent impression. Psychologically the West was a stimulant. It fostered self-reliance and a self-determination that has made the West a power to be felt in all departments of life. | For a long time few opportunities were offered for cultivating the finer qualities. Frontier life is close to nature, It is in the raw. Its passions are elemental. It reacts emotionally rather than intellectually. A log cabin political campaign or a religious revival appealed to the love of the dramatic and sensational. They were expres- 76 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. sions of the frontier mind that craves excitement and feeds on the bizarre and extravagant. The pioneer, re~ leased from the restraints of the older communities, coarsened by his struggle with beasts and savage men for existence, lacking the mental and moral poise that comes from social contacts, easily fell into bad habits, and was guilty of drunkenness, licentiousness, profanity, gambling, and general coarseness of speech and manners. ‘That was true of the pioneer period everywhere, from the Ken- tucky of Daniel Boone to the mining camps with which Bret Harte became familiar. Moral delinquency has not always meant irreligion. Presbyterians, Baptists and Quakers were among the vanguard of emigrants. They knew the fundamental doc- trines. ‘They had religious phrases on their tongues, even unction on lips stained with tobacco juice and moistened with white liquor. But they failed to apply religion to life. When religion came to them, it specialized in re- vivals from which moral lapses were easy, and men could be depended on to be sounder in theology than in ethical conduct and good will. The people of the frontier were not without occasional preaching, when itinerating evangelists came among them, but they lacked the church to conserve their emotion and make it fruitful. The preacher was their one inspiration, the prophet and savior of the frontier. Pushing his horse through a wilderness of forest, braving swollen streams and the danger of a savage foe, pressing on through summer heat and winter storms, stopping for a meal in a lonely cabin, sleeping where night found him with his saddle bags for a pillow, pondering on the Eternal while his horse foraged for noon rations, preach- ing in a house or out-of-doors wherever he could find a group to listen, he blazed a path for law and order, for morality and religion, in the new country beyond the mountains. The pioneer was followed soon by the permanent set- RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 17 tler. Church people from the East sometimes settled near one another and held occasional religious meetings. In- stances occurred where the emigrants took their church organization along with them. But usually religion was represented by scattered individuals who lost connection with any church and became quite indifferent to the claims of religion. The virile force that rekindled their interest was the preacher whe rode his circuit through the settlements, the home missionary who came to the lonely family on the farm at sunset, as he had visited the pioneer clearing in the forest, sat with its members and talked quietly at the fireside, and was off at sunrise to carry to others the benign influence that was the saving salt of the countryside. He gained a response wherever the frontier went, because he found men and women with the same longings for faith and hope as in the East. On the outstretching prairie beneath a wide-arching sky, among the foothills of the Rockies where the eye sees deep vistas in the dry air, there eternal issues had a significance felt more deeply than in the circumscribed towns back East. The pioneering period dates from the era of the Revo- lution. In sixty years the vanguard of migration had come out upon the prairie, and the second period of group settlement had begun, with greater possibilities for civili- zation and moral and religious culture. The nation was interested in internal development. National roads were being built, and railroads were on the point of projection. The frontiersman with his innate democracy was learn- ing his political strength and demanding a share in na- tional management under the leadership of Andrew Jack- son. Not yet conscious of what it would be, the West was awakening to a vision of its future. As settlement increased, better organized evangelism was needed. In its beginnings the home mission enter- prise was not planned. Its development was genetic in character. But the danger that the material interests of 78 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. 8. the homesteader would make him callous to the finer sensi- bilities and the deeper spiritual concerns compelled the astern churches to consider the problem of his religious destitution. In religion the West has been both an asset and a lia- bility. As an asset it has broadened the horizon of church interest, compelling home missions to keep pace with the advancing frontier. It has helped to make the church ~ democratic, and has responded most willingly to the more democratic among the religious denominations. The West has had a leveling influence; it appraises a man. for his real worth as a man, not for his wealth or position. The missionary demands made upon church people have cultivated generosity, until American Christianity has become renowned for its beneficence. The West has af- fected ecclesiastical organization, for missionary societies are conspicuous among the codperative organizations of the churches. Home missionary activity has resulted in the multiplication of churches and the addition of millions to church membership. Religion on the frontier has been a liability in that it required continual maintenance by outside effort. The people who had the will and the ability to carry on a church in any community without the assistance of a mis- sionary society were few. ‘Those hard-working rural folk, living close to the soil and tending to become materialized, no doubt needed an awakening to moral and religious values. ‘The creation of permanent ecclesiastical centers where regular preaching could be maintained and the conventional forms of religious observance could be set up, was impossible until the farm cultivator and his family had succeeded the more nomadic hunter and ranchman and had settled down within reach of neigh- bors. A lone family in a forest clearing or on the prairie could not constitute a flourishing church. Church people were drawn away from the villages and churches back Hast, but they did not become an ecclesiastical asset any- RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 79 where else until they were numerous enough locally to maintain their own churches. Their religion needed to be conserved until it should become an active force once more. ‘The religious lability was assumed by the older churches of the East. They carried the emigrants on an ecclesiastical mortgage. They believed that there were potential assets in the frontiersman, as there were in the land, but it would take time to develop values. To turn the ecclesiastical liability into an asset was the task of the home mission societies of the evangelical denomina- tions, a task that took approximately seventy-five years (1825-1900). The story of American home missions is one of the great chapters of church history. It has never been told adequately. Its significance for the nation has never been realized fully. It is as thrilling as the story of the pioneer settlers, as dramatic as the tales of Indian battles and buffalo hunts on the plains, as consequential as anything that three centuries of national progress have produced. Nothing in the history of modern Europe can compare in scope or importance with the American exodus to the West, and nothing in the history of Catholic mediaevalism or the Protestant Reformation was more epochal in its consequences than the peaceful conquest of the Western mind and heart for Christian ideals. The task was so immense that it required special ec- clesiastical machinery. As early as 1801 the Presby- terians and Congregationalists formulated their Plan of Union for foreign and home mission work. In 1813 the Massachusetts and Connecticut missionary societies sent out investigators to make a survey through the older parts of settlement. Everywhere they found moral laxness and religious destitution, everywhere a dearth of religious inspiration and leadership. In certain localities they found Presbyterian ministers earning their living by school teaching, while the people lacked the institutions of religion. Within the next twelve years the Connecticut 80 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. society, at that time the strongest. of the missionary or- ganizations, sent out two hundred missionaries and_or- ganized four hundred Presbyterian and Congregational churches. By that time a national organization seemed desirable, and Presbyterian, Congregational and Re- formed churches combined in the American Home Mis-. sionary Society, organized in. 1826. — The Baptists organized their home missionary society in 1832, Jonathan Going, a prominent. minister in the East, resigning his pulpit to become its secretary and one of its active agents on the ground. Baptists with their adaptability to frontier