BISHOP KEMPER 
 
 AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 
 
* MAR 29 1900 *] 
 
 BX 5995 .K4 W5 1900 
 White, Greenough, 1863-1901 
 An apostle of the western 
 church 
 
AN APOSTLE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 MEMOIR OF THE RIGHT REVEREND 
 
 JACKSON "KEMPER 
 
 DOCTOR OF DIVINITY, FIRST MISSIONARY BISHOP 
 OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH 
 
 WITH NOTICES OF SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 A CONTRIBUTION 
 TO THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE WESTERN STATES 
 
 BY THE REVEREND 
 
 GREENOUGH WHITE A.M. B.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF THE 
 
 SOUTH. AUTHOR OF "AN OUTLINE OF THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE," "A SAINT OF THE 
 
 SOUTHERN CHURCH," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER 
 
 2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE 
 1900 
 
Copyright, 1899, 
 By GREENOUGH WHITE 
 
TO 
 
 THE BISHOPS 
 
 OF THE CHURCH IN THE WEST 
 
 THIS PORTRAIT 
 
 OF ONE OF THEIR APOSTOLIC PREDECESSORS 
 
 IS RESPECTFULLY PRESENTED 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In a note to his sketch of Jackson Kemper, in his " Bishops 
 of the American Church," Bishop Perry wrote : "His Ufe is 
 yet to be written. It will be the history of the founding of 
 the Church in the middle West." No apology is necessary 
 for a biography of Bishop Kemper ; in fact, it is a reflection 
 upon the church that she has not had one before. There is 
 a certain vulgarity about a family, an institution or a nation 
 that is ignorant of and indifferent to its past. Every church- 
 man old or young, but especially the young, and especially 
 in the dioceses that have sprung out of Kemper's old juris- 
 diction, should be familiar with the facts in his career. 
 
 It was while composing his life of Bishop Cobbs that the 
 writer's attention was attracted to the western field, and 
 now that his work is done he may perhaps be pardoned some 
 expression of retrospective satisfaction as he looks out over 
 the clearings he has made in the mental forest, and draws a 
 deep breath of relief at the completion of the labor, incon- 
 ceivable by those who have never tried it, of reducing to a 
 cosmos a chaos of material gathered from books, pamphlets, 
 reports, newspaper clippings, and a mass of manuscript, 
 journals, letters, notes of conversations, etc. The two 
 books may be read as halves of a whole ; taken together, 
 they describe the expansion of the church throughout the 
 land in the middle of the nineteenth century, — the national- 
 izing, one might almost call it the continentalizing, of the 
 church ; and it is hoped that they may serve to make the 
 southern and western provinces of our national communion 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 better acquainted with each other, and, what is perhaps 
 more important, each with itself, and the church in the 
 North and East with both. As for outsiders, they can find 
 embodied in Kemper and Cobbs the very genius of the 
 American church. 
 
 Many of the authorities used are plainly indicated in the 
 text. Without attempting an exhaustive enumeration, the 
 following deserve mention, as the more important sources of 
 general information : 
 
 Reynolds: "Pioneer History of Illinois"; Moses: 
 "Illinois Historical and Statistical"; Ford's History of 
 lUinois, and a pamphlet by Dr. R. W. Patterson: "Early 
 Society in Southern Illinois " ; Roosevelt : "Thomas Hart 
 Benton"; Thwaites : "Story of Wisconsin"; Harsha: 
 " Story of Iowa " ; Tuttle : " Illustrated History of Iowa " ; 
 Nourse: " Iowa and the Centennial "; Spring : "Kansas," 
 (and others of the "American Commonwealths" series); 
 Morton: "Centennial Discourse on Nebraska," and papers 
 of the Nebraska and other State Historical Societies ; Flint : 
 "Recollections of Ten Years in the Mississippi Valley " ; 
 memorial histories of Chicago and Milwaukee; and in the 
 literature of humor. Hall's "New Purchase," and Riley's 
 "Puddleford Papers." Ecclesiastico-historical and bio- 
 graphical sources are: "The Spirit of Missions," and 
 journals of the various dioceses ; Bishop Chase's " Reminis- 
 cences," and "The Ken yon Book"; Bishop Whitehouse's 
 " Exhibits " ; the lives of Breck and Cummins ; Morehouse : 
 "Some American Churchmen"; papers on Breck and 
 Adams by Rev. D. D. Chapin, in "The Living Church" ; 
 the Report of the Jubilee Ceremonies of Nashotah House, a 
 pamphlet on Nashotah by Rev. W. W. Webb, and an article 
 on Dr. DeKoven by Rev. T. F. Gailor, in "The Sewanee 
 Review" for May, 1893. 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 Particular information may be classified as follows : 
 
 I. Documentary : 
 
 (A) Published or printed : 
 
 Kemper's reports in "The Spirit of Missions" and ad- 
 dresses to his diocesan conventions, a memorial pamphlet, 
 with sermon by Rev. Dr. H. M. Thompson, and numbers 
 of "The Nashotah Scholiast." 
 
 (B) Manuscript : 
 
 A few of the bishop's letters and sermons, a memoir of 
 his early years, and letters by his daughter, Mrs. William 
 Adams, and letters from Rev. Dr. R. H. Sweet, Rev. J. H. 
 Knowles, Messrs. J. S. Irwin and FitzHugh Whitehouse, 
 Mrs. R. H. Clarkson and Miss Upfold. 
 
 II. Oral : 
 
 From Rev. Drs. E. C. Benson and W. J. Gold, Revs. D. 
 D. Chapin, G. A. Carstensen, and W. W. Webb, Mrs. 
 William Adams, Mrs. Alfred Louderback, and Miss Up- 
 fold. 
 
 In conclusion, the author cannot but express one deep 
 regret connected with the publication of the present volume, 
 — that Bishop Perry, late historiographer of the church, 
 who was among the first to give his life of Bishop Cobbs a 
 cordial welcome, and Bishop Kemper's daughter, Mrs. 
 William Adams, who was most helpful in furnishing nec- 
 essary material, are no longer here to read it. Were he be- 
 ginning its preparation now, the work as it is could not be 
 written. 
 
 University of the South, 
 Martinmas, 1899. 
 
chronological Index 
 
 EARLY YEARS 
 
 A. D. PAGE 
 
 1706 Birth of Jacob Kemper, 3 
 
 1 74 1 He removes to America, 3 
 
 1742 H. M. Muhlenberg in 
 
 America 4 
 
 1747 Kemper settles in New 
 
 Jersey 4 
 
 1749 Birthof Daniel Kemper, 4 
 
 1759 Birth of Susan Kemper, 
 
 and removal to N. Y., 4 
 
 1763 Endof the Seven Years' 
 War — Dudley Chase 
 moves from Mass. to 
 New Hampshire ... 4 
 
 1771 Marriage of Daniel 
 
 Kemper 5 
 
 1775 Birth of Philander 
 
 Chase 4 
 
 1783 End of Revolutionary 
 War — Kemper's mar- 
 riage with Elizabeth 
 Marius 5 
 
 1789 Birth of David Jackson 
 
 Kemper — His baptism, 5 
 
 1791 Philander Chase at 
 
 Dartmouth College . . 6 
 
 1794 Death of Jacob Kemper 
 — Longevity of his 
 stock 6 
 
 1796 Marriage of Philander 
 Chase — Birth of 
 George Upfold, and of 
 Wm. Augustus Muh- 
 lenberg 6 
 
 A. D. PAGE 
 
 1798 Chase ordained; first 
 
 missionary tour ... 7 
 
 1799 Advanced to priesthood 
 
 — Jackson Kemper's 
 boyhood 7 
 
 1802 To school at Cheshire — 
 
 The Upfolds settle in 
 Albany . 8 
 
 1803 Birth of Henry John 
 
 Whitehous e — The 
 Louisiana Purchase . 9 
 
 1804 Kemper's school-life . . 10 
 
 1805 Chase to New Orleans, 9 
 Kemper at Dr. Bar- 
 ry's school and Co- 
 lumbia college — His 
 brother's career ... 11 
 
 A walk by the sea ... 12 
 
 1807 Visits Philadelphia — 
 
 Correspondence with 
 his father 13 
 
 1808 His brother's execution 
 
 — His father's fortune 
 
 gone 14 
 
 Discards his first name 
 — Begins to study the- 
 ology 15 
 
 1809 Graduated from college, 16 
 
 1810 Preparing for Holy Or- 
 
 ders under Dr. Ho- 
 bart 16 
 
 181 1 Ordination by Bishop 
 
 White 16 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX 
 
 II 
 
 MINISTRY 
 
 A. D. PAGE 
 
 1811 First sermon, and its 
 
 effect 19 
 
 Return to New York . 20 
 Disappointment in love 
 — Assistant at united 
 
 churches 21 
 
 Ecclesiastical etiquette 
 — Reflex episcopal in- 
 fluences ..... 22 
 Society in Philadelphia, 23 
 Parochial and diocesan 
 
 work . 24 
 
 Chase's character — At 
 Christ Church, Hart- 
 ford 42 
 
 1812 Kemper's first mission- 
 
 ary tour ; agent of 
 Advancement Society, 24 
 In western Virginia . . 25 
 Studies and correspond- 
 ence 26 
 
 Sermon on charity . . 27 
 Religious reading — 
 
 Churchmanship ... 30 
 Pastoral character . . 31 
 Mental characteristics . 32 
 Tastes, personal appear- 
 ance 33 
 
 Birth of C. S. Hawks 
 and Vail 40 
 
 1813 Revival of church life — 
 
 Call to Baltimore . . 34 
 
 1814 Priested — Criticised for 
 
 sermon on the Lord's 
 
 Supper 35 
 
 Second missionary tour, 36 
 
 In Ohio 37 
 
 Upfold's college life . . 40 
 And graduation — 
 Studies medicine . . 41 
 
 1815 End of the war with 
 
 England — White on 
 the religious revival . 39 
 
 1815 
 1816 
 
 1817 
 
 1818 
 
 1819 
 1821 
 
 PAGE 
 
 • 40 
 
 • 40 
 41 
 40 
 40 
 
 41 
 
 43 
 45 
 
 45 
 46 
 
 1822 
 1823 
 
 1824 
 
 Birth of H. W. Lee . . 
 
 Kemper's marriage . . 
 
 Upfold an M. D. . . . 
 
 Birth of J. C. Talbot . 
 
 Whitehouse to college . 
 
 Upfold's marriage — 
 Studies for ministry . 
 
 Chase in Ohio — Society 
 on the frontier . . . 
 
 Settles at Worthington, 
 
 Primary convention at 
 Columbus — Chase 
 elected bishop — Diffi- 
 culties 
 
 His consecration . . . 
 
 To Cincinnati — His 
 plan of a church 
 school 46 
 
 U p f o 1 d assistant at 
 Trinity — And rector 
 of St. Luke's, New 
 York — Whitehouse a 
 B. A 
 
 Kemper's second mar- 
 riage 
 
 His children — Reflec- 
 tions on education — 
 Diocesan life ... 
 
 Views of missions and 
 sects 
 
 White on relations with 
 sects 
 
 Birth of H.B.Whipple, 
 
 Chase to England . . 
 
 Obstructed by Hobart 
 — Helped by Lords 
 Gambler and Kenyon, 
 
 Returns to America — 
 Success 
 
 Whitehouse graduated 
 in divinity — Takes 
 deacon's orders — His 
 attainments 56 
 
 56 
 58 
 
 59 
 60 
 
 60 
 58 
 47 
 
 48 
 49 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX 
 
 A. D. PAGE 
 
 1824 White and Kemper on 
 
 diocesan tour . . 
 
 1825 Another tour — Missions 
 
 in the west . . . 
 
 Report of united 
 churches .... 
 
 Convention at Zanes 
 ville — Opposition to 
 Chase's plans ... 
 
 Trustees of "Theolog 
 ical Seminary of Ohio' 
 meet 
 
 1826 Chase at Gambier . . 
 Election controversies 
 
 in Pennsylvania . 
 Birth of R. H. Clarkson 
 
 1827 Corner stone of Kenyon 
 
 College laid . . . 
 Hobart at Detroit . 
 Election of H. U. On 
 
 derdonk .... 
 Whitehouse priested — 
 
 To Reading .... 
 
 1828 Upfold to St. Thomas' 
 
 New York 
 
 1829 Whitehouse's report — 
 
 To St. Luke's, Roches 
 ter — Lectures on apos 
 tology 
 
 Kemper an S. T. D. — 
 Meets Cobbs — Moth 
 er's death 
 
 Seventy boys at Gam 
 bier 
 
 1830 One hundred and thirty 
 
 60 
 
 60 
 
 61 
 
 49 
 
 50 
 50 
 
 61 
 
 58 
 
 50 
 53 
 
 61 
 
 57 
 56 
 
 57 
 
 62 
 
 51 
 
 A.D. PAGE 
 
 1830 boys at Gambier — 
 Their life there ... 51 
 
 Education of Hawks, 
 Vail, Lee, and Talbot 
 — Birth of Armitage . , 58 
 
 1831 Kemper to Norwalk — 
 
 His activity in Con- 
 necticut 62 
 
 Crisis at Gambier — res- 
 ignation of Chase . . 52 
 
 Enters Michigan — Re- 
 flections on his char- 
 acter and career ... 53 
 
 And on relations of 
 church and educa- 
 tion 54 
 
 Upfold an S. T. D.— To 
 Trinity, Pittsburg . . 56 
 
 1832 Death of Mrs. Kemper, 63 
 
 1833 Whitehouse abroad . . 58 
 
 1834 Hawks and Vail candi- 
 
 dates for Orders — 
 Kemper to Green Bay, 63 
 
 1835 Diocese of Illinois or- 
 
 ganized — Chase elect- 
 ed bishop 63 
 
 Confirmed — Diocese of 
 Michigan organized — 
 Whitehouse elected 
 bishop — Declines — 
 Brownell to Southwest 
 — Kemper appointed 
 missionary bishop of 
 Indiana and Missouri, 64 
 
 His consecration ... 65 
 
 III 
 EPISCOPATE 
 
 1835 Chase to England ... 69 
 Kemper to Indiana — 
 Phases of life on the 
 frontier before and af- 
 ter statehood .... 70 
 
 1835 Economic and social, 71 
 Political, moral and re- 
 ligious characteristics, 73 
 Advance of the frontier 
 of culture 81 
 
tu 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX 
 
 A. D. PAGE 
 
 1835 Early attempts to intro- 
 
 duce the church into 
 the West 82 
 
 Samuel Roosevelt John- 
 son 83 
 
 Kemper to St. Louis, 
 via New Albany and 
 Paducah 83 
 
 The situation in Mis- 
 souri 84 
 
 1836 Kemper in Ilhnois — 
 Glimpse of Iowa ... 85 
 Invited to Green Bay . 86 
 Chase returns from 
 
 abroad 70 
 
 Consecration of Mc- 
 
 Coskry 86 
 
 Kemper's tour in the 
 
 East 86 
 
 Gifts to western mis- 
 sions 87 
 
 1837 Kemper College incor- 
 
 porate d — T rial of 
 Bishop Smith .... 87 
 
 Financial crisis — Love- 
 joy murdered .... 88 
 
 Chase's experience in 
 Illinois 97 
 
 Kemper in Indiana — 
 Meets Owen — Across 
 Missouri to Fort 
 Leavenworth — 
 Glimpse of Indian 
 Territory 89 
 
 1838 Southern tour .... 90 
 In Indiana — Meets Har- 
 rison 91 
 
 Visit to Wisconsin . . 92 
 Elected bishop of Mary- 
 land — Testimony of 
 St. Louis vestry ... 93 
 
 School begun 94 
 
 Second trip to Indian 
 Ter. — Intense cold . . 95 
 
 1839 In Wisconsin and Iowa, 96 
 Chase lays corner stone 
 
 of chapel of Jubilee 
 
 A.D. PAGE 
 
 1839 College — Second crisis 
 
 at Kenyon 97 
 
 1840 Chase's tour south and 
 
 east 98 
 
 1 84 1 Condition of Kemper 
 
 College 99 
 
 Adams, Breck, and Ho- 
 bart 100 
 
 Upfold's sermon on 
 death of Harrison . .101 
 
 Hobart, etc., in Wis- 
 consin — Kemper 
 elected bishop of In- 
 diana — Killikelly ob- 
 tains funds in Eng- 
 land — Wylie's conver- 
 sion 102 
 
 Kemper's sermon be- 
 fore board of missions, 103 
 
 Johnson's sermon at 
 Wylie's ordination — 
 Influence of Oxford 
 movement — Progress 
 of Lee, Talbot, Hawks 
 and Vail — Argument 
 of latter's " Comprehen- 
 sive Church " . . . . 104 
 
 1842 Kemper's and Adams' 
 
 reports 108 
 
 Settlement and life at 
 Nashotah 109 
 
 1843 Kemper College — Med- 
 
 ical department — At- 
 kinson elected bishop 
 of Indiana — Kenyon 
 saved to the church . iio 
 
 1844 Consecration of Hawks 
 
 as bishop of Missouri, III 
 
 1845 Kemper in Milwaukee 
 
 — The city and the ter- 
 ritory 112 
 
 The community at Nash- 
 otah — Breck's person- 
 ality 117 
 
 Suspension of Onder- 
 donk 119 
 
 Attacks upon Nashotah, 121 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX 
 
 A. D. PAGE 
 
 1845 Kemper's defence . . . 121 
 Chase's report . . . .127 
 Closure of Kemper Col- 
 lege 128 
 
 1846 Charges against Kem- 
 
 per — Killikelly's state- 
 ment 120 
 
 Kemper's position, and 123 
 catena of passages on 
 the Roman church . . 1 24 
 
 The Romish diocese of 
 Chicago 125 
 
 Spread of Mormonism, 126 
 
 Sufferings of mission- 
 aries 1 29 
 
 Catena of testimonies . 130 
 
 Church fairs .... 132 
 
 Reasons for the back- 
 wardness of the church 
 in the West 133 
 
 And for the defective 
 support of the clergy . 135 
 
 Need of a native min- 
 istry 137 
 
 Kemper at Nashotah .113 
 
 His course of life — 
 Tastes in reading, etc., 1 14 
 
 Traits — Sunday observ- 
 ance 116 
 
 Iowa a state 139 
 
 1847 Incorporation of Jubilee 
 
 College 127 
 
 And Nashotah House — 
 
 Adams' «« Mercy to 
 
 Babes" 141 
 
 Primary convention — 
 
 Diocese of Wisconsin, 140 
 Johnson leaves Indiana, 142 
 Kemper sick — Visit to 
 
 Nashotah 143 
 
 1848 Wisconsin a state . , .112 
 Glimpse of Minnesota, 140 
 Visitation in Iowa . .139 
 End of Mexican War — 
 
 Extension of domestic 
 missionary field . . . 138 
 St. Paul's College, Mo., 129 
 
 A. D. PAQB 
 
 1848 Adams' marriage and 
 
 personality 141 
 
 1849 Clarkson to Chicago . . 127 
 St. Ansgarius' Church, 144 
 Louderback to Daven- 
 port 140 
 
 Election, acceptance 
 and consecration of 
 Upfold as bishop of 
 Indiana 144 
 
 1850 Azel Dow Cole at Ra- 
 
 cine 145 
 
 Breck and others to 
 Minnesota — Cole to 
 Nashotah — His char- 
 acter 146 
 
 Adams' " Elements of 
 
 Christian Science " . . 147 
 Kemper's character . . 149 
 His work in Wisconsin, 150 
 Growth of Iowa — Diffi- 
 culties to contend with 
 — Clergy ill-paid . .153 
 Moving of population, 155 
 Resources of Indiana 
 missionaries .... 154 
 Louderback at Daven- 
 port — Travels with 
 Kemper .... 156 
 Whipple in orders . .164 
 
 1 85 1 Election and consecra- 
 
 tion of Whitehouse . . 161 
 
 1852 Work in Minnesota — 
 
 Breck to the Indians, 151 
 H. M. Thompson at 
 Madison — A winter 
 visitation in Wiscon- 
 sin 157 
 
 Racine College founded, 150 
 Last days and death of 
 
 Philander Chase . . 159 
 Lee's sermon on mis- 
 sions — Armitage in 
 orders 164 
 
 1853 Whitehouse in Illinois 
 
 — An American cathe- 
 dral — Non-residence . 162 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX 
 
 A. D. PAGE 
 
 1853 Reflections on Ives' 
 
 course — Talbot to In- 
 dianapolis 164 
 
 Consecration of Kip as 
 bishop of California . 165 
 
 1854 Progress of work in 
 
 Minnesota — Box of 
 clothing to Indian 
 mission 152 
 
 Massacre near Fort 
 Laramie 158 
 
 Progress of work in 
 Iowa — Election and 
 consecration of Lee . . 165 
 
 Kemper Diocesan of 
 Wisconsin — James De- 
 Koven in Wisconsin . 166 
 
 The Kansas-Nebraska 
 Bill 168 
 
 1855 Bishop White Hall- 
 
 Kemper to Superior . 167 
 Breck's marriage . . . 172 
 
 1856 Year of speculation . . 170 
 
 Hiram Stone 168 
 
 Kemper and Lee to 
 
 Nebraska — Kemper's 
 tour in Kansas . . .169 
 Stone to Leavenworth, 170 
 Knickerbacker in Min- 
 neapolis 174 
 
 1857 Kemper in Kansas . . 170 
 Wharton in Iowa — Fi- 
 nancial crisis . . . .171 
 
 Breck to Faribault . . 172 
 Wilcoxson's work in 
 Minnesota 173 
 
 1858 Growth of diocese of Io- 
 
 wa— Religious revival, 171 
 Minnesota a state . . . 174 
 Breck's tour to the east 
 — E. R. Welles at Red 
 
 Wing 173 
 
 Kemper to Kansas . . 175 
 
 1859 His last visitation there 
 
 — Diocese organized . 175 
 G r i s w o 1 d College 
 founded 173 
 
 A. D. PAGE 
 
 1859 DeKoven to Racine . . 168 
 
 Election of H. B.Whip- 
 ple 174 
 
 And consecration as 
 bishop of Minnesota 
 — Kemper resigns his 
 missionary jurisdiction 
 — Summary of results 
 
 of his work 176 
 
 i860 Consecration of Talbot 
 
 as missionary bishop .177 
 
 Dissension in Diocese 
 of Illinois 179 
 
 The " compromise trans- 
 action " 180 
 
 Bishop's charges vs. 
 Chicago clergy . . .181 
 
 C. E. Cheney in Chi- 
 cago 183 
 
 " Episcopal troubles in 
 Illinois" 184 
 
 Lee's special prayer . . 187 
 
 Episcopal elections in 
 Kansas 191 
 
 1 86 1 Lee on Cobbs' death . 187 
 Whitehouse on Cobbs' 
 
 death 188 
 
 Kansas a state — West- 
 ern view of seces- 
 sion 185 
 
 Criticism of Southern 
 
 dioceses 187 
 
 Iowa and Wisconsin in 
 
 the war 186 
 
 Civil war in Colorado . 178 
 Whitehouse's view of 
 
 the war 188 
 
 Kemper ignores the war 
 — His health .... 193 
 Whitehouse buys a 
 church 200 
 
 1862 His cathedral organiza- 
 
 tion 200 
 
 The war and the church 
 
 in Missouri 190 
 
 " The North-Western 
 
 Church " 195 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX 
 
 1 86 
 194 
 178 
 
 185 
 191 
 186 
 
 189 
 
 A. D. PAGE 
 
 1862 Sioux outbreak in Min- 
 
 nesota 
 
 Kemper's letters . 
 
 1863 Talbot in Utah, etc 
 Sack of Lawrence 
 Churchmen slain . 
 Indiana threatened 
 Whitehouse's special 
 
 prayer — Upfold's 
 special prayer . . . 
 
 The war and education, 192 
 
 Decline of religious 
 prejudice — U p f o 1 d 's 
 testimony, and " Man- 
 ual of Devotion" . . 199 
 
 G. D. Cummins in 
 Chicago 200 
 
 Vail to Iowa 205 
 
 1864 Kemper and the war . 196 
 
 His special prayer — 
 His manuscript — Let- 
 ter to S. R. Johnson . 
 
 Report on Sunday- 
 schools 200 
 
 Whitehouse vs. ration- 
 alism — The Broad 
 church school . . . .201 
 
 " Essays and Reviews," 202 
 
 Upfold's and Kemper's 
 charges 204 
 
 Consecration of Vail as 
 bishop of Kansas . . 205 
 
 1865 Upfold's retirement . . 205 
 Talbot assistant bishop 
 
 of Indiana 206 
 
 Expansion of the 
 church — Randall 
 missionary bishop of 
 Colorado 206 
 
 197 
 
 A. D. 
 1865 
 
 1866 
 
 1867 
 
 1868 
 
 1869 
 
 1870 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Clarkson in Nebraska, 207 
 Vail in Kansas .... 209 
 Whitehouse on effects 
 
 of war 211 
 
 Kemper at general con- 
 vention 213 
 
 Whitehouse in Europe, 212 
 Cummins assistant bish- 
 op of Kentucky . . . 224 
 Armitage assistant bish- 
 op of Wisconsin . . .214 
 Tuttle missionary bish- 
 op of Montana, etc . . 206 
 Nebraska a state . . . 209 
 Lambeth conference. . 213 
 Breck to California . . 216 
 Death of Bishop 
 
 Hawks 210 
 
 Diocese of Nebraska . 209 
 The Wisconsin Memor- 
 ial 215 
 
 Enlargement of Racine 
 College — Kemper to 
 general convention. . 216 
 The Broad church 
 
 movement 219 
 
 Ritual advance .... 220 
 Catena of opinions . . 221 
 Cummins re-visits Chi- 
 cago 224 
 
 Beginning of Cheney 
 
 trial 226 
 
 Whittaker missionary 
 bishop of Nevada . . 206 
 Kemper to Faribault . 216 
 
 His old age 217 
 
 Last days and death . . 228 
 Memorial tributes . . 230 
 
I 
 
 EARLY YEARS 
 
EARLY YEARS 
 
 OUR story begins on the banks of the almost spiritual 
 river Rhine, at the little town of Caub, nearly oppo- 
 site St. Goar with its vineyards, and about midway between 
 Mainz and Coblentz. There, in the year of grace 1706, 
 there was born to an army officer surnamed Kemper a 
 son to whom he gave at baptism the name of Jacob. 
 " Kemper " is derived from the familiar German substantive 
 Kaempfer, thus signifying a fighter, a champion. The 
 chief industry of Caub is the quarrying of slate. On a 
 height behind the town rise the mouldering walls of the 
 castle of Gutenfels, and on an island in the river stands a 
 quaint pentagonal structure, the Pfalzgrafenstein, where 
 until quite recently the lords of the territory exacted their 
 feudal toll from passing vessels. 
 
 As Jacob Kemper matured in years he developed some- 
 what of the feudal passion for the possession of land, and 
 this aspiration, denied satisfaction in his native country, was 
 inflamed by glowing accounts of America, as a veritable 
 land of promise, given by the itinerating agents of Dutch 
 ship-owners, and also by news received from his wife's 
 brother, who, excited by such representations, had emigrated 
 to the new world and settled at Rhinebeck on the Hudson 
 river. Thither accordingly, having converted all his prop- 
 erty into coin, Kemper removed in the year 1741, accompa- 
 nied by his wife — the daughter of a Reformed, or Calvinistic, 
 minister at Mannheim. They sailed from Amsterdam to 
 
 3 
 
4 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 Philadelphia, on their way across New Jersey visited the 
 settlement at New Brunswick, and remained some time with 
 their relative at Rhinebeck. 
 
 The year following, a Lutheran pastor named Henry 
 Melchior Muhlenberg came from Hanover to America, 
 having accepted an appointment to minister to the members 
 of his communion in Pennsylvania and the neighboring 
 provinces. 
 
 After four years' residence on a farm in Dutchess county, 
 many miles below Rhinebeck, Kemper became dissatisfied 
 with the location and determined to remove. His heart 
 was still set on becoming a great landed proprietor. In 
 1 747 he revisited New Brunswick, and there bought an ex- 
 tensive property, — and there, two years later, his son Daniel 
 was born. The father prospered in his new home until the 
 outbreak of the Seven Years' War caused such disturbance 
 of trade and accompanying monetary stringency that in 1759, 
 — the year of the birth of his youngest daughter, Susan, — 
 he felt constrained to move to New York ; where, after peace 
 was concluded, he prospered again. 
 
 At this time — about the year 1763 — a God-fearing farmer 
 named Dudley Chase, of the fourth generation of his family 
 in Massachusetts, moved from that province, with his wife 
 Alice and their seven children, into the forest primeval of 
 Cornish, New Hampshire. Red Indians were to be met 
 there in every direction ; Mrs. Chase was the first white 
 woman that had ever appeared in that wilderness. The log 
 walls of the rude cabin that sheltered the growing family 
 were raised in a single day. Seven more children were 
 added to the household in Cornish ; the youngest of them 
 all, Philander, was born on the 14th of December, 1775. 
 
 After a course of study at King's College, New York, in 
 which he gave evidence of mental alertness and love of 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 5 
 
 learning, Daniel Kemper married, at the age of twenty- 
 two years, and shortly after threw himself, heart and hand, 
 into the provincial cause in the War of Independence. He 
 held a colonel's office in the continental army, and lavished 
 his means in the service. He was made a member of the 
 Order of the Cincinnati immediately upon its foundation. 
 
 At the close of the war, in which he had lost a fortune, 
 he lost his wife also, but soon provided his six young 
 children with another mother by a second marriage. 
 Elizabeth Marius was a woman not of any great powers 
 of intellect, but — what was better — of keen and warm femi- 
 nine sympathies and practical good sense ; and she proved 
 an excellent housekeeper at a time when her husband's af- 
 fairs most needed looking after. In the practice of a stricter 
 economy. Colonel Kemper moved with his family to a 
 place in Dutchess county, not far from Poughkeepsie, called 
 Pleasant Valley ; and there, on Christmas Eve of the year 
 1789, the third child of this union and the subject of this 
 story was born. Very soon after his birth the family re- 
 turned to New York city, Colonel Kemper having received, 
 through his old-time General and friend. President Wash- 
 ington, an appointment to a position in the Custom House 
 there. Mrs. Kemper had been a member of the Dutch 
 Reformed communion, but, at the time of their marriage, 
 apparently, she and her husband connected themselves with 
 the Episcopal church. Susan Kemper, the Colonel's sister, 
 had married Dr. David Jackson, of Philadelphia ; and her 
 vivacity and cordiality of manner, and the elegant enter- 
 tainments she gave during the sessions of Congress, made 
 her a prominent figure in the social life of the young nation's 
 capital. Through this combination of circumstances it 
 came about that the child was baptized, by the name of 
 David Jackson, by the assistant minister of Trinity parish, 
 
6 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 Dr. Benjamin Moore, — with whose name is associated the 
 revival of the church in New York, sadly weakened by 
 the departure of Loyalist families. 
 
 Jacob Kemper, the patriarch of his race in the new world, 
 lived just long enough to be remembered by his little grand- 
 son, dying in 1794, at the age of eighty-eight years, leaving 
 behind him the memory of a just man. Here it may be 
 mentioned, in order to give an idea of the extraordinary 
 longevity of the stock, that Daniel Kemper lived to the 
 patriarchal age of ninety-eight, and three of his daughters 
 by his first wife to the ages of ninety, ninety-six, and one 
 hundred and two years respectively. Of his children by 
 Elizabeth Marius, two died in infancy, David Jackson 
 Kemper lived to be over eighty, and two others, daughters, 
 died unmarried at advanced ages, but short of eighty years. 
 
 Although his parents earnestly desired him to study for 
 the Congregational ministry, the young Philander Chase had 
 no aspiration beyond the life of the woods and the farm 
 until his matriculation at Dartmouth College, in the six- 
 teenth year of his age. In his second year there he first 
 came upon a copy of the Book of Common Prayer, and 
 that, by God's grace, effected what his parents' urgency had 
 not been able to do. So contagious was his enthusiasm that 
 his family followed him into the Church. He was graduated 
 in due course of time by his Alma Mater, and the following 
 year, 1796 — in which he attained his majority — was mar- 
 ried to Mary Fay. 
 
 In May of that year, in the mother-country across the 
 sea, George Upfold was born in the pleasant county of 
 Surrey; the son of a yeoman farmer and his wife, both 
 members of the Church of England. And in September of 
 the same year, William Augustus Muhlenberg, great-grand- 
 son of the Henry Melchior above mentioned, was born in 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 7 
 
 Philadelphia. Kemper and Muhlenberg ! For two of the 
 most illustrious names in her annals the Church in America 
 is indebted to German ancestry. 
 