conditions, Methodists with their simple message of divine goodwill and their superb organization, took the lead in evangelizing the far terri- tory, and to them chiefly is due the credit of pioneering. Presbyterians built up the churches in the settled towns; Episcopalians coming later found most of the ground preémpted; Congregationalists sacrificed their denomina- tional interests that the universal gospel might abound. The home missionary societies of the East were di- rected by men who were moved by two strong convictions. The first was the obligation to preach religion to indi- viduals, the other a feeling that unless the Protestant churches should actively push their propaganda, either Catholicism would win new territory through European emigration or the vast reaches of the West would be occu- pied by irreligious Americans and the standards of the whole nation would be imperilled by that section. By 1835 a considerable part of the Middle West was taking on the characteristics of permanent settlement. The farmer cultivator had replaced the pioneer who had cleared the land, and with the increased help of machinery he was to become the producer of agricultural wealth. For him must be the church of the village, its Sunday school, and its gatherings for prayer or sociability. From eastern seminaries theological graduates went as groups to several of the western states, Turner, Gaylord, and RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 81 nine others settling in Iowa, others going later to Kan- sas and even to Washington. Whole-souled men and women, like Marcus Whitman and his wife, pushed be- yond the Rockies and helped to open the Oregon country. When the Episcopalians were ready, they appointed their local clergymen in strategic situations and appointed over them Bishop Kemper, who bore the familiar title of “Bishop of All-out-doors.” The pastor of a home mission church was poorly paid. Sometimes he put up his own shack and helped to build a meeting-house. Often he had to depend on a stipend of a few hundred dollars from the missionary society supplemented by whatever the people were minded to give, and voluntarism was not always a generous giver. The minister was accompanied..by the school master, or himself added the teaching function to that of preach- ing. Some of the pioneer leaders of the church were far- seeing men, and they realized how much fresh water colleges could do for the growing West. The home mis- sionary had a vision of a settled future when a school would be as necessary as the church. One of them founded a colony in the Western Reserve of Ohio. He selected the first settlers, all of them professing Chris- tians. He organized a church in the first log cabin of the settlement. Soon followed a school and a public library, and within eight years from the first white set- tlement in the district an academy was founded, to grow with the increase of population into a college of high standing. A Methodist minister and a Catholic priest were leaders in the organization of the first state uni- versity, that of Michigan, a school that served as a model for similar institutions and that was opened for both sexes. A Congregational minister was the first super- intendent of public instruction for the State of Michigan. Baptists planted a college in every state as settlement moved westward. Of a certain Presbyterian minister who had worked wonders in the Far West it was said: 82 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. “He must found colleges, create presbyteries and synods, inaugurate missions, and organize awakened desire into permanent institutions.” Among organizations that had grown out of the evan- gelical awakening at the beginning of the century were Sunday school and tract societies. The American Sun- day School Union, an undenominational organization, sent out agents into the West, who reénforced the efforts of the denominational agencies. Bible and tract societies supplied a religious literature that was to be increased later by the publication departments of the denominations, and colporteurs followed the pioneers far to the west. to their lonely ranches and farms. Beyond the great central valley were the wide spaces of the plains and the towering ranges of the Great Divide. Caravans of prairie schooners began to drag their slow length across the plains; venturesome prospectors dug their picks into the mountains in search of silver and gold; ranchmen drove the Indian and the buffalo from the plateaus and substituted cattle to multiply by the thousands. Not yet did the pioneer dream of the possi- bilities of irrigated land in the arid sections, or of the tremendous energy to be released from the water power of the mountain slopes and glens. Those features were to be visualized by a later generation. But men of faith and vision knew that the vast country of the mountains would draw to itself adventurous settlers, and they under- took to do their part in making the life of those settlers clean and pure and religious. To the ranches and among the mines and in infant settlements beyond the railroads went the colporteurs with Bible and tract; for people who needed the spur of religion and the comfort of eternal hope the evangelist pushed his jaded horse over endless miles to a meeting place; over the tiny churches that sprang up here and there the missionary societies placed shepherds of souls and gave general oversight to a bishop or a regional society. As settlement grew they planted RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 83 schools, where the railroad went they sent a chapel car, when the automobile came they supplied a church on wheels with a gasoline engine. At a convenient point they held a conference of ministers to cheer the lonely men at their solitary stations. When the field of activity was hopelessly large for one denomination, the societies pooled their energies and made plans for codperation and a di- vision of the field. Such wisdom did not come at once. In the Middle West where every hamlet expected to be- come a thriving city too many rival churches were planted for the good of the community, and whole regions that failed to grow became overchurched with struggling ec- clesiastical enterprises of every name, while broad reaches of open farm country were insufliciently cultivated, but experience and a better spirit taught a better way in the Far West. | Nor were the Indians neglected in the swift coming of the white man. As preachers went among the Indians in colonial times when the Eastern country was filling up, so under home mission auspices evangelists visited the tepees of the Western Indians and spoke a religious mes- sage. The missionaries helped to atone for the neglect of the best interests of the Indians, of which the Govern- ment was too often guilty. It was a minister who en- couraged the Government at Washington to open Indian reservations, and helped to put one into operation in Kan- sas. It was a half-breed Indian, educated at an Eastern college, who planned Ottawa University in the same state for Indian education. During the same period and later devoted Catholic missioners gave themselves to frontier evangelism among both settlers and Indians. The same spirit of sacrifice that was exhibited by Protestant home missionaries sent them out into the Mississippi valley and beyond. Before the nineteenth century was half over they had pushed through to the mountain states and the Pacific. Father de Smet had a more powerful influence over the Indians 84 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE UT. $8. than any other man of his time, acting as a diplomatic mediator for Government as well as for the church, and contributing to the safety of the frontier. In an inland region where their ecclesiastical influence was feared as unfriendly by the Protestant agencies the Catholics proved their worth as religious pioneers and friends of the set- tlers. After the Civil War was over the home mission agencies of the Protestant churches went into the South, at a time — when that prostrate section could not, if it would, give adequate aid to freedmen. ‘The societies planted schools and appointed teachers to guide the first essays in the path of liberty. To those schools is due the initial train- ing of the leaders of the colored race for their new citizen- ship. On the Pacific slope where Orientals entered the country from China and Japan missionaries introduced the same gospel that others were preaching to the home lands of the Orient. Over the border to Mexico and out to the islands of the Caribbean other missionaries went to proselyte among the Catholics of the Latin lands. The home missionary task became complicated by an increasing immigration of Old World races into the Amer- ican interior. The Irish did not ordinarily penetrate to the farms beyond the Alleghanies, but the Germans and Scandinavians moved to the West in large numbers and settled, the former east of the Mississippi, the latter west and north. These two peoples were of the finest Con- tinental stock, but they needed to be assimilated by the American, and it was part of the task of the home mis- sion societies to Americanize as well as to evangelize them. Most of them were Lutherans, because they had been brought up in the state churches of