 There were no theological seminaries in those days, no 
 societies to assist candidates for Holy Orders in their pre- 
 paratory studies ; young Chase went to read divinity with 
 an English clergyman settled at Albany. That was about as 
 near his home as any place where he could enjoy an equal 
 advantage ; something he had known or heard, some pre- 
 vious connection, would seem to have determined his selec- 
 tion ; and anything to the westward always exerted a power- 
 ful attraction over him. He was admitted to the diaconate 
 by Bishop Provoost, in St. Paul's Chapel, New York, in the 
 summer of 1798, and was immediately despatched on a 
 missionary tour in the northern and western parts of New 
 York state by the newly organized " Committee for the Propa- 
 gation of the Gospel, ' ' the missionary society of the diocese : 
 one of the first of such organizations, if not the very first, 
 in the American church. Chase visited some Indian set- 
 tlements on his way to Utica, which he found to be a raw 
 village, the fresh stumps of trees still obstructing its streets. 
 He organized parishes there and at other places ; the site of 
 Syracuse was then a marsh. In 1799 he was advanced to 
 the priesthood by the same bishop, and was put in charge of 
 the church at Poughkeepsie, where, to supplement his 
 slender stipend, he taught in an academy, thus beginning 
 his educational career. Already he was looking earnestly 
 westward, troubled in heart and conscience as he reflected 
 upon the ignorance, infidelity and depravity of the rapidly 
 growing settlements upon the frontier. 
 
 Meantime the little Kemper was growing up, "a pretty 
 boy," as he was remembered by many, " with long fair ring- 
 lets," and was going to school with his sisters in New 
 
8 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 York. He was his mother's favorite, for the other boys, his 
 brother (who afterward entered the navy) and especially his 
 half-brother, Daniel, were turbulent and reckless spirits. 
 There subsisted a particularly strong bond of affection be- 
 tween him and his eldest half-sister, Sophia. From earliest 
 boyhood he manifested a highly susceptible temperament, 
 especially with regard to religious impressions ; herein re- 
 vealing the close temperamental tie between him and his 
 mother, — a woman of deeply devout and affectionate dis- 
 position. The whole family attended both morning and 
 evening prayer every Sunday at St. Paul's Chapel. As the 
 century wore to its close, his father's circumstances im- 
 proved, with the country's, and the family moved into a 
 finer, better furnished house. The dining-room in particular 
 was furnished with expense: years after, the bishop re- 
 membered how he went as a boy with his mother to pur- 
 chase andirons, mantel ornaments, and India china, — a tea 
 set and punch bowls. Then, too, his father could satisfy 
 his literary tastes by forming a library, in which such 
 standard works as Johnson's Lives of the Poets, Hume's 
 History of England, and Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the 
 Roman Empire were contained. At this period, the Kem- 
 pers spent their summers, in part, upon Long Island. An 
 Episcopal Academy having been established at Cheshire, 
 Connecticut, the boy Jackson was sent there in 1802, at the 
 age of twelve, to finish his schooling. 
 
 That year, George Upfold, then six years old and their 
 only child, was brought by his parents to America. His 
 father, to whom by right of seniority the homestead in Sur- 
 rey belonged, by some underhanded dealing of a brother was 
 ousted, and resolved to leave England. He settled in 
 Albany, supporting himself by teaching school, Mrs. Upfold 
 assisting by teaching the younger pupils. She was a 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 9 
 
 woman of sincere piety and charity and much strength of 
 character. She started the first Sunday-school in that part 
 of the country ; it was of the primitive type, designed to 
 impart the rudiments of education to the ignorant poor. So 
 depressing to one of her ardent religious temperament was 
 the lack of zeal in the Episcopal church, particularly in the 
 diocese of the latitudinarian Provoost, that for a time she 
 was on the point of connecting herself with the Methodists, 
 and was only finally restrained from the step by their re- 
 quirement that she put away her wedding ring. Her hus- 
 band became a warden, and ultimately for many years 
 senior warden, of St. Peter's Church, Albany. 
 
 In 1803 was born in New York one whose life was des- 
 tined to be interwoven with Philander Chase's at its close : 
 Henry John Whitehouse, son of James Whitehouse, of an 
 old English family, who, like the Upfolds, had lately come 
 to America. Mrs. Whitehouse came of a family that was 
 socially superior to her husband's, and that had given many 
 sons to the priesthood of the Church of England. 
 
 Soon after the Louisiana purchase, several of the new- 
 comers in New Orleans, belonging to different evangelical 
 denominations, combined to form a kind of union organiza- 
 tion for public worship which they called "The Protestant 
 Church," and agreed, as a compromise, to call an Episcopal 
 minister. Through Dr. Benjamin Moore, then assistant 
 bishop of New York, and a hearty friend of domestic mis- 
 sions. Philander Chase was invited to complete the organiza- 
 tion. He left his charge at Poughkeepsie, accordingly, in 
 the year 1805, and sailed from New York to New Orleans, 
 where, after much diplomacy, he succeeded in bringing the 
 somewhat anomalous society into accord with parochial 
 models, under the name of Christ Church, and in securing 
 for himself rectorial authority. The new parish placed it- 
 
10 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 self under the jurisdiction of the bishop of New York, he 
 being quite as accessible and more efficient than the nearest 
 bishop geographically, — the moribund Madison, of Vir- 
 ginia, To eke out his salary, inadequate for the support of 
 his growing family. Chase opened a school in New Orleans. 
 The boy Kemper meantime was not happy in the acad- 
 emy at Cheshire, which was regarded, apparently, too much 
 in the light of a house of correction by parents of unman- 
 ageable boys. It may be that he was somewhat fastidious, 
 used as he was to refined, feminine environment, — but a 
 coarse and rude element was undoubtedly in the ascendency 
 there. On one occasion his tormentors forced him to smoke 
 until he was sickened, — with a lifelong result : he con- 
 tracted therefrom such an aversion to tobacco that he never 
 touched it again. In after life he always believed that his 
 mother's influence and prayers saved him from contamina- 
 tion at that trying time. Another result his experience had, 
 in that he derived from it an invincible dislike of boarding 
 schools. He was convinced that home influence was better. 
 He wrote to his father, begging him to take him away from 
 the school, but for a time Colonel Kemper deprecated such 
 removal. The correspondence between father and son in 
 the year 1804 brings out the character and disposition of 
 the former in an interesting and attractive light ; he writes 
 to the boy of fourteen as if he were a young man, exhibit- 
 ing an implicit confidence in him — which was, in truth, de- 
 served, — and a graceful deference to his opinions and re- 
 gard for his wishes. There is nothing more graceful in life 
 than friendship between father and son. In one letter Colo- 
 nel Kemper seeks to impress upon him, even thus early, and 
 with every consideration for his inclination, the importance 
 of reflecting upon the choice of a profession : upon that 
 choice his future success and happiness will depend ; there- 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 11 
 
 fore he must take his time about it. He prays God to di- 
 rect his son's mind in the matter. In July, he writes of his 
 horror (deepened by his piety and his Federal principles) at 
 the murder of Alexander Hamilton. In the ensuing autumn, 
 he consented to Jackson's return home. As one more year 
 of preparation was necessary before the lad could enter 
 college, he was placed under the instruction of one of the 
 finest classical scholars and most successful teachers in the 
 country, — the Rev. Dr. Edmund Barry, an Irishman, and a 
 graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. Among his new 
 schoolmates were Benjamin Onderdonk and William Wyatt, 
 the latter being his deskmate, and ever after a faithful 
 friend. In the fall of the year 1805, at the close of his 
 sixteenth year, he entered Columbia College, then under the 
 presidency of Bishop Moore, one of its early graduates. 
 Onderdonk and Wyatt accompanied him thither, and 
 among other classmates he made friends with J. W. Francis 
 and Murray Hoffman. 
 
 We now approach the tragedy in his family. His half- 
 brother before mentioned, Daniel Kemper, Jr., was a rest- 
 less, adventurous spirit, who had never acquired any fixed 
 principles of religion or morals, owing to his having in- 
 stinctively adopted, as a youth, the doctrines of French in- 
 fidelity, widely disseminated in this country by Thomas 
 Jefferson, now at the head of the government. Colonel 
 Kemper had been at great expense in starting his wayward 
 son in life, — and now the young man, infatuated with the 
 projects of the Venezuelan agitator, Francisco Miranda, for 
 crushing the power of Spain in the new world, abandoned 
 every advantage and sacrificed brilliant prospects and op- 
 portunities, to go on a mad filibustering expedition in the 
 Caribbean Sea. Obscurely connected with Miranda's de- 
 signs were the fantastic schemes of Aaron Burr for detach- 
 
12 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 ing from the American Union the western states and terri- 
 tories, which were to be united with the revolted Spanish 
 colonies in a Napoleonic empire that was to stretch to the 
 western ocean and the tropic of Capricorn. 
 
 With an attention undistracted by such visions, Jackson 
 Kemper was pursuing his studies at Columbia. Living at 
 home, he enjoyed his college course and the friendships 
 made there. He found that for him winter was the best 
 season for study. He went once, for the only time in his 
 life, to the theatre, and was disappointed ; the play was 
 " Hamlet," and it was not up to his expectations. In the 
 school at Cheshire he had acted in some play, taking the 
 part, it is said, of "Isabella," — presumably the Spanish 
 Queen ; it is not likely that it was the heroine of " Measure 
 for Measure." This visit to the theatre, and the tempera- 
 ment revealed in a record of a walk he took with a college 
 mate along the Long Island shore, remind one that it was 
 the day of discovery of natural and poetic beauty in Amer- 
 ica, when the charm and grandeur of Trenton and Niagara 
 Falls and the White Mountains were being made known, 
 — heralding the rise of schools of landscape art, both garden- 
 ing and painting, and poetry ; that it was the day of Irving 
 and Paulding, of Joseph Dennie and Brockden Brown, — 
 the almost forgotten fathers of American literature. The 
 passage referred to exhibits the spirit in which Bryant's 
 poetry originated. The comrades strolled by farms and or- 
 chards to the Narrows, and thence along " the sandy shore, 
 which was scattered profusely with old shells, until the 
 Ocean itself limited our sight. Such a view ! — the bound- 
 less Ocean before us, a rich country on each side, and the 
 Sun urging toward the West yet shining with full splendor, 
 raised in my mind such ideas and thrilled my soul with such 
 delight as I had but seldom felt before, and made us deter- 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 13 
 
 mine when Summer returned often to take a pedestrian jour- 
 ney. Before we returned home we had walked twenty 
 miles, and felt no fatigue." 
 
 The fervor of this description renders it hard to under- 
 stand — but the fact is that Kemper experienced great diffi- 
 culty in English composition. He was not often as inspired 
 by his subject. He applied himself pretty closely to his 
 studies, and at the end of his Sophomore year, in the sum- 
 mer of 1807, was what we would call "run down." In 
 fact, he seemed so delicate that his parents apprehended 
 some deep-seated disorder, some weakness of the lungs, and 
 accordingly gladly encouraged his plan of a vacation outing 
 in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. His father keenly re- 
 gretted that his diminished resources would not enable him 
 to provide for a more extended tour. At the outset, the 
 youth visited, with interest, the college at Princeton. At 
 Trenton he greatly admired the bridge ("the handsomest I 
 have ever seen") over the Delaware river. Philadelphia 
 pleased him much ; he stayed with his relatives, the Jack- 
 sons ; and after a course of sight-seeing decided that, home 
 associations excepted, he liked the city better than New 
 York. From a point beyond Philadelphia, he wrote his 
 father, in the middle of September, that his vacation was 
 more than half over ; that he wanted to do some reading 
 before returning to college ; that he strongly desired to com- 
 plete his college course, but not if his father were anyway 
 unable to afford it. (Colonel Kemper was becoming deeply 
 involved, financially, through heavy endorsements for his 
 son Daniel ; Jackson had seen his mother weep, with appre- 
 hension of ruin, at having to sign papers for him.) His 
 father responded affectionately : he is as desirous as his son 
 that he should return to college — "but alas ! my situation 
 is precarious. Your mama and myself have daily 
 
14 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 anxiously reflected." They are fearful lest renewal of study 
 should cause a relapse of his regained health. He knows 
 enough Latin for the law : would it not be well to contem- 
 plate entrance into a lawyer's office? The writer would 
 "by no means enforce this measure, but only recommend it 
 to your consideration." If his heart is still set upon re- 
 entering college, " a kind Providence may enable me to 
 bear the expense, and I will do so with the greatest pleasure." 
 In his reply, the youth appealed to his father's own ex- 
 perience : he had left college without taking his degree, and 
 ever after regretted it. He also appealed to the judgment 
 of a kinsman, a lawyer, who earnestly advised him to finish 
 his course ; and concluded by dutifully leaving the matter 
 for his father to decide, — and the indulgent father decided 
 upon college. 
 
 His property was well-nigh gone, consumed by his sadly 
 abused and ruinous devotion to his eldest son. That in- 
 dulgence which was justified in Jackson's case, by his con- 
 sistent conduct and career, was hopelessly misdirected in the 
 case of the unworthy Daniel, now hastening to his disgraceful 
 end. The expedition that he had joined was a ludicrous 
 and lamentable failure, and he was captured and put to 
 death. This tragical consummation took place in the year 
 1808. Colonel Kemper was completely crushed by it ; his 
 fortune gone for the second time, the son in whose promise 
 and welfare he was so wrapped up having come to a violent 
 end, and he himself verging upon sixty years, — for years 
 thereafter he was utterly depressed both in spirits and 
 finances. And yet his affliction cannot be said to have 
 shortened his days, seeing that he lived on for nearly forty 
 years. He was able to retain his pleasant home, in a pleas- 
 ant neighborhood. Jackson took the reduction of his allow- 
 ance and the loss of his patrimony very philosophically : 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 16 
 
 "it is not fortune that I covet," he wrote, " but the being 
 freed from real property and complicated misfortunes." 
 The one indelible impression that would seem to have been 
 left upon his mind by his brother's fate was a conviction of 
 the unwisdom of political scheming. He conceived a 
 rooted aversion to all such manceuvering, and carried his 
 scruples touching a strict demarcation between Church and 
 State to such a point that he even abstained from voting. 
 
 The unfortunate Miranda perished in a Spanish prison ; 
 but the movement that he had initiated progressed rapidly 
 until in a few years her continental dependencies in both 
 Americas were torn from the crown of Spain. 
 
 The subject of our story was always known at home and 
 among his friends by the name of "Jackson" simply, 
 though up to the date of his correspondence with his father 
 just noted he had usually signed his full name. At that 
 time, in consequence, presumably, of something that was 
 said or that happened during his visit to his Uncle Jackson, 
 he quietly and finally dropped his baptismal name, 
 "David." 
 
 All of his best friends had long divined his fitness for the 
 sacred ministry. The sweetness and evenness of his tem- 
 per, the harmony of his talents, his unsullied purity of 
 character and motive, and the unbroken course, from boy- 
 hood, of his Christian nurture, had already set him apart, in 
 their estimation. But he, though for some time he had 
 been yet more deeply interested than they in the prospect, 
 with characteristic tenderness of conscience, hesitated. He 
 shrank from the responsibility of a decision; he would 
 leave it to divine direction; he must not presume, not 
 having had an evident call of the Holy Spirit. (He was 
 always instinctively reticent upon the subject of his religious 
 impressions and experience.) Meantime, while yet in col- 
 
16 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 lege, he joined a class that had been formed by Dr. John 
 Henry Hobart, the active and influential assistant minister 
 of Trinity Church, and that met weekly for theological 
 study, under the direction of a clerical instructor. 
 
 In the month of August, 1809, he was graduated, as the 
 valedictorian of his class, at Columbia College. He then 
 entered upon a year of theological training, reading the 
 standard English commentators, divines, and homilists, un- 
 der the supervision of Bishop Moore and Dr. Hobart. 
 These studies were broken only by occasional excursions 
 into the country and visits to relatives, and by correspond- 
 ence, in which he delighted and indulged himself with 
 youthful fervor, in spite of the time and cost involved. 
 
 His friend Wyatt was ordered deacon at the autumnal 
 ember season of 18 10, and went immediately to work on 
 Long Island, much to Kemper's envy. His scruples were 
 now quieted, and he was impatient for ordination, but had 
 to wait yet a few months until he should attain his majority, 
 — the canonical age. In December he was fully prepared, 
 and his ordination had been provided for, — when, to his 
 sorrow and suspense, his bishop was stricken with paralysis. 
 Unwilling to undergo an indefinite postponement, he ap- 
 plied to the ecclesiastical authority of the diocese for 
 recommendation to the Presiding Bishop ; and on the itih 
 of March, the second Sunday in Lent, in the year 181 1, 
 he was ordained to the diaconate by Bishop William White, 
 in St. Peter's Church, Philadelphia. 
 
II 
 
 MINISTRY 
 
n 
 
 MINISTRY 
 
 IMMEDIATELY after his ordination, the young deacon 
 went to his ordainer's house to dine, — for such was 
 Bishop White's hospitable rule upon these occasions, — and 
 in the afternoon preached his first sermon, in St. James' 
 Church. Kemper was not and never became a great 
 preacher ; to explain the curiosity and interest, the high ex- 
 pectations, the veritable sensation excited by that his maiden 
 homiletical effort, it is to be mentioned that the clergy of 
 the city were all men advanced in years. The bishop was 
 sixty-three ; Dr. Robert Blackwell, his senior assistant, was 
 ready to resign for age ; Dr. Joseph Pilmore, that pioneer 
 of evangelicalism, at St. Paul's Church, was seventy-seven 
 years old, — any of them old enough to be the grandfather 
 of the neophyte of twenty-one, whose personality rather 
 than the quality of his discourse must account for the im- 
 pression produced. His auditors doubtless felt, and justly 
 so, that they were participating in an event full of promise 
 for the future, — a pledge of the reviving energies of the 
 church after many years of lassitude and depression. 
 
 The following Tuesday, he was sounded as to an assist- 
 antship by a committee from the united churches. The 
 mother parish of Christ Church with its offshoots, St. 
 Peter's and St. James', were associated under the bishop's 
 supervision, and served by him with the cooperation of 
 assistant clergy. The following Sunday — the third in Lent 
 — Kemper preached three times ; in the evening to the col- 
 
 19 
 
20 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 ored congregation of St. Thomas' Church, He then re- 
 turned to New York to fill appointments that he had made 
 before leaving, and this took him several weeks to do. 
 Among them was one with Dr. Nathaniel Bowen of Grace 
 Church (afterward the third bishop of South Carolina) 
 who was anxious to have him settle in the city. He re- 
 turned a polite, circuitous reply to a communication from 
 the Philadelphia vestry, inviting him to pay their city an- 
 other visit, for better acquaintance. To his friends he 
 confessed that he deprecated the imputation of ingratitude ; 
 he had been treated with the utmost civility and hospitality, 
 — but he felt the delicacy of the situation : to preach on 
 trial went against his grain. Meantime his feelings were 
 being far more deeply harrowed by a yet more delicate situ- 
 ation ; for now we reach the romance of his life. 
 
 We are acquainted with his impressionable temperament. 
 Something other than clerical engagements had drawn him 
 homeward in a week. He and a well-tried friend of long 
 standing — a college classmate — were both ardently in love 
 with the same young lady, — one of rare beauty of figure, 
 feature and expression, charm of manner, sweetness of dis- 
 position ; and she (now that they all have long been dust, it 
 can be no breach of confidence to reveal it) was almost 
 equally interested in either. Kemper's bearing throughout 
 this trying situation, in which he suffered acutely, was char- 
 acterized by truly romantic refinement, sensitive honor, spir- 
 itual elevation. His father was impoverished, and he had 
 no resources, no income, or visible means of supporting a 
 family. He felt too that his first duty was to help his 
 aging parents. So he resigned his prospect of happiness to 
 his friend. But the latter was not to be outdone in gener- 
 osity ; he yielded with equal chivalry ; both agreed to 
 abide by her decision, — and she decided for the friend. 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 21 
 
 And so a crisis which by unregulated passion is only too 
 often rendered ridiculous or revolting, made the subject of 
 nauseous rant and sentimentality, settled in some countries 
 by barbarous pistol-shot or stiletto, or followed by equally 
 silly suicide, was here resolved according to the unyielding 
 principles of morality, manliness, and sound good sense. 
 
 This forgotten love affair of nigh a hundred years ago is 
 the tenderest, most beautiful passage in our hero's life. He 
 never forgot that early love ; it was an idealizing and hal- 
 lowing presence in after years ; but it left a scar upon his 
 heart, — a disappointment that should not have been. 
 
 In utter ignorance of the emotional tragedy that was 
 transpiring, the church people of Philadelphia were express- 
 ing regret at his refusal of their call. His aunt, Mrs. Jack- 
 son, a skilful social diplomatist, now rose to the occasion ; 
 telling every one who alluded to it in her presence that he 
 could not well refuse what had never been offered, and that 
 as to the invitation to preach, his engagements in New York 
 prevented his acceptance at that time. The strain of the 
 situation was relieved by the positive resignation of Dr. 
 Blackwell, in whose stead an assistant now had to be chosen. 
 So, on the 14th of May, Kemper was notified of his unani- 
 mous election to the position by the vestry, his salary to 
 amount to three hundred and fifty pounds sterling, "with 
 such extra allowance as the vestry vote assistants from time 
 to time; such allowance at present being three hundred 
 dollars." Notice of this action was publicly read in the 
 three associated churches, with the appended proviso (a 
 quaint and early instance of the referenduni) that it should 
 be considered final, "unless a majority of the congregation 
 entitled to vote at the annual election for churchwardens 
 and vestrymen shall declare in writing in one month to the 
 churchwardens or either of them that they object to the 
 
22 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 same election ; in which case it shall be considered as null 
 and void." On the twentieth of the same month, Kemper 
 signified his acceptance, and having waited long enough for 
 any objectors to be heard from, journeyed to Philadelphia in 
 June. 
 
 Such punctilios were a feature of an age far more formal 
 than ours, and a society that stood stiffly upon its dignity, 
 and were certain to arise when one party to a contract 
 dreaded the mortification of a refusal and the other was 
 sensitively scrupulous against seeming to seek a position. 
 Readers of Bishop Richard Channing Moore's life will re- 
 call the protracted negotiations between him and the diocese 
 of Virginia, antecedent to his election to its episcopate. 
 "Come and let us hear you. Would you come if you 
 were elected? " " Elect me, and I will go and see." The 
 intricacies of such correspondence sometimes, to modern 
 sense, touch the ludicrous and overshoot the mark, suggest- 
 ing the subtleties of the most calculating policy, and mutual 
 suspicion of motive. 
 
 Thus at last, providentially, it came to pass that the young 
 minister was brought into the kindliest and most intimate 
 relations, reaching over twenty years, with the distinguished 
 and much experienced bishop who then presided over the 
 American church, whose character he came more and niore 
 to resemble, and whose spirit he transmitted to another 
 generation. It was an invaluable discipline. A memorable 
 interweaving of Episcopal influences has been remarked 
 among our older bishops. The high-church Seabury gradu- 
 ated the evangelic Griswold, the moderate White, the high- 
 church Hobart, and the latitudinarian Provoost, the evangel- 
 ical Channing Moore. In the third generation, while these 
 types generally became more pronounced, they blended, and 
 these oscillations came to equilibrium, in the catholic-minded 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 23 
 
 Kemper, — given as amends, as it were, by Hobart to White, 
 — and in Cobbs, who went forth from Moore's diocese, 
 evangelical, but a stronger churchman than he ; while from 
 Griswold's influence Hopkins emerged and steadily grew 
 higher. The lives of these nine sum up as much of the 
 experience of the American church as as yet belongs to 
 history. 
 
 Kemper spent the first three months after his arrival in 
 Philadelphia with his Aunt Jackson, — who repeated to him 
 a caution that had been given her, "not to let him be 
 spoiled by such general approbation" as he had received, — 
 and then took rooms at William Murdock's. The population 
 of the city at that time was approaching one hundred thou- 
 sand ; it was the largest in the country, — but New York 
 was rapidly gaining upon it. Having been for a time the 
 seat of government, it had acquired somewhat of a metro- 
 politan character, and during the French Revolution and 
 ascendency of Bonaparte many aristocratic exiles made it 
 their home and contributed to its culture. Some made a 
 livelihood by teaching languages and arts, especially music ; 
 others brought scientific knowledge and the principles of the 
 Encyclopaedia. A diversified and party-colored life had re- 
 placed the simplicity and monotony of the provincial period : 
 the age of contrasts had begun. Roman Catholicism and 
 deistic infidelity, the social refinements and license of Ver- 
 sailles, were all in evidence. Beside the French emigrants 
 there were many German and Irish Catholics; Michael 
 Egan, a member of the Franciscan order, had just been 
 consecrated their bishop. 
 
 Amid these complex conditions, young Kemper main- 
 tained the even tenor of his course. The society in which 
 he chiefly mingled boasted itself as the best in America, and 
 doubtless there was none superior. His manners bore to the 
 
24 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 end the stamp of its elegance, but he was never diverted by 
 its attractions from the active work of the ministry. The 
 communicants of the three parishes that he served num- 
 bered two hundred at the time of his arrival ; the baptisms 
 that year amounted to upward of that number. Any Sun- 
 day morning or afternoon when he happened to be disen- 
 gaged he devoted to holding service at Germantown, 
 where there was no church ; and if he could not visit there 
 on a Sunday, he would give the people a week-day service. 
 He was appointed secretary of the diocesan convention at 
 the first meeting he attended, and was reappointed time 
 after time until the year 1817 inclusive. He was a prime 
 mover in the formation, in the spring of 181 2, of the Society 
 for the Advancement of Christianity in Pennsylvania; an 
 organization that marked an epoch in the life of the diocese 
 and, viewed in the light shed upon it by his later career, in 
 general religious history as well. Its primary object was to 
 increase the supply of clergy, and so meet the most pressing 
 need, and thus and by every other means in its power, — for 
 example, the distribution of prayer-books, also a crying 
 need, — to help revive the parishes that were ready to die and 
 to strengthen the feeble ones throughout the diocese. Kem- 
 per was chosen as the first missionary of the society, and, 
 having secured a substitute to perform his parochial duties 
 during his absence, he set out early in August, just after the 
 breaking out of the second war with England, upon his first 
 tour of ecclesiastical discovery and exploration. He held ser- 
 vice at Radnor, thence drove, in a sulky, to Lancaster, where 
 Joseph Clarkson, the earliest of Bishop White's ordinands, 
 was rector, and thence to York, Chambersburg, where he 
 had service in the courthouse, and Huntingdon, where he 
 found a log church in a fair state of preservation, a parson- 
 age lapsing to ruin, and a little flock without a pastor, still 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 25 
 
 faithful to the church and attached to her worship. All 
 along his way, he met or heard of scattered families of 
 church people, and at one point a rumor came to him of a 
 settlement of them, from beyond sea, in the upper part of a 
 remote valley. Early in September he reached Pittsburg, 
 and preached in Trinity Church ; thence proceeded south- 
 ward, up the Monongahela valley, to Brownsville, whereabout 
 he found many members of his communion, their churches 
 closed ; and then crossed the state line, stopping at Charles- 
 ton, in the western part of Virginia. Here he found a 
 clergyman settled, the only one in that portion of the state, 
 whose name was Doddridge ; and with him enjoyed 
 brotherly intercourse, which vastly widened his missionary 
 horizon. His new friend was of the opinion that half of the 
 original settlers of Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee — the 
 only states as yet beyond the AUeghanies — had been Epis- 
 copalians, and that it was not too late to follow and 
 endeavor to recover some of them. He had given much 
 anxious thought to the condition of the church in the 
 western part of the United States, and said that the first 
 step should be to form a convention of all the clergy west of 
 the mountains. Two, he knew, were at work in Ohio, and 
 one at least, by the name of Moore, at Lexington, Kentucky. 
 He impressed upon his young guest the necessity of imme- 
 diate action, for the salvation of the church's prospects in 
 the West. Kemper then retraced his steps, and visited 
 Beaver on the Ohio river, thirty miles below Pittsburg. 
 The people there had worshipped at first in the jail, then 
 in a schoolhouse, at the time of his visit in the courthouse ; 
 they seemed to be utterly ignorant of the liturgy. At this 
 point he turned his face eastward and homeward, recrossing 
 the state in the month of October, revisiting upon his way 
 as many as possible of the places he had stopped at before. 
 
26 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 He returned to Philadelphia greatly improved in health, 
 which had been poor, partly, no doubt, in consequence of 
 his disappointment, — and with a store of fresh impressions 
 and conclusions drawn from his observation ; among others, 
 that "the apathy of a congregation is principally, almost 
 entirely, owing to the pastor who presides over it," that 
 " the custom throughout the state of being anti-rubrical has 
 been attended with most fatal consequences to our Zion," 
 — that is, with exceeding lukewarmness of ecclesiastical 
 principle, — and above all, that the West offered a wide, ex- 
 tremely important and inviting mission field. He could re- 
 port beside that upon his tour he had baptized thirteen 
 children. The zeal that his experience awakened in his 
 soul was communicated to others, and his report rendered to 
 the Society that had sent him out, and through it to the 
 diocesan convention at its next meeting, greatly excited if 
 indeed it may not be said to have created interest in domes- 
 tic missions, raising anew the question of an episcopal ap- 
 pointment for the region beyond the Alleghanies. 
 
 Another symptom of increasing strength is the fact that 
 this year a fund was started and collections were made in 
 some of the churches of the diocese for the endowment of 
 the Pennsylvanian episcopate. 
 
 Kemper now devoted his spare hours to improving his 
 acquaintance with Hebrew, and corresponded in regard to 
 his studies Avith the learned Samuel Farmar Jarvis, who en- 
 larged upon the importance and value of Biblical criticism, 
 and regretted that the Socinians by taking it up had created 
 a prejudice against it. He also corresponded with the dis- 
 tinguished evangelical, James Milnor, who had just effected 
 his "breach with the world," abandoning a political career 
 that promised distinction. Milnor addressed his young 
 correspondent in a reverential tone that strikes one as re- 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 27 
 
 markable, coming from a man many years the senior. 
 About this time the young deacon's piety was deepened and 
 his homiletical style received an infusion of unction through 
 readings in an evangelical organ entitled " The Christian 
 Observer," several articles in which affected him profoundly. 
 We have spoken of the persuasiveness of his preaching ; 
 among those who were deeply interested and moved by it 
 was the talented young William Augustus Muhlenberg, then 
 a student at the University of Pennsylvania. It seems ap- 
 propriate here to illustrate his method by a representative 
 sermon on Charity, preached in all the churches of his 
 charge. Its text was taken from the familiar tenth verse of 
 the sixth chapter of St. Paul's epistle to the Galatians. 
 The preacher enforced his theme by (i), the Almighty's 
 command, illustrated by His goodness as shown in the 
 works of nature, and (2), the example of Jesus, in con- 
 sidering which he burst into the following apostrophe and 
 prayer: "And didst Thou, blessed Jesus, spend thy life 
 for us, for our example ? Wast thou touched with a feeling 
 for our infirmities ? Didst thou enter the hovel of distress, 
 assuage the grief of a sufferer, and dispel from his abode 
 misery and want ? O wonderful was thy condescension and 
 infinite thy love ! And can we refuse to imitate the pattern 
 which thou hast set us ? May our right hands forget their 
 cunning, may our tongues cleave to the roof of our mouths 
 when this is obliterated from our memories ! Effuse, Al- 
 mighty Saviour, thy powerful grace into our hearts, enable 
 us to be continually given to all good works, and in imi- 
 tation of thee to delight in benefiting the bodies and souls 
 of men. 
 
 " Christians, behold your Saviour going from city to city. 
 Crowds of people with the halt and the diseased gather around 
 him. And lo ! the eyes of the blind are opened, and the 
 
28 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 ears of the deaf are unstopped. The lame man leaps as an 
 hart, and the tongue of the dumb sings. The demons of 
 hell obey him. Thousands are fed by his power. At his 
 command the billows cease their raging, and the insatiable 
 grave yields up its dead. It was a jubilee in Israel ; their 
 habitations sounded with the voice of health and joy. 
 Scarce was sickness known, while fear and dismay fled 
 from the trembling penitent and faith and hope possessed 
 his soul. Thus did the holy Jesus labor in our cause, while, 
 though fatigued in body and in mind, he frequently spent 
 the whole night in praying for us. 
 
 "Surely the contemplation of the Saviour's life must 
 kindle the smallest spark of faith into a perfect flame of de- 
 votion ; it must convince us that without charity we cannot 
 even hope for heaven." 
 
 The Saviour removed from poverty its old time stigma 
 and even consecrated it by bearing it himself throughout 
 his earthly life. Henceforth it becomes an occasion for the 
 practice of many Christian virtues and graces, not the least 
 of which is the privilege of relieving it afforded to wealth. 
 "Riches are talents committed to our trust; as they ac- 
 cumulate our obligations increase." And the obligation is 
 also a blessing, affording exercise to "the finest feelings of 
 our nature, — the pure and exalted sensations of benefi- 
 cence." The thought of judgment to come should impress 
 upon the rich the duty of helping their poor neighbors, 
 while the attendant blessing should make t"he duty a de- 
 light. "The blessing of God accompanies those actions 
 which are well pleasing in his sight. How extremely in- 
 teresting, how captivating, how endearing is this passage of 
 Holy Writ : ' He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth 
 unto the Lord.' They are his. . . . And for every 
 act of mercy he will rcjKiy us tenfold. He considers every 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 29 
 
 kind expression as made to himself, and every benevolent 
 performance we confer upon our fellow-mortals as if they 
 promoted his own happiness. 
 
 " Our obligation is complete in one simple truth: This 
 is the will of God." 
 
 The foregoing is, no doubt, an immature effort, — naturally 
 and inevitably so. It may be said to lack the graces of 
 style and, with exception of the passages quoted, to be a 
 little dry. " Charity " is perhaps limited too narrowly in it 
 to mere almsgiving ; but we must make allowance for this 
 because of the occasion of its delivery : a collection was 
 to be taken up for the poor of the parish. And in truth 
 the few paragraphs quoted unveil the depths of Kemper's 
 spiritual nature and the secret of his success. Fa- 
 miliarity with Scripture, glowing love of his Saviour, im- 
 parting to his expressions affecting power, unquestioning and 
 loyal obedience to the divine will, — these are what impressed 
 his hearers ; and they were rendered the more engaging by 
 the fresh, boyish face, shapely figure, and pleasant voice of 
 the speaker, appearing in a pulpit where for years only 
 grizzled heads had been seen. As he preached, the delight 
 of beneficence beamed from his features, until he seemed 
 an embodiment of his theme. And, to repeat, the last 
 sentence quoted contains the key and clue to his career : 
 " the will of God," — that was always his animating princi- 
 ple. Probably no one ever lived to whom the call of duty 
 was more constraining, — who yielded a more implicit obedi- 
 ence to the voice of conscience ; for his was absolute. 
 
 He used to preach regularly to the negroes of St. Thomas'. 
 We have noticed how freely he would quote Scripture in his 
 sermons ; he was not accustomed to quote poetry, save lines 
 and stanzas of hymns. "Rock of Ages" was his favorite 
 hymn : 
 
30 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 In my hand no price I bring : 
 Simply to Thy cross I cling. 
 
 He rendered divine service in an ideal manner, with sim- 
 plicity and feeling. He loved the study of divinity, and 
 made it a practice to read theological works, both the 
 standard Anglican doctors, Hooker, Pearson, Bull, Barrow, 
 Butler, Waterland, etc., and current treatises as well. This 
 is illustrated by a passage in a letter to James Milnor, in 
 answer to a request for a list of theological books : "I rec- 
 ollect being very much pleased a few years ago with a work 
 by Vicesimus Knox on the Lord's Supper. The benefits of 
 that sacrament are fully and clearly explained by good 
 Bishop Wilson in his works. I am at present highly de- 
 lighted with a book just published which I trust will prove a 
 great blessing to this country : " Magee, on Atonement and 
 Sacrifice." He also made it a rule daily to read a chapter 
 of the New Testament in the original Greek. He used 
 Bishop Andrewes' book of devotion and Bishop Wilson's 
 "Sacra Privata," but, as before said, was exceedingly ret- 
 icent about his religious frames and feelings, and delicate 
 about discussing those of others. As was inevitable in one 
 who had been trained by Dr. Hobart, he was a strong, 
 hearty and loyal Churchman, but owing to Bishop White's 
 temperate influence, not as stiffly so as his first preceptor. 
 To quote again from his correspondence with Milnor : "I 
 have not infrequently been perplexed in mind, wondering at 
 the mysterious providence of God in permitting a Church 
 whose doctrines are apparently an exact transcript of the 
 Sacred Scriptures to continue in so lifeless a state. But 
 those days of coldness are, I trust, fleeing away. Many are 
 becoming sensible of the vast importance of their immortal 
 souls, who, if they continue seeking, will soon glory in the 
 cross of Christ." To illustrate his ecclesiastical attitude yet 
 
riSHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 31 
 
 more clearly, throwing it into relief against a sharply con- 
 trasting background : he learned from Archbishop Seeker's 
 sermons against popery that for six ages before the Reforma- 
 tion "both clergy and laity were so universally ignorant and 
 vicious that nothing was too bad for them to do or too 
 absurd for them to believe. . . . Transubstantiation 
 was an article of their faith." As this was a consequence 
 of admitting, beside Scriptural authority, the rule of tradi- 
 tion, he deduced the conclusion "that the only thing we 
 have to rely on in Christianity is the written word of God. 
 . . Worshipping or praying to saints and angels are 
 expressly forbidden therein," and there is no example of 
 either for at least three hundred years after the Apostles' 
 time ; yet Roman Catholics ' ' pray to them in the house of 
 God — and in the same posture in which they pray to God, — 
 to bestow grace, pardon sin, save from hell and place in 
 heaven. They pray to St. Joachim, who, they say, was 
 Mary's father, to use his influence with her, and they even 
 pray her by virtue of her parental authority to command of 
 her son what they want." 
 
 His temperament was pastoral rather than sacerdotal or 
 oratorical. He was in his element when making a round of 
 parish visits, which he found to be an easy and eligible 
 means of imparting religious instruction ; and his tenderness 
 and personal kindness in times of trouble, sickness, or death 
 endeared him deeply to his people. His prayers and minis- 
 trations by the sick bed were especially affecting. 
 
 He thoroughly enjoyed simple social visiting, both pay- 
 ing and receiving, and all his life long was very particular 
 about calling on strangers and returning calls. He was a 
 generous giver to every good cause, exemplifying with 
 utmost consistency the principles of his sennon above 
 quoted ; indeed, his friends thought him liberal above 
 
32 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 what he could or ought to afford, — yet he was never in 
 want. 
 
 Politically, he was bred in the Federal school, and was 
 never known to express dislike of any one as emphatically as 
 of Thomas Jefferson. This was remarked in one who was 
 exceedingly restrained in. criticism of others. On the other 
 hand, he inherited from his New York Dutch ancestry and 
 connections their long-standing prejudice against New Eng- 
 land. 
 
 He was not a great man intellectually, not a thinker, 
 scholar, writer or eloquent preacher. Such is the testimony 
 of one who knew him best and loved him most, — and none 
 was better aware of these facts than he himself. He had 
 the most modest view of his powers and attainments, and 
 was never satisfied with them but ever strove to improve 
 himself. Like Washington, he felt and lamented his lack of 
 intimate acquaintance with the past, with history and letters. 
 He was lacking in imagination, as is shown by his indiffer- 
 ence to poetry, the drama and fiction. He did not care for 
 Shakespeare, and abhorred Byron ; to that poet of reprobate 
 nature he had an antipathy second in intensity only to that 
 that he felt toward Jefferson. Among poets he preferred 
 Cowper, and his favorite prose-writer was Addison. He 
 read and enjoyed Scott's romances as they came out. 
 Among American authors, he met and liked both Irving and 
 Cooper. He read newspapers on principle, believing that 
 a minister should keep up with what is going on in the 
 world. He was by no means lacking in humor of a gay and 
 gentle kind ; one of his most attractive qualities, which he 
 never lost, was a certain boyish light-heartedness and zest in 
 living. He had a quick and keen appreciation of the ludi- 
 crous side of things, expression of which, like Bishop Gris- 
 wold, he thought it a duty to restrain. 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 33 
 
 As we have seen, he was affected by beauty and sublimity 
 of landscape and scenery. He loved the mountains, and 
 spoke enthusiastically of the great falls of Niagara. He ob- 
 served, too, the details of nature, especially the outlines of 
 leaves ; he was fond of botany and other branches of natural 
 history, — hence it was a rare pleasure to him to meet, in 
 later years, the ornithologist Audubon. 
 
 He had a taste for bright colors and for sweets, but fought 
 off the use of stimulants until the end of his life. He 
 dressed plainly and wore no jewelry, but was scrupulously 
 neat in all his habits. He shared the opinion of his day re- 
 garding amusements, holding that attendance at balls, 
 theatres, and horse-races, and all card-playing, were entirely 
 proscribed to the clergy, and were indeed inconsistent with 
 faithful church membership. In Philadelphia in his time 
 card-playing and dancing only began after the clergy had 
 left a party; it was considered an open disrespect to a 
 minister to play or dance in his presence. 
 
 In height he was a trifle under the masculine average, be- 
 ing five feet, seven inches tall ; his shoulders square, hands 
 and feet shapely and delicate ; of erect and graceful figure 
 and springy gait. His voice was sweet but not very strong, 
 and he had no ear for music. His complexion was fair, of 
 good color but not ruddy, save as to the lips. A miniature 
 taken of him by Tott, soon after he was priested, shows a 
 face wide in proportion to its length, thick brown hair 
 combed from left to right, looking as if bloAvn by the wind, 
 short side-whiskers, bright hazel eyes, a kissable mouth, the 
 lower lip ripe and full, chin fine and strong, — altogether a 
 handsome face and pleasant expression. 
 
 The degree to which his work was telling is evidenced by 
 the fact that in 1813 the communicants of the united 
 churches numbered three hundred, an increase of fifty per 
 
34 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 cent, in the two years only that he had labored among them. 
 The confirmation class that year reached the extraordinary 
 number of one hundred and eighty, Muhlenberg being one. 
 To the effect of the war in deepening the sense of depend- 
 ence on God this veritable revival must largely be ascribed, 
 but far more to the evangelical awakening which had been 
 in progress for some years, whose energies the war may be 
 held to have liberated. 
 
 Kemper was now placed upon the Standing Committee of 
 the diocese, upon which he served for many years. Al- 
 ready a friend of his foresaw that he was destined to be- 
 come a bishop. In July he was called to St. Paul's 
 Church, Baltimore, to assist Dr. James Kemp, who notified 
 him of the election by letter. The salary was fixed at a 
 thousand, three hundred and thirty-three dollars, thirty- 
 three and a third cents, with perquisites amounting to two 
 hundred dollars, and the rent of a fine house. He replied 
 immediately, expressing his "grateful sensibility " of the favor 
 shown him by the offer, and consulted his friends with re- 
 gard to it. The united vestries, in alarm, applied to Bishop 
 White to prevail upon him to postpone his decision until 
 after their meeting, the end of the month ! He promptly 
 notified them that he had decided to decline, and that in 
 any case delay would put him in the indelicate position of 
 seeming to offer himself to the highest bidder. 
 
 After a diaconate of nearly three years, he was advanced 
 to the priesthood, in Christ Church, on the 23d of 
 January, the third Sunday after the Epiphany, in the year 
 1814. Upon this interesting occasion his excellent father 
 wrote : " We do all unite in our most sincere and hearty 
 gratulations on your advancement in the Church. You are 
 now consecrated a Priest of the Lord, and may His good 
 Spirit which first directed your choice to the ministry keep 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 35 
 
 you faithful in the same to your life's end." Abundantly 
 was that paternal petition granted, in ways they little 
 dreamed ! 
 
 Kemper's was not a nature that needed the discipline of 
 adversity. He was in harmony with his environment ; his 
 character and career are an illustration of the truth em- 
 bodied in the exquisite lines of Tennyson : 
 
 The wind that beats the mountain blows 
 
 More softly round the open wold ; 
 And gently comes the world to those 
 
 That are cast in gentle mold. 
 
 The winds of heaven did not often visit his face too 
 roughly, or the censure of the world disturb his pure and 
 peaceful spirit. But now, just after his ordination, he had 
 to experience the first breath of hostile criticism, and his 
 sensitive soul was depressed. He had preached a sermon 
 upon the sacrament of the Lord's Supper which gave great 
 offence ; he was accused of teaching that its reception was 
 necessary to salvation. Milnor aiid another called upon 
 him to inquire about it, "The unusual circumstance of 
 being openly abused has in a measure depressed my spirits," 
 he wrote ; " one woe at least is now removed : that of hav- 
 ing all persons speak well of me." He confessed to a feel- 
 ing of compunction at having entered the ministry so young 
 and with so little theological preparation. "I am even 
 growing rusty as respects general literature and the lan- 
 guages," he said. His humble estimate of himself and 
 sense of deficiency, rendered keener by the strictures to 
 which he was subjected, made him long to retire for a time 
 from the world ; like St. Paul, he was ready to go for three 
 years into Arabia, for self-discipline and improvement, — but 
 he dared not turn his back upon his active work so long. 
 
36 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 His health, which through all these early years of his 
 ministry continued delicate, may partly account for this sen- 
 sitiveness to the breeze of unpopularity ; and that in turn 
 reacted upon it. He began to show symptoms of overwork, 
 most noticeably by a weakening of the voice, and his physi- 
 cian recommended cessation of his regular duties and a tour 
 of several months. The Advancement Society was ready 
 to engage him as its missionary, as before. He did not feel 
 disposed to go, for he wanted to study ; but he realized that 
 " to spend and be spent in such a service is not the dictate 
 of affectation or enthusiasm, but is just what Scripture de- 
 mands." Milnor's ordination was hastened, to supply his 
 place in the city, and in August — the month when Wash- 
 ington was sacked and burned by the British, — he started on 
 his way. One cannot but be struck by this providential or- 
 dering of his life ; just at the times when his health, both 
 mental and physical, most demanded it, he was enabled to 
 enjoy those months of wandering that are so essential to the 
 experience and perfect development of every young man. 
 He rode a horse that had been bought for the trip, and from 
 his letters on the way we know that a safe beast had been 
 selected, for it proved exceedingly slow. At the outset the 
 heat of the dog-days was very great. He revisited all the 
 towns and settlements where he had stopped before, to see 
 what progress, if any, had been made, and to keep the 
 flame burning, and, further, made a detour to a dilapidated 
 log church of the old Society for the Propagation of the 
 Gospel in the colonies. In the neighborhood of Pittsburg 
 he found that there were four clergymen, but against all of 
 them the people had grounds of complaint from which it 
 would appear that they were of decadent latitudinarian 
 stamp, devoid of zeal, hopelessly secularized, — " a name of 
 dishonor." His notes of a Sunday spent at Butler, thirty 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 37 
 
 miles north of Pittsburg, preserve the memory of a novel 
 and picturesque experience. " As the courthouse was to be 
 occupied by the Presbyterians in the morning, a few Church- 
 people assembled with me in a private room, I began by 
 performing the whole of the baptismal service and baptizing 
 three children ; then administered the Communion to six 
 persons, and baptized an adult." In the afternoon he held 
 service in the courthouse, and preached to a throng of hear- 
 ers ; baptized a child in private ; and then dined (by that 
 time he must have needed refreshment) with an intelligent 
 lady whose husband had died a few months before, leaving 
 her with a large family of interesting children. " She was 
 very anxious to have me read the burial service over her 
 husband's grave. The request was a strange one, but after 
 consideration I signiiied my willingness to comply if it 
 would afford any consolation to the widow, and if her 
 friends would accompany us to the grave. Just before sun- 
 set we left the house, she having gone before us with her 
 children and servants. After walking a mile, we came to a 
 large field on a hill full of sheep. In the centre was the 
 grave, palisaded by rails and covered with wild flowers. I 
 began the service with feelings somewhat agitated. The 
 setting sun, the bird's-eye view of the town, the sheep, the 
 variegated landscape, and the mourners opposite me, all 
 rendered the scene deeply interesting." 
 
 He now crossed the state line, penetrating further west 
 than he had gone on the previous journey, into the north- 
 eastern corner of Ohio, becoming thus the first missionary 
 of the Church to enter what had been and was still 
 known as " tlie Connecticut Reserve." Here he passed 
 good part of the autumn. He encountered extremely 
 primitive conditions: "In the same place which serves as 
 kitchen, drawing-room and parlor I have slept at night." 
 
33 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 Sometimes a single drinking cup did duty for a whole 
 family ! The roads were shockingly bad ; his horse had to 
 wade and pick his way over logs ; once he was thrown from 
 his horse, and contracted rheumatism from a severe wetting. 
 " For a month I was traveling through a country nearly 
 inundated with rain ; the people were poor, the accommoda- 
 tions bad ; sometimes I was benighted and sometimes ex- 
 posed to dangers. To all these things it appeared to me I 
 would soon become reconciled." In truth, the underlying 
 bent of his religious nature, his particular taste, endowment, 
 and vocation, were then and there fully revealed to him. In 
 many counties through which he rode long vistas of useful- 
 ness opened upon his mental gaze. The people, however 
 destitute of apparent necessaries of life, proved to be highly 
 intelligent ; true Yankees that they were, they had already 
 begun to establish public libraries ! Church people, he dis- 
 covered, were scattered about like sheep in a wilderness ; 
 many there were who had not lost their zeal, and who read 
 the service and a sermon every Sunday in their homes. He 
 preached atCanfield, Poland, and Boardman, baptized, upon 
 this part of his tour, one hundred and twenty-five souls, and 
 administered the Communion to many "who had despaired 
 of ever enjoying its reception again." He helped to form 
 several congregations, and to create a demand for the 
 prayer-book to the extent of a thousand copies. He pleaded 
 with the parents of a promising youth to let him study for 
 the ministry in Philadelphia; and retraversed his stt-ps, 
 filled with enthusiasm by his new experiences, seriously con- 
 sidering within himself whether he were not called to this 
 fresh field of work. He was ready and desirous to cast in 
 his lot with the rising West, if only it were consistent with 
 "some filial duties of a pecuniary nature," (that is, the 
 support of his aging parents, to which, all through these 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 39 
 
 years, and for some time to come, he largely contributed). 
 It was now the latter part of November ; the weather was 
 cold, and snow was daily expected, as he rode back through 
 Pennsylvania. He reached home again in December, having 
 accomplished his mission, as his bishop testified, in a man- 
 ner " preeminently conducive to the interesting purposes 
 contemplated by the Society." 
 
 Soon after his return, the country was gladdened by news of 
 Jackson's victory at New Orleans, and of peace with England. 
 
 In his address to the diocesan convention of 1815, Bishop 
 White spoke of the disturbed state of the country for some 
 time past, and of the concurrent spread of a serious spirit and 
 interest in religious subjects. He urged the clergy to distin- 
 guish carefully between genuine religious affection and mere 
 animal sensibility or faulty passion, causing impiety, Phari- 
 saical ostentation or infidelity in different natures. One 
 happy consequence of the revival was that at Norristown, 
 where for many years " the Episcopal religion " had been at 
 a low ebb, a large and elegant church was built and conse- 
 crated. At this period, moreover, the custom of sitting 
 during singing of the psalms and hymns in public worship 
 began to give way "to the more comely posture of stand- 
 ing." James Milnor took priest's orders this year, while 
 young Muhlenberg became a candidate, and began to visit 
 the sick and poor in Kemper's company. 
 
 The daughters of General William Lyman, lately de- 
 ceased, (he had been a special consul in London, under 
 President Madison), had returned from Europe and opened 
 a large and fashionable boarding-school for girls in Philadel- 
 phia. Kemper became deeply interested in the eldest of 
 these, Jerusha. (Unfeeling parents, to inflict a name that 
 sounds like profane swearing upon an unoffending and help- 
 less girl !) Miss Lyman was three years older than he, and 
 
40 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 a person of rare cultivation. For some time the obligation 
 he was under to help support his father conflicted with their 
 marriage, but at length, in the year 1816, the way was made 
 plain, and after a wedding-tour to Lakes George and Cham- 
 plain, — the only pleasure trip he ever took, — they began 
 housekeeping in Dr. Benjamin Rush's old home. His mar- 
 riage added to the interest felt in him by the people of 
 Philadelphia ; it was a stimulating influence to him men- 
 tally : it was always hard for him to write, and his wife 
 helped him greatly by criticism of his sermons ; altogether, 
 it was an ideal union, marked by a harmony of opinion and 
 sentiment that was broken only by her untimely death, after 
 two years. 
 
 In the period so far covered by this chapter, several 
 children were born the threads of whose lives were destined 
 to be intertwined with our hero's life. It is to be remarked 
 how many of these were from the South. In 181 2, Cicero 
 Stephens Hawks was born in Newberne, North Carolina, and 
 Thomas Hubbard Vail in Richmond, Virginia. The latter, 
 however, was of Northern parentage ; he was baptized in 
 the Monumental Church at Richmond ; after his father's 
 death the family returned to New England. In 18 15, 
 Henry Washington Lee was born in Hamden, Connecticut, 
 and in 18 16, Joseph Cruikshank Talbot in Alexandria, Vir- 
 ginia. Meantime young Henry Whitehouse finished school 
 in New York, and at the age of fourteen entered Columbia 
 College. At the same age, George Upfold had entered 
 Union College, Schenectady, then under the presidency of 
 Dr. Eliphalet Nott. His life there was happy ; he had been 
 well prepared, was a hard student, excelling in English com- 
 position, reading widely outside the requirements of the cur- 
 riculum ; he was also a good companion, — in fact, both at 
 school and college he was a leader in both study and sport. 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 41 
 
 At Schenectady he was well grounded in Greek, ancient 
 history, and the English classics, especially Shakespeare, 
 Bacon, and Milton ; but the highest privilege he enjoyed 
 there was, without doubt, contact with the distinguished 
 educator then at the head of the institution. That was an 
 influence for a lifetime ; and he used often to say that he 
 had never met a man who understood boys and their 
 management better than Dr. Nott. While yet a mere lad, 
 he improved his college vacations by the study of medicine, 
 which he continued, after taking his degree of Bachelor of 
 Arts in 1814, under the direction of a physician in Albany, 
 until the end of the following year, when he went to New York 
 to become a pupil of the celebrated Dr. Valentine Mott, and 
 to attend lectures at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, 
 whence he was graduated in May, 181 6, just after he had 
 passed his twentieth birthday ; when the degree had been 
 conferred he was asked his age, and was told that if it 
 had been known before he would have had to wait a 
 year for graduation, until he had attained his majority, — 
 but it was admitted that he had fairly earned it. He 
 now began the practice of medicine at Albany, and also the 
 study of divinity. His mother's prayer had always been 
 that her only son might become one of God's ministers, and 
 nothing more than this is known regarding his change of 
 profession. In June, 181 7, he was married to Miss Sarah 
 Graves, a churchwoman, of New York, both having just 
 completed their twenty-first year, and from that time his 
 wife's calm, strong, and unvarying good sense was the 
 dominant influence of his life. A few months after, he was 
 admitted as a candidate for Holy Orders, and the following 
 winter returned to New York, to prosecute his theological 
 studies under the direction of Bishop Hobart, whose influ' 
 ence over him, ecclesiastically, was thenceforth profound. 
 
42 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 It is time to return to Philander Chase, who, in the year 
 that we have reached, was entering his period of highest 
 activity. We are acquainted with the leading points of his 
 experience and character, sufficiently to comprehend his 
 ruling passion and to interpret his life's work. He knew 
 what college had done for him, — how it had opened his eyes, 
 enlightened his mind, expanded his soul, — and afterward he 
 had had experience as a teacher in Poughkeepsie and New Or- 
 leans. So he became, first and foremost, an ardent believer 
 in the transcendent benefits of education. But he had seen 
 enough of infidelity and the effects of an education without 
 religion to realize that such divorce was deeply to be de- 
 plored, and of the most injurious consequences. He had a 
 religious nature ; his conversion to the church's ways was 
 wholehearted and his attachment to her sincere and deep ; 
 he was accordingly fully persuaded of the importance of 
 Christian education, under the auspices of the church. 
 And further, he was born on a frontier, when he was 
 grown he made a missionary journey to the frontier, in 
 Louisiana he encountered frontier conditions, meeting the 
 hardy frontiersmen of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys ; all 
 his life long he followed the westering frontier. Such, then, 
 was his ruling passion, such is his position in church, yea, 
 and American, history ; he was the great Christian educator 
 of the frontier. 
 
 He left his school and parish in New Orleans, in 1811, 
 and returned North to educate his growing boys; finding 
 infidelity prevalent in his early home and its neighborhood, 
 he decided to send them to the Episcopal academy at 
 Cheshire, and, to be near them, gladly accepted the rector- 
 ship of Christ Church, Hartford. Here he spent six pleasant 
 years, the most peaceful, as he said, looking back at its close, 
 of his whole life. But he could not rest content amid so 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 43 
 
 much civilization, so, when his sons' education was finished, 
 he resigned his position, leaving behind him many good and 
 warm friends, and late in the winter of 1817 started for the 
 wilderness, having no audible call, no prospect of support, 
 but only the constraining inward call of Providence and his 
 own nature ; and, the middle of March, preached his first 
 sermon in Ohio. 
 
 In the year 1800, the southeastern corner of the vast North- 
 west Territory was erected into a separate territory by the 
 name of Ohio. A majority of its settlers were, naturally, 
 hardy young men, and a majority of these were from New 
 England ; self-reliant, aggressive spirits, hard drinkers, after 
 the fashion of that day, — and little wonder, when we con- 
 sider the tedium of life during the long winter's cold and 
 the chills and fever of summer-time upon the frontier. The 
 territorial governor, Arthur St. Clair, was bitterly unpop- 
 ular ; his aristocratic tendencies excited to fever heat the 
 fierce democracy of Ohio. Desire to be rid of him inspired 
 much of the agitation for statehood, and out of a very broth 
 of politics the new state emerged. "A people's beginning," 
 said Aristotle, "is more than half of the whole; " and a 
 peculiar intensity of partisan politics henceforth character- 
 ized the people of Ohio. The territorial officers had carried 
 their slaves thither, and in the convention summoned in 1802 
 to draft a constitution there was a majority of one in favor 
 of the establishment of slavery, as an inducement to South- 
 ern immigration, — but an eloquent dissuasive turned the 
 scale. Even at this distance of time it almost brings one's 
 heart into one's mouth to think of all that hung in the bal- 
 ance at that unconscious moment, — of all that was impli- 
 cated in that vote, in that single speech ; for if slavery had 
 been domesticated there, state after state to westward would 
 have followed suit. As it turned out, no loss whatever was 
 
44 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 involved in the defeat of the measure, for, mild as was the 
 type of slavery in Virginia and Kentucky, many natives of 
 those states removed to Ohio in order to escape it entirely. 
 About the year 1804, the new commonwealth was visited by 
 the peculiar religious epidemic known as "the jerks," — the 
 delirium tremens of emotional religion. In 1805, Michigan 
 was made a separate territory, and the setting off of Illinois 
 in 1809 reduced Indiana to its present proportions. 
 
 A summary of the various economic frontiers — for the 
 term is by no means a simple one — will help to an under- 
 standing of the situation. First, outermost, and ever reced- 
 ing was what may be called the hunter's frontier, that of the 
 Indian, the wild animal, and the white hunter ; then, pur- 
 suing the first, came that of the trapper and trader in fur ; 
 the third, ever advancing upon the former two, might be 
 distinguished as the pastoral, — that of the wool-growers and 
 cattlemen ; and the fourth and fifth were agricultural, 
 marked by rotating crops of Indian corn and wheat and by 
 intenser, diversified cultivation respectively. The sixth was 
 marked by the rise of towns; it was that of the manu- 
 facturer, and might be called the commercial, unless the 
 latter term be regarded as forming a fresh distinction. 
 We may go a step further and describe a seventh and final 
 frontier, — that of culture, depending upon great cities ; of 
 literature, architecture, music, and all the refinements of a 
 high and complex civilization. And in America it needed a 
 marvellously short space of time to run up the whole gamut ; 
 the experience of a border state in the first half, the first 
 generation even, of the nineteenth century foreshortened the 
 history of civilization. The successive waves resembled the 
 ripples that spread from a stone dropped in a pool, the first 
 being the furthest and swiftest ; only in the historical in- 
 stance the undulations of advancing civilization continually 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 45 
 
 overlapped. This is illustrated at the period of Chase's ar- 
 rival in Ohio : Columbus was then a village five years of 
 age, Cleveland had just reached its majority, Cincinnati 
 boasted a population of upward of three thousand souls and 
 was rapidly growing, — and yet for some time after, bounties 
 were offered in the state for wolves' and panthers' heads. 
 
 Only three months after his arrival, Chase was appointed 
 principal of an incipient academy at Worthington, a place 
 settled by New Englanders, and accordingly made it his 
 home, purchasing a farm on the outskirts of the town. He 
 made a tour of exploration in the southern half of the state, 
 organizing parishes at Zanesville, then in its eighteenth year, 
 and Columbus, before the stumps had disappeared from its 
 main road, and visiting Dayton, Cincinnati, and Chillicothe. 
 A convention to organize the diocese was held at Columbus 
 in January, 1818; two clergymen and nine lay delegates 
 were present ; they adjourned to meet at Worthington the 
 following June, in order to complete their organization by 
 the election of a bishop ; and there Philander Chase was 
 chosen to be the first bishop of Ohio, — the first west of the 
 Alleghany Mountains. He left immediately for Baltimore 
 and Philadelphia, to consult Bishops Kemp and White. 
 
 For many years the subject of a western bishopric had 
 been under consideration. It afforded an agreeable topic 
 for speculation and conversation, — which so far had ended 
 in deliberation. Now that Ohio had acted, the church was 
 thrown upon the defensive, did not know what to do in the 
 premises ; that action seemed premature, precipitate. So 
 the standing committees refused to move, that is, withheld 
 their consent to the consecration. It was the beginning of 
 troubles for the bishop elect, against whom personally ob- 
 jections began to be alleged. His episcopate began in dis- 
 sension. His whole career was passed in review, and this 
 
46 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 naturally consumed much time. Investigations having been 
 made in every place where he had lived, his character was 
 triumphantly cleared, and on the eleventh of February, 
 1819, he was consecrated by Bishops White, Hobart and 
 Kemp, in St. James' Church, Philadelphia. We can im- 
 agine how absorbingly interesting this event, so momentous 
 in the history of American Christianity, must have been to 
 Jackson Kemper. 
 
 On his return to his diocese in the spring, the new bishop 
 organized parishes at Steubenville and Wheeling, and on the 
 first Sunday in June confirmed seventy-nine souls at Worth- 
 ington. He had the oversight of three parishes, beside that 
 of the diocese, — from which he received no salary ; he had 
 to cut wood, make fires, and feed his live-stock with his own 
 hands. This Episcopal type contrasted picturesquely with 
 the bewigged, British type, of which Provoost was an exam- 
 ple, that was already perishing in its propriety. In 182 1, 
 Bishop Chase moved to Cincinnati, which then numbered ten 
 thousand inhabitants, to assume the presidency of the col- 
 lege of that city ; and there he matured his plans for a dio- 
 cesan institution of learning. Because of the originality of 
 his ideas, and because in the course of their application all 
 the arguments and objections in the case were elicited, all 
 the problems started, and innumerable suggestions afforded 
 regarding the relation of the church to education, this pas- 
 sage of history deserves the close attention of every Ameri- 
 can churchman. 
 
 Only a little experience was enough to convince Bishop 
 Chase that the west must breed its own ministry, for a suffi- 
 cient and satisfactory supply of clergy could not be hoped 
 for from the east, and that western candidates for orders 
 must be educated on the spot, for in those days of poor 
 travelling facilities and scanty specie on the frontier it was 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 47 
 
 out of the question that young men should go east to the 
 General Seminary and there be supported for three years. 
 And further, preparatory schools were few and inferior in 
 the west ; Chase's design included, perforce, an academy or 
 college ; he never forgot what Dartmouth had done for him, 
 and was inspired by the noble ambition to provide classical 
 and literary instruction for any western youth who had zeal 
 and willingness to work for it. He had himself been 
 brought up on a farm, and had managed a farm at Worth- 
 ington ; there was dearth of capital and specie in the west ; 
 he proposed therefore that the students should help support 
 themselves by working on a farm held in common. Thus, 
 he was persuaded, from his knowledge of the situation, any 
 boy, youth or young man could obtain school, college or 
 seminary education. It was certainly a magnanimous idea, 
 — but from the first it had to encounter doubt, discourage- 
 ment, and opposition that only served fully to bring out its 
 author's magnificent force of character and will. Even in 
 Ohio the scheme seemed visionary, and received perfunctory 
 support. When communicated to his compeers of the east 
 it won the approval only of the bishops of the Carolinas, 
 Ravenscroft and Bowen ; White ignored, Hobart actively 
 opposed it. The latter's interest was all bound up, of course, 
 with the General Seminary ; he was all for centralization, 
 and opposed diocesan seminaries as tending to create preju- 
 dice and division ; he did not believe in the collegiate fea- 
 ture of Chase's plan, — theological and literary courses //z^j- 
 farming : altogether it seemed to him badly mixed, an un- 
 couth innovation, foredoomed to failure. Hopeless of ob- 
 taining in his own church and land the funds necessary for 
 the inception of his great work, but othenvise undaunted, 
 Bishop Chase sailed for England in the autumn of 1823, to 
 submit the whole matter to the judgment of English church- 
 
48 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 men. But Bishop Hobart was beforehand with him ; he too 
 had just arrived in England, and there, by every means in 
 his power and in a manner that one cannot regard as 
 justifiable, he endeavored, in private and public, even to 
 the extent of printed circulars and warning notices in news- 
 papers, to create suspicion and prejudice against his brother, 
 and to embarrass and if possible utterly defeat him in the ex- 
 ecution of his plan, which, because he had antagonized it 
 at home, Hobart now pursued abroad with the animosity of 
 a persecutor, intent upon its destruction. One of his loud- 
 est objections had been the impropriety of begging money 
 from the British ; and now, consistently enough, one of his 
 measures for diverting the attention and means of English 
 churchmen from the Ohio school was to beg himself for the 
 Seminary in New York and cooperate in begging for a pro- 
 posed Episcopal college in Connecticut. 
 