northern Europe. Lutheran most of them remained, but the distinctly Amer- ican denominations gathered recruits from the more pro- gressive among them. Oftentimes there were enough of these to constitute foreign-speaking churches and even associations of churches. These needed leaders, and to RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 85 find them proved one of the most difficult problems of the societies. Reactionary leaders would keep the people a race-conscious group, that would make little religious or social progress. A progressive man would be very likely to hasten the process of merging the group into American fellowship, and this was sure to be resented by some of the conservatives among the foreigners. To guide the foreign-speaking churches was a peculiarly delicate task. The decade from 1880 to.1890 is a landmark in-home mission history. The older immigration gaye place to the new. Southern and eastern Europeans swarmed. into the Eastern cities and mining centers. The old frontier in the West ceased to exist, except as locally certain dis- tricts remained unsettled. The societies had to give their attention to the newcomers in the East, and to so- cialize their own methods in distinction from the indi- vidual approach that had been usual in the West. A new chapter opened in American church history. The frontier period of the history of religion in America had its consequences in the forms of church organization, in the development of certain characteristics in religious groups, in diversity of sects, and in an intensification of the independency that was won in the East when the frontier was a few miles back from the coast. The frontier called the national home mission societies into being, with all that is included in their history, and it was the stimulus to the organization of state conventions and conferences where episcopal organization was not provided. The state body brought into association mis- sionary churches scattered over a wide area, and served in cooperation with the home mission society or supple mentary to it as a missionary agency for church exten- sion. In a denomination like the Baptist the state con- vention supplied an important link between the local church and the whole denomination, and the state super- intendent of missions had a function of oversight of de- ae 86 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S$. pendent churches that approximated that of a Methodist or Episcopal bishop. With few exceptions the denomina- tional machinery of Baptists, Congregationalists and Disciples is geared to missions, home and foreign. Boards of direction, committees of investigation, agencies of promotion among the churches, budgets, campaigns for sys- tematic giving, are all consequences of missionary opera- tions. Even the location of denominational headquarters may be determined by missionary relations or exigencies. With much truth it has been said: “Whatever its creed or form of polity, the main business in America hitherto has been geographical expansion and its organization has reflected this necessity.” Another consequence of the frontier is the intensifica- tion of individualism and democracy among the churches. These were characteristics of the people of the frontier. Their whole manner of life strengthened those charac- teristics. It had to be so. So many families lived remote from one another that they were thrown on their own re- sources. Absence of physicians and lawyers made them their own doctors and jurists. In religion they had their own decided religious opinions. When they did come together they found themselves on approximately the same level, and as a group they settled their group ques- tions in democratic fashion. It was inevitable that this individualism and democracy should dominate ecclesiasti- eal organization. Associations and conventions had come into existence almost always when the churches were frontier churches. The people that organized and consti- tuted them could not escape the sway of those principles. It is not alone the Congregationalists and Baptists whose organization is democratic. Neither Methodists nor Epis- copalians have an overhead authority for administration that is not subject to the decisions of the democracy as- sembled in General Conference or Convention. The power of revision and veto is in the hands of the people, even in those denominations. So much the more true is it of RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 87 Disciples, Congregationalists and Baptists. The ecclesi- astical organization is true to the spirit of America, and the American spirit gets its temper from the frontier. The independency of the frontier folk has produced two other ecclesiastical consequences in the United States. One is the multiplication of sects. The same elements that were characteristic of the early history of the English Independents showed their presence on the frontier. There was a tendency for denominations to divide and to send off divergent branches that agitated for specific changes in doctrine and polity. There was a rivalry among these sects for a place in the sun. Each of them, no matter how closely they resembled one another in most respects, must have its own meeting-house and its own pastor. Each must play a prominent part in the ecclesiastical leader- ship of the community. This overchurching tendency has been most disastrous in its effects. Least serious is the waste of money and of effort, the duplication of tasks, the rivalries and jealousies among the churches. The reaction on the communities, on the people outside of the churches, has been such as to make them skeptical of the value of ecclesiastical religion, and unquestionably to weaken the morale of the nation. It is only within recent years that the efforts of the Home Missions Council in the di- rection of comity and codrdination have begun to counter- act the evil influences of decades of the narrow denomina- tionalism that individual independence and democratic freedom have engendered. The other consequence is an independence among’ local churches that makes them critical of the denominational ° organizations, sometimes secessionist in practice, and usually suspicious of the motives and beliefs of denomina- tional leaders. No more progressive and generally in- telligent people are to be found in the rank and file of church membership in this country than the people of the Middle West. Their experience has taught them not to be afraid of experiments. Their education in the state 88 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. &%. universities that they have built up has given them trained intelligence. But where people have grown up under frontier conditions they have. fixed opinions.in.theology, opinions that have been received traditionally and retained unchanged from frontier days. These have tended to keep them unprogressive in their religious beliefs and to make them distrust the leaders of the schools who are less conservative. The farther west one goes, where the frontier influence still more strongly abides, the more de- cidedly conservative church people appear to be in their theology and the more responsive to primitive or pro- vincial ideas. All this reacts unfavorably on ecclesiastical progress. The frontier in America has passed into history. Home mission societies have been turning more of their atten-_. tion to the new frontier of the cities of the East. There, they believe, are the problems of America’s future, where the races meet and fuse, where the rivalries and antago- nisms of trade and industry provoke the clash of classes and the contradictions of races, where life is lived under the urge of the struggle for prestige and power. If re- ligion fails in America, it will fail most colossally in the cities. ‘The churches that have come into being on the frontier will have to solve their own difficulties. The people of the vanishing frontier of the West are capable of taking care of themselves. But the influences of the frontier will linger long in ecclesiastical circles. There will be a need of broadening, of culturing, so to speak, a need of faith in the spirit of man to work his way free from the limitations that have rested upon him as a re- ligious being. The nation needs the idealism of the West, its democratic spirit, its intensity of conviction, but the churches of the West, at least, need to socialize their individualism, make efficient their democracy, and apply their idealism to the insistent problems that vex twentieth century civilization at home and abroad. Over against any limitation of theological outlook are RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 89 the moral values that have been preserved or generated by home missions. ‘Eliminate from Western society the si- lent moral forces, all of them practically the creation of home missionary churches; the respect for law which they inculcate; the temperance they practice and help to enforce; the safeguarding of the young; the security of property and life; the cultivation of high moral ideals; the claims of humanity which they teach and practice ;— blot out all those forces which make up the morale of a commonwealth, socially, religiously, and politically, and something of the immeasurable value of the home mis sionary movement as related to order, morality, civic virtue, and national prosperity, would be appreciated.” VI. ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM Tux same impulse that sent missionaries to pagan peo- ples and into the American West prompted beneficent enterprises for the unfortunate. Christian sympathy felt keenly the weakness of the intemperate and the misery of their families, was distressed over the evils of the prison system, and questioned the rightfulness of slavery. The reformers of the period had no understanding of social science, no conception of the necessity of getting at the root causes of the evils, but their feelings were stirred and they were eager to relieve suffering. Later came a clearer understanding of the nature of society and the character of social relations, both in the actual and the ideal, and reform became more constructive and systematic. It was the Wesleyan movement that first supplied the humanitarian impulse. Methodism itself did much to ac- complish the moral salvation of England. It carried re- ligion to the common people of England. It did more than that. It impregnated groups of persons high enough up in the social scale to act as leaders for reform, and through them set in motion a distinct effort to ameliorate bad conditions. John Howard, a London Baptist, gave his life to the improvement of the prisons, saturated as they were with filth and obscenity as well as criminality. Thomas Clarkson,.a Quaker, and William Wilberforce, an Anglican, agitated for the abolition of slavery in the British dominion. Robert Hall,..an eminent Baptist — preacher, championed the cause of the trade unions at a time when they were unpopular, condemning those “who withhold their hire from those who reaped the field.” Thomas Chalmers, a leader of the Scotch Presbyterians, | 90 ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 91 worked out in Glasgow a scheme for the scientific applica- tion of charity to the poor, blazing a trail for the charity organization societies that have become a normal part of modern city institutionalism. Father Mathew, an Irish Catholic priest, preached a crusade for total abstinence, and John Bright, “the most representative Nonconform- ist of the nineteenth century,” was an earnest supporter of temperance. The contrast between the hardships of English work- ing folk and the relative comfort and immensely greater opportunity of Americans was noticeable. The habit of New England thrift sent many women and children into the workshops in such cities as Lawrence and Lowell, where the confinement was often irksome and the hours were long, but Americans were accustomed to work long and hard for small returns, and the social intercourse af- forded by the workroom and the factory town was so agreeable to those whose outlook had been restricted to the isolated farm or the small village that it was a com- pensation for the confinement. If work in the factory or on the New England farm became too irksome, the laborer might return home or pull up stakes and go west. As manufacturing increased in New England, cities } became congested with the families of the workers, and emigration to the West was impossible for such workers, the irksome conditions of the factory and the home created a spirit of dissatisfaction and insurgency, and | contributed to the organization of labor unions, Through © them working men agitated for shorter hours and better wages. This movement did not elicit the sympathy of religious people, as might have been expected, because religion did not as yet move easily in social channels and because those who usually molded the church mind were the owners of factory machinery, the employers of labor. They were men who had worked hard to get ahead, and it hardly occurred to them in those days that hard work 92 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. was not healthy to body or mind under the new indus- trial conditions. The industrial awakening of the churches had to wait for a generation or two. In spite of the undesirable conditions in the factory towns, the long hours of toil and the small wages, the purchasing power of money was greater than now and the conditions of living were better than in rural or industrial England. Americans in general did not suffer hunger, and while everybody drank liquor of some kind, it was not in an effort to drown misery. Shiftless and unfortunate persons there were, of course, scattered among the colonies and the newer states, ne’er-do-wells who never got on, sinners and sots who served as a foil to set off the general prosperity. Rude as comforts and cus- toms were, the people of America were better off than Englishmen. The churches were conservers of morals and religion. Everywhere the meeting-house reminded the people of moral and spiritual obligation, and religion was a real force in the home and the community. Fathers of families had not forgotten to conduct family prayers and to say grace at meals. Families went to church together, sat in the family pew, and in due time one by one the chil- dren took upon themselves the responsibilities of church membership. Ministers made pastoral.calls upon their flock, and were entertained at dinner or supper as hon- ored guests. Men and women were willing to practice self-denial to pay the minister’s salary and contribute to sending the gospel to the heathen. On the frontier where it was easy to dispense with religion and compromise with morals, the preacher was given a hearty welcome, and the whole community helped to put up a shack for a meeting-house. Religion of that sort might not be very enlightened, theology might be antiquated, and the social application of the gospel might be little understood, nevertheless religion was a vital force. Yet with the disposition to exploit material or human resources, per- ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 93 sonal hardships and social inequalities were sure to ap- pear. The law favored the master rather than the worker. There are records of overwork, injustice and cruelty. At- tempts of the workers to band together that they might make their demands more effective were met with opposi- tion. When the trade unions began to make their power felt in the thirties, they complained of inequality of taxation, of unfair credit and banking systems, of im- prisonment for debt, and of insufficient educational privi- leges. Against these the struggle of insurgency went on for a time, as the political and religious struggles had been waged, and the worst abuses were remedied. Certain social evils were less easily removed. In- herited from England, and not realized as serious evils, or intrenched in the economic or political system and so defended by their beneficiaries, they were apparently fixed in the body social. Such was the evil of intemper- ance and the evil of slavery. Such, too, were imprison- ment for debt, and the harsh punishments visited upon prisoners, the disgraceful condition of the prisons and the promiscuous mixing of the inmates; the common practice of gambling and the resort to lottery to raise money for eleemosynary purposes; the callousness to the physical suffering of animals and even of human beings; the indifference to the fate of the Indian who was driven steadily westward to make way for the settler greedy for his land. Here was a broad field for reform, and boundless opportunity for the reformer. The movement for reform was undertaken first by indi- viduals who reacted more sensitively to human need than the majority of citizens. Doubtless the humanitarianism of these individuals was quickened by religion, but few churches interested themselves in unfortunate individuals or classes. Church people in general believed that misery was the consequence of individual sin or of the frown of the Almighty. There were groups of religious peo- ple who took an uncommon interest in misfortune or op- 94 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S$. pression. Quakers, Unitarians, and Free Baptists were especially sympathetic. Quakers have always been in the forefront of any humanitarian enterprise. Unitarians, with their emphasis on the worth of man, were quicker than most other sects to see that philanthropy was essen- tially religious. They organized societies for the im- provement of seamen, for the suppression of intemper- ance, for peace, and for the employment of the poor. They supplied leaders of social reform in excess of their proportionate membership. A particular social evil that was inherited from the older social order of Europe was imprisonment for debt. The poor man had no escape from his creditor. If he was unable to pay, his last bit of property could be taken to satisfy the claim. No law had yet been passed giving him the right to keep a minimum of his possessions. When his property was gone, his person might be seized and confined in one of the horrible prisons that were characteristic of America as well as England before the days of prison reform, there to remain until the sum was paid. Charitable people were willing to help provide food and clothing to the prisoner, but apparently never thought of improving the wretched surroundings. Prison reform was long hindered in the United States because of political influence and interference, but the story of the nineteenth century is a story of gradual gains. The colonies started with the handicap of crim- inals dumped by the mother country on these shores from 1619 to the Revolution. Other persons were shut up for all sorts of offences. Quakers were put to hard labor in Massachusetts for interfering with ‘the religion of the colony. The prisons were nurseries of crime and breed- ing places of disease. Most of them had underground dungeons, used for the confinement of incorrigibles. One prison in Connecticut was itself underground, formerly a copper mine, reached only by a ladder, dripping with moisture, yet in wooden pens below convicts were fastened ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 95 head and foot and kept for years. In Worcester, North- ampton, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia condi- tions that beggar description were found by investigators. Reform began in Pennsylvania in 1786. The Quakers and an improvement society of Philadelphians took the lead. The Pennsylvania legislature was invoked, and the penal code was studied and improved. Extreme and degrading punishments were abolished, and the death pen- alty was removed for a few offences. Wholesome but not severe labor was provided for; the abominable practice of drinking in prisons at the common expense was ended. New Hampshire and New York made improvements before the end of the eighteenth century, and others fol- lowed in the early years of the nineteenth. No religious instruction was given to prisoners.until after the Revolution. The first sermon in the Philadel- phia penitentiary was preached literally at the mouth of a cannon to prevent disorder and rioting. In the north- eastern part of the country it became the custom about 1830 to supply the prisons with Bibles, to hold Sunday schools and to appoint chaplains, but the churches had no conception of the larger responsibility of probing to the roots of crime and trying to find remedies. Beginnings were made in secular instruction, and prison libraries and debating societies came into existence. These reforms owed something to the sympathy of those who had been sensitized by the spirit of Christianity, and in large de- gree by those who were members of Christian churches. Crime and vice were frequently the result of intem- perance. In 1820 over seven gallons per capita of dis- tilled spirits were consumed. Liquors were considered indispensable on all social occasions. Even among the clergy the decanter was on the sideboard and drunken- ness was not uncommon. The awakening came early in the nineteenth century. Dr. Benjamin.Rush of Phila- delphia wrote a paper showing the ill effects of intemper- ance upon the physical system, and in 1811 presented 96 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. a thousand copies of it to the Presbyterian General As- sembly with a letter urging action. A committee was appointed to consider measures of reform. ‘This action marked the beginning of denominational activity in the interest of temperance. Within twenty years more than a thousand local organizations and eleven State societies gave evidence of the widespread interest in the subject. The impulse was stimulated by six temperance sermons _ given wide circulation by Lyman Beecher of Litchfield, Connecticut. . Total abstinence societies with their hundreds of thou- sands of pledge takers testified to the strength of the reac- tion against indulgence in liquors. The Woman’s Chris- tian Temperance Union in its name recognized the re- ligious motive in the campaign. Experiments in political prohibition were made and a Prohibition party started. Ministers of churches made up much of the strength of the party and were the most vigorous advocates of the policy of prohibition. During the second half of the century a healthy growth of sentiment developed against the liquor traffic. The moral arguments of reformers were reinforced by the economic waste. The enormous expenditure of hundreds of millions yearly for such in- dulgence as compared with less than three hundred mil- lions for schools and one-tenth of that number for min- isters’ salaries was thought-provoking. Added to this was the loss of wages of workingmen through drunken- ness. Intemperance was a well-known concomitant of ill health, crime, and the social evil. * The organization of the Anti-Saloon League in Ohio in 1893 was a federation of existing agencies with the active support of the churches, and became the chief agency in sweeping the country twenty-five years later for constitutional prohibition. The crying evil of the age was negro slavery. The cupidity of European traders could be blamed for fasten- ing the institution upon America, but Americans ac ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 97 quiesced in it wherever it was economically profitable. On the small farms of the North slave labor was of small value, and in the households negro labor was less eff- cient than hired help. It was different in the South. In the older Southern states slavery seemed likely to die out until cotton became a profitable crop. Even then the slaves were treated paternally, and most of the negroes were better off under the influences of American civiliza- tion than they had been in savage Africa, better even than serfs of ancient or mediaeval times. It was different in the newer. South, where large plantations were planted to cotton, sugar, or rice, where slaves were owned by the thousand and were worked under the superintendence of hired overseers. Slaves from the border states were sold off the estates to the Southern planters, families were fre- quently broken up and new connections made without the bother of legal ceremony; whites and negroes debauched each other with their vices. These were almost inevit- able consequences of racial subordination and economic exploitation, and they created an evil that became in- tolerable. Rarely has the South been given credit for Christian- izing and civilizing the negro. Brought out of African slavery, planted in a new environment, without schools or moral training, the man of color might have ruined the South. Instead he became the means of its agri- cultural prosperity, and in return master and mistress made him into a civilized being. He had his own home life in a cabin on the plantation; he received a practical manual training in house, stable and field; in spite of his ignorance and superstition he was taught the rudi- ments of the Christian religion, usually after the Bap- tist or Methodist fashion. ‘The negroes revelled in the enjoyment of emotional piety. Unfortunately religion did not chasten their moral nature, and they were lack- ing in self-control. At best the slave system was a social order that did not belong to the nineteenth century, and 98 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE JU. S. even the Southern landholders whose property was de- pendent for its value on slavery did not attempt for some time to defend it on principle. Men like Jefferson and Madison now and then proposed its abolition, but the plan did not seem feasible. | American slavery was for a long time solely an eco- nomic affair. . The conscience of the people hardly stirred until humanitarianism began to exert its influence. The denominational bodies were the first to protest strongly against the system. The Quakers spoke against it as early as 1688, and later on excluded any of their mem- bers who engaged in it. In the revolutionary period Samuel Hopkins, the Newport theologian, took strong ground against a trade that flourished in his own port, and his Congregationalist church voted that no slave holder should keep his membership in the local organiza- tion. Individuals among the Presbyterians maintained a similar advanced position. The younger Edwards preached a sermon against the slave trade before the Connecticut Abolition Society, which was printed and circulated widely North and South. In 1774 the first abolition society was organized by the Pennsylvania Quakers, an example followed by the Friends in Eng- land nine years later. Other societies were organized along the coast north of Virginia. No body of Christians has done so much for their fellows in social and moral reform in proportion to their numbers as have the Friends, or Quakers. They were the first to recognize the right of the slave to his freedom and to free those whom they held. Sometimes they bought slaves to set them free, or to make it possible to work out their freedom. They would not even hire slave labor, and were known to boycott the products of such labor. They encouraged the religious interest of the slaves, and helped some of them to educate themselves. Later they assisted slaves to escape, but confined their efforts to peace- ful measures, and never countenanced the political move- ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 99 ment for abolition or the resort to arms. Whittier, the Quaker poet, won deserved fame for his songs of freedom. Methodists and Baptists both put themselves on record against slavery, and this is the more remarkable as both denominations were strong in the South. After the Revo- lution the Methodist Conference declared slavery to be contrary to all law and conscience, and harmful to human society. Southern Baptists a few