 A letter of introduction from Henry Clay with which he 
 had fortunately come provided enabled Chase to triumph 
 over these machinations, securing him a hearing from Lord 
 Gambler, a liberal, influential, and devoted Christian and 
 churchman, and through him from Lord Kenyon, the son 
 of the distinguished Chief Justice of the Court of King's 
 Bench. He was now fairly launched, and enjoyed beside 
 the patronage of the Countess Dowager of Rosse, who gave 
 him two hundred pounds sterling, to which she soon after 
 added a hundred pounds, which he resolved to devote to 
 the erection of a chapel, and soon after yet another hundred, 
 for church-building in Ohio. He visited Sir Thomas Ac- 
 land in Devon, calling on the way, by invitation, upon the 
 venerable Hannah More. Lady Acland opened a subscrip- 
 tion which was ultimately invested in a printing press and 
 types. Everywhere the bishop met with kindness and gen- 
 erosity, and his remarkable personality, unprecedented in the 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 49 
 
 old world, seems deeply to have interested and impressed the 
 church people of England. He returned to America late in 
 the summer of 1824, having achieved decided success; he 
 had received about twenty thousand dollars for his project, — 
 equivalent in purchasing power in Ohio then to several times 
 the amount to-day. He had all along determined to secure a 
 rural site and an extensive domain for his school, in order to 
 remove the students from the temptations of town-life. He 
 himself had been a country boy ; and he had a deep-seated 
 dread of intemperance, then disastrously common. This as- 
 pect of his project, however, awakened strong opposition in the 
 convention at Zanesville in 1825 ; it was sneered at as "a 
 literary penitentiary ' ' ; almost all the deputies preferred a 
 suburban site, but as each wanted it near his town they neu- 
 tralized each others' efforts, and their opposition was in- 
 effectual. Some prominent deputies, moreover, objected to 
 the academic feature, believing in a theological seminary 
 pure and simple, and that all the students should take or- 
 ders. Here and now, accordingly, sprouted up some flour- 
 ishing controversies. There Avas a certain clearness, defi- 
 niteness and consistency about his opponents' view of a sem- 
 inary solely that made the bishop's idea seem inchoate, — 
 but his Avas the larger view, and so far he was undoubtedly 
 in the right. He understood the intention of the English 
 donors, with their experience of Oxford and Cambridge, to 
 whom theological seminaries distinctively were unknown ; 
 their only care was that their donation should be devoted 
 to the instruction of candidates for the ministry. It should 
 be remembered that Chase was a pioneer in his field, and 
 had no models for his guidance ; his conception was bound 
 to be misunderstood and to be somewhat confused ; he had 
 to feel his way, and was bound to make some mistakes, — 
 and a man who never makes mistakes never amounts to any- 
 
50 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 thing. But it was unfortunate that in his conduct of the 
 affair he produced an impression of arbitrariness and am- 
 biguity. He had the institution incorporated as a theolog- 
 ical seminary and then secured an amendment authorizing 
 its faculty to act as the faculty of a college, in granting de- 
 grees. This provision, evidently designed to shelter the 
 academic department from the attacks of its enemies and to 
 ensure its dependence upon himself, became the fountain of 
 his bitterest woes. 
 
 On the third of June, 1825, occurred the first meeting of 
 the trustees of the Theological Seminary of Ohio, which it 
 was arranged to open on the bishop's farm at Worthington. 
 A canvass of the diocese for subscriptions resulted in a sad 
 exposure of human nature, its contracted, local policy, its 
 " selfish and mercenary spirit " : none would take an inter- 
 est in the school unless it were so located as to enhance the 
 value of his property. Lands were at last secured, to im- 
 portant advantage, in Knox county, — with the result of a 
 decline and fall of the institution in favor everywhere else ! 
 Now began grave misunderstandings between the bishop 
 and the diocese : its convention legislated, he complained, 
 but made no appropriations ; and he contrasted the irre- 
 sponsibility of legislative bodies with the onerous responsi- 
 bility resting upon the individual : were he remiss, what an 
 outcry would be raised ! 
 
 In June, 1826, the bishop and his family went into camp 
 on Gambier hill, and there, just a year after, the corner- 
 stone of Kenyon College was laid. When in England he 
 had been much impressed by the beauty of the pointed 
 style of architecture, and so now he engaged the celebrated 
 architect Bulfinch to furnish designs for the building, which 
 is hence a quaint and curious example of early American 
 Gothic. The rising walls appeared so thick and formidable 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 51 
 
 that among the ignorant rustics of the neighborhood a ru- 
 mor ran that it was really a fort constructed with British 
 gold (so only could they explain the liberality of their late 
 enemies) and that the bishcp was an intriguer, designing 
 to reduce the country again to subjection to the British 
 crown ! 
 
 A regulation on which the bishop justly prided himself 
 was the banishment from Gambler, for both laborers and 
 students, of intoxicating liquors, which he characterized as 
 '' the greatest enemy of the human race." 
 
 Meantime the school was flourishing at Worthington under 
 the care of an able evangelical clergyman named William 
 Sparrow ; it numbered over fifty scholars, not one of whom was 
 a student of divinity, — and this number rapidly increased 
 at Gambler, whither it was removed as soon as accommo- 
 dations were ready; in 1829, seventy boys gathered there, 
 and in 1830, one hundred and thirty, — an increase in a 
 single year of nearly a hundred per cent. They worked at 
 intervals upon the college farm, cut wood and stacked it in 
 piles for winter, and drew water from the well. Their board 
 cost only a dollar a week apiece, — five cents a meal ! They 
 slept on straw mattresses in bunks or berths piled one above 
 another, and made their own beds, " proving unskilful 
 chambermaids;" they suffered from a plague of fleas. 
 Mrs. Chase took charge of all the linen of the establish- 
 ment. Doubtless the bishop's judgment was sound in re- 
 spect to all this manual labor during the critical, incipient 
 stage of his undertaking ; but such primitive conditions, 
 while not without their compensations, bore, of course, the 
 stamp of transiency. And now the supreme crisis drew 
 near. 
 
 Bishop Chase liked to have his own way, — but who 
 among Eve's descendants doesn't? He had made enemies 
 
5a AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 on all hands ; there was hardly a leading man in the diocese 
 who did not take issue with him on one point or another. 
 Rumors regarding misapplication of funds began to circu- 
 late, — rumors fatally easy to start, hard to quiet, and always 
 damaging. Yet it is admitted that owing to the commin- 
 gling of the two ideas, the literary and the theological, and 
 to the exigency of the occasion, moneys intended for one 
 purpose may have been applied, temporarily at least, to 
 another. Were it so, that was not the only time or place at 
 which such expedients have been justified on the ground of 
 imperious necessity, — in childish ignorance of the fact that 
 any the least departure from the straight line is the costliest 
 of errors, and the wreck of confidence and credit. The 
 development of his plans had involved the bishop in finan- 
 cial embarrassment and had created friction between him 
 and his faculty ; and there were only too many hostile by- 
 standers who were ready and desirous to improve against 
 him the first opportunity that offered. It occurred in the 
 summer of 1831. 
 
 The faculty of the seminary were willing to grant him 
 the casting vote in case of a tie in their proceedings, but 
 this could never satisfy the strong-willed bishop ; he would 
 not submit to be made a cipher, as he phrased it, and in- 
 sisted upon his right to veto any action of theirs. There- 
 upon they appealed to the public in a letter composed, or 
 certainly inspired, by William Sparrow, in which they 
 charged him with arbitrary conduct in the government of 
 the institution. The matter was considered in the dio- 
 cesan convention, which failed to sustain the bishop, and 
 referred everything to the trustees, who sympathized with 
 the faculty. Chase thereupon, wrought up to a pitch of in- 
 tense feeling, resigned both presidency and bishopric: "to 
 preside over such a diocese," he exclaimed, " would be but 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 53 
 
 the carrying on of a perpetual war." As soon as he could 
 complete his arrangements, he abandoned forever his once 
 loved Gambler, and having bought a tract of land in Michi- 
 gan, near the Indiana line, the indomitable pioneer entered 
 that virginal mission field. A bishop, but only one, had 
 been seen already within the confines of the territory of 
 Michigan, but only at Detroit. In the summer of 1827 
 Bishop Hobart laid there the cornerstone of the first Episco- 
 pal church, and administered the rite of confirmation ; and 
 a year after returned to consecrate the church. 
 
 Bishop Chase was at times, no doubt, imperious and hot- 
 tempered. His own nephew, a schoolboy at Gambler in 
 his day, afterward bore witness that " he was determined to 
 have everything just as he thought it ought to be; " a not 
 unprecedented determination. We may admit, with an im- 
 partial reviewer of the aff'air, that "there may have been a 
 groundwork of personal ambition underneath his purpose," 
 while we are forced to conclude with him that " there was 
 hardly so much tenderness shown to his temperament as he 
 had earned by his long suffering, heroic endurance, and per- 
 sistent energy. ' ' In casting up the account, we must charge 
 much of the bitterness of the conflict to the environment 
 and the atmosphere, — to the partisan politics, the polemical 
 spirit so rife at that time and in that commonwealth in par- 
 ticular. From another point of view, the quarrel may be 
 regarded as the growing pains attendant upon the evolution 
 of the institution. The bishop's general idea was wise and 
 good : its soundness has been attested by the vitality of the 
 schools at Gambler. There can be little doubt that in his 
 idea lay latent the germ of a church university ; that beside 
 preparatory school, academic and theological departments 
 as instituted, he would have liked, had the possibility ever 
 dawned upon his horizon, to educate Christian physicians 
 
54 AN ArOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 and legists also. It is to be regretted that in the realization 
 of his design he yielded to the temptation that always be- 
 sets the idealist after a little experience of a refractory 
 world, — the temptation to manoeuvre, to descend from 
 right to expediency, as the thing hoped for seems to travel 
 with the horizon. And if in the ideal there is the least alloy 
 of self-love, such scheming becomes inevitable in the 
 execution. In connection with this, one notes something 
 unpleasant in the quality of the bishop's style; an unctuous 
 vein of religious reflection, with Yankee shrewdness gleam- 
 ing through, and in describing his transactions, a self- 
 conscious, declamatory tone, designed to win his audi- 
 tors' adherence. He speaks of his humble dwelling, his 
 thorny path, his agonizing pangs and holy triumph ; he 
 has to encounter jealousy, selfishness, intrigue, malignity 
 and hypocrisy : his opponents are consummately and wick- 
 edly artful men. His notion that a bishop should or could 
 be a college president was utterly erroneous ; either position, 
 if efficiently filled, would take up a man's whole time. It 
 was altogether well that he left Ohio ; the writer is far from 
 defending the American uncatholic practice by which a 
 bishop is placed in a diocese and there bidden to remain 
 forever though nature, experience, and God Himself would 
 have him sometime go elsewhere ; but Chase's identification 
 of the presidency of Kenyon College and the bishopric of 
 Ohio, so that resignation of the first involved that also of 
 the other, was enough to reveal, by its absurdity, the unten- 
 ability of his position. 
 
 One is irresistibly drawn, by the retrospect just concluded, 
 into some consideration of the causes of the educational 
 wrecks that strew the course of American church history. 
 The extremely utilitarian character of our people accounts 
 for many ; practical American parents can see the advan- 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 55 
 
 tage of schooling up to the age of sixteen to eighteen 
 years, but after that they are apt to think that a youth 
 should be earning something, — and he is quite likely to 
 agree with them. To a vast majority, college education 
 seems a mere luxury. This idea is in rapid process of mod- 
 ification, as it becomes evident more and more that a thor- 
 ough education unlocks in every direction the portals of 
 success, steadily becoming more difficult of attainment ; but 
 at all times it bore equally upon all higher education, so for 
 an explanation of the frequent failure of church colleges 
 we must look closer, — and we find it in diocesan control. 
 The support of a single diocese can never assure a college 
 success, but at best a pitiably attenuated thread of existence. 
 After a century of bitter experience, our colleges that still 
 live must gather about them whole provinces of dioceses, if 
 they would improve the opportunities of the brighter era 
 now opening for education. And finally, not the least im- 
 portant consideration : these institutions must guard them- 
 selves scrupulously against imparting a clericalized educa- 
 tion. There has always been and still is a highly injurious 
 suspicion of obscurantism, among hosts of people who have 
 never heard the term, in the teaching at church colleges ; 
 and it is only too well justified. Good and earnest men are 
 peculiarly prone to fall into an apologetic and polemic strain, 
 and science and philosophy, history, literature and art, can 
 all assume a distorted cast and astonishing color when han- 
 dled and regarded from the clerical point of view. This 
 would-be patrons feel and eschew ; they do not want a 
 Protestant Episcopal education in these branches but one 
 that is whole, sound, and sincere. And God is best served 
 by teaching the whole truth. Our educators should con- 
 scientiously avoid anything that may give credence to the 
 popular belief that their colleges are really feeders to theo- 
 
56 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 logical seminaries in disguise, and should study to impart an 
 exact education, without prejudice and without reservations. 
 
 After his ordination by Bishop Hobart, Upfold accepted 
 a position as assistant minister of Trinity parish, in 1821, 
 and at the same time began to gather a congregation and 
 became the first rector of St. Luke's Church, New York. 
 He ever after looked back to this period of his life with ten- 
 der recollection ; he was happy in his rectorship and pas- 
 toral relations, and had as a fellow assistant at Trinity a 
 young minister of extraordinary promise named George 
 Washington Doane, with whom he struck up a hearty and 
 life-long friendship. He Avas reluctant to break with these 
 congenial surroundings ; but St. Thomas' Church, in the 
 same city, being without a rector, and its vestry, after seri- 
 ous division, having been able to agree only upon him, he 
 yielded to the representations of his advisers that acceptance 
 would be for the good of the church, and removed thither 
 in 1828. He came to regret the change, and, three years 
 after, resigned. He then received and accepted a call to 
 the rectorship of Trinity Church, Pittsburg ; and at the 
 same time received his doctorate in divinity from Columbia 
 College. 
 
 From the same college Whitehouse was graduated in 
 1 82 1, having given evidence of exceptional mental endow- 
 ments, and immediately began the study of divinity at the 
 General Theological Seminary, just opened. Upon his 
 graduation thence, in 1824, he was made a deacon, having 
 just reached his majority, and as soon thereafter as the canon 
 permitted, a priest. He could now boast of the most var- 
 ied attainments : beside a thorough acquaintance with He- 
 brew and the classic tongues, he was familiar with both 
 French and Italian (to which he afterward added some 
 knowledge of German), had proved himself proficient in 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 57 
 
 exegesis and theology, and was well read in medicine and 
 law. He was disposed to pride himself particularly upon 
 his knowledge of the last mentioned branch, and he would 
 undoubtedly have made an excellent lawyer, but his ac- 
 quaintance with this subject proved, spiritually, somewhat 
 of a siren in after years. Beside moral qualities of a high 
 order, he possessed, without question, the most remarkable 
 intellectual powers, improved by the most thorough scholar- 
 ship and varied culture, of all the group of great men whose 
 careers we are tracing. In 1827, immediately after his ad- 
 vancement to the priesthood by Bishop White, in Christ 
 Church, Philadelphia, — his own bishop being absent upon 
 the visitation to Detroit before mentioned, — he became rec- 
 tor of Christ Church, Reading ; and could report at the 
 diocesan convention next year that beside his stated duties 
 and catechetical instruction he had delivered a course of 
 lectures to his parishioners upon the nature, ministry, and' 
 worship of the Church. In 1829, he reported that he ad- 
 ministered the Holy Communion once every eight weeks, 
 opening the church for prayer on the Wednesday and Fri- 
 day just before each administration, and that there was a 
 gratifying increase in attendance upon a Bible class that he 
 had started. Bishop Hobart was desirous that he should 
 return to his diocese, and secured him a call, which he ac- 
 cepted, to the important parish of St. Luke's, Rochester. 
 In December of the above year he began his ministrations 
 there ; and within the next two years the roll of communi- 
 cants was more than doubled. Here he signalized his ac- 
 quaintance with apostology and interest therein, — an inter- 
 est which he imparted to his hearers ; it goes far to explain 
 the spiritual revival just indicated, — by a course of lectures 
 on missions and on the internal condition of Turkey in 
 Asia, with special reference thereto. His researches in this 
 
58 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 field plainly exerted a powerful attraction over him, for in 
 the summer of 1833, when his health and strength, natur- 
 ally good, but exhausted by incessant application, forced 
 upon his notice the need of recuperation, he entered upon 
 a long-protracted course of travel in Europe and the Orient. 
 
 Meanwhile the youths whose births were noted in the 
 middle of this chapter were prosecuting their studies. 
 Hawks at the University of his native state. Vail at Wash- 
 ington — now Trinity — College, Hartford, Lee at the Chesh- 
 ire Academy, Talbot at an academy in his native town ; 
 while we have to note the birth, in 1822, of Henry Benja- 
 min Whipple, at Adams, New York; in 1826, of Robert 
 Harper Clarkson, grandson of Joseph Clarkson, of Lancas- 
 ter, at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; and in 1830, of William 
 Edmond Armitage, in the city of New York. 
 
 Jackson Kemper, as we know, was of an affectionate, do- 
 mestic, hospitable disposition ; having tasted for a time the 
 sweets of home life, he could not forego them forever. In 
 the autumn of 182 1, three years after the loss of his first 
 wife, and toward the close of his thirty-second year, he was 
 married to Miss Ann Relf, of a wealthy family of Philadel- 
 phia. Her parents gave her a liberal allowance, so that the 
 newly wedded pair could entertain in the quiet way they 
 both enjoyed. Mrs. Kemper identified herself heartily with 
 all her husband's interests. They took a house on Fifth 
 Street, near Spruce ; and there their children were born : 
 the eldest, a daughter, named Elizabeth Marius, after her 
 father's mother, in 1824, and the boys Samuel and Lewis in 
 1827 and 1829 respectively. An extract from Kemper's 
 journal, recording some reflections upon the discipline of 
 his infant daughter, illustrates the general truth that a man's 
 first child is, often to its great grief, the child of theory, a 
 subject for experiment. 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 59 
 
 " If I would succeed in the great work of education, I 
 must begin by conquering vanity and indolence in self. 
 
 " Make it a constant rule never to give her what she ob- 
 stinately cries for. Encourage humility, but discourage fear 
 and timidity; selfishness is almost always connected with 
 extreme timidity. 
 
 " The object I would accomplish by education is to train 
 up my child in the knowledge, love, and application of those 
 principles of conduct which, under the superintending influ- 
 ence of divine mercy, will probably lead to a considerable 
 share of happiness in this life, but assuredly to a full meas- 
 ure of it in that which is to come." 
 
 He loved his children tenderly, and shrank from inflict- 
 ing corporal punishment, — which in fact, he practically 
 never had to apply, for they revered him, and a word was 
 enough to ensure their obedience. Once he had to whip 
 one of his boys, — and the child turned and threw his arms 
 around his father's neck. 
 
 All through these years, he was involved in all the routine 
 and carried along by the current of diocesan life. He was 
 active and helpful in ministering to vacant parishes and 
 missions, and in serving upon committees too numerous to 
 name. He was a trustee of the General Seminary, and 
 traveled widely in behalf of its endowment ; was one of 
 the managers of the newly organized Domestic and Foreign 
 Missionary Society ; and served on a committee on the en- 
 largement of the hymnary. In regard to his view of the 
 relative force of the claims of foreign and domestic missions : 
 he followed Bishop White, who thought that our own im- 
 mense country was our proper field ; but inasmuch as many 
 good people would give to foreign missions, believed it bet- 
 ter to enable them to do so under the direction of the 
 church, rather than that they should support sectarian mis- 
 
60 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 sions. As to his views of the various sects by which he 
 was surrounded : he could have no sympathy with bodies 
 that had separated themselves from the church, as he held, 
 without reason. Of Unitarians he expressed unqualified 
 condemnation ; toward Presbyterians, Quakers, and the 
 Dutch Reformed he had kindlier feelings. In his relations 
 with them all he was governed by Bishop White's practice, 
 as defined in an address to his convention, in 1822, which 
 recommended unvarying courtesy, with scrupulous avoid- 
 ance of any mixture of administration, which always creates 
 ill feeling, in faith or polity : " Our church affirms episco- 
 pacy to rest on Scriptural institution," believes in forms of 
 prayer, teaches the doctrines of grace. And the plea of 
 " liberality " only too often cloaks a surrender of some of 
 our institutions. 
 
 It is worthy of remark that in the above the bishop ex- 
 pressed the sentiment of the convention, which passed him 
 a vote of thanks for his address. 
 
 In ensuing years, Kemper accompanied his venerable 
 bishop upon some interesting diocesan missionary tours. In 
 October, 1824, they started on what was designed to be an 
 extensive tour, but an accident cut it short : after consecrat- 
 ing a church at Lewistown, a fall from his carriage so shook 
 the old bishop, then seventy-six years of age, that he had to 
 return home. The following May they started again, with 
 better success, and arrived at Pittsburg, where John Henry 
 Hopkins was beginning his ministry. It was the furthest 
 point to the westward that Bishop White had ever reached, 
 and he never got so far again. 
 
 At this time the general Missionary Society reported that 
 it was sustaining missions in Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, 
 and at Green Bay, off the western shore of Lake Michigan. 
 The last named was the most popular of the evangelizing 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 61 
 
 efforts of the church ; it was loudly advertised and heartily 
 befriended by Bishop Hobart, and was a favorite object of 
 offerings of congregations and Sunday-schools, and of the 
 charity of wealthy women. 
 
 About this time also the Pennsylvanian clergy roll began 
 rapidly to increase, and the reports from the parishes grew 
 longer. Younger ministers were now coming to the front, 
 and though of course there was no diminution in the regard 
 felt for him, the extraordinary popularity that had greeted 
 Kemper's early ministry and the unprecedented interest in 
 his preaching had for some time declined. The report 
 from the united churches for the year 1825 gives us a 
 glimpse of his parochial routine : prayers are said on Wed- 
 nesdays and Fridays "in imitation of the stationary days of 
 the primitive church, and agreeably to the usage of the 
 Church of England ' ' ; lectures on the catechism are given 
 during Passion and the two preceding weeks, and on the 
 doctrines of grace in Easter week, for candidates for con- 
 firmation ; there is a lecture on the Bible every Friday af- 
 ternoon ; and Sunday-schools are attached to all the three 
 churches, the children being catechised after service on Sun- 
 day afternoons. 
 
 The vehement controversies over the election of an assist- 
 ant to its aged bishop which convulsed the diocese of Penn- 
 sylvania and its convention in the years 1826 and 1827, and 
 in fact, sounded the tocsin of party spirit throughout the 
 church at large, disturbed Kemper greatly, and made him 
 ready to depart. The strife began with the nomination of 
 William Meade, a partisan low-churchman of Virginia ; and 
 something in that name and the propaganda of its adherents 
 made it distasteful to Kemper for the remainder of his days. 
 He was teller at the time of the final vote, and announced 
 the election of Henry Ustick Onderdonk ; but the divisions 
 
62 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 were not healed. Other causes conspired with these to 
 make him anxious to leave the diocese : the bishop was now 
 fast set in his ways and harder to please, and Kemper real- 
 ized that the term of his greater usefulness in Philadelphia 
 was over. 
 
 He met Nicholas Hamner Cobbs, a clerical deputy from 
 Virginia, in the general convention which sat in that city 
 in 1829, and to which George Upfold was admitted as a 
 visitor. The same year he received the degree of doctor of 
 sacred theology froni his alma mater, but at the same time 
 his heart was saddened by the death of his well-beloved 
 mother. 
 
 Owing to his extreme diffidence about seeking a position, 
 some years elapsed before it became known that he was will- 
 ing to make a change. He could have had the position at 
 Pittsburg afterward offered to Upfold, but removal from 
 Philadelphia alone would not satisfy him ; he wished to es- 
 cape from the tempest-tossed diocese, and its contentious 
 convention, with its endless divisions over words in resolu- 
 tions and points of order, and an eligible opportunity was 
 offered after twenty years of faithful service in it. In 1831, 
 Bishop Brownell of Connecticut had him called to St. 
 Paul's, Norwalk, one of the four most important parishes in 
 that diocese, the others being those of New Haven, Hart- 
 ford and Bridgeport. Had he been invited merely to pay 
 the congregation a visit he would have declined, so fastidi- 
 ous was he about preaching on trial ; as it was he went to 
 Norwalk in June to see whether it promised to be a congen- 
 ial field, and was so much pleased that he accepted the rec- 
 torship. He immediately took and held a prominent posi- 
 tion in the church life of Connecticut ; he was appointed to 
 open with morning prayer the first convention he attended, 
 and was placed upon the standing committee of the diocese ; 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 63 
 
 at the following meeting he served as secretary, and was 
 elected diocesan trustee of the General Seminary. He 
 could report steady and substantial growth in his parish ; a 
 constant increase in the number of baptisms and confirma- 
 tions, a gain of fifty per cent, in the list of communicants in 
 three years ; and could also give a good account of several 
 missions that he had inaugurated. But at Norvvalk he had 
 to encounter the deepest grief of his life in the death of his 
 excellent wife, after a union of eleven years in which she 
 had proved a loving helpmeet to him. She died in the year 
 1832, and was laid to rest in the churchyard of St. Paul's, 
 leaving him with their three young children of the ages of 
 eight, five, and three years. 
 
 It is interesting to find record, in the reports of the meet- 
 ings of convention above mentioned, of the candidacy for 
 Holy Orders of Thomas Hubbard Vail and Cicero Stephens 
 Hawks. It is probable, therefore, that thus early, as a 
 member of the standing committee, Kemper met these 
 young men, both of whom were destined to build upon 
 foundations that he was to lay. 
 
 In 1834, in company with his old friend James Milnor, 
 he went further afield than he had ever gone before, even 
 as far as to Green Bay, on a visit of inspection to the Indian 
 mission there, in what was then the remotest west. The 
 year 1835 was one of missionary advance all along the line. 
 In March, a corporal's guard of clergy and delegates in con- 
 vention at Peoria chose Philander Chase for bishop of Illi- 
 nois. He immediately accepted, as providential, the unex- 
 pected call, and visited Chicago, "a newly built town, of a 
 few houses," Peoria, Springfield and Jacksonville. The 
 last named place boasted the only church building in the 
 frontier diocese, which contained four presbyters and par- 
 ishes (not even a parish for the bishop !) and thirty-nine 
 
64 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 communicants. At the general convention that year a com- 
 mittee of bishops was appointed to consider the matter ; it 
 reported that the case was certainly unprecedented, but that 
 the action of Illinois was recommended by "especial con- 
 siderations," — and the house of bishops concurred in the 
 report. They had plainly been embarrassed by having one 
 of their number at large, and, like the subject of the election, 
 regarded it as a providential disposition. Meantime Chase's 
 four years' occupation of Michigan, and investment in land 
 for church objects, had taken effect there ; a diocese was 
 organized, and in June Whitehouse was elected bishop, but 
 declined. There were at that time in Michigan eight 
 clergymen, including a navy chaplain, ten parishes, two 
 hundred communicants, and three church buildings, whose 
 sites were Detroit, Tecumseh, and Monroe. In 1835, too. 
 Bishop Brownell undertook a visitation of the southwestern 
 states that had far-reaching results ; and the crown of all 
 this activity was the appointment of our hero as missionary 
 bishop of Indiana and Missouri. 
 
 It sounds strange, but only for an instant, for the provi- 
 dential nature of those dispensations becomes immediately 
 apparent, to say that deaths in his femily released Kemper 
 for this work. The death of his mother relieved him, to 
 his sorrow, of one charge upon his purse ; his father had 
 just been granted a pension for service in the Revolutionary 
 War, which relieved him of another ; and the loss of his 
 wife broke the most constraining domestic bond, freeing him 
 for the arduous and unceasing labors of his large mission 
 field, while it disposed him for just such a change. In this 
 case there was no rival candidate, no one as well qualified 
 for that field, both by nature and experience, as he. After 
 a fervent sermon in which Bishop Doane struck the keynote 
 of the convention, declaring that every church member was, 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 65 
 
 by the terms of his baptism, a member also of the Mission- 
 ary Society, Kemper's name was sent by the house of bish- 
 ops to the house of deputies, and there approved. The 
 walls that had seen his ordination to the diaconate, a quar- 
 ter of a century before, witnessed also his elevation to the 
 highest office that the church has to confer. On the twenty- 
 fifth of September, 1835, he was consecrated first missionary 
 bishop of the American church, in St. Peter's, Philadelphia, 
 by the presiding bishop, so many years his diocesan, coun- 
 sellor, and friend, assisted by Bishops Channing Moore, Phi- 
 lander Chase, both the Onderdonks, Bosworth Smith, and 
 Doane. It was the twenty-seventh consecration and the last 
 in which the patriarchal White took part. 
 
Ill 
 
 EPISCOPATE 
 
m 
 
 EPISCOPATE 
 
 IMMEDIATELY after the adjournment of convention, 
 Bishop Chase passed a pleasant day or two in Hartford, 
 rejoicing to find his old-time parishioners as loyal as ever, — 
 and then the indefatigable, indomitable old man sailed for 
 England, to plead the cause of a new church college five hun- 
 dred miles further than Kenyon toward the setting sun ! This 
 second voyage is invested with pathos ; when he went to plead 
 for Ohio he was in the meridian of his powers, — but that was 
 twelve years before, and now his days were declining. In 
 the interval, one by one among those who had befriended 
 him then had dropped into the grave ; he was especially 
 saddened by the loss of his most valued friend. Lord Gam- 
 bier, Moreover the English church was herself in straits, 
 was being wounded in the house of those who should have 
 been her friends; and yet, — a most encouraging sign of her 
 vitality, however discouraging to his mission, — was begin- 
 ning to realize her responsibility toward those of her com- 
 munion in Ireland, Canada, India, and Australia. Chase's 
 appeal was wholly unexpected ; his welcome in England 
 was a warning that would have disheartened any but him ; 
 his friend Lord Bexley told him not to look for success in 
 founding a second college in the Mississippi valley, — pity- 
 ingly salving the hurt of his words with a present of fifty 
 pounds. The archbishop of Canterbury politely invited 
 him to visit Lambeth, — but mentioned the above imperative 
 claims upon his purse. He was cheered, however, by a 
 
 69 
 
70 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 cordial letter and gift of a hundred pounds from the faith- 
 ful Kenyon ; Lady Rosse, too, was still living, and testified 
 to the permanency of her interest by the munificent gift of 
 two hundred and sixty pounds, — so that actually he did 
 better at the outset than before. His chief resources in the 
 way of argument were the large number of English emi- 
 grants in Illinois, and the danger of their loss to the church, 
 together with the phenomenal strides that Roman Catholi- 
 cism was making in that region. In less than four months 
 the subscriptions mounted up to the equivalent of seven 
 thousand dollars, and two months later, — April, 1836 — he 
 sailed for home with pledges amounting to ten thousand, — 
 so that out of the lion came sweetness at the last. 
 
 Before his departure, he had engaged his newly con- 
 secrated brother to visit his diocese for him, and so, shortly 
 after the close of convention, cheered by wide and deep in- 
 terest in his missionary venture of faith, witnessed to sub- 
 stantially by contributions aggregating upward of three 
 thousand dollars from churches in New York and Phila- 
 delphia, increased by generous offerings from Upfold's and 
 Whitehouse's parishes in Pittsburg and Rochester, Kemper 
 left the East for Indiana and Illinois. Those territories had 
 been admitted into the Union as states in the years 181 6 and 
 181 8 respectively. Up to that period the larger portion of 
 them still owned the sway of primeval nature ; simplest 
 frontier conditions prevailed ; there was a mere fringe of 
 settlement upon their southern bound, along the bank of the 
 Ohio river; the bison still roamed over their grassy northern 
 savannahs, and in the woods wolves, wildcat, deer and 
 foxes multiplied. The settlers had to confront the red man 
 at every turn ; even as late as 1832 they were stricken with 
 panic at the raid of the Black Hawk. These conflicts 
 tended to intensify the vigilant, militant spirit, sufficiently 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 71 
 
 pronounced from the first, of the hardy pioneers, picked 
 men of their kind. An ardent individuaUsm was the note 
 of the hour, whether in religion or politics, economic or 
 social life. All sorts of eccentric characters were largely in 
 evidence ; it was an age of humors. Every clearing in the 
 forest was an independent principality, producing pretty 
 nearly everything that was consumed upon it. It was the 
 log cabin age ; in the midst of a clearing still marked by 
 charred stumps and gaunt trunks of trees that had been 
 deadened by girdling the bark around at the base would 
 stand a rude dwelling of logs notched at the ends, thus pro- 
 ducing dove-tailed corners, the crevices in the walls chinked 
 with clay, the chimney outside, at one end. Within was a 
 single room below, a loft above, the furniture of the room 
 consisting chiefly of beds, with splint chairs and stools, and 
 a shelf holding crockery, calabashes, a rifle and powder- 
 horn. A big bowl, after doing duty as a Avash-basin, would 
 be pressed into service for mush or milk, which with balls of 
 corn bread, pork, and greasy "chicken fixin's" — fried fowl 
 — were the staple fare. Log walls thus fashioned were poor 
 protection from the wind, which in winter would search 
 them, shrunken with cold, and circulate in gusts about the 
 draughty abode, making the pine torch or candle flare. 
 Through holes in the roof one could see the stars. When 
 time came to retire, modest men folk would step outside, to 
 study the signs of the weather ! 
 