years later resolved that slavery was inconsistent with republican government and the rights of nature, and recommended the extirpa- tion of the “horrid evil’ by every possible legal means. The prospect of gradual abolition vanished after the invention of the cotton gin. By 1818 the Presbyterian church, representing all parts. of the country, was moved to express itself forcibly against the slave institution, de- nouncing it as unwarranted by nature or the law of God, and as inconsistent with Christianity, as leading to moral weakness and irresponsibility, and at best as being a violation of the natural rights of freedom. Furthermore the Assembly declared it to be the duty of Christians “to use their honest, earnest and unwearied endeavors to cor- rect the errors of former times, and as speedily as possi- ble to efface this blot on our holy religion and to obtain the complete abolition of slavery throughout Christendom, _and if possible throughout the world.” This action was taken because it was apparent that the slave system was becoming aggressive. New slave territory was being opened in the South along the Gulf. The country north of the Ohio was being settled by Southerners first of all, but it was generally admitted that it would not be worth while to try to introduce slavery there, though Baptist and Methodist ministers once nipped such a conspiracy in the bud. The serious question was whether slavery would be restricted to the southern country _ east of the Mississippi River, or whether the system would reach out for new cotton fields in the farther West. It was becoming apparent that the slaveholders would not be 100 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. contented with what they possessed already. They wanted a share in the exploitation of the boundless acres that stretched away to the horizon, and they wanted to keep the balance of power in the national Government. It was with this in mind that the Presbyterian Assembly uttered its strong protest. The discussion over the admission of Missouri to the Union, followed, ending in compromise. During’ the thirties political agitation was concerned with other mat- ters. Partisan politics were absorbing and economic in- terests demanded attention, especially before and after the panic of 1837. But interest in the slave issue was not slumbering; individual agitators like William Lloyd Garrison were crying out hoarsely for abolition and nothing but abolition; the churches were considering seri- ously their obligations. The conviction grew among the churches that the slave issue must not be dodged. More and more were Northern people convinced that slavehold- ing was wrong, but how to deal with it was a delicate and perplexing question. As Christian churches at pres- ent are becoming more convinced that there are social evils to be eradicated, and that the churches ought to take. a firmer stand against every form of wrong, but hesitate over the method, so it was with reference to the towering evil of that time. But a changing sentiment was com- ing over the South. When Northern Baptists, Metho- dists, and Presbyterians urged their Southern friends ~ to emancipate their servants and threatened them with discipline for persistence in their course, the Southerners who regarded themselves as equally good Christians as were the complainants justified themselves by appealing to the example of the Old Testament worthies. Such an — argument was forceful among those who regarded all , parts of the Bible as equally inspired for the guidance of human conduct. The Southern attitude troubled those who wanted peace at all costs, yet whose consciences were not easy. ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 101 Midway in the next decade both the Methodist and the Baptist churches North and South broke apart over questions relating to slavery. It was an omen of evil days to come. No definite policy seemed possible among the Methodists. An attempt to quell the turbulent abolli- tionists in the church resulted in a secession of the fiercest of them. An attempt to deal kindly but conscientiously with Southern members led to an agreement by which a separation was effected, and in 1845 the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was fully organized. In the same year the Southern Baptists reorganized. This was due to the precipitate action of the Alabama State Con- vention demanding a statement that no discrimination would be made against slaveholders in appointments of missionaries and officers on denominational boards. The general denominational body was thus forced to take a stand for principle, and the Foreign Missionary Society replied to the demand that it could not in any way give the seal of its approval to slavery. This incident forced the two sections apart, and resulted in the organization of the Southern Baptist Convention, which undertook its own foreign and home mission and publication and edu- cational obligations. Before the Civil War the Presby- terians suffered similar schism, and during the conflict the Episcopalians of North and South enjoyed neither fellowship nor cooperation. At the close of the war the Episcopal organization was able to unify both sec- tions by ignoring the temporary separation, but the more independent bodies that had separated earlier found it impossible to reunite. As the conflict thickened various incidents showed the attitude of uncompromising church people. When the attempt was made by Southern sympathizers to secure control of Kansas, hundreds of ministers signed a moral protest and sent it to Congress. Harriet Beecher Stowe, wife of a theological professor, thrilled the North and enraged the South with her story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 102 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S$. Ministers in the South ardently defended the canse for which that section of the country was contending. It was exceedingly difficult for people in the free states to under- stand how Christian people of the South ecwuld justify slavery. There can be no question that the Scuthern people were religious; they have been probably the most religious portion of the nation. But their religion did not require them to give up an institution that seemed to them to be much better than freedom for the negro in spite of abuses in certain quarters. No one can read the sermons of Southern divines without believing that it was the honest conviction of church men and women that they were commissioned of God to rule a subject race as were the Hebrews in the land of Canaan. Min- isters prayed as confidently as in the North for the bless- ing of the Lord of Hosts on those who fought for the Cause, and when it was apparent that it was a lost Cause because their resources were exhausted, they be- lieved none the less in its justice. Nor was the Northern conscience universally troubled about slavery. When the war came it was supported for _ the defense of the Union rather than for the emancipa- tion of the slave... The churches helped to organize Chris- tian and Sanitary Commissions to aid in preserving the health and morals of the soldiers. Ministers volunteered as chaplains in field and hospital to bring cheer and con- solation, as they did on the other side of the line. The moral conviction of the North clarified itself as the war went on. The people generally supported the Emancipa- tion Proclamation of the President as not only a justi- fiable war measure but a moral necessity too. After the war they insisted on the civil rights of the negro, and promptly founded schools for his improvement. But it is reasonable to believe that most of this happened as a consequence of war fervor. The emancipation of the slave would have been a much slower process had the war not come, for the conscience of the people was only ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 103 slowly becoming sensitive enough to carry through so gigantic a reform. The excitement of the war carried the reform farther than conditions warranted, and the negro became a persistent problem for the whole nation, not alone of the South. In church circles the war pro- duced divisions that many decades could not heal. VII. THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING Tue period between the Revolution and the Civil War is marked by a definite growth in the religious conscious- ness of the American people. In spite of the Puritan ancestry of many, relatively few persons belonged to the churches, not more than one out of twenty-five at the outbreak of the war against Great Britain. People in general were indifferent in their attitude towards religion. They were concerned with the practical things of agri- culture and business and politics. They were bringing broad acres under cultivation, rearing large families, leaving both in order to fight during the war, and after- wards sharing in the experimental task of building a nation. The evangelistic activities at the turn of the century and subsequently brought many more persons into the churches.. Between 1800 and 1850 the number of church members increased from 365,000 to 3,530,000, a gain of one thousand per cent. Such an increment invigorated the churches, and had the effect of extending their influence in the local communities. ‘The simple routine