 All manner of bilious attacks, pleurisy, fever and ague, 
 were the plagues of those raw clearings ; malarial fever, it 
 has been said, was then the Grendel of Indiana, sometimes 
 depopulating whole settlements. Yet it may be doubted 
 whether this was any more owing to the climate and the 
 newly opened soil than to unsanitary habits, such as laboring 
 under the noonday sun, and so getting overheated and 
 
72 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 then chilled. If there is one thing that sentient, hot-blooded 
 creatures must have it is warmth; one cannot therefore 
 think severely of poor sufferers who in the deadly chill of a 
 fit of ague filled themselves with alcoholic stimulant. Tea 
 and coffee were rare and expensive luxuries in the back- 
 woods ; quinine apparently was not available ; so the plague 
 of ague was accompanied by a plague of whiskey. The 
 women consumed quantities of injurious drugs, for quacks 
 and their specifics abounded. 
 
 About one such lonesome spot amid the wet forest the fol- 
 lowing veracious conversation between a settler and an in- 
 quiring stranger is reported to have taken place. The 
 melancholy, monotonous, monosyllabic replies tell volumes. 
 " What's your place called ? " " Moggs'." " What sort of 
 land thereabouts?" "Bogs." " What's the climate ? " 
 "Fogs." " What's your name ? " " Scroggs." " What's 
 your house built of ? " " Logs." " What do you have to 
 eat ? " " Hogs. " " Have you any neighbors ? " " Frogs. ' ' 
 " Gracious ! Haven't you any comforts ? " " Grog." 
 
 Yet such unromantic toilers, with their sordid cares and 
 sufferings, and discouragements often, were the nameless 
 pioneers and hewers of great states to be. Nor were their 
 lives all winter, but had an equal share of spring and sum- 
 mer days, and their long hours of labor were followed by 
 evening rest. And to the traveler by miry roads through 
 the murky forest the forlornest of their clearings seemed a 
 paradise, for it lay open to the sun and afforded dry stand- 
 ing ground. 
 
 It is no wonder that every farm was sufficient to itself in 
 those days ; it had to be, — for the difficulties and dolors of 
 transportation were excessive. For much of the year the 
 roads were practically impassable. (Here we may take a 
 picturesque glimpse into the prehistoric past of the West : 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 73 
 
 the road in whose mud the straining wagon sank to its axles 
 had been the pathway of the light-footed Indian, and before 
 him, the trail of the buffalo. To complete the picture : the 
 Indian camps and trading posts whither these trails led were 
 already becoming the sites of white men's villages, destined 
 to grow into great and famous cities.) All travelers tell of 
 the terrors of those roads ; the cleverest of them has re- 
 corded that in spring " traveling by land becomes traveling 
 by water, or by both mixed, — mud and water;" and he 
 defined forest travel as "a taste of 'ma'shland,' — rooty and 
 snaggy land, — of ' corduroys ' woven single and double 
 twill, and fords with and without bottom." Once, inquiring 
 his way, he was directed — but with the warning that it was 
 " the most powerfulest road ! " 
 
 Politically and religiously, these states were cradled in 
 Jeffersonian Democracy and Methodism, — individualistic 
 both. It has been remarked that the tendency of the fron- 
 tier was ever away from the influence of Europe. Prejudice 
 amounting to hatred — which would naturally be intense 
 among the many Irish immigrants — was felt and expressed 
 toward England, and was extended toward New England, 
 partly because of its attitude in the war of 1812. The 
 frontier has been termed a crucible, in which the most 
 diverse human elements were fused into something new, 
 composite, un-English, — transmuted, shall we say, into the 
 pure gold of Americanism? The year that Illinois was 
 erected into a territory, Abraham Lincoln was born amid 
 frontier conditions in the adjoining state of Kentucky ; at 
 the age of seven years he was taken by his parents to 
 Indiana when it became a state ; and when he had attained 
 his majority, he settled in Illinois. 
 
 The intimate relations of prejudice and ignorance were 
 copiously illustrated ; prejudice against the old country, 
 
74 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 against old societies and their forms, contempt of the past, 
 as of a bondage it was well to escape, excused ignorance, — 
 and that intensified prejudice. Education and true religion 
 had a hard struggle to survive; " schools and preachers, " 
 said a governor of Illinois, " could be dispensed with better 
 than corn meal." There was a prevalent prejudice against 
 education on the supposition that it unfitted boys and girls 
 for workers and housewives. Unlearned preachers were 
 supposed, by those that were themselves illiterate, to be 
 ''more favored than man-made ones," — and people who 
 thought thus were accordingly given over to the bedlam of 
 camp-meeting revivals, the one intense excitement of the 
 day, culminating in the hideous, hysterical, "holy laugh " ; 
 and to the ministrations of ranters like him who, mistaking 
 the passage in the Apocalypse about " a pair of balances," 
 read it "a pair of bellowses,^^ with which, he explained, the 
 wicked would be blown to destruction in the fiery furnace ! 
 Yet many of those circuit-riders were devoted men, who 
 very early penetrated to the remotest settlements and were 
 the one uplifting agency among them. They received no 
 salary : most people thought that attendance upon their 
 preaching was sufficient compensation, — and we cannot 
 blame them, judging by the above quoted discourse. They 
 were freely entertained, though, wherever they went, — were 
 not expected to pay at ferries or taverns. 
 
 Spurious, factitious religious excitement had its inevitable 
 consequence in infidelity even to the pitch of blasphemy. 
 The more cultivated scepticism of Jeffersonian grain was 
 amply defined by the politician before quoted : " One 
 Christian creed is as good as another. The creed of each 
 must be right to himself when it is founded on the best 
 lights in his power. It matters not what particular faith any 
 Christian may possess; it is quite immaterial how he ar- 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 75 
 
 rives at it, so that it is reached with honesty and sin- 
 cerity." 
 
 The erection of these territories into states did not alter 
 the above conditions, but gave them wider scope, while 
 introducing new factors. Everything henceforth was on a 
 larger scale, even the epidemics of malarial fever, which 
 recurred with desolating effect, appalling prospective immi- 
 grants and checking, each time, the inflow of population. 
 One cannot make too emphatic the fact that these states 
 were cradled into being through utility ; they were business 
 ventures, and ran each other hard in the matter of adver- 
 tising. The settlement of the West has been described as 
 an industrial conquest. Freedom, religious or political, was 
 not its motive ; no one fled or had cause to flee from the 
 East because of oppression. The impelling power was the 
 desire to better one's condition ; the highest, purest motive 
 discernible was that on the part of parents to give their 
 children a better start in life, materially, — for certainly none 
 went West for the sake of higher education. Hence the 
 utilitarianism, and that of materialistic cast, that was the 
 presiding genius at the birth of state after state. And a 
 people's origin is more than half of the whole. " The in- 
 tense mental activity and untiring energy of the people," 
 wrote an observer, "in the pursuit of wealth, threaten seri- 
 ous results to their social and moral well-being." And yet 
 we must remember that thousands of years of civilization 
 Avere at their back ; the inheritance of ages ran in their 
 blood ; the great human needs were not obliterated from 
 their souls but stifled in them, and only waited an oppor- 
 tunity to reassert themselves. 
 
 As in the case of Ohio, territorial officers had brought 
 their slaves into Indiana and Illinois, and when state consti- 
 tutions came to be drafted for the latter there was agitation 
 
76 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 over the introduction of slavery, which became more excited 
 after the admission of INIissouri as a slave state in 1820. 
 Three and four years after that date determined efforts were 
 made to naturalize the system in Illinois, the strongest argu- 
 ment being the numbers of Virginians and Kentuckians 
 that crossed the state with their negroes, to settle in Mis- 
 souri. Had the initiative of the latter been followed by 
 Illinois, it is believed that it would have created a reflex 
 wave of slavery that Indiana could not have resisted. 
 
 The backwoodsman and squatter fought shy of encroach- 
 ing civilization ; it was noticed that they could not abide 
 the vicinity of a school, which seemed to mark a descent of 
 their children in the social scale; they accordingly took 
 what they could get for their clearings and followed the sun, 
 crossing the Mississippi into Iowa, leaving schools and the 
 Sabbath behind. Indeed, migratory habits became con- 
 firmed in them; "every one in Puddleford expected to 
 move somewhere else very soon ; ' ' farmers would shift from 
 place to place half-a-dozen times, as superficial cultivation 
 and neglect of the principle of rotation of crops exhausted 
 the soil. It was a picturesque sight to see their " prairie 
 schooners," — wagons with swelling covers of white cotton 
 cloth stretched over hoops, and containing their belongings, 
 — toiling along a dusty road, followed by the cattle. As a 
 precaution against the fierce fires that periodically licked the 
 prairies, they would choose sites for their cabins upon the 
 edge of a strip of woodland. 
 
 To the plantations that thus changed hands more careful 
 cultivation would be applied ; and ere long a frame house 
 would rise upon one and then another, the abandoned cabin 
 being relegated to the uses of a summer kitchen and winter 
 wood shed. Now at last parlor was separated from kitchen 
 as bedrooms were from both, — and from each other ! The 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 77 
 
 evolution of the dining-room marked a yet higher stage. 
 And now an occasional pianoforte appeared — that symbol 
 of advanced civilization, — together with horsehair covered 
 furniture, a rag carpet, stove, timepiece, grotesque likeness 
 in crayons, and mirror whose only virtue was that it never 
 flattered. "Settlements" sprang up, consisting of "a 
 smithery, mill, tannery, and above all, a store"; "cities" 
 were named before the roots had been grubbed up from their 
 central squares, whereon courthouse and tavern faced each 
 other, while on a corner stood the jail. 
 
 The sentiment of loyalty, that guarantee of good govern- 
 ment, had not been developed toward either state ; nothing 
 yet had been done to elicit it, — there was nothing to be 
 proud of. Indiana and Illinois could be abused anywhere 
 with tacit consent. Money was scarce; there was much 
 indebtedness ; and financial honor was at as low an ebb as 
 civic spirit. "Cheap public service," was the cry; the 
 honor of holding office was estimated as sufficient compen- 
 sation ; salaries were so low that no poor man, for example, 
 could be state governor unless he stole. The spoils system 
 was evolved by frontier politics, and bequeathed — a per- 
 nicious legacy — to the nation. Those politics were charac- 
 terized by one who knew as " nasty, pitiful intrigues and 
 licentious slanders. Any silly charge, if uncontradicted, de- 
 feated an election. Defaming and clearing up, cursing the 
 administration and treating to whiskey, constituted an elec- 
 toral campaign. Even youths, as future voters, were courted 
 and cajoled till they grew conceited, positive, insolent." 
 
 The evils of defective education and a lack of literature 
 and wholesome pastimes became glaringly apparent, spirit- 
 ually, intellectually, and morally, among the young men of 
 the rising generation. They mistook dissipation, we are 
 told, only too often for manliness ; they hung around sa- 
 
78 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 loons and billiard-tables; for their untutored energy and 
 natural craving for excitement, denied healthy outlet, drove 
 them, in the reactions of drudgery, to hard drinking, gam- 
 bling, and seduction. Their headstrong passions forced ex- 
 pression in a veritable monotony of profanity. Abuse of 
 stimulants led to equivalent abuse of the great narcotic ; con- 
 sumption of tobacco was inordinate in all its forms, smoking, 
 snuffing, and chewing with its consequent spitting : present 
 day opinion, rendered dispassionate by the passage of time, 
 is ready to admit that Dickens' " Chuzzlewit " affords a not 
 unfair picture of some of those raw communities. In many 
 of them a spice was added to life and delays of justice were 
 expedited by occasional "necktie sociables," — lynching 
 parties. Yet it is the testimony of an experienced and 
 critical observer that in the roughest districts of the West, 
 tyrannized over by bullies and " eye-gougers," a sensible, 
 self-controlled man could go about his business without 
 molestation. 
 
 This was the palmy time of the flat-boatmen of the 
 Mississippi ; the frontier of commerce was approaching ; 
 and we are reminded that the people of the new states were 
 beginning to manifest new and varied wants. The age of 
 homespun and leather wear was passing away; manufac- 
 tured goods and a few luxuries were beginning to be brought 
 down the Ohio from Pittsburg and up the Mississippi from 
 New Orleans. The highest ambition of the growing youth 
 was to go on a flatboat to the latter city. 
 
 We have spoken of Dickens' strictures. Not the West 
 only, but the whole country as well Avas then characterized 
 by that peculiar sensitiveness that betrays the justice of 
 criticism. Young men especially who had grown up in 
 western settlements, who had seen nothing of the world and 
 so had no standard of comparison, whose uninstructed 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 79 
 
 minds and consciences were possessed by the most uncouth 
 ideas, self-confident and satisfied, prone to exaggerate, bit- 
 terly prejudiced against the East because they knew nothing 
 of it, not given to reflection or self-criticism, grew frenzied 
 under the criticism of others. They made no pretence of 
 good manners ; at meals bolted their meat in silence, — con- 
 versation at such times would have seemed folly to them and 
 a waste of precious minutes ; the amenities of life, such as 
 " please" and "thank you," struck them as suited to effete 
 monarchical societies, but as incongruous with free-born, in- 
 dependent Americanism, Force of character and self-reliance 
 are admirable qualities, certainly, — but mark the nemesis of 
 this pugnacious, iconoclastic spirit, this illusory self-suffi- 
 ciency, contempt of the past and of old authority : it is 
 simple ignorance and vulgarity. Rejecting what is good in 
 the old one is given over to what is coarse and bad in the 
 new ; his pretended freedom is actual bondage to the baser 
 elements of society and his own nature, is resoluble into a 
 plea for license and anarchy ; his contempt of the great 
 names of old delivers him up, hoodwinked, to undiscerning 
 idolatry of contemporary opinion and reputations. This 
 attitude of mind is responsible, by way of disgusted reac- 
 tion, for the Anglomania of an ensuing generation ; and 
 both betray unstable equilibrium. 
 
 The most effectual efforts to control the frontier that were 
 put forth by the East were by sending thither mission- 
 aries and schoolmasters. Baptist exhorters had followed 
 close upon Methodist, and now came Campbellites, or Dis- 
 ciples, Cumberland Presbyterians, and representatives of 
 innumerable curious sects beside, such as the Soul-sleepers, 
 whose distinguishing tenet was that disembodied souls are 
 in a somnolent state between death and the day of judg- 
 ment. 
 
80 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 These missionaries received meagre stipends from home 
 and nothing in the field, and hence had to work with their 
 hands, chop wood, and plough for their living. So it came 
 about that they were often denounced in the East as " given 
 to secular employments" ! One of them, a Presbyterian, 
 proposed a new society : " The-make-congregations-/<y- 
 what-they-voluntarily-/r^;;/w-society,"- — for " most clergy- 
 men do perform all they ever promise and often a very great 
 deal more." 
 
 One of these worthy men who at his first coming was dis- 
 couraged by the survey, for the young people in particular 
 seemed to have lapsed into heathenism, made the cheering 
 discovery after a little effort that though religious feeling, 
 through disuse, had become dormant, it was not extinct, and 
 that only regular and faithful work was required to cause 
 the nobler qualities again to assume control. There is in- 
 teresting evidence of the fact that soon became notorious 
 to all observers, that churchless villages were backward, 
 rude, vicious, and failed to attract settlers ; hence it became 
 good business to solicit and advertise ecclesiastical privileges. 
 But with the multitude of sects mutual antagonism flamed 
 more fiercely. The five hundred citizens of the capital of 
 Indiana were divided among ten religious sects : "Almost 
 every householder had a ' meeting ' of his own and in his 
 own dwelling." A schismatical, self-righteous spirit was 
 abroad, that " magnified differences, hunted more diligently 
 than intelligently for scriptural excuses for division, and 
 perverted texts to support creeds and uncharitable criticisms 
 of varying creeds." Such was the common burden of ser- 
 mons ; there was no exchange of pulpits in those days ! 
 " Most that was done at many of our meetings was to revile 
 others and glorify ourselves. Extra saints used to resort for 
 worship to the top of the courthouse steeple. Men thought 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 81 
 
 there was one church in the world and that their own, and 
 wondered what judgment would fall on other denomina- 
 tions. They were possessed by a disposition to dogmatize, 
 to settle not only their own faith but also their neighbors', 
 and to stand resolutely and dispute fiercely for the slightest 
 shade of difference of religious opinion." And finally, that 
 opinion was badly mixed up with politics, and confounded 
 with noise : "a quiet religion in Puddleford was no religion 
 at all!" 
 
 After the suppression of the Black Hawk insurrection in 
 1832, immigration of better quality from the South, New 
 England and Great Britain began to pour in, bearing with it 
 property, education, and some sound religion. Now the 
 northern tiers of counties began to be settled ; neat white 
 cottages, of New England style, with pine trees flanking the 
 approach to the door, began to appear; towns sprang up 
 and soon numbered their thousands, and boasted many 
 stores, among them a bookstore, hotels, newspapers, schools 
 and churches. Now appeared Roman Catholics, Episcopa- 
 lians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Universalists, Uni- 
 tarians, "and a few Nothingarians." Trained lawyers 
 replaced the old-time pettifoggers, and physicians the quacks. 
 Lyceum courses of lectures, universities, and charitable in- 
 stitutions drew within the horizon of the possible ; and we 
 hear mention of musical societies and another sign of the 
 approaching frontier of culture, albeit untimely : a wander- 
 ing artist, a disconsolate swallow of premature culture, dies 
 in one of the settlements. Temperance societies are organ- 
 ized, to suppress intoxication at elections, primarily ; and, 
 best of all, progress in pure religion is recognized as " an 
 index to the dignity and elevation of society, of states, of 
 human life." Interest in it deepens, young men begin to 
 seek the ministry ; educated clergymen are called to urban 
 
82 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 parishes, and institute Sunday-schools ; written sermons and 
 chaste eloquence replace the spontaneous ranting of former 
 time, and sacred music and song the discordant noise. 
 
 The first Episcopal minister of whom we hear in these 
 quarters was an almost mythical being named Henry Shaw, 
 who, in 1823, gathered a congregation at Vincennes; but 
 who he was, whence he came and whence he derived his or- 
 ders, no one knows. We no sooner hear of him than we 
 hear that he " quit preaching and was elected to the legisla- 
 ture " ; and from later ambiguous allusions we infer that his 
 character was not of the best, — that, in a word, he was a 
 clerical adventurer. What finally became of him is also 
 unknown ; out of the dark into the dark he goes. 
 
 The same year an emissary of the infant Domestic Mis- 
 sionary Society of the church, sent out to reconnoitre in both 
 states, organized a hopeful parish at Albion, Illinois, whose 
 history is conclusive as to the practicability of an early in- 
 troduction of the church into this region. The nucleus of 
 the parish was composed, without doubt, of a cluster of 
 English immigrants ; much zeal was manifested at the out- 
 set, and a rector was called from the East. Upon his decli- 
 nation, the congregation entreated the Missionary Society for 
 a supply ; and when that appeal also proved unavailing, it 
 dissolved away. 
 
 Such experiences as these should quiet all plaints about 
 the irreparable loss the church is supposed to have incurred 
 through her comparatively late entrance into this field ; the 
 time was not ripe. Both men and money were needed for 
 the work, and neither was at hand. The General Seminary 
 only graduated its first class that year, the Theological Sem- 
 inary of Virginia was located at Alexandria, and Bishop 
 Chase went abroad to solicit funds for a western seminary. 
 Even for the East the supply of clergy was sadly inade- 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 83 
 
 quate. Funds were also lacking; the Missionary Society 
 was in its inception, and after a moment of promise had to 
 struggle for life against a decline of interest. Undoubtedly 
 it should have sent a bishop instead of a priest as its first 
 missionary to the West, but in 1823 such a step would have 
 seemed utterly impracticable. No society can be imagined 
 where Episcopal services were more needed than in In- 
 diana and Illinois at that time, and on the other hand there 
 was none where they were less wanted. A bishop would 
 have had terribly hard work and could have accomplished 
 scarcely anything for ten years ; still, he should have been 
 sent. Not until after 1832 was the soil prepared for the 
 church's seed. 
 
 Leaving his young children in charge of their relatives in 
 Philadelphia, and accompanied by the Rev. Samuel Roose- 
 velt Johnson, Bishop Kemper reached Indiana in November, 
 1835. A word is necessary concerning his companion, who 
 was destined to exert a moulding influence upon the new 
 diocese. He was the son of a distinguished minister, a 
 scholar and eloquent preacher, of the Dutch Reformed com- 
 munion, whose name, originally Jansen, had by simple 
 change of spelling been conformed to its English homologue. 
 After graduating at Columbia College, the younger Johnson 
 received Episcopal ordination, and now, at the age of thirty- 
 three years, attended Bishop Kemper upon his first mission- 
 ary journey. 
 
 They discovered that in the whole state of Indiana there 
 was one lone missionary of their communion, located at the 
 capital, but not one church. New Albany was the largest 
 town, numbering upward of three thousand inhabitants, and 
 this and Evansville, where there were seven hundred souls 
 and no minister of any kind, seemed to be highly promising 
 stations. Having traversed the southern part of the state, 
 
84 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 the bishop sought to reach St. Louis by river, and touched 
 at Paducah, a growing town of a thousand inhabitants, that 
 could boast a theatre, but not a single place of public wor- 
 ship. Something untoward must have happened to the 
 travelers, for they now had to take an open wagon, wherein 
 their trunks served them for seats, and drive across the 
 southern end of Illinois. • After toiling through a swamp 
 fitly called Purgatory, they arrived at St. Louis in the mid- 
 dle of December. Here there was an organized parish and 
 church building, the only one in the jurisdiction of Missouri, 
 in which there was not a single clergyman, — an exact con- 
 verse of the case in Indiana. 
 
 The arrival of Americans, after the Louisiana purchase, 
 in the old French military and trading post of St. Louis, 
 was followed by municipal incorporation, the organization of 
 the fur trade, a post office, newspaper, school, and bank; 
 and the appearance of the first river steamboat, in the sum- 
 mer of 1817, marked a fresh era in the life of the place. 
 The year after, the foundation of a Roman Catholic cathe- 
 dral was laid, and in 18 19, the year of Chase's consecration, 
 the Episcopal parish of Christ Church was organized. 
 After a period of suspended animation, a church building 
 was completed in 1830, but even after that there was a 
 vacancy until Bishop Kemper assumed the rectorship and 
 secured the services of the Reverend Peter Minard as assist- 
 ant minister. Apart from the metropolis, there was hardly 
 a town in Missouri worthy of the title, but only straggling 
 villages and a scattered and ever moving population of fron- 
 tiersmen, stock raisers and small farmers. Civilization here 
 did not differ materially, save in the points of slavery and 
 the frequency of duels, from that in the states immediately 
 to the eastward. There was little capital or credit, and so, 
 in the midst of undeveloped and almost inexhaustible nat- 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 85 
 
 ural wealth, the people were generally poor. The religious 
 among them were possessed by bitter sectarian prejudices ; 
 Roman Catholics were numerous, and had had a resident 
 bishop since 1826; irreligion was of mutinous and blasphe- 
 mous rather than of intellectual, sceptical cast. Thomas 
 Hart Benton, the representative statesman of the frontier, 
 held the vote of the state in the hollow of his hand. Bishop 
 Kemper met him, but they cannot have been congenial, for 
 Benton, though brought up in the church, had connected 
 himself with the Methodists, and the bishop's prejudice 
 against Jefferson had descended to Andrew Jackson and 
 men of his party. 
 
 Still attended by Mr. Johnson, the bishop spent the win- 
 ter of 1836 in Illinois, fulfilling his promise to Chase. Early 
 in January he consecrated the church at Jacksonville, and 
 in February organized the parish at Alton. The cold 
 proved intense and travel difficult. In the course of this 
 visitation, apparently, he recrossed the Mississippi and stood 
 for the first time on the soil of Iowa ; for in consequence of 
 his representations Dubuque was made a station of the Mis- 
 sionary Society. 
 
 Iowa has been called " a great meadow between the Mis- 
 sissippi and Missouri rivers " ; it contains a greater propor- 
 tion of rich, arable land than any other state in the union. 
 Its name is said to signify "beautiful land," and the im- 
 pression made upon the favored ones who first looked out 
 over its undulating prairies, with their waving grass and 
 flowers, was not that of an aboriginal wilderness, but of " a 
 lately cultivated country, suddenly deserted by its inhabit- 
 ants." As a territory it had been attached to Missouri until 
 that became a state ; thenceforth for many years its condi- 
 tion has been aptly defined as political orphanage, until in 
 1834 it was appended to Wisconsin, which was itself an ap- 
 
86 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 pendage of Michigan territory. Dubuque had just been 
 laid out, and, the year of Kemper's visit, the site of Daven- 
 port was surveyed, and its streets were planned. The pop- 
 ulation of the territory was estimated at upward of ten 
 thousand souls. 
 
 Kemper now heard of " Milwalky in Ouisconsin " as a 
 hopeful site for a mission station, and soon after, in view of 
 the erection of Michigan into a state and consequent separ- 
 ation therefrom of Wisconsin territory, the few church peo- 
 ple in the latter, at Green Bay, conceiving that they were 
 thereby separated from Michigan diocese, applied to him for 
 Episcopal services. Much feeling ^vas excited by this action. 
 
 He was then on his way to the East, where one of his first 
 acts was to join in the consecration — the first in which he 
 took part, — of Samuel Allen McCoskry, of Pennsylvania, 
 as first bishop of Michigan. Kemper could testify that in 
 the three states he had just inspected he could easily find 
 places for a hundred missionaries, and he put so strongly 
 the case for church building in the West that a society was 
 formed in New York to promote it. His aim in his eastern 
 tour was threefold : to plead in the seminaries for men to 
 volunteer as missionaries, and, everywhere else, for means 
 to sustain them, and also to start a church college west of 
 the Mississippi. It needed only six months' experience to 
 convince him of the wisdom of Bishop Chase's ideal. For 
 some weeks he had difficulty in getting a hearing for his 
 college plan, and was somewhat chagrined, when on a sud- 
 den the tide turned and within twenty days he secured for 
 it subscriptions amounting to as many thousand dollars, and 
 thus ensured its foundation. After this, wherever he went 
 the keenest interest was aroused in his work, — an interest 
 that was attested then and in after years by gifts to the cause 
 from eastern clergymen and laymen, divinity students, ladies 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 87 
 
 old and young, (widows and orphans, one may truly say), 
 Sunday-school children, parochial missionary societies and 
 entire congregations. It should never be forgotten that, as 
 the western states were peopled from the East and their de- 
 velopment depended upon eastern capital, so their dioceses 
 owed their being to the grace of God acting upon eastern 
 hearts, and producing the fruit of self-denial. 
 
 November found the bishop back in St. Louis, anxiously 
 expecting the promised arrival of two clergymen, and his 
 disappointment was keen when he learned that they had ac- 
 cepted positions elsewhere. Meantime there was borne to 
 his ears on every wind the Macedonian cry, " Come and 
 help us." The prospect of a gift of land and subscriptions 
 for a college at Lafayette, Indiana, where his friend Johnson 
 had just organized St. John's parish, drew him thither in 
 haste; and during his absence, early in January, 1837, an 
 act incorporating Kemper College was passed by the Mis- 
 souri legislature. The bishop had chosen the title, " Mis- 
 souri College," but exception was taken to it, and at the 
 last moment his name, as that of the principal trustee, was 
 substituted, without his knowledge. 
 
 The year then opening was a troublous one, in both 
 church and state. Kemper was engaged with his brother 
 bishops, Mcllvaine, McCoskry, and Otey, and for some 
 time vainly, in endeavoring to restore peace to the agitated 
 diocese of Kentucky, whose bishop had been accused of 
 falsehood. They brought in a verdict that excited loud 
 cachinnation : " Guilty, without criminaUty." Their mean- 
 ing was perfectly perspicuous : Bishop Smith had made a 
 misstatement, but without culpable motive. 
 
 The financial panic that swept the land like a cyclone in 
 1837 wrought havoc with the credit of these states. Their 
 currency had been inflated with worthless paper, and wild- 
 
88 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 cat banking brought in its revenges. No moral principle 
 had been recognized in the management of many banks ; it 
 is said that in Michigan there was a mutual understanding 
 among them, and that the same silver and gold were dis- 
 patched from one point to another ahead of the inspectors, 
 and exhibited to them at bank after bank. The demoraliz- 
 ing, disintegrating folly was exposed of making haste to be 
 rich ; of undertaking internal improvements at other people's 
 expense, and thinking to pay for them with riches manufac- 
 tured by the printing-press ; of imagining that something 
 could be made out of nothing, or out of land itself without 
 steadfast human labor. The crisis was so severely felt in 
 Chicago, which in only a couple of years had sprung from 
 a village into a town, that people were forced to raise vege- 
 tables in their house lots, to keep from starving. Ere long, 
 payment of interest ceased upon the state debts of Indiana 
 and Illinois. The intoxication of speculation was followed 
 by weary years of depression ; and this grievously affected 
 the missionary cause. 
 
 1837 also marked a crisis in the anti-slavery campaign. 
 Elijah Lovejoy, a Whig, Presbyterian minister, and editor 
 of a denominational journal that opposed slavery, came to 
 a violent end at Alton. A career like his served to confirm 
 Kemper in his abhorrence of the mixture of politics with re- 
 ligion; and he always thought that the methods of the 
 abolitionists defeated their chosen end, and tended to per- 
 petuate slavery. 
 
 His unconquerable optimism in the face of financial dis- 
 aster is inspiring. He still hoped to prove " that if Indiana 
 was ever lost to the church, she is regained." He had the 
 satisfaction of laying the corner stone of a church at Craw- 
 fordsville, and of organizing Christ Church parish at Indi- 
 anapolis. He was kindly received at New Harmony, and 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 89 
 
 made the acquaintance of Robert Dale Owen. He had no 
 sympathy with Owen's communistic scheme, and had a 
 horror of infidelity ; but personally the intercourse between 
 them was courteous and friendly, and the bishop enjoyed 
 examining the philosopher's fine library and collections 
 illustrative of natural history. 
 
 In the late autumn he was speeding across Missouri to 
 Fort Leavenworth, the most important post on the frontier. 
 Colonel Stephen Kearny, the commandant, had begged 
 him to secure a chaplain for it. The bishop's account of 
 the trip is so vivid, and expressive of his buoyant spirit, 
 that it is well to quote from it. "I have now experienced 
 a little of western adventure, and really entered into it with 
 much more spirit and enjoyment than I could have imagined. 
 . . . Shall I tell you how we were benighted and how 
 we lost our way, of the deep creeks we forded and the bad 
 bridges we crossed, — how we were drenched to the skin, 
 and how we were wading for half-an-hour in a slough, and 
 the accidents which arose from the stumbling of our horses ? 
 But these events were matters of course. We had daily 
 cause for thankfulness and praise. . . . What a proof 
 of the sluggishness of our movements is the fact that, so far 
 as I can learn, I am the first clergyman of our Church who 
 has preached at Columbia, Boonville, Fayette, Richmond, 
 Lexington, Independence and Fort Leavenworth, — in a 
 word, I have been the pioneer from St. Charles up the Mis- 
 souri ! " And so he trod for the first time that portion of 
 the vast tract then vaguely known as the Indian Territory 
 which in after days was to take its name from the tribe of 
 Kansas Indians. 
 
 The earliest record of that territory is of one of those 
 violent summer hailstorms that still distress the farmer. On 
 a sultry and dazzling afternoon in June, three centuries be- 
 
90 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 fore Kemper's visit, a Spaniard named Coronado was cross- 
 ing its treeless plains, when of a sudden the sky was over- 
 cast and he and his troop were pelted with hailstones as big 
 as oranges. Its only development up to Kemper's day was 
 owing to its being threaded by the Santa F€ trail for traders 
 between Missouri and Mexico. What he saw of the possi- 
 bilities of mission work among the Indians there interested 
 the bishop profoundly. 
 
 On his return to St. Louis, where he hoped to rest for 
 some months, doing pastoral work, looking after his college, 
 writing letters and reports, he found a letter awaiting him 
 from Bishop Otey, entreating his company upon a tour in 
 the southwest. The two bishops had been closely drawn to 
 each other at the time of the Smith trial, and ever after 
 were faithful friends. To Kemper the invitation came as a 
 constraining call, and accordingly, in January, 1838, he 
 dropped down the great river to Memphis, where news 
 reached him that Otey was prostrated by an attack of fever, 
 and begged him to make the visitation in his stead. "If 
 possible, I shall gratify him," Kemper wrote home, "for I 
 am much attached to him, and I belong entirely to the 
 Church." So began a magnificent tour which, taken in 
 connection with his other activities, affords the most im- 
 pressive spectacle of the expansion of the church through- 
 out the land at the opening of the second generation of the 
 nineteenth century. His route lay through Natchez, New 
 Orleans, Mobile, Pensacola, Tallahassee, Macon, Columbus 
 (Georgia), Montgomery, Greensboro', Tuscaloosa, and Co- 
 lumbus (Mississippi), and terminated at Mobile and New 
 Orleans, whither he returned in May. He could report that 
 in about four months he had visited nearly all the parishes 
 in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, 
 confirming in nearly all; that he had consecrated eight 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 91 
 
 churches and advanced two deacons to the priesthood ; and 
 that he had become a hving witness to the church at large 
 of the wants, claims, and prospects of the southwest. He 
 estimated that at least fifty missionaries were needed there 
 immediately, and put the pointed question : "Is climate ever 
 to be taken into consideration by those who have solemnly 
 bound themselves at the Altar of God ? ' ' 
 
 This superb tour was the prelude to the consecration of 
 Leonidas Polk. 
 