of the eighteenth century churches did not require much activity from the laity, but the new recruits had a keener sense of religious obligation. The obligation to propagate the gospel encouraged evangelism at home and missions abroad. ‘The obligation to give religious training to children resulted in the organization of the Sunday School. The obligation to relieve human suffering produced phil- anthropic and reform organizations. When Sunday schools were organized, superintendents and teachers were needed; when the churches kindled with an interest 104 7 THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING 105 in missions, women’s local missionary societies came into existence, and out of their small resources earnest women made generous contributions. Philanthropic enterprises enlisted those who were sensitive to human misfortunes. Religion proved to be a larger concept than it had been traditionally. The church, like the nation, grew in terri- tory, expanded its interests and obligations, and came to understand its values more clearly in the century be tween 1765 and 1865. Yet, while the religious mind broadened in the con- ception of its task, it was slow to change the content of its code. Like other social institutions, the church was the creature of tradition .and.custom.. Its forms of or- ganization and worship, its ordinances or sacraments, its doctrines and creeds, had the sanction of a religious mind that was trained from early childhood to believe in their validity. Religious belief found authority for them in the divine will. Even in the atmosphere of revolt against custom and tradition that characterized the Revolutionary period, a revolt which with some persons involved a loss of faith in religion altogether, the church mind seemed not to change. Not that modifications did not take place from time to time. More or less unconsciously the mind was in process of development. Two conflicting forces were at issue in the religious mind from the beginning of American history—the obli- gation to think and act in obedience to certain principles that had been inherited from the past, and freedom under the new colonial conditions to change the code.. The sense of religious obligation had sent the Puritan on migration rather than give up his cherished principles, but the impulse to freedom made him organize his churches after a new pattern, and to work himself free from the State control of religion. The belief in the excellence of Calvinism made Jonathan Edwards its champion, but the impulse to break over homiletic barriers made him a revivalist. On the other hand, his opponent, Charles 106 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. Chauncy, held to the orderly methods of religious pro- fession, but repudiated the rigorous creed of the orthodox churches. But the rank and file of church people be- lieved and practiced according to custom. The most important. part of the church code was its system of theological thought. Both organization and activity rested on certain cherished ideas. These ideas had been wrought into a coherent system of belief by the theologians of the Reformation. Many of these ideas were survivals of medieval Catholicism, but Protestant- ism had personalized religion in removing the priest from his position as a necessary intermediary between man and God, and had stressed the attitude of heart towards God as more important than any act of merit. The theology of most church people had as its cardinal doc- trine a belief in an absolute, unchanging God, perfect in his attributes, holy, just, and good. Transcendent in majesty and enthroned in the heavens, he made the earth his footstool and stooped to hear the petitions of his sub- jects, domiciled there by his creative act. The human race was tangled in a net of evil through the fall of the first man from the place of honor and opportunity for which he had been designed. The only means of salva- tion from sin was personal faith in God’s grace as re- vealed and made dynamic through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, and sanctification by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, who with the Father and the Son constituted the divine Trinity. Since in Adam the race had sinned against him, God was under no obliga- tion to save its members from the consequences of their sin, but his gracious mercy chose to save a few through the merits of the blood of Jesus, which cleansed them from their sin, and made atonement for them with an outraged God. Those who were not thus cleansed were doomed after a day of judgment to suffer eternal punish- ment in a hell of torment. The religious attitude towards mundane things was THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING 107 critical and inclined to asceticism. Material things and the desires of the carnal mind were deceitful to the soul. The Christian must deny himself pleasures that might lead his feet to stray from the straight and narrow path that was marked out by the Bible, his infallible guide. By prayer and occasional fasting he should discipline his froward heart to seek good rather than evil. Church worship was expected of him regularly, and it was his duty to participate in the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, though they had no regenerating power, except to sacramentalists hke Catholics and High Church Episcopalians. The church was a bond of Chris- tian fellowship and an ark of safety. It was its task to rescue aS many sinners as possible from an evil world that was doomed to destruction, to convert them to per- sonal faith and hope in Christ as their Savior, and to cultivate in them a Christian character that would stand against the assaults of temptation and assure them an entrance at death into the land of the blessed where they would abide in eternal happiness and blissful ease. Beyond these conceptions the religious mind of most Americans had not gone. This was the theology that was preached in revivals, taught in Sunday schools, explained by missionaries, discussed in conference and assembly. Different denominations and parties within them differed in minor details, small groups, like the Freewill Baptists denied Calvinistic determinism, or like the Unitarians denied the Trinity, or like the Universalists denied fu- ture punishment, but the large majority of church people were orthodox. The perpetuation of orthodox religion in America re- quired instruments of education. These might be schools and colleges, books and periodicals and above all else Bibles, and sermons that would be at the same time ex- planatory and persuasive. Influences must be brought to bear upon children in the formative stage of their minds; hence the publication and tract societies. 108 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE JU. S$. In the sparsely settled American country education was not easy. Ever since the original settlers had left England it had been difficult to give attention to educa- tion of any sort. ven in the mother country only a few had enjoyed the benefit of schooling. The religious in- struction of the children was not forgotten in the homes of the conscientious Puritans, and elementary and gram- mar schools were a part of the social furniture of New England in the larger towns. The Bible and the New Eng- land Primer with its moral exhibits were school books, and religious and moral instruction was possible under public auspices for a people homogeneous in race and religion. But schools were not free for all everywhere as later, and even in the better parts of New England the support of the schools became half-hearted; when the drift of irreligion and the introduction of new textbooks weakened the piace of the Bible and the Primer, and denominational bodies found it impossible to agree as to what sort of re- ligion should be taught, religious teaching was eliminated from most of the schools. Outside of New England public schools were uncommon, and only the children of the well-to-do found room in private schools. Two considerations were weighty in creating an in- terest in the extension of education, besides the obvious advantage of literacy in making a living. One was re-_ ligious. A religion in which reading the Bible and lis- tening to sermons played so large a part required intelli- gence on the part of laymen and training for the clergy. The other was political. As the nation grew democratic, it became necessary that the people should be acquainted with public questions, and should be able to understand and join in political discussions. The progress of edu- cation was most popular wherever the New England in- fluence spread; in the Middle West schools sprang up through that influence more rapidly than could have been expected. Ministers were frequently school teachers, and their influence was on the side of education in the older THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING 109 sections of the country. For boys and girls the academy was adopted from England. Usually under church aus- pices, this grade of school provided an education that would fit them for intelligent citizenship and Christian living. Supported by private benefaction, sometimes with public assistance, the academy became the main reliance of the people for education where the grammar school had not flourished and the high school had not yet come into existence. Hight colleges were founded before the Revo- lution, and a hundred more were added within the next sixty years. They were of little higher grade than the nineteenth century academies; boys finished their courses of study by the time they had reached their middle teens. Colleges like Harvard and Yale, Princeton and Columbia, Brown and Dartmouth, were founded primarily for minis- terial education, and for a time they made the study of divinity the central item in the curriculum. Teachers and administrators were usually ministers, and in de nominational colleges it was required that they must be orthodox in the faith. The defection of the Faculty at Yale from Congregationalism to Episcopacy required a change in administration in the early years of the college. The election of Ware to a professorship of divinity at Harvard a century later meant that that college had been definitely lost to Unitarianism by the Congregationalists. As population increased colleges multiplied and grew in size and in resources. As they became less conspicu- ously training schools for the ministry, their curriculum broadened and theological education was relegated to professional schools. For freer instruction State univer- sities were created. They threw open their doors without expense for tuition on the principle that education was for the training of citizenship, and presently women as well as men were taking advantage of an educational oppor- tunity that was free from denominational handicaps and that offered a broader course of instruction than did the denominational schools. Until normal schools were de- 110 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. §S. vised the academies and colleges provided the training for public school teachers. Before many years had passed the State universities of the South and the Middle West were becoming so popular and strong in resources as to threaten the very existence of the denominational colleges. But the churches depended on the colleges to train their ministers, and were willing to pay for the support of the schools in order that their young people might be educated in a religious atmosphere. ‘Thus the small college could depend on an ecclesiastical constituency, but its policy was determined by the church mind, which was not cordial. to new tendencies in education. Though with narrow vision, the distinctively Christian schools rendered a real service to the nation in the recruiting and training of thousands of religious leaders, both ministerial and lay. The first Protestant theological seminary to be opened for the training of ministers was under the shadow of the - Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts, in 1808. When colleges were few, and not easily accessible, promi- nent ministers had admitted theological students into their homes and had shared with them their experience and given them clinical training. Men of the schools had greater prestige among the churches as well as ability, and when the demand warranted colleges sprang up in every section. But the professional school seemed advisable for several reasons... he Catholics had established a seminary at Baltimore for the training of priests as early as.1791. The New Light. Presbyterians had organized their Log College in Pennsylvania for the special purpose of train- ing evangelists. The most powerful motive in the found- ing of Andover Seminary was to preserve orthodoxy after the Unitarians had captured Harvard College. Other de- nominations promptly followed the example of the Con-_ gregationalists, providing the professional education which was no longer the principal part of the college curriculum. The theological schools were important in maintaining the standard of an educated ministry, but like the colleges THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING 111i many of them were of inferior quality. Like all profes- sional schools they were conservative in ideas, and by segregating their students apart from the active currents of society they did not fit them altogether well for a pro- ductive ministry. It is only in recent years that theo- logical schools have become progressive in their ideas, modern in their outlook, broader and richer and more practical in their curricula. Other instruments besides the schools helped to make the religious mind of America. The renewed energy that came with the awakened interest in religion, so gen- eral about 1800, and that produced the missionary move- ments abroad and on the western frontier, resulted in the organization of a variety of associations, many of them of an educational nature. Some of them were accessory to organized missions, like Bible and tract societies, others were humanitarian like the Seamen’s Friend Society, one was for the distinct purpose of encouraging evangelism and religious instruction, the American Sunday School Union. Bible and tract societies were organized for the distri- bution of religious literature, especially in that part of the country where religious privileges were enjoyed inter- mittently. It was not sufficient to send preachers out on religious propaganda. They were not numerous enough to go around. On the frontier they were couriers of a day, voicing their message and disappearing over the horizon. Then, too, most of them were ignorant, except for their grasp upon the rudiments of religion, and they were hhable to become religious quacks. Backwoodsmen might put up with patent nostrums for a while, and small groups of followers devote themselves with a zeal worthy of a better cause to such strange cults as those of the Millerites, the Shakers and the Mormons, but a healthy growth of religion required the assent of the mind as well as of the heart. Colporteurs, therefore, were employed by the new societies to follow the preachers to the West, and persua- 112 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. 8. sively to distribute religious literature that would make_ the people think. The general societies were followed, sometimes pre- ceded, by denominational publishing houses. The Method- ist Book Concern was the earliest of them. It developed out of a private enterprise for disseminating the writings of John Wesley, and was adopted officially by the denomi- nation. Others were local experiments, but soon extended to the bounds of the denominations. Pamphlet literature was circulated in the interest of denominational tenets, and books were issued when the finances permitted. Most of the publishing houses found their principal work in sup- plying literature for the Sunday schools that were coming into existence in increasing numbers. | The chief instrument for the education of democracy has been the newspaper and the magazine. The periodical visit of the printed sheet exerted cumulative force upon the minds of its readers, and proved a most effective means for the propagation of specific ideas, political, philosophi- eal or religious. In religious circles the missionary enter- prise created a demand for news sheets. New England was issuing state magazines under denominational imprint early in the nineteenth century, giving the news of Eng- lish foreign missions as well as of American interests, and stimulating the American mind to respond to the mission- ary idea by the organization of American societies. With- in a few years denominational newspapers were in the field. Naturally most of this literary activity was in the East, but as many as eighteen papers are said to have been published west of the mountains in 1832. Certain ambitious scholars, attempted the publication of monthly or quarterly religious reviews, with articles that appealed especially to scholars and cultivated people, but such maga- zines were not popular enough to keep them in circulation. ‘The influence of the religious press was not liberalizing . theologically, but it kept alive an interest in the denomi- nation and its enterprises, and it provided spiritual nour- THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING 113 ishment to some who otherwise would have gone hungry. The expansion of religious ideas was to come through the freer instruction of the schools and the influence of an un- sectarian press. For the religious instruction of the young a more defi- nite method was needed than the religious press could supply. The religious school with its definite schedules and. its concentrated study under the personal guidance of a teacher was the only solution. When religion was crowded out of the public schools in the East, a Sunday school was the logical result. Starting as a philanthropic enterprise in England for the instruction of street gamins, the Sunday school became in America an organized auxil- iary of the church for the religious instruction of the chil- dren of church families. Local church initiative was fol- lowed by more general societies. The earliest Bible study was almost entirely a matter of memorizing Scripture, but a new method was introduced by which a selection of verses was made and printed with questions on the text. Question books were used in the classes by the teachers; the pupils were expected to gather their information from the Bible. B. F. Jacobs and J..H. 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