 Among the testimonies to the genial impression produced 
 by Kemper's personality we select two from Mississippi, 
 from the missionaries at Woodville and Columbus. "I 
 cannot doubt that the labors of this amiable and excellent 
 prelate will greatly advance the interests of the Church in 
 this destitute region. His indefatigable zeal and amiable 
 manners have secured him friends in all who have known 
 him." "He was the first Bishop that had ever been in 
 this region, and I am happy to say that he made a good and 
 wholesome impression for the Church. Our people were 
 very much pleased with him in the pulpit, and delighted 
 with him in the private circle. We only regret that there is 
 but little hope of our seeing him again." 
 
 No sooner had he returned north than he started upon a 
 visitation of Indiana, and presided over its diocesan con- 
 vention. At Vincennes he walked and talked with General 
 William Henry Harrison, who owned property in the town, 
 to such good effect that he obtained from him a gift of a 
 fine lot of land for a church. He preached at New Har- 
 mony in a room that Owen had helped prepare for service. 
 
 In the growing town of Milwaukie (as it was then spelled) 
 a parish had just been organized by the name of St. Paul. 
 An experienced missionary named Richard Cadle, who had 
 formerly been employed by the board of missions in Michi- 
 
92 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 gan, had been transferred to Wisconsin, where he was busily 
 gathering congregations. That territory and Iowa were now 
 formally placed under Kemper's jurisdiction, and in July, 
 for the first time as bishop, he entered Wisconsin, with 
 which his relations were destined to become the most inti- 
 mate of all. 
 
 The imaginative charm of this wonderful career lies in 
 the illimitable perspectives opened by it into space, time, 
 and eternity. 
 
 Until within only four years of his visit traffic with the 
 Indians had been the one interest of the territory, and the 
 fur-trade had opened up and marked out the way for all its 
 future development. Green Bay, Milwaukee, Fond-du-Lac, 
 Oshkosh, Sheboygan, Madison and many other towns stand 
 upon the sites of Indian villages and trading-posts, and 
 many a highway was once an Indian trail. The water ways 
 had early been well explored by French voyagers and Jesuit 
 priests. The Black Hawk war first advertised the country, 
 and in the summers immediately ensuing waves of immigra- 
 tion, of good quality, native American and protestant, broke 
 upon its eastern coast. Methodist and Presbyterian minis- 
 ters put in an appearance, schools were opened and news- 
 papers started at Green Bay and Milwaukee, and mail was 
 carried up the coast once a week. Kaleidoscopic changes 
 marked the infancy of the territory ; it participated in the 
 speculative excitement of the year 1836, which reached its 
 height in Milwaukee in a building mania; after the col- 
 lapse, next year, a thousand dollar house-lot could be bought 
 for a barrel of pork or flour, or a suit of clothes. For some 
 time after, immigration was checked. At the date of the 
 bishop's visit, the white population of the territory amounted 
 to twelve thousand souls. He passed through Prairie du 
 Chien, Cassville, Mineral Point, Madison, and Fort Win- 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 93 
 
 nebago, preaching and administering the holy communion, 
 and early in August arrived at Green Bay, where he con- 
 firmed six persons and laid the corner stone of Christ Church. 
 He also visited the Oneida settlement at Duck Creek, being 
 escorted thither by a mounted guard of thirty Indians, and 
 laid for them the corner stone of Hobart Church. He then 
 retraced his steps, and heard news that agitated his mani- 
 fold jurisdictions : that he had been elected to the bishopric 
 of Maryland. 
 
 The following tribute, elicited at this juncture from the 
 vestry of Christ Church, St. Louis, witnesses to the esteem 
 in which he was held : 
 
 " Resolved, That Bishop Kemper seems particularly fitted 
 for his present situation as Missionary Bishop at the West, 
 not only in the great essentials to be expected of every 
 Bishop, piety and devotedness, but in the lesser qualities 
 which are all important to his efficiency and success in this 
 region ; viz, firm health and constitution, which have been 
 tried by the climate ; a cheerful temper and popular manners, 
 enabling him to come in contact with our heterogeneous 
 population, with favorable impressions on their side to the 
 cause in which he is engaged; and great prudence and 
 caution, peculiarly requisite amidst a population made up 
 of almost all religions and nations, whose moral and religious 
 character is yet unformed, and where different denomina- 
 tions of Christians are striving to make establishment. 
 
 ''Resolved, That we bear testimony to the activity and 
 perseverance of Bishop Kemper while he has been amongst 
 us, and to the great services rendered by him. 
 
 ''Resolved, That, in our opinion, his removal from us 
 would be to undo much of what has been done and is in 
 progress, favorable to the growth of the Protestant Episco- 
 pal Church amongst us ; that it would require of his sue- 
 
94 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 cesser several years' labor and travel to gain the practical 
 information possessed by Bishop Kemper of the wants of the 
 West, and to inspire the confidence of the scattered friends 
 of the Church, to the degree now acquired by him, from 
 personal intercourse with them at their homes throughout 
 this vast region. 
 
 ^^ Resolved, That his presence seems necessary to Kemper 
 College, an institution just commencing here under favor- 
 able auspices, of which he may be styled the founder, and 
 is relied upon to procure for it proper professors and instruc- 
 tors, as well as necessary patronage for the future." 
 
 This action of the vestry, widely disseminated, no doubt 
 expressed and helped to confirm the convictions that actu- 
 ated Kemper in his refusal to forsake his proper and chosen 
 sphere of labor, to the great relief of all concerned save the 
 people of Maryland ; and it was so clear and emphatic that 
 it put a quietus upon any future attempt to withdraw him 
 from his western field. An allusion in the first resolution, 
 to his "firm health and constitution," may have sounded 
 somewhat surprising, but it is a fact that he had completely 
 outgrown the delicacy of his early years in the ministry, so 
 that he positively enjoyed the intense cold of the wintry 
 plains, — protected against it as he was in the fashion we 
 will let him describe in his own Avords, momently. 
 
 The last resolution touched a subject very near his heart. 
 A desirable property had been bought in the neighborhood 
 of St. Louis, building had been begun upon it, and that 
 very autumn Mr. Minard began instruction in the prepara- 
 tory school of Kemper College. 
 
 On his return from general convention, the bishop was 
 twice overturned in vehicles between Baltimore and St. 
 Louis, but without serious injury. He consecrated the com- 
 pleted fabric, "of wood, in the Gothic style," of Christ 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 95 
 
 Church, Indianapohs ; and here a carelessly worded or 
 printed report would seem to indicate that on one and the 
 same day he was consecrating a church in Indiana and gal- 
 loping across western Missouri on his way to the Indian 
 Territory ! Similar powers of bilocation are reported of 
 mediaeval saints. It was in fact the middle of November 
 that found him engaged in the latter journey, but the mo- 
 mentary confusion affords a kinetoscopic impression of the 
 celerity of his moments. In letters to his family, he pic- 
 tures himself as chilled to the heart and shaking with cold 
 while eating in a wretched cabin without a window, so that 
 the door had to be left open for light ; the meal consisted 
 of corn-dodgers and coffee, without butter or sugar. The 
 tract through which he rode, on horseback, was sparsely in- 
 habited, and what people there were were pitiably poor. ■ 
 He went once for twenty miles in a driving snowstorm 
 without seeing a house ; one night he was glad to share with 
 eleven others the shelter of a log house of a single room ; 
 the snow drifted in and lay in heaps upon the middle of the 
 floor : no one troubled himself to remove it, and it did not 
 melt in the slightest degree. Fastidious though the bishop 
 usually was about his toilet and the like, he enjoyed this ex- 
 traordinary experience. Of course he could not have existed 
 without the wraps that he describes : "I have on thick blue 
 cloth leggings, buffalo moccasins over waterproof boots, a 
 lion skin greatcoat with collar turned up and a handker- 
 chief around it to keep it tight, another handkerchief 
 around my ears, and want nothing beside but a mask of rab- 
 bit skin." He was deeply disappointed at the condition in 
 which he found the lately deported Indians, professedly 
 Christian, whom it was his object to visit ; they were aban- 
 doned to the evils of intemperance, having been debauched 
 by the rum-sellers of the border. 
 
96 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 In picturesque contrast with this freezing tour was his 
 visitation in Wisconsin the succeeding summer : the heat 
 was intense, and the mosquitoes were so many and fierce 
 that he had to wear a veil, for protection. His recommen- 
 dation that Racine be made a mission station was adopted. 
 On his way down the Mississippi he stopped at Dubuque 
 and Davenport; in fact, for 1839 and the following year it 
 is sufficient to record that he repeated his regular routine of 
 visitations in Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin and Iowa, only 
 interrupted by his annual tour to the East. 
 
 Turning to the state that he was continually encircling on 
 these tours, we find that all through these years it was suffer- 
 ing acutely from the stringency in the money market, and 
 that in consequence the diocese remained stationary. In 
 1837, Bishop Chase consecrated St. James' Church, Chi- 
 cago, — and then the panic and ensuing hard times put an 
 abrupt stop to church building. The diocese numbered 
 eleven clergymen ; there was sore need of traveling evangel- 
 ists, as the bishop declared to his convention ; he lamented 
 the fact that he was its only itinerant, and often had to stay 
 at home for lack of funds. It was almost too much to ex- 
 pect a man of his age and size to undergo the toil and ex- 
 posure of such travel, — over the wind-swept prairies, through 
 creeks and sloughs : in 1838 a carriage in which he was 
 riding was upset and some of his ribs were broken. On his 
 diocesan tours he never failed to find a welcome in the lone- 
 liest hamlets and solitary cabins ; the people were very 
 friendly, but mostly without means, and engaged in a des- 
 perate struggle for bare subsistence. In such a situation it 
 behoved a minister to go and seek, he said, without waiting 
 for a call and salary ; and he pointed out that the condi- 
 tions of the primitive church were repeated in this country, 
 where there is no public support of religion. Missionaries 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 97 
 
 must be content with corn meal, molasses, and pork, instead 
 of bread, sugar, butter, and beef; they must be prepared to 
 endure hardships, yet will not lack compensations ; a buffalo 
 coat and boots, for example, with warm cap and gloves are 
 great comforts,— and the coat makes an excellent blanket. 
 In a new country versatile genius is in demand ; the mis- 
 sionary should be something of a doctor, nurse, and cook. 
 
 Bishop Chase was delayed by the hard times in the execu- 
 tion of his educational project. In fact, he had to encounter 
 in Illinois the same difficulties that in Ohio had beset the 
 locating of Kenyon College. No good land was to be 
 cheaply bought; everpvhere he found "individual cupid- 
 ity" in conflict with and defeating "public utility." After 
 some years he succeeded in getting a site according to his 
 mind : a low, wooded ridge along a creek, in Peoria 
 county; and on the 3rd of April, 1839, he had the satis- 
 faction of laying the corner stone of the chapel of Jubilee 
 College. It was a beautiful day, and the knoll was thronged 
 with folk from far and near, who found sitting room on the 
 heaps of stone just quarried for the chapel. The bishop 
 said that never before in his life had he been filled with such 
 solemn gladness ; and he explained that the name he had 
 chosen for the college suited best of any his feelings and cir- 
 cumstances : "after seven years I rejoice in a return of 
 God's favor." 
 
 The year 1839 saw the second crisis in the history of 
 Kenyon College, and Chase remarked, with a considerable 
 degree of pardonable satisfaction, that his successor in the 
 bishopric of Ohio was forced to adopt his position. Dr. 
 Sparrow had rallied the opposition to Bishop Mcllvaine, who 
 had no alternative, he said, but to quell it or quit the dio- 
 cese. So battle was joined and the bishop triumphed, — for 
 the diocese did not seek another episcopal resignation ; Mc- 
 
98 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 Ilvaine said, later, that he would have resigned had he been 
 outvoted. His opponents on the college faculty were re- 
 moved ; Sparrow left Gambler, an ' ' earthquake of feeling 
 in his heart." But the change did not work well ; confi- 
 dence declined ; and before very long Mcllvaine himself 
 vainly sought Sparrow's return, promising himself to leave 
 Gambler. 
 
 Chase's English funds, all that he had, had been con- 
 sumed in the purchase of land and beginning of building at 
 Jubilee, so he had to look around for means, and resolved 
 to travel for his college through the southern states. He 
 applied to Kemper for his good-will, and received the fol- 
 lowing note : 
 
 St. Louis, Mo., Nov. 29, 1839. 
 The plan of the venerable Bishop Chase is exceedingly interesting, 
 and one of great importance to the future prosperity of our country, 
 and the welfare of the Church of the living God in the Diocese of Illi- 
 nois. I wish him every success in his noble and arduous undertaking. 
 
 Jackson Kemper, 
 Missionary Bishop of Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa, etc., and Acting 
 Bishop of Indiana. 
 
 New Year's day, 1840, Chase was in New Orleans again, 
 — when suddenly a clergyman appeared, begging for Kem- 
 per College. "How like my former trials ! " he exclaimed, 
 recalling the competition when he was first in England. He 
 only obtained in that great city fifty dollars for Jubilee ; but 
 arrears of salary thirty years old were paid him by Christ 
 Church. He sailed in a schooner to Charleston, where he 
 succeeded in raising an endowment of ten thousand dollars 
 for a professorship. Thence he proceeded to Savannah and 
 Columbia, where the Reverend Stephen Elliott gave him 
 two hundred dollars. " I never was better treated," the 
 bishop testified, "than in South Carolina and Georgia." 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 99 
 
 At Norfolk he visited a man-of-war that was lying in the 
 harbor, and found that the sailors preferred the Church 
 service to any other : " The Church they regard as the reg- 
 ular troops; all others, as the militia." Thence he trav- 
 ersed the northeastern states with a fair degree of success, 
 getting subscriptions in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, 
 Brooklyn and Hartford. 
 
 The year 1841 was a notable one in the history of Kem- 
 per and his group. His college at St. Louis was then in 
 running order, domiciled in its own large hall ; more than 
 forty students were receiving instruction in mathematics, the 
 classics, rhetoric and "belle lettres," from a faculty of three 
 professors, — but over the institution hung an ominous debt 
 of nearly five thousand dollars ; a storm was brewing in that 
 cloud, then only as large as a man's hand. The grammar 
 school continued, alongside the college, and the bishop's 
 ambition now was to engage a theological professor and open 
 a seminary. In January he journeyed east with this in view, 
 and also to seek missionaries for the upbuilding of the church 
 in Wisconsin ; and at the General Seminary met four stu- 
 dents who gave themselves to him for the latter work. Here 
 comes into relief the importance of seminary courses in 
 apostology; those young men had been inspired by Dr. 
 Whittingham's lectures in church history, in which he caused 
 to pass before their mental vision the heroic figures of the 
 golden age of missions, which ever after loomed and beck- 
 oned upon their spiritual horizon : Columba and his com- 
 panions, mariner missionaries among the western islands of 
 Scotland ; St. Gall, amid the Swiss mountains ; Boniface, 
 the apostle of sylvan Germany ; Willibrord, of the Frisian 
 dunes, and Ansgar, of the Scandinavian lakes. Their hearts 
 had burned within them as they heard Kemper tell, upon his 
 previous visit, of similar splendid opportunities in the 
 
100 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 boundless West, and they had eagerly talked the matter over 
 in their rooms, taken trusted advice, and come to an affirm- 
 ative decision. Their names were William Adams, James 
 Lloyd Breck, John Henry Hobart, and James Warley Miles. 
 The first, an Irishman, was the maturest in mind as in 
 years ; he was a thinker and scholar, fond of the contem- 
 plative life, yet no dreamer, quick-witted, and a born 
 teacher. Breck was his junior by several years, but became 
 the soul of the movement. He was born near Philadelphia 
 in 1818. His parents were church people, and from the 
 first he enjoyed catholic nurture. At the age of twelve he 
 was placed in the school that Muhlenberg had just opened 
 at Flushing, Long Island, whither Bishop Kemper also sent 
 his sons, and there, for the six ensuing impressionable years 
 of his life he responded to the moulding influence of that 
 great evangelical catholic. There the precocious youth re- 
 solved to devote himself to a celibate ministry; stringent 
 discipline was what his nature craved ; and the religious life, 
 narrowly interpreted in its mediaeval sense, — that is, the 
 ascetic, — became henceforth his lode-star. He was so well 
 advanced in his studies at Flushing that in 1836 he was able 
 to enter the junior class in the University of Pennsylvania, 
 whence he passed, after two years, to the General Seminary. 
 Hobart was a son of the bishop of that name. His dom- 
 inant inspiration was missionary. Only after much urging, 
 and then with extreme reluctance, could his bishop be per- 
 suaded to relinquish his claim to Hobart's services, while 
 Miles's positively refused to let him go, saying that he was 
 more needed in South Carolina, his native state. This was 
 a great disappointment to all concerned, for, according to 
 Breck' s testimony, to Miles was due the first suggestion of a 
 religious house somewhere on the western frontier, to evan- 
 gelize and educate the people. 
 
AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 101 
 
 On the fourth of March, General Harrison was inaugu- 
 rated President of the United States, — a victory for the 
 northwest, as Jackson's election was for the southwest, mark- 
 ing the rise in political importance of those sections, — but 
 after exactly one month he expired. Dr. Upfold improved 
 the sad occasion to administer a severe castigation to his 
 people, upon a text from the prophet Jeremiah : " My peo- 
 ple have committed two evils ; they have forsaken me the 
 fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, 
 broken cisterns, that can hold no water." During his ten 
 years' pastorate at Pittsburg, Upfold had become a power in 
 his parish, the community, and the surrounding country. 
 He had paid off a debt upon his church, had had the edi- 
 fice thoroughly repaired and a fine organ placed in it ; and, 
 unwilling to let his activities be circumscribed by parochial 
 routine, had ministered to vacant parishes in the neighbor- 
 hood of the city, and made missionary excursions that 
 familiarized him with the needs of western Pennsylvania. 
 The sermon referred to was one of his greatest homiletic 
 efforts ; it was an exposure of the short-sighted worldliness 
 of the American populace, and the evils of the times. The 
 people have forgotten the Lord their God, and are given 
 over to irreligion and accompanying profligacy, peculation 
 and speculation ; departing from republican simplicity, they 
 are abandoned to the pursuit of luxury and its means ; have 
 imported debased amusements, and lavish their wealth on 
 "histrionic adventurers, singers, fiddlers, and lascivious 
 dancing girls." Sabbath breaking, profanity, and intem- 
 perance are fearfully common ; the press is obscene ; the 
 love of money has become idolatry. Money is the god of 
 thousands, and its acquisition the passion of the age ; avarice 
 and indulgence are the ruling propensities of the nation. 
 Wealth had become a source of confidence, making men 
 
102 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 feel independent of God, — hence the scourge of tlie kite fi- 
 nancial disasters, for recovery from which the besotted peo- 
 ple looked every way but the right one, putting their reliance 
 upon industry, the richness of the soil, republican govern- 
 ment, — and especially upon a man, William Henry Harrison, 
 whose election was to cure every ill and restore confidence 
 and credit. And now he is taken from their eyes. 
 
 A union of church and state, the preacher concluded, is 
 to be deprecated, but no infidel state can stand. Without 
 religion there can be no stability ; government will degener- 
 ate into anarchy, as during the French Revolution. " Re- 
 ligion, practically recognized in our public affairs, and by 
 our public men, is the great safeguard of our liberties." 
 
 Immediately after graduation from the seminary, Adams, 
 Breck and Hobart were ordered deacons, and accepted by 
 the board of missions for work in Wisconsin. Hobart left 
 first, to survey the field ; the others followed in September ; 
 they made Prairieville (now Waukesha) their centre of op- 
 erations, organized a parish which they called St. John's in 
 the Wilderness, and itinerated in every direction for a ra- 
 dius of fifty miles. 
 
 The missionary jurisdictions of Indiana and Missouri had 
 by this time been organized as dioceses, Kemper presiding ; 
 and the former now eagerly elected him as its diocesan, but 
 he declined. The time had not yet nearly come for him so 
 to settle clown, and he was deeply interested in his college 
 and the Wisconsin mission. It was a moment of hope and 
 energy in Indiana ; Dr. Eryan Killikelly, missionary at Vin- 
 cennes, was in England that summer, pleading for his work, 
 and with the cordial assistance of the bishop of London ob- 
 tained over two hundred pounds sterling to helj) him in 
 building his church. 
 
 Dr. Andrew Wylie, an eminent Presbyterian dominie, and 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 1()3 
 
 president of the state university at Bloomington, alienated 
 by the violent controversies within his communion, and con- 
 cluding that "sectarianism is heresy," applied to Kemper 
 for ordination. This famous conversion fluttered the dove- 
 cotes of western Presbyterianism as a similar event, the 
 conversion of a rector and several tutors of Yale College, 
 had agitated the Congregational societies of New England 
 more than a century before. 
 
 The bishop was the recipient this year of a legacy from 
 some maiden ladies of Philadelphia. He accepted an in- 
 vitation to preach the triennial sermon before the board of 
 missions in St. Paul's Chapel, New York, and took as his 
 text the admirably appropriate passage in the tenth chapter 
 of St. Paul's epistle to the Romans, the thirteenth and fol- 
 lowing verses. At the close of a glowing incentive to mis- 
 sionary duty, he spoke, as his audience expected him to 
 speak, of his own field, in prophetic strain: "With re- 
 spect to the western portion of our own country, the mighty 
 West, the seat of future empires, — from whence the arts 
 and sciences and, if we are faithful to our trust, the elevat- 
 ing and holy doctrines of Christianity in all their vital 
 influence are to extend far and wide, through Mexico and 
 the almost boundless plains of South America to Cape 
 Horn and the Isles of the Pacific, — even in the West, 
 amidst the wildest speculations, the most intense excitement, 
 and the all-absorbing desire to be rich, — even there the 
 Church has been planted, and in many a village is to be 
 found a band of faithful worshippers. 
 
 " To theological students, in whose welfare I am most 
 truly interested, I can speak with plainness; for at the pres- 
 ent day, if amid the prodigious efforts of Popery, the beau- 
 tiful example set us by various denominations in this coun- 
 try, and the delightful, the noble stand which our highly 
 
104 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 honored mother, the Church of England, has at last taken 
 in reference to missions, there is even one, looking to the 
 ministry, who has not in all sincerity and from his heart 
 said to his Saviour, Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth, — 
 and is not ready to say to the Church, Here am I, send me, 
 — he has mistaken his calling. The spirit to be cultivated 
 at the schools of the prophets is the spirit of unreserved and 
 entire devotion to the cause of Christ Jesus and Him cruci- 
 fied. The heart, the whole heart is required." 
 
 On the second Sunday in Advent, Andrew Wylie was or- 
 dered deacon, being upward of fifty years of age. It was 
 felt to be a deeply interesting, indeed momentous event in 
 the history of the infant diocese of Indiana. The ordina- 
 tion took place at New Albany, and Samuel Roosevelt 
 Johnson was the preacher. In his sermon he set forth 
 in incisive terms the doctrine of a catholic deposit, — a 
 trust, not subjective, but " a witness which God has given 
 His Church, independent of us, transmitted to our care, 
 which we must accept and faithfully declare and hand over 
 to the generation which shall succeed, without addition, 
 diminution, or reserve. 
 
 "I would prefer grace to knowledge that might lead to 
 grace, — would rather possess my privilege than know of it." 
 
 The ordinand cordially assented to these sentiments, — in- 
 deed, the preacher and he were the formative ecclesiastical 
 influences of the diocese. Wylie was its representative at 
 the next general convention, whereat his was the only voice 
 raised in defense of the Oxford tracts. It has been pointed 
 out that a wave from Oxford that had just struck New 
 York, leaped over Pennsylvania and Ohio, and then poured 
 along the same parallels, inundating Indiana and Wisconsin, 
 eddying around and finally engulfing Illinois. Hence the 
 desperate efforts the evangelical association made to check 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 105 
 
 its further progress by placing their men in Iowa, like stones 
 in a wall, having the Mississippi for a dyke. 
 
 Little did Henry Lee dream at that time of his coming 
 relation to the latter see. After finishing his course at 
 Cheshire, he moved to Massachusetts, taught school for a 
 while at Taunton, carrying on his theological studies pri- 
 vately, was ordained by Bishop Griswold, and installed, in 
 1840, as rector of Christ Church, Springfield. 
 
 Joseph Talbot meantime left his native Virginia for Ken- 
 tucky, and engaged in business in Louisville. He was bap- 
 tized the year he attained his majority, and in 1841 began 
 his preparation for the ministry. At that date, Hawks had 
 for some years been in holy orders, and was in charge of 
 Trinity Church, Buffalo ; and Vail had given evidence of 
 unusual activity and ability. After graduating at the Gen- 
 eral Seminary, he was ordered deacon by Bishop Brownell, 
 and was called to be assistant at St. Paul's Church, 
 Boston. While thus engaged, he organized All Saint's 
 Church, Worcester. He was priested by Bishop Griswold 
 on the feast of the Epiphany, 1837, and was rector of 
 Christ Church, Cambridge, for two years thereafter, when 
 h'e returned to Connecticut. In 1841 he brought out his re- 
 markable book, "The Comprehensive Church," which was 
 read in manuscript and approved by Bishop Brownell. 
 
 Its thesis is that everything necessary to Christian unity 
 and ecclesiastical union, with nothing superfluous, is to be 
 found in the Episcopal church. Its tone is tolerant, undog- 
 matic ; it is an interesting contribution from the ecclesiasti- 
 cal side to the literature of the age of Henry Clay and com- 
 promise. The writer explains at the outset that he does not 
 intend to discuss disputed points, such as apostolical suc- 
 cession or the principle of a liturgy. His initial premise is 
 that originally all Christians were churchmen, and that reli- 
 
106 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 gious divisions are great evils. He refuses to surrender the 
 term " Catholic" to the Roman church, and defends the 
 church of England from the charge of schism : the papacy 
 was never universal, and had no lawful authority over Eng- 
 land, no authority to excommunicate a national church ; 
 Roman excommunications are valid only in the Roman dio- 
 cese ; England broke with the Roman, not with the univer- 
 sal church. As regards the relation of the English and 
 American churches, the brave claim is advanced that the 
 current figure of mother and daughter must yield to that of 
 sisterhood, on the principle of the equality of national 
 churches ; a declaration of ecclesiastical independence ! 
 The Protestant Episcopal church was moored, theologically 
 and every way, alongside the English, until Vail cut the 
 cables. Sectarianism seemed to him without excuse; its 
 principle he defined as "continual separation, in order to 
 secure the most exact assimilation," until at last unity is re- 
 solved into its units, and the sect becomes the individual. 
 He answers the popular apologies for division on the 
 ground of its supposed benefits, — increase of zeal, for 
 example ; pointing out that such increase is difficult to dis- 
 tinguish from fanaticism, and is moreover outweighed by the 
 skepticism it engenders ; whereas there never was more 
 genuine and heroic zeal than in the early ages, when the 
 Church was one. The arguments of the Baptists are com- 
 pletely turned by the fact of the rite of confirmation and ad- 
 mission of the lawfulness of immersion. It is admitted 
 that the one distinctive point in each denomination is gener- 
 ally a truth, made disproportionally prominent ; the ques- 
 tion is, Is there in existence any religious organization that 
 combines the truths of all ? — and the author answers, Yes, 
 the Episcopal, " because, in its system, those points which 
 its own members hold essential and which are not provided 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 107 
 
 for in any other system, and those also which are held essen- 
 tial by the various other denominations, are distinctly recog- 
 nized and amply provided for." In it " the elements of 
 the three great systems, the Episcopal, the Presbyterial, the 
 Congregational, are so combined that the entire strength of 
 each is preserved." The laity have a share in its govern- 
 ment, parochial, diocesan, and national ; in fact, its consti- 
 tution bears a striking resemblance to that of the republic, 
 with which it is geographically co-extensive. (Happily for 
 the writer, Kemper had just made this last claim good.) 
 The theory of the Episcopal church is, that the church of 
 Christ is itself the great Missionary Society appointed by 
 Him, and that His sacraments are as free to all His true dis- 
 ciples as are the benefits of His precious blood. As to doc- 
 trine, there have been and are, both in the English and 
 American churches, both Calvinists and Arminians among 
 both clergy and laity. And forms of public worship may be 
 changed by the will of the majority. The author regrets 
 that churchmen themselves too often exhibit sectarian spirit, 
 not realizing the largeness of their communion, and how 
 many diversities of opinion and practice are permissible in 
 it. "It is treason against nature and nature's God," he ex- 
 claims, "to attempt to shape all the varieties of individual, 
 mental, moral, and physical character, by one exact and 
 elaborately contrived standard of human rules. . . . It is 
 the fundamental error of sectarism, . . . — an error into 
 which the weakness of men is continually falling. It 
 springs from that inordinate but hidden self-love, which 
 causes every man to look at himself as the standard of per- 
 fection, to which all others must be made to conform. 
 
 " The great fault of ecclesiastical legislators, in all ages of 
 the Church, has been in legislating too much. . . . They 
 seem to have forgotten that there are laws in nature itself and 
 
108 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 in the Gospel as well as in their codes of canons. They 
 ought to have faith in the common sense and the deliberate 
 judgments and the sincere hearts of Christian people ; they 
 should trust much to the laws of experience, the laws of the 
 human mind and affections ; they should have calm confi- 
 dence in the gracious care of the Holy Spirit, the superin- 
 tendence of the Head of the Church." 
 
 Such is the argument of Vail's remarkable treatise, the 
 most remarkable, indeed, about the only publication in book 
 form produced by the group around Bishop Kemper. It 
 may reflect too fully the spirit of compromise of the age out 
 of which it arose, — may be too pliable in some of its ap- 
 plications, — though he maintained that in practice extreme 
 tendencies would be automatically adjusted, — but its spirit 
 is in line with sound Anglican and truly catholic tradition, 
 — is in truth identical with the spirit of Richard Hooker 
 and, further back, of Bishop Pecocke ; and those who cry 
 out against it owe to it their foothold in the church. It 
 offers a refreshing contrast to the violent party contests and 
 ecclesiastical trials of its day ; it indicated, long before, the 
 lines along which the church was to progress ; and, finally, 
 in its clear-cut distinction between nature and sin it was far 
 in advance of the times and still remains so in a measure. 
 
 Kemper's plan of visitation of all his dioceses and juris- 
 dictions for the year 1842 reveals a general intention of 
 spending a week at every parish or mission station visited. 
 This may have been the common custom then; Bishop 
 Cobbs followed it, and so had time to call upon every 
 church family in every place, become personally acquainted 
 with every individual, and so be in truth the chief pastor of 
 his diocese. Kemper reported this year that there were 
 thirty-one clergymen and that he had confirmed one hun- 
 dred and ninety-one persons in his field. In a report from 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 109 
 
 Prairieville, Wisconsin, rendered by William Adams, as 
 clerk of the associated mission, we find the following refer- 
 ence: " We have had an interesting visit from Bishop Kem- 
 per. We believe he is satisfied with our eff"orts. And 
 though in his services he wore the robes appropriate to his 
 office, a thing before unheard of in this region, still we 
 have heard no complaints, and we know that the dignified 
 and impressive way in which he performed the solemn 
 duties of the Episcopate, as well the reverential suavity of 
 his natural manner, have brought it close to the most careless, 
 that the commission borne by an apostolic bishop is not of 
 man, neither by man, but of the Holy Ghost." 
 
 In the same report a " Catholic feature " of the mission 
 is noted, — classes of adult catechumens, conducted by the 
 brethren ; and an intention of having weekly communions, 
 "according to primitive practice," is recorded. To this 
 end the brothers had sought to secure the services of the 
 good missionary priest, Richard Cadle, and to convert him 
 into the Father Superior of their order, — but the worthy 
 man shied at the novel honor. With funds that Hobart had 
 obtained at the East a beautiful tract of land was bought 
 about Nashotah (signifying "Twin Lakes"), and thither, 
 in August, the mission was moved. The following October, 
 Adams and Breck were advanced to the priesthood, and the 
 latter was made head of the religious house. A few theo- 
 logical students answered to the lay brothers of Vallombrosa ; 
 they supported themselves by farm work, etc., according to 
 the primitive method at Gambier. The community rose at 
 five o'clock, had services (lauds or prime) at six and nine 
 in the morning, on Wednesdays and Fridays the litany and 
 on Thursdays Holy Communion at noontide, and services 
 at three and half-past six o'clock in the evening, answer- 
 ing to nones and vespers. Now at length, as Breck wrote 
 
110 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 home with glee, he began to feel that he was really in a 
 monastery. But within a year from that hopeful start it 
 seemed as if the community would be dissolved. Adams 
 had a severe attack of pneumonia, felt unequal to bearing 
 the business burdens of the house, and returned to the East ; 
 Hobart lingered a few months longer, and then followed ; 
 and Breck began to think of moving further west. 
 
 At this period Kenyon College was in such financial 
 straits that it was in imminent danger of being lost to the 
 church, — but a mighty effort was made, collections were 
 taken for it on a large scale among congregations through- 
 out the eastern dioceses, and it was saved ; but the extra- 
 ordinary exertion resulted in a deficit in the missionary 
 treasury that reduced many a poor minister on the frontier 
 to pinching poverty. 
 
 One is startled to hear that in 1843 a medical department 
 was annexed to Kem})er College and already boasted of the 
 formidable number of seventy-five students. The attention 
 of the church was called to this Protestant Episcopal Uni- 
 versity west of the Mississippi, which " promised a rich re- 
 turn for its fostering care," and seemed destined to "hand 
 down the name of its beloved founder to other ages." There 
 were but a score of students, however, in the collegiate de- 
 partment, at whose first commencement the bishop presided 
 that summer. 
 
 The good example set by his young itinerants in Wiscon- 
 sin moved him to urge the appointment of two or more 
 missionaries of similar type to operate in Indiana. That 
 diocese now made another attempt to perfect its organiza- 
 tion, electing Thomas Atkinson of Virginia as its bishop, — 
 but he declined. Its leading presbyter, Roosevelt Johnson, 
 waived a like ofTer. Missouri diocese had similar aspira- 
 tions and electoral difficulties, which it solved by throwing the 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 111 
 
 onus upon the general convention, entreating it to choose 
 a bishop. In 1843, Cicero Stephens Hawks accepted a call 
 to the rectorate of Christ Church, St. Louis ; and the favor 
 with which he was received determined the choice of the 
 convention. On the 20th of October, 1844, (the day of 
 Cobbs' consecration), and in Christ Church, Philadelphia, 
 he was consecrated bishop of Missouri by Philander Chase, 
 now presiding bishop, assisted by Kemper, McCoskry, Polk, 
 and DeLancey. 
 
 With this event terminated what is in one way the most 
 interesting period of our hero's life,— the dawn, or morning 
 of his episcopate, with its wide and long vistas, its freshness 
 and promise. Wonderful indeed was the accomplishment 
 of those nine mystic years, especially when we consider that 
 it was before the days of railroads, — that he had to toil 
 painfully in wagons, on horseback or afoot along wretched 
 roads over boundless tracts that the traveler now crosses 
 smoothly, gliding at the rate of a mile a minute in a palace 
 car. One outlet of his energy having been stopped, we be- 
 come aware of a certain limitation ; yet the setting off of 
 Missouri simply freed him to expand in other directions. 
 Truth to tell, he had felt least at home in that state ; out of 
 the city of St. Louis and two or three towns, he had always 
 felt balked by the class he had to deal with, — the unim- 
 pressible "poor whites." The era of beginnings was not 
 wholly over ; and the noonday of his episcopate which we 
 now enter was equally missionary with the earlier period, 
 and possesses an interest of its own. As a happy aid to the 
 memory, it may be pointed out that the remainder of his 
 career is articulated into five-yearly periods: in 1844, 
 Hawks became bishop of Missouri; in 1849, George Up- 
 
112 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 fold, of Indiana; in 1854, Henry Washington Lee, of 
 Iowa; in 1859, Henry Benjamin Whipple, of Minnesota; 
 in 1864, Thomas Hubbard Vail, of Kansas. Would that 
 for symmetry we might add, in 1869, Ozi William Whita- 
 ker, of Nevada; but, though an indirect connection may 
 certainly be traced, that field lay beyond the utmost western 
 verge of Kemper's horizon. These dates, furthermore, co- 
 incide with epochs in his life that are divisible by five, thus : 
 fifty-five years, sixty, sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five, and 
 eighty years. 
 
 For some time his centre of interest and of gravity had 
 been gradually shifting from Missouri to Wisconsin, from 
 St. Louis to Nashotah, — and the latter henceforth became 
 his base of operations. The winter of 1845 was spent in 
 Wisconsin, partly at Milwaukee, where he consecrated St. 
 Paul's Church, partly at Nashotah, which he visited re- 
 peatedly. So much of the latter half of the year and of 
 1846 was passed in Milwaukee that that city may be re- 
 garded as his transitional residence. It received a city 
 charter in the latter year, having attained a population of 
 nearly ten thousand souls, of the most heterogeneous char- 
 acter ; already nearly every European nation Avas represented 
 in it, and every sect. It was erected into a see of the 
 Church of Rome, and a Swiss priest named Henni was 
 made its bishop ; at the same time, Universalist and Uni- 
 tarian societies were formed there. In its diversities, Mil- 
 waukee was a type of the territory of which it was the me- 
 tropolis, into which a veritable human deluge was pouring ; 
 long before the last Indians were removed from its bounds, 
 English, Scotch, Irish and Welsh, French, Belgian, Dutch, 
 German, Swedish and Norwegian, Polish and Hungarian 
 immigrants were swarming there; after the revolutionary 
 disturbances of 1848 (in which year the territory became a 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 113 
 
 State), the inrush from Europe resembled a stampede ; in a 
 single year the increase amounted to almost a hundred 
 thousand souls. And so Wisconsin became the polyglot 
 state of the union, its foreign-born out of all proportion to 
 its native or American inhabitants. This is its distinction, 
 and it makes it a fruitful field of study and its future a 
 problem for the human biologist. 
 
 In November, 1846, Bishop Kemper took possession of a 
 rustic homestead, thenceforth humorously known as "the 
 Palace," hard by Nashotah, and for the first time since 
 leaving Norwalk, a length of eleven years, had a house 
 whither he could bring his daughter, now a young lady, 
 from Philadelphia. For all those years he was literally a 
 homeless wanderer ; a lot hard to be borne by one whose 
 domestic tastes and ties were as strong as his. With deep 
 delight he kindled his hearth-fire again, and unpacked his 
 books and other souvenirs of his old home and vanished 
 wife. The year following his father died, at the age of 
 ninety-eight, and the bishop's two unmarried sisters came 
 to live with him. And two years after that his son Lewis, 
 who seems to have resembled him in temperament and char- 
 acter, was graduated at Columbia College and began the 
 study of theology at Nashotah. So the bishop had at last 
 quite a family gathered about him, amid which he led a 
 serene and beautiful existence. 
 
 He rose early, at five o'clock in summer and six in win- 
 ter, and attributed his established health in large measure to 
 his habitual morning bath in cold water, followed by the 
 use of the flesh brush. He was punctilious about his 
 toilet. At a quarter before seven he had family prayers, 
 and at seven breakfasted, always taking two large cups of 
 coffee with a great deal of sugar. He had a good appetite, 
 healthily stimulated by the varying fare of the changing 
 
114 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 seasons; he welcomed the new vegetables of spring, the 
 fruits of autumn, and especially the first hot buckwheat 
 cakes in winter with boyish delight. The rest of the morn- 
 ing he spent in his study, preparing for official duties, at- 
 tending to his correspondence, making up his accounts, and 
 reading. He made it a rule to read daily in his Greek 
 Testament and in some solid book, preferably of divinity, 
 and generally found time to do some light reading beside, 
 making it a point to keep up with the news of the day 
 through journals and reviews. He enjoyed books of 
 humor, particularly, it is remembered, as a hit at the 
 Yankees, Judge Haliburton's "Sam Slick"; but strangely 
 enough did not care for "Pickwick" or Dickens' other 
 books. He disapproved of Bulwer's novels ; his repugnance 
 to that meretricious writer resembled the sentiment he en- 
 tertained toward Lord Byron. When strongly urged, on 
 some occasion, to read a novel of the season, he refused. 
 He let his children read Scott's romances, but not too many 
 of them at a time, fearing lest they should acquire a taste 
 for fiction. He cared little for poetry, even for Tennyson's 
 or for Keble's "Christian Year"; strange as that would 
 seem, were we not aware of his imaginative deficiency. 
 
 At one o'clock he dined with his family and frequently 
 had guests, for he cultivated the grace of hospitality, which 
 was to him both a duty and pleasure, and made indeed a 
 model Episcopal host. In memory of White, he always 
 had his candidates dine with him immediately after their 
 ordination. His house became a gathering place for the 
 clergy, and he entertained distinguished visitors from the 
 East, in increasing numbers after Nashotah became a station 
 on the railroad between Milwaukee and the Mississippi. 
 His was a liberal soul ; and so simple were his tastes and so 
 perfect was his economy that out of his annual missionary 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 115 
 
 Stipend of fifteen hundred dollars he was able to give largely 
 to struggling missions in his field ; there was probably no 
 one in the church who gave away more in proportion to his 
 income than he. He hardl}- ever had wine upon his table, 
 one of the few exceptions being Christmas day, which, after 
 he had formed a home in Wisconsin, he always tried to 
 spend with his family. He sometimes drank a little beer, 
 but weeks and months would often pass without his touch- 
 ing it. He liked desserts, having indeed a taste for sweets, 
 as he had also for bright colors. 
 
 After dinner, if Aveather permitted, he would drive for 
 hours or ride horseback, for he never acquired the habit of 
 taking a nap in the afternoon. He liked to be much in the 
 open air, and to this also he owed the firm health of his 
 maturer years. If it were cold, he wrapped himself up 
 well, having a horror of being chilled. Yet he did not 
 suffer, happily for one who had to be exposed in all weathers 
 as much as he, from extremes of temperature; the crisp 
 cold of the northwestern winter was exhilarating to him. 
 His temperament was sanguine. He observed natural ob- 
 jects with an attentive eye, and taught his children to do 
 the same. Yet he was not particularly fond of animals, — 
 never made a pet of cat or dog, for instance, — though he 
 could not bear to see them suffer; he was exceedingly, 
 almost morbidly sensitive about having any horse, cow, calf, 
 or even chicken killed on his place, and disliked to be told 
 of it. He was considerate of his domestics, and they re- 
 vered and delighted to serve him. He preferred to help 
 himself as much as possible ; carried his own portmanteau 
 upon his travels ; and never coveted precedence or expected 
 to be waited upon. The terrible problem of poverty (save 
 that of his missionaries and their families !), of the relation 
 of capital and labor, did not force itself upon his notice in 
 
116 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 that environment and time, but his view of the source of 
 happiness for the farm hands and other laborers of his Httle 
 community shows what his attitude would be : he believed 
 that if in all the relations of life all men would sincerely 
 take the Lord's prayer upon their lips, be actuated by be- 
 lief in the creed, and square their conduct by the ten com- 
 mandments and the catechism — especially that part of it 
 that treats of one's duty to one's neighbor, — all the diffi- 
 culties of life would not only be resolved but would never 
 arise; and who can deny that the most threatening prob- 
 lems of crowded factories and cities would yield to such 
 treatment ? He had a horror of debt as of a plague, im- 
 pressed it upon his clergy, and earnestly discountenanced 
 ambitious schemes of church building beyond a congrega- 
 tion's means. It was an article of his ethical and spiritual 
 creed to make payment when it was due ; he scrupulously 
 avoided getting into a position Avhere he might have to be 
 asked for it twice. In all financial dealings he was gov- 
 erned by that old-fashioned sense of self-respect, honor, in- 
 dependence, manhood, that cannot live and sponge upon 
 others for goods or service. Connected with this attribute 
 was his conscientious recognition of social obligations ; all 
 through his busy episcopate, as time and strength permitted, 
 he was particular about making and returning calls. 
 
 At supper, which was at six o'clock, he always took two 
 large cups of tea, very much sweetened ; and afterward sat 
 and talked with his family and friends. At nine he had 
 prayers, and retiring immediately after, was in bed by ten. 
 His mode of life and mind conduced to tired nature's 
 balmy restorer ; he slept without waking until daybreak. 
 
 Sunday he kept as a day of holy rest and refreshment, 
 equally removed from the strictness of the Presbyterian and 
 the laxity of the Romanist. He always appeared at both 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 117 
 
 morning and evening services ; paid pastoral visits to the 
 old and infirm ; and gave such Christian hospitality as did 
 not encroach upon his servants' rest. He never read news- 
 papers on that day, or traveled if he could possibly help 
 it. His children looked back to the Sundays spent with 
 him as to glimpses of paradise on earth ; and Christmas 
 was the crown of all the year. Every Twelfth-night he en- 
 tertained the students of Nashotah. 
 
 At first the members of that community, to the number 
 of three clerical instructors and six students, were all ac- 
 commodated in one small frame house of five rooms, that 
 served as chapel, lecture-hall, library and dormitory ! The 
 kitchen and refectory were the cabin that had sheltered the 
 missionaries upon their first arrival. The frame building 
 was known as the Blue House, from some sky-blue paint, a 
 present to the mission, with which it was covered. In a 
 tiny room, where only four persons could receive at a time, 
 the holy communion was administered. The problem of 
 accommodation was solved in a larger room upstairs, by 
 having five bed-frames hinged upon its walls so that they 
 could be folded up by day, and the bedroom be thus con- 
 verted into a study. The men slept on straw pallets. 
 Breck, the president and superior, was one of the occupants 
 of this room, a corner of which was his office and study, his 
 desk and table being an empty box set on end. He was then 
 the presiding genius of the place. The key to his character 
 is military ; he was by nature a soldier, by grace a Chris- 
 tian and ecclesiastical soldier ; he longed for discipline, and 
 was only happy when obeying and exercising it. His tall 
 figure, in cassock and girdle (the dress adopted by the 
 brothers), reading the roll call, for the major part of the year 
 before daybreak, by lantern light, after the rousing bell had 
 rung out from an old oak-tree, — such was the striking pic- 
 
118 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 ture that ever after haunted the memories of his old 
 pupils. 
 
 The community lived by faith, and was not allowed to 
 suffer. The students were expected to do at least four hours 
 of outdoor work a day. One of them served as cook, others 
 as washermen, and of their exploits in the former line especially 
 amusing anecdotes used to be told. A favorite and healthful 
 mode of recreation was rowing upon the lake. On Sundays 
 they were all engaged in lay reading at villages and scattered 
 farmhouses for many miles around. After a chapel was built 
 at Nashotah, the people of the neighborhood came to worship 
 there, and so was formed the parish of St. Sylvanus. 
 
 After an absence of a year and a half, William Adams 
 returned from the East, to the relief and encouragement of 
 the brethren, stipulating that he should not be expected in 
 future to assume the business management of the house, but 
 should be left free to devote himself to educational and cler- 
 ical functions. Henceforth, accordingly, he applied himself 
 to inculcating " Pearson on the Creed," an ounce of which, 
 he was used to say, was worth a pound of Paley. His 
 method of instruction was textual, and he required his 
 students to commit long passages to memory. 
 
 As the number of students increased, fresh accommoda- 
 tion was needed, and a shanty was raised and divided by 
 partitions into cells seven by nine feet in size. Beside the 
 lake a baptistery was built, whereat the sacrament was ad- 
 ministered by immersion. 
 
 In those early days there is no doubt that Nashotah ex- 
 cited widespread and extraordinary interest and curiosity. 
 Eminent churchmen came a long way to visit it, among 
 them Kemper's old friend and Breck's preceptor, Dr. 
 Muhlenberg, who was accompanied by the accomj)lished 
 William Ingraham Kip, then rector of St. Paul's Church, 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 119 
 
 Albany. Dr. Kip formed with the young head of Nashotah 
 House a friendship that was destined to have important con- 
 sequences. Bishops McCoskry and Upfold were frequent 
 visitors. To Bishop Kemper's daughter, who spent a day 
 there in the summer of 1845, Nashotah seemed an earthly 
 paradise, a realization of the idea one would form of "the 
 first beginnings of one of the pure old monasteries." She 
 was particularly impressed by Breck's profoundly reverential 
 manner at the time of the early celebration, as if he were 
 "in the immediate presence of the God whom he was ad- 
 dressing." The altar (no communiontable!) was raised 
 above the chancel floor, and on it stood a large cross flanked 
 by vases filled with white flowers. 
 
 Miss Kemper was right ; Nashotah was the Clugny of the 
 American church in the nineteenth century. And, the year 
 of her visit, a derivative idea found embodiment, like Ca- 
 maldoli amid its mountains, at Valle Crucis, in Bishop Ives' 
 diocese of North Carolina. 
 
 To many worthy people, however, like the old lady, 
 somewhat mixed in her ideas or expression, who confessed 
 that she preferred " an honest pulpit, with legs ! " and who 
 balked at flowers in the font on Easter day, for fear that 
 they inculcated the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, these 
 doings and appointments seemed altogether Romish and 
 wrong. This was the year of John Henry Newman's seces- 
 sion, when suspicion and acrimonious party spirit reached 
 their acme. It was also the year when the trial of Bishop 
 Onderdonk of New York issued in his suspension. During 
 that painful trial of his old schoolmate and college class- 
 mate Kemper's hair turned perceptibly grey; he felt the 
 scandal and disgrace as acutely as if it had been a brother's. 
 And now his turn came to suffer personal detraction ; all the 
 evidence we need of the rancor of party spirit in that trou- 
 
120 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 blous time is that unkind insinuations were circulated touch- 
 ing Kemper's soundness in the faith ! In a circular letter to 
 the clergy of his jurisdiction, issued in the winter of 1846, 
 he directs them to ' ' report without reserve all the efforts I 
 have made, directly or indirectly, to influence you to adopt 
 peculiar views or party feelings. ' ' What those views were 
 appears from an indignant disclaimer, in reply, from the 
 missionary at Laporte, Indiana ; an article had appeared in 
 the public press ' ' intimating, or rather affirming, that the 
 deficit in the revenues of the Church for domestic missions 
 was owing to the semi-papal views of many of the domestic 
 missionaries." From the chorus of denials of these in- 
 jurious insinuations one may be selected as a type. Dr. 
 Killikelly of Vincennes bore witness that the bishop's " un- 
 obtrusive goodness and patient endurance of fatigue and 
 privations in his arduous undertaking have gained for him 
 the high esteem and admiration of all classes of the com- 
 munity. If any doctrine has had the preeminence in the 
 sermons that we have listened to [from him], it has been the 
 great doctrine of justification through faith in the atonement 
 of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He has, on all 
 proper occasions, set forth and contended for the Church as 
 she has been handed down to us from the Reformers." 
 
 Like his friend Muhlenberg, Bishop Kemper had in the 
 beginning sympathized with the Oxford INIovement, but to- 
 ward Rome he shared in full measure the strong feeling of 
 aversion of the English church arid nation. As to partisan- 
 ship, we know his dislike of secular politics, and as regards 
 the ecclesiastical species his sentiment was equally strong if 
 not stronger. He hated and abhorred party spirit in the 
 church, and disliked the terms "high" and "low." The 
 term "broad," as descriptive of a type of churchmanship, 
 was not in vogue until after 1850. As to any exercise of 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 121 
 
 undue influence upon his clergy, no bishop ever abstained 
 more scrupulously from the slightest shadow of it. He 
 never said a word or lifted a finger to influence an episcopal 
 election, such as Hawks's, for instance, in any of his dioceses. 
 
 The attacks upon Nashotah filled him with sorrow and 
 apprehension, and he hastened to its defence in his report 
 for 1845 : " That it is worthy the patronage of every sound 
 Churchman, I have no doubt. In thorough training upon 
 the truest principles of the Gospel, as a religious house, 
 similar to those of primitive days, where retirement from the 
 world, frequent and ardent communion with God through 
 all the ordinances of his Church, industry, hard study, 
 obedience, and the spirit of self-sacrifice will be duly incul- 
 cated ; in these respects it will, I believe, fully realize, if 
 properly cherished, the most sanguine expectations of its 
 best friends. Party spirit, and the topics which occasionally 
 agitate the various dioceses of our country, are unknown 
 there. Simply to the Church they chng." 
 
 This last sentence was exceedingly infelicitous as an 
 apology, — a seeming justification of the charge of the ene- 
 mies of the school that in its devotion to the church its grip 
 upon the cross was relaxed ; that the tendency of its teach- 
 ing was to substitute dependence upon rites and ceremonies 
 for the interior operation of divine grace and personal re- 
 ligion. 
 
 In an address to the diocesan convention of Wisconsin, 
 the bishop enlarged upon the need of long and thorough 
 trial of the motives, ability and acquirements of candidates 
 for holy orders, for lack of which many have afterward in- 
 jured and disgraced the fold. The clergy have to encounter 
 " the strongest minds, ignorant of the sublimest truths, per- 
 verted by every species of error. "What knowledge of man- 
 kind, and of the Holy Scriptures, what faith, meekness, and 
 
122 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 perseverance are necessary to bring such men under the in- 
 fluence of the Gospel! " And he urged all candidates to 
 go to Nashotah, where " the discipline and instruction have 
 been so correct." 
 
 The diocesan committee on the state of the church re- 
 ported that that school had at times been unjustly reputed 
 unsound in the true Protestant faith. 
 
 On another occasion the bishop declared that "the sons 
 of Nashotah have never wavered in their allegiance and de- 
 votion to the Protestant Episcopal Church," — but such boast- 
 ing went before a fall : immediately afterward it became a 
 humiliating necessity to announce the deposition of William 
 Markoe for Romanizing errors. Markoe was a scion of a 
 rich and fashionable family of Philadelphia. He studied at 
 Nashotah, and after finishing his course at the General 
 Seminary, returned thither as chaplain. He built a church 
 in the adjoining village of Delafield, and furnished its altar 
 with elegant ecclesiastical embroideries brought from Eng- 
 land. His submission to Rome caused Kemper "deep and 
 unfeigned sorrow." 
 
 A certain Gardner Jones imposed upon the authorities of 
 the school and was appointed professor of Hebrew, but com- 
 ing under suspicion, and charged with being a Roman 
 priest, he suddenly withdrew to a Romish seminary in 
 Indiana. 
 
 Episodes like these, and the unfortunate fact that, beside 
 Markoe, five sometime students at Nashotah went (to adapt 
 an expressive westernism) the whole Roman hog, were glee- 
 fully greeted by assailants of the institution as complete 
 justification of the suspicions that from the first they had en- 
 tertained. 
 
 In this relation, Breck's opinion of Newman's perversion 
 is of interest ; he held that it was a proof of the want of true 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 123 
 
 Catholicity in the Anglican communion, whence yet it was 
 cowardice to run away. It is said that Breck's fraternal 
 biographer did not lay all the evidence before the public, — 
 evidence that would show that there was a time when the 
 president of Nashotah House himself was on the verge of 
 perversion. 
 
 Under the pressure of these agitations, Bishop Kemper 
 was forced to assume a position that admitted of no misun- 
 derstanding, and to adopt a tone, in instruction, admonition 
 and condemnation, of unwonted severity. He lectured on 
 "the scriptural principles of the reformation of the Church 
 of England," lauding "the glorious martyrs, Ridley, Cran- 
 mer, and Latimer ; . . . our great and glorious English 
 reformers, whose blood enriched the Church." He called 
 upon the Wisconsin clergy to rally around their "primitive 
 symbols, evangelical worship, and admirable articles," all 
 needed in the present time quite as much as at the Reforma- 
 tion, and all "wonderfully and delightfully conformed " to the 
 inspired volume. "I am exceedingly solicitous," he said, 
 "that as a diocese you take a right-minded and conservative 
 stand amid the agitations that now disturb our Zion. Avoid 
 party spirit, often as rancorous as it is groundless, and nour- 
 ished by mischievous beings who attack with virulence what- 
 ever is not conformed to their imperfect views, and revile 
 church members in religious papers. ... I beseech 
 you, let no party spirit exist among us." He warned them 
 that "a corrupt church is using every effort to bewitch the 
 world by her sorceries. . . . The soul-destroying errors 
 of Mormonism and infidelity are prevailing, and those of 
 Rome and rationalism are applauded, and dealers with fa- 
 miliar and diabolical spirits are often to be met with." He 
 denounced " the blasphemies of Rome ; . . . the dark 
 designs, Jesuitical practices, idolatrous rites, and unfounded 
 
124 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 claims " of the Roman church ; her friendship is " death to 
 our hopes, and our most formidable evil." Yet some have 
 fallen into ' ' her more than Egyptian bondage ; . . . 
 bright but perverted intellects flee to this refuge of lies." 
 
 Whitehouse believed in the " martyr witness of the Wal- 
 denses and Wicklifife," and the "vigorous and productive 
 protest " of the Reformation ; Vail deplored " the fatal cor- 
 ruptions and idolatries of the Romish communion ; " and 
 Chase was very bold : he enjoined upon his clergy to 
 "avoid the traps of new doctrines ; wild schemes of salva- 
 tion on the one hand, and the piebald fripperies of Roman- 
 izing tendencies on the other;" assuring them that as he 
 traveled about Illinois he encountered many "Jesuits and 
 other Romanists, whose object it is to corrupt the faith once 
 delivered to the saints, . . . and to subjugate America 
 to the papal power." Hence the importance of united effort 
 among all Protestants, to guard against a threatened relapse 
 into the " ignorance and superstition of the dark ages." He 
 was roused to a pitch of indignation by an impudent invita- 
 tion to the Protestant Episcopal Church to turn Romish : 
 "martyrs died," he retorted, "rather than own the cor- 
 rupted creed of the Romish church, or submit to the usur- 
 pations of her self-created pontiff." We look up to the 
 throne of God, not to the chair of the pope ; we should 
 "commit a great sin by acknowledging an earthly spiritual 
 monarch, in calling the pope our master, when Jesus Christ 
 is our only universal Bishop, as he and he only was such to 
 the Apostles and first Bishops of the Church." It is a sug- 
 gestion "repugnant to our consciences and abhorrent to our 
 feelings. Rome is a precipice including the gulf that is 
 beneath her; 'approximations to Rome ' are not innocent: 
 it is a sin to think of her idolatrous practices without abhor- 
 rence ; to look upon her with complacency is adultery of the 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 125 
 
 heart. But Rome is said to be changed now. Where is the 
 proof? Can infallibility change? [By this claim] she hath 
 incarcerated herself in error and thrown the key away." 
 Her mass is idolatrous ; her gaudy trappings were plucked 
 from heathenism. He deplored the sophistry of modem 
 apologists for the church of Rome; a disposition "tore- 
 form the Reformation" was at work in the Episcopal 
 church, — whereas ''to be in the Church with Romish senti- 
 ments is a crime." 
 
 The severity of these expressions gave umbrage to many ; 
 but shortly after their utterance, Newman's lapse silenced all 
 criticism. 
 
 A glance at the experience of the Roman intruders into 
 Chase's diocese is instructive. One of the earliest priests 
 that appeared in Chicago was a deep-drinking Irishman 
 named O'Meara; "a notorious scoundrel," exclaimed one 
 of his own order : " may God preserve Chicago from such 
 a priest ! " It soon became necessary to have a bishop on 
 the spot, and in 1844 an Irishman named William Quarter 
 was consecrated for the new see, and began to build a 
 cathedral, college and female seminary ; but O'Meara and 
 his tactics made his life a burden, and after four years of 
 contention, Bishop Quarter gave up the ghost. He was 
 succeeded by a Jesuit, who proved unequal to the situation, 
 and was shortly transferred to Natchez, where he had all the 
 time he wanted for reflection. The next bishop, O'Regan, 
 was accused of arbitrary conduct, and was in perpetual con- 
 troversy with his subordinates and with prominent laymen ; 
 three priests abandoned his diocese, and within six years from 
 his appointment he sought peace by resignation. His suc- 
 cessor, James Duggan, was selected because of his concilia- 
 tory disposition ; he was devout, amiable, and of cultivated 
 mind. He had endeared himself to the whole community, 
 
126 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 not only to both clergy and laity of his own communion but to 
 Protestants as well, — when the strange discovery was made 
 that his mind was affected (it may shrewdly be suspected 
 that his malady was a liberal spirit), and he was suddenly 
 and silently removed. Meantime, revolted priests were 
 much in evidence as popular lecturers, exposing the secret 
 processes of the Roman machine, and being assaulted by 
 Catholic mobs. 
 
 Such was the peace of the church whither " bright but 
 perverted intellects" fled for infallibility. For this experience 
 was not local or peculiar, but was a type and summary of 
 the history of the papal communion in America. Quarrels 
 about property, quarrels of bishops and priests, of priests 
 and people, of people with their bishops over the removal of 
 popular or retention of unpopular priests, make up the 
 staple of the history of the collision of mediaeval hierarchical 
 claims with the American spirit. 
 
 Our picture of Bishop Kemper's environment would be 
 materially lacking did we not interpret his reference to Mor- 
 monism. That strange religious hybrid, an unnatural com- 
 pound of Judaism, Mohammedanism, and anthropomorphic 
 polytheism, with its baptismal immersion, its visions, proph- 
 ecies, miracles, faith cures and gift of tongues, left its 
 trail all over the northwest in the very years of which we are 
 treating. Ousted from Ohio and Illinois, it ramified in Mis- 
 souri, Iowa, and Wisconsin, being introduced into the last 
 named territory in 1844 by one James Strang, who took to 
 himself five wives and set up his latter-day monarchy on an 
 island in Lake Michigan. Bishop Chase mourned the 
 delusion, which seduced many English immigrants from the 
 church. Having been inquired of about the validity of its 
 baptism, he burst out : " Have I lived to see the day when 
 Mormon baptism is put on a par with other dissenters' ? " 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 127 
 
 Joseph Smith he characterized as " a second Mahomet, a false 
 prophet, who is deceiving his thousands ; " his revelation is 
 a lie, like the Koran, a dreadful imposture, ruining immor- 
 tal souls. Such apostasy is denounced in the Bible, and is 
 darker than schism. Submission to Mormon baptism is sin, 
 to be repented of; Smith's baptism is null and void, no 
 matter what form of words is used ; it is even worse than 
 nothing, for it is sin, God's name being taken in it in vain. 
 
 Jubilee College matters take up much space in Chase's re- 
 ports. More professorships were needed, also scholarships 
 for candidates for the ministry, — as experience showed that 
 the wealthy would not give their sons to God and that the 
 willing had no means. In 1845 he had the pleasure of re- 
 porting a clergy list of more than twenty names in Illinois, 
 seven churches ready for consecration, classes numbering 
 nearly fifty students at Jubilee, and thirty-five scholarships, 
 obtained on a recent begging tour in New York and New 
 England. By the year 1847 he had become so infirm 
 that he had to be seated while preaching ; yet his candidate 
 for an assistant bishopric was rejected at general convention 
 by a close party vote, so widespread was the prejudice 
 against his administration as "self-willed." It had con- 
 tributed, nevertheless, to form a better public sentiment 
 throughout the great commonwealth, at whose birth anti- 
 christian influences had presided. For some time all college 
 charters granted by the legislature of Illinois contained a 
 clause prohibiting the inculcation of any creed ; but in the 
 year just mentioned, after some difficulty, Bishop Chase suc- 
 ceeded in getting a charter for Jubilee without the obnox- 
 ious clause ; and in July he presided at its first commence- 
 ment, at which five of its students received the degree of 
 bachelor of arts. 
 
 In 1849, Robert Harper Clarkson, having passed through 
 
128 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 college at Gettysburg, and having finished his preparation 
 for holy orders under Bishop Whittingham's supervision and 
 been ordered deacon by him, accepted a call to the charge 
 of St. James' Church, Chicago. At the time of his arrival 
 there, the city was still only an overgrown village, though it 
 claimed twenty-five thousand inhabitants. Its streets were 
 still roads, a few of which boasted plank sidewalks along 
 part of their length ; there were no public conveyances, no 
 gaslights, no sewers ; until within a short time before hogs 
 had run at large in the streets. That very year it suffered a 
 fearful visitation of cholera; Clarkson showed of what mettle 
 he was made by his care of the plague stricken ; and he 
 won the heart of the community. 
 
 The reader will be able to understand, perhaps to share. 
 Bishop Kemper's "utter astonishment" at the news that in 
 1845 Kemper College was closed. The debt before men- 
 tioned had rolled up to twelve, or according to one estimate 
 sixteen, thousand dollars ; no relief could be looked for in 
 St. Louis, where the churches were all in debt ; the faculty 
 had been just supported for a year by the tuition fees, and 
 had such faith in the institution that they offered to conduct 
 it for another term with no other salary than such fees sup- 
 plied ; but the trustees felt bound to close its doors. A fatal 
 decision, for while there was as much life in it as the faculty 
 manifested there was hope; the students were doing well 
 and would have disseminated interest ; and there was every 
 probability that some one would come to its relief and save 
 a property (at the present day of fabulous value) for the 
 church, — but after the teaching force had been dissolved the 
 difficulty of a revival became insuperable. For a time the 
 building was used as the county courthouse. Its loss was 
 a terrible blow to the diocese of Missouri, in which at the 
 time it engendered much ill feeling, and which was affected 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 129 
 
 by it through all the coming years in ways impossible 
 fully to estimate. Bishop Kemper was never after able to 
 allude to it without tears in his eyes. Of course it was 
 complained that Bishop Hawks had not exerted himself as 
 he might have done to save the school ; and it is a fact that 
 his interest was absorbed in a proposed mission, of itinerat- 
 ing and educational type like Nashotah, for which a hun- 
 dred acres of land, shortly increased to upward of three 
 hundred acres, were given him. The people of Palmyra, 
 by their liberality, manifested such zeal in behalf of the 
 new institution that it was located in their midst, in 1848, 
 under the title of St. Paul's College. 
 
 The summer of 1845 was intensely hot and told on 
 Kemper's strength ; the following winter was intensely cold ; 
 and the summer and autumn of 1846 were humid and sickly. 
 The sufferings of the missionaries, their wives and children, 
 were severe,— sufferings, it was said, of which the church 
 triumphant would know though the militant church never 
 could, and indeed seemed not to care about. The zeal of 
 the former decade had grown cold ; there was a manifest 
 decline of interest in the western mission field ; people were 
 weary of annually repeated appeals for aid, and thought 
 that after ten years more missions and dioceses should have 
 become self-supporting. Yet in those trying years many a 
 worthy minister tasted the uttermost bitterness of poverty; 
 one had to subsist, with his family, upon a diet of potatoes, 
 and another's wife was without shoes. In their extremity 
 they would borrow of each other's little stores, not wishing 
 and not able to apply to the world, which demanded the 
 exorbitant interest on loans of twelve per cent, per annum. 
 Bishop Kemper candidly confessed that, though not in de- 
 spair, even his cheerful spirit was cast down ; and Chase 
 declared, in his downright way, that the suffering of the 
 
130 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 clergy through breach of promises made to encourage them 
 to turn to the West as missionaries was bringing the good 
 faith and moral character of the church into question. The 
 problem of clerical support pressed with equal weight upon 
 Whitehouse, his successor in the see of Illinois ; indeed, from 
 the ever intensifying strain of admonition, entreaty, expostu- 
 lation and denunciation that runs through his addresses one 
 would infer that the situation was steadily growing worse. 
 An experience of only two years was enough to convince 
 him that, as a rule, salaries in that diocese were not only 
 disproportionately low in comparison with ministers' services 
 but were even insufficient for their necessary expenses, their 
 material needs ; while salaries that had once been fair, but 
 remained the same while the cost of living had increased, 
 were thereby rendered equivalent to a positive reduction. 
 The voluntary system, Whitehouse continued, is sometimes 
 regarded as permitting breach of promise of support and 
 non-payment of subscriptions. It were a sad hour if this 
 dependence on the religious sense of the country were found 
 insufficient or misplaced. Some ministers are almost starv- 
 ing ; and what of their future and that of their families ? 
 "They are ground down to the veriest pittance, and life's 
 heartiness, dignity, affection and power are shrunk and 
 withered by the shifts of poverty," in times of unprece- 
 dented commercial prosperity. Certain of the laity who 
 came West poor, a few years since, and are now rich to re- 
 pletion, think that they have done all that can be expected 
 of them if they pay the rent of a pew. Continual changes 
 of place made by ministers, so deleterious to the progress 
 of the church, are owing to the "bad faith of the laity in 
 pecuniary provision." Year by year he returned to the 
 charge, deploring " the galling bondage imposed by cares of 
 worldly maintenance on the spiritual energies. ... It 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 131 
 
 is mere mockery to preach to such [sufferers] against ' the 
 love of money. ' A brawny, ignorant laborer delves as much 
 from a ditch. The ministry is free from the spirit of covet- 
 ousness." 
 
 Years before, Chase had singled out wealth as the popular 
 idol and covetousness as the besetting sin of the ^^'est ; yet 
 all, he said, " are very jealous of the affections of the clergy 
 in this respect, and fain will starve their bodies to save their 
 souls. ' ' 
 
 "The demand for ability in the ministry is at its max- 
 imum, the means of securing or rewarding it at a minimum," 
 Whitehouse concluded ; and later, in a tone embittered by 
 the injustice and impiety of such dealings, he exposed the 
 fact that many a salary was a speculation on a preacher's 
 ability to draw a crowd, and if he failed, pledges were 
 broken, irrelevant faults would then be imputed to him, and 
 finally he would be ousted from his place. 
 
 " Our clergy," said Clarkson, "do not as a rule receive 
 what is sufficient for their needs or what is commensurate 
 with the means of their congregations." Most parishes de- 
 termine salaries according to the least they can offer instead 
 of the most they can raise ; and lack of heart among the 
 clergy, frequent changes, and long parochial vacancies are 
 the result. This, however, one may say in passing, is far 
 better than to make liberal promises, largely based on the 
 estimated contents of a clergyman's private purse, or that 
 of his wife, or having made them, to pay according to his 
 supposed actual expenditure for the necessaries of life. 
 
 Bishops shared the penury of their clergy. In beginning 
 his work, Kemper impressed upon the people of his juris- 
 diction the importance of starting funds for the support of 
 diocesan bishops; but, a dozen years after his appeal, 
 Upfold was in receipt of an episcopal salary of one hun- 
 
132 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 dred dollars a year. His salary as rector of St. John's 
 Church, Lafayette, was six hundred dollars, out of which 
 he had to pay three hundred for an assistant. The in- 
 adequate support of his clergy was the burden of Up- 
 fold's addresses: "Many receive little more annually 
 than the wages of an ordinary day-laborer, and some 
 not so much." The common and stereotyped plea, in 
 extenuation, is that of " hard times " ; but these, if hard to 
 the laity, are harder still to the clergy. There is ability to 
 remedy this bad state of affairs, if not by money, at least by 
 providing the necessaries of life. He adduced, as a warning, 
 the fact that God can and often does take away means that 
 are abused to purposes of " personal and selfish gratification 
 only ; " and besought the people at least to pay their min- 
 ister's pittance punctually, for neglect of this simple busi- 
 ness principle, mournfully common in this particular rela- 
 tion, was the cause of serious embarrassment to the helpless 
 clergy and harassing and unjust suspicions among their 
 creditors. 
 
 It is melancholy to contemplate the underlying stratum 
 of human suffering in which the bases of all the western 
 dioceses were laid. But it gives the right perspective to 
 know that these ills were by no means peculiar to church- 
 men : a devoted Presbyterian missionary, who in the course 
 of his career organized twenty-eight congregations, did not 
 receive from his people for the first six years of his work 
 the amount of Upfold's episcopal salary for the first year. 
 
 Everywhere there was crying need of a " Make-congre- 
 gations-/rt_>'-what-they-voluntaril y-/r^w/V^-society. ' ' 
 
 Distressing as it was, the situation would have been in- 
 tolerable but for the efforts of Christian women, who, not 
 having the money they wished to give, earned it by the 
 sacrifice of time, material, and skilled labor, and turned the 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 133 
 
 proceeds over to vestries to complete the purchase of build- 
 ing lots, the building and then the furnishing of churches, 
 and to pay arrears of ministers' salaries. Sales of eatables 
 and fancy work are no doubt a frontier method and not the 
 most dignified means of ecclesiastical support, and the mo- 
 tives of the buyers, while certainly not bad, may not be 
 the highest, — but none can impugn the purity of motive 
 of the kindly earners, evidences of whose zeal are plenti- 
 fully scattered through the early records of the dioceses of 
 Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. 
 
 In explanation of the long drawn and bitter indictments 
 of financial dishonor brought against their people by the 
 pioneer bishops, one must frankly accept the statement that 
 in the West, both northwest and southwest, a quite different 
 standard of financial honor from that of the long-settled 
 East was in possession of the field, — a standard to which 
 men like Kemper, Whitehouse and Upfold could not accus- 
 tom or reconcile themselves. The debtor and creditor legis- 
 lation of American commonwealths, says the author of 
 "The Winning of the West," is not pleasant reading for 
 one who is or would fain be proud of his country. The 
 reader would do well to peruse again the opening pages of 
 this chapter, descriptive of frontier conditions, with reference 
 to their bearing upon the subject in hand ; remembering 
 this rule, that pioneer traits persist as survivals in the place 
 of their origin. Religion was not a motive in the settle- 
 ment of the West. European and English ideals were de- 
 spised ; English immigrants fell away from the communion 
 of the church. The influence of the past and all authority 
 seemed a hateful and ridiculous bondage. The West, re- 
 marked Whitehouse, is new, impetuous, defiant ; pioneering 
 as if nothing social or religious were settled. A curious 
 and interesting indication of the independent temper of the 
 
134 AN ATOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 people has been recorded : it was practically impossible to 
 induce them to kneel in public worship. There existed no 
 reverence for the ministry as of divine appointment; the 
 estimation in which it was held was betrayed by the expres- 
 sion which often struck unpleasantly upon Whitehouse's 
 ears: "to hire a minister." It was an inclement climate 
 for episcopal prerogative ; an anecdote which if it be not true 
 is at least well invented is told of a burly Irishman who 
 had some business with Bishop Upfold, who answered his 
 rap at the door: "Is Misther Upfold in?" "Sir, the 
 Bishop of Indiana is before you ! " Quick as thought the 
 visitor turned on his heel- " Och, and now he's behoind 
 me ! " 
 
 Enough has been said of the miasma of infidelity and ma- 
 terialism, and the incessant shifting of the population of the 
 frontier, which had such a depressing effect on all religion, 
 and of the intense individualism, profound ignorance and 
 bitter prejudices of the sects, that operated so adversely to 
 the church's progress. The immigrant sought no continuing 
 city, came without thought of making a permanent home, 
 formed no local attachments ; in Chicago, it was said, a minis- 
 ter was the pastor of a procession. This continual moving 
 about and solution of ties was highly injurious to domestic 
 and religious feeling. Vail pointed out that the two chief 
 perils of the spiritual life in a new country were business and 
 pleasure : the hurry to get rich, the fever of speculation, 
 and the rush for amusement, afforded by traveling concert 
 and theatre troupes, shows of all sorts, the circus, horse- 
 races and balls. Bovine comfort in the sense alone, re- 
 lieved by a little excitement once in a while, was the low 
 ideal of the masses, while even harder to reach and influence 
 was tlie class of honest, virtuous, moral citizens, many of them 
 benevolent, and some among them readers of the Bible, who 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 135 
 
 were members of no religious body and felt no need of sal- 
 vation. 
 
 The conclusion is inevitable that, however it were, the 
 church and western society were ill adjusted in that day. 
 The populace was devoid of "the church idea"; our 
 "Catholic heritage," historic episcopate or apostolical suc- 
 cession, and "incomparable liturgy" did not appeal to it 
 in the least. A popular objection to the prayer-book service 
 was its sameness, day after day. Of course it was easy to 
 rejoin that it was positively too reverent and devotional in 
 tone and spirit for an irreverent and undevout multitude 
 and age. But it would manifest only proper humility if, 
 before seeking to shift the whole onus upon a reprobate age, 
 church people were to ask themselves if they may not have 
 been a little in fault, a little too self-complacent, too quick 
 to take offence at irregular zeal, too narrowly devoted to our 
 order and forms, — in a word, too restrained and exclusive 
 of emotion ; making an idol of conformity, "dying of dig- 
 nity." It is always well to see ourselves as others see us ; 
 and to the Methodists, for example, the "old church" still 
 seemed, mistakenly, of course, to be the petrifaction that it 
 had been in the latitudinarian age. 
 
 Many reasons have been alleged for the parsimony of 
 church people in supporting their ministers. The extra ex- 
 pense of providing an episcopal salary is adduced as a 
 burden of taxation unknown to presbyterian and congrega- 
 tional polities. Then it is said that Episcopalians have a rela- 
 tively high standard of living to sustain, — that a relatively 
 large proportion of their means is consumed in social and 
 general culture, which is by no means necessarily worldly 
 and self-indulgent ; and so far as it goes to maintain a fine 
 ideal of human life, the finest that our country has to exhibit, 
 one would not quarrel with such expenditure, — but the 
 
136 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 harmony of piety and culture, because it is so fair an ideal, 
 is hard to realize, and if the former quality be Avanting the 
 latter will not long be distinguishable from worldliness ; we 
 must acknowledge, with compunction, that church people 
 are involved, to an extraordinary degree, in social entangle- 
 ments, fashion and luxury, with corresponding decay and 
 extinction of the spirit of sacrifice, which is the spirit of 
 missions. And the ebbing away of interest in a congrega- 
 tion, first from foreign, then from domestic, diocesan and 
 finally parochial missions, is accompanied by internal dis- 
 sensions and falling off in attendance on public worship, and 
 that by reduction of the minister's salary, and increase of 
 selfishness and meanness in the homes of the parishioners, 
 the spirit of avarice throttling the spirit of Christian love. 
 Such progressive shrinkage of spirituality is the melancholy 
 explanation of the decline and fall of many a parish. " Spir- 
 itual awakening," it has been truly said, " and the setting 
 free of money to do the Lord's work, stand to each other 
 as cause and effect." And here it is to be pointed out that 
 the relatively high degree of mental culture among Episco- 
 palians prevents them from being moved, a thousand as one 
 man, by appeals to the emotions such as carry Methodist 
 and Baptist assemblies, for example, off their feet, and lead 
 to triumphs of liberality that darken the offerings of church- 
 men, whose inbred conservatism and knowledge of the 
 world make them suspicious of new enterprises and fervent 
 appeals, and induce an habitual trial of motives. Sad ex- 
 perience makes many of them sceptical about schemes of 
 endowment, so apt to go agley through careless investment 
 and misapplication. But in the early day in the north- 
 west, beside the actual want of capital, the character of 
 many of the clergy was a sufficient reason for their lack of 
 remuneration. Clerical incompetents and adventurers who 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 137 
 
 had failed in the East went West to improve their fortunes. 
 All denominations suffered from this cause ; we catch com- 
 plaints from Presbyterians of "hireling workers," and the 
 first Roman priests were poor of their kind, covetous, dissi- 
 pated, drunken. Nothing so wore on Kemper's spirits, and 
 later on Upfold's, — nothing, in their judgment, was so seri- 
 ous a drawback to western missions, — as the clerical timber, 
 the number of "poor, crooked sticks," that they had to fit 
 into diocesan fabrics. One of these, for example, not a bad 
 man by any means, but hopelessly devoid of practical sense, 
 was a source of amusement wherever he went, owing to his 
 ignorance and obstinacy. He could not and would not 
 learn to harness a horse and hitch him in a wagon ; could 
 not be made to see how the old-style collar went on the ani- 
 mal's neck ; and once mounting his horse in a hurry, hind- 
 side foremost, sat with his face to the tail. " Able men, 
 thoroughly instructed as sound divines, and prepared to re- 
 fute every error," said Kemper, "and only such, should 
 come to the West. Those who cannot succeed at the East, 
 — who are illiterate, ignorant of human nature, indolent, or 
 characterized by great peculiarities, would be useless here. 
 The post demands skilful, vigilant, and brave soldiers, ready 
 to endure hardship." As these were hard to get, it is no 
 wonder that he was speedily forced, like Chase, to the con- 
 clusion that "we must soon begin to look to our own soil 
 and our own resources for our clergy." Years later, Talbot 
 testified that "it has been found that the men best adapted 
 to our western missionary work have been trained to it on 
 the spot." 
 
 Certainly no good churchman, filled with the love of God 
 and human souls, and richly dowered with common sense, 
 ever failed to receive meet compensation anyAvhere. The 
 trouble in pioneer times was that too many had the last 
 
138 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 qualification without the zeal, and their canniness was soon 
 seen through ; missionaries that went West in search of for- 
 tune, and parishes that expected to get much for little, to 
 get good clerical service cheap, were mutually disappointed. 
 Others who had the churchmanship or the zeal but lacked 
 the saving grace of good sense were disqualified by eccen- 
 tricity shading into fanaticism of type more or less mild. 
 Given a minister of the right kind, who duly instructs his 
 people in the theology of giving, and the cause of penury 
 would be removed. This last suggestion might be expanded 
 into a volume ; in this branch of their duty the clergy them- 
 selves are remiss, — false modesty, sensitiveness, or what not 
 renders them tongue-tied ; they should in due season impress 
 the truth that people's gifts to God are the sacrament of 
 their means, — a sign of loyalty and homage, a tribute to the 
 King of kings. 
 
 Bishop Kemper was severely disappointed that for a term 
 of years he was so straightened in finances that he could not 
 revisit the Indian territory. Golden prospects of spiritual 
 gain were thrown away by a near-sighted, close-fisted policy 
 in the present. The Mexican War and consequent territorial 
 accessions inimitably enlarged his field of vision ; of a sud- 
 den the sphere of domestic missionary duty was extended as 
 far beyond the westernmost station of the first year of his 
 episcopate, as that station was from the shores of the Atlan- 
 tic. "Should my services, as it is highly probable, be no 
 longer required in Indiana," he wrote, at the close of that 
 war, " I contemplate, during the fall, an extensive visitation 
 of Iowa and the Northern territory ; and I feel assured that, 
 whenever missionaries are wanted for the country that is 
 washed by the Pacific Ocean, there are two or more able 
 men in the ministry who will be ready to go to that impor- 
 tant region." Pie had announced his expansion policy as 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 139 
 
 follows : "I shall require hereafter each clergyman within 
 my jurisdiction, who is aided by the Board, to visit, at least 
 four times every year, one or more places within twenty 
 miles of his residence ; and thus new stations will be pre- 
 pared for the fostering care of the Church." 
 
 "Iowa to a fearful extent has yet been unexplored by the 
 Church. There are now missionaries at Burlington, Daven- 
 port, and Dubuque ; Iowa City, Bloomington, and the town 
 of Fort Madison should be immediately attended to, while 
 two or three itinerants would be of the greatest use." 
 
 In 1846 Iowa became a state, — " the first free child born 
 of the Missouri compromise." The preamble to her consti- 
 tution, expressing gratitude to the Supreme Being for his 
 blessings, and the sense of dependence upon him for their 
 continuance, registers a marked improvement in the temper 
 of the times ; a religious regeneration had taken place since 
 her neighbor to the eastward became a state, a generation 
 before. It is not extravagant to opine that Kemper's life 
 and work had contributed to this desirable consummation. 
 
 In 1848, he laid the corner stone of St. John's Church, 
 Dubuque. The missionary at Burlington was almost ready 
 to begin building there, having collected funds for a brick 
 church. " Keokuk is growing rapidly," the bishop reports, 
 "and will be an important place." He was distressed by a 
 blight that had been cast upon a promising beginning at 
 Bloomington by the intemperance of the missionary, who 
 was tried and suspended. At Trinity Church, Davenport, 
 where a missionary of the board had labored for five years 
 without local remuneration, a public appeal in which he 
 " urged in plain and pointed terms the duty of church peo- 
 ple to do something in the way of sustaining" him at his 
 post gave great offence. " No people have a right to expect 
 the Domestic Board to sustain a station forever," he 
 
140 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 averred, with perfect truth, " and I stated this fact plainly 
 and distinctly to the congregation ; " but something in his 
 manner of statement, and something also in the background, 
 apparently, caused great and increasing prejudice ; in the 
 two ensuing years, only sixty-five dollars were paid him, in 
 response to his appeal, by the congregation, which steadily 
 diminished until in 1849, when he was replaced by Alfred 
 Louderback, a missionary from Bishop Chase's diocese, it 
 had shrunk to only a dozen souls. 
 
 The "Northern territory," Bishop Kemper's allusion to 
 which may have puzzled the reader, was that subsequently 
 known as Minnesota. It was as late as the year 1819 that 
 the authority of the general government was first made good 
 over its vast extent by the establishment of Fort Snelling. 
 The first settlement within it was made by lumbermen, in 
 1837, upon the St, Croix river. In 1846, there were a few 
 shanties of Indian rum-sellers upon the site of St. Paul. 
 When Iowa and Wisconsin became states, this territory, 
 which had pertained to both of them, was organized by the 
 name of Minnesota. Kemper visited it for the first time in 
 the spring of 1848, spending a few days with the pioneer 
 missionary at Stillwater on the St. Croix, who, beside the 
 chaplain at Fort Snelling, was the only clergyman in the 
 field. The bishop learned enough to convince him of its 
 coming importance; farms were being cleared in every 
 direction, and the villages of St. Paul and St. Anthony were 
 rapidly increasing in population. 
 
 1847 was a memorable year in the history of the diocese 
 of Wisconsin, which then held its primary convention, 
 twenty-one clergymen and representatives of seventeen 
 parishes attending, — an excellent showing for the bishop's 
 nine years' work. He was elected diocesan, but gently de- 
 clined the honor, being unwilling to resign his missionary 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 141 
 
 charge. The school at Nashotah was incorporated the same 
 year, and gave the world its first book : Professor William 
 Adams' maiden treatise, bearing the somewhat sensational 
 title, " Mercy to Babes." It is worthy of remark that not a 
 native American but an Irishman by birth made the first 
 contribution of the western church to theological literature. 
 It is a plea for the restoration of the sacrament of baptism, 
 that Americans may become a righteous people. The mo- 
 tive of its production was the great strength of the Baptists 
 and similar bodies in the West. They demand (i): Scrip- 
 tural warrant for infant baptism, and (2): a profession of 
 faith by the candidate. Adams replies by demanding (i) : 
 any Scriptural evidence of its prohibition, — and goes on to 
 show that it is consonant with the tenor of Scripture : why 
 exclude infants, for example, when exercising the divine 
 commission to " baptize all nations " ? — while he affirms (2): 
 that baptism is more than a sign of profession or an ordi- 
 nance, — for it conveys spiritual blessing, grace, remission of 
 sin, and is the entrance into the kingdom of Christ, that is, 
 the Church, and into mystical union with the Redeemer. 
 
 The conclusion is that it is cruelty to withhold these 
 inestimable benefits from babes, and so imperil their salva- 
 tion. 
 
 The year after the publication of this treatise, Adams 
 married Elizabeth Kemper, the bishop's daughter. This 
 union was the death-blow to Breck's ascetic ideal, which 
 henceforth declined, while Adams' influence increased at 
 Nashotah. In his next book the latter came out boldly with 
 the dogma that it is generally wrong not to marry: "Mar- 
 riage is, by its very nature, and by the very nature and being 
 of man," he wrote, "a better state than singleness, a more 
 moral state, a more natural and useful state; and except 
 there is some impediment that makes it positively wrong to 
 
142 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 marry, all are bound to marry, and are better vietitally, 
 morally, and physically because of it^ 
 
 Nevertheless, when after marriage hot soda biscuits were 
 provided for his breakfast, he had them removed from the 
 table while he said grace, — for, he declared, he could not 
 consistently thank God for such a dispensation ! He was 
 master of a keen and caustic Avit, — a warning and a woe to 
 the presumptuous or wilfully stupid student. One rarely 
 repeated a foolish or irrelevant question after he had en- 
 countered the professor's meditative upward gaze and 
 pointed reply: "Young gentlemen, I can teach theology, 
 but there is one thing I can't do. I can't furnish my 
 pupils with brains." The bumptiousness of the new stu- 
 dent, disposed to argue a point, saying that he couldn't see 
 or couldn't believe so and so, did not long survive the dis- 
 comfiture of his indulgent, pitying acquiescence : " Very 
 well ; that is possible in extraordinary cases of malforma- 
 tion of mind." 
 
 In 1847 Bishop Kemper had the sorrow of losing his old 
 and tried friend and faithful collaborator, Samuel Roose- 
 velt Johnson, who was transferred from Indiana to New 
 York, where after a short time he became professor of sys- 
 tematic divinity in the General Seminary. All through the 
 term of years study of which we are now concluding, the 
 bishop had watched over Indiana with the tenderest care. 
 From the beginning he had been attached to it by pecul- 
 iarly strong and warm ties of affection, and his compassion 
 for the diocese in its trials and disappointments (it had just 
 suffered the mortification of a second rejection of its episco- 
 pate by Thomas Atkinson) led him to redouble his exertions 
 in its service. And warmly were they appreciated, as the 
 following touching tribute from a struggling missionary 
 proves: "Amid our overwhelming cares, our s])irits are 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 143 
 
 truly refreshed by the annual visitation of our beloved Mis- 
 sionary Bishop. It is like the return of day to the polar re- 
 gions, and we forget the sorrows of the past in the gratifica- 
 tion of the present. At ray home station four candidates 
 have just been confirmed, and all admitted to the commun- 
 ion. The Bishop preached in our unfinished church, and it 
 truly was a season of refreshing to our souls." In the 
 progress of his visitations, Kemper often encountered old 
 pupils of Dr. Wylie, of the state university. In the sum- 
 mer of 1847 occurred the first breach of the excellent 
 health he had enjoyed for the first twelve years of his epis- 
 copate ; after a visitation in the region of the Wabash he 
 was prostrated by an attack of bilious, or remittent, or ma- 
 larial fever, and as soon as he was able to travel, went East, 
 according to his physician's advice, and was in time to at- 
 tend the session of the general convention in New York. 
 The ensuing November found him back in Wisconsin, and 
 for the 15th and i6th of December we find the following 
 entry in his journal : "I attended with several of my 
 clerical brethren the examinations of the students at Nash- 
 otah, in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, History, Arithmetic, Geog- 
 raphy, Algebra, Natural Philosophy, Euclid, and Rhet- 
 oric. Much satisfaction was afforded. At the close of the 
 exercises a matriculation sermon was delivered by me to the 
 students. There are here about twenty-five lads and young 
 men, in various stages of preparation for the ministry. ' ' 
 
 We have here an indication of the academic department 
 which was shortly after fully organized at Nashotah, and at- 
 tracted boys from all over the state. Wherever he traveled 
 the bishop was enthusiastic in his commendation of the 
 school, not the least of whose recommendations was the fact 
 that the annual cost of a student's living needed not to exceed 
 seventy-five dollars. 
 
144 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 In the course of a visitation in its neighborhood, he 
 preached in several private houses, in a mill, a bar-room, 
 and a ballroom. In February, 1848, he consecrated Grace 
 Church, Sheboygan, and in April laid the corner stone of 
 St. Paul's Church, Beloit. In passing between Wisconsin 
 and Indiana he often preached in Chicago, where, in 1849, 
 Nashotah's first ordinand, a Swede named Gustaf Unonius, 
 organized St. Ansgarius' Church for his fellow-countrymen. 
 In June of the latter year Kemper presided over the dio- 
 cesan convention of Indiana which elected Dr. George Up- 
 fold as its bishop. His record as rector for eighteen years 
 of an important parish in Pittsburg, which was still re- 
 garded as a western city, taken in connection with mission 
 work that he had done in its vicinity, made him a most eli- 
 gible choice, and the rejoicing was great when he termi- 
 nated the long suspense of the diocese in perfecting its or- 
 ganization by signifying his acceptance of the call, " at a pe- 
 riod," as his people testified when he came to lay down his 
 earthly burden, " which promised nothing but severe labor, 
 great personal self-sacrifice and self denial, with small visi- 
 ble results to long-continued, patient work, laying founda- 
 tions that others might build thereon." It is to be re- 
 gretted that, though he must have known Upfold's earnest 
 desire that it should be included, Philander Chase, to whom 
 as presiding bishop it fell to make arrangements for the con- 
 secration, omitted Kemper's name from the list of consecra- 
 tors. The slight, or oversight, was remedied by the bishop- 
 elect, who telegraphed an urgent invitation to take part ; 
 and on the i6th of December, 1849, being the third 
 Sunday in Advent, George Upfold was consecrated the first 
 diocesan bishop of Indiana, in Christ Church, Indianapo- 
 lis, by Bishops Bosworth Smith, Mcllvaine, Kemper and 
 Hawks. 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 145 
 
 Our hero was thus relieved of the oversight of twenty- 
 three parishes, — for to that number, beginning fourteen 
 years before with none at all, had he nursed the new dio- 
 cese. " He retires from that scene of his missionary 
 labors," said a writer in the organ of the board of missions, 
 " with the high consciousness of having long willingly ren- 
 dered severe, self-sacrificing, and disinterested services, un- 
 requited, except by honor and affection, — followed by the 
 reverence and respect, the love and the best wishes and 
 prayers of all. Blessings go with him on his way, — bless- 
 ings on his person and his work." Planting himself firmly 
 in Wisconsin, he could henceforth turn westward an undi- 
 verted gaze, for the remainder of his jurisdiction lay west of 
 the Mississippi. Of Wisconsin he could report, in 1850, 
 that " already a few of our congregations have, with God's 
 blessing, gained such strength, that beside supporting their 
 own rector they might almost sustain a missionary." He 
 found the parish at Racine, now worshipping in a neat new 
 Gothic church, in a greatly improved condition, the new 
 rector, the Reverend Azel Dow Cole, having won all hearts. 
 
 The scion of a Puritan family in Connecticut, Cole was 
 born in 1818, — the same year as Breck, whose classmate he 
 became at the General Theological Seminary, and whose 
 work at Nashotah he was destined to continue. Of his sen- 
 sations when, as a college student at Providence, he first 
 entered an Episcopal church and beheld its form of worship, 
 he has left the striking impression that he felt as if every one 
 there were committing idolatry. Naturally, when he be- 
 came an Episcopalian, his churchmanship was of pro- 
 nounced type. 
 
 Breck had for some time been meditating a move further 
 west. He felt oppressed by the business cares of Nashotah 
 House which he had now borne for several years, and was 
 
146 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 rendered restless by the conviction that his ideal had never 
 been fairly tested there, and was becoming a rapidly vanish- 
 ing quantity. He was also worried by the problem which 
 he expressed in the following words : "Can the Church 
 recover and be Catholic, or must she become Romish?" 
 More than all this, we must recognize the fact that the fever 
 of the frontier was in his blood ; Chase and Kemper the 
 bishops and Breck the priest were the three eminent pioneers 
 of the church in the West, and their careers sum up a suffi- 
 cient history of its planting. Still with the ideal of a pristine 
 monastery flitting before his mind's eye, and taking with him 
 two young unmarried ministers, brought from the East, 
 named Wilcoxson and Merrick, Breck left Nashotah in the 
 early summer of 1850, but though he forsook Wisconsin he 
 did not at this time pass beyond the bounds of Kemper's 
 jurisdiction ; plunging with his companions into the forests 
 of Minnesota, which they claimed for Christ by rearing on 
 the border a great rustic cross, they threaded its streams and 
 established their mission house on a site commanding the 
 village of St. Paul. 
 
 The presidency thus left vacant at Nashotah was filled, 
 and well and faithfully filled, by Azel Cole. When he took 
 charge there was a debt upon the institution and no funds 
 to its credit ; its dependence for material support was upon 
 the free will gifts of friends, coming by mail. During his 
 long term of service. Dr. Cole was president, professor, and 
 priest at the seminary, rector of St. Sylvanus', and a con- 
 scientious preacher and missionary at stations near and far. 
 For many years he was both treasurer and secretary of the 
 faculty, conducting a considerable correspondence, despatch- 
 ing circulars, editing a Sunday-school paper, and even act- 
 ing in the capacity of steward, buying provisions for the 
 refectory at his office door. The sad financial necessities of 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 147 
 
 his position bred in him a regrettable but doubtless inevi- 
 table closeness in money matters. His figure was tall and 
 erect, his expression grave and somewhat forbidding; his 
 eyes were dark and searchir.j,s lips thin and close-pressed, 
 the upper one shaven, cheeks and chin covered with a bushy 
 beard. Behind a certain constraint of manner he concealed 
 a kind heart and tenacious will. For some time he and Dr. 
 Adams were the only teachers at the seminary, until Lewis 
 Kemper was graduated and appointed tutor in New Testa- 
 ment Greek. 
 
 In 1850 Adams published his principal work, "The Ele- 
 ments of Christian Science," with the explanatory sub-title, 
 "A Treatise upon Moral Philosophy and Practice." The 
 work would be more intelligibly and accurately defined to- 
 day as moral theology or theological ethics ; upon a care- 
 fully considered psychological basis the author constructs a 
 system of duties and activities directed and restrained by 
 religious. Scriptural and ecclesiastical motives and sanc- 
 tions. The use of the term "science " is explained in the 
 preface : every living thing is scientifically investigated un- 
 der the two aspects of its Nature and Position, (in modern 
 phraseology, organism and environment) ; and from these 
 complementary points of view the author proposes to con- 
 sider man as a moral being. He starts from the premise 
 that human nature and all its powers are good in them- 
 selves,— not bestial or devilish,— but fallen. The perfection 
 of that nature is to be sought in something outside itself, 
 /. c, in God. The subject of the conscience is first treated, 
 because in the doctor's view the normal movement is from 
 the moral to the intellectual powers; moral precedes and 
 produces mental awakening, he says, and he thus dethrones 
 tiie popular educational fetish: "He that shall send his 
 son to a school wherein his meiihil powers are trained in the 
 
148 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 very fullest way, and expect that by reason of that training 
 his moral powers shall be educated, without a direct iraiti- 
 ing addressed to them, — that man has mistaken the very na- 
 ture of things." The Calvinistic doctrine of total de- 
 pravity is negatived by the admission that the natural man 
 does good, and does it by the aid of divine grace. The 
 dilemma of the binding nature of the decrees of conscience, 
 which may yet be utterly mistaken, is thus resolved ; con- 
 science by itself is fallible, and needs enlightenment ; it is 
 infallible as far as it reports accurately the will of the Holy 
 Spirit. Restlessness, shame and fear are the penalties for 
 breach of conscience, the only cure for which is the Atone- 
 ment made by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 
 The next division of the work is on the reason, which is 
 carefully distinguished from "reasoning" or arguing, the 
 infidel and sectarian passion of the hour. Adams professed 
 himself a trichotomist, distinguishing psychical and spirit- 
 ual factors in human nature, — an animal soul or understand- 
 ing and a spiritual reason. Throughout this discussion 
 there is much unacknowledged indebtedness to Coleridge's 
 "Aids to Reflection." The highest law or object of the 
 reason is the faith of Christ, revealed in Holy Scripture, 
 taught by the Church. 
 
 In the part of the treatise that deals with the affections, 
 that property of our nature is defined as disinterested love 
 of persons ; if things enter into the calculation affection de- 
 generates into desire. It must issue in action, or else it 
 degenerates into sentimentalism.. Its highest exercise is when 
 it is occupied with the person of the Incarnate Lord, in the 
 Holy Communion. This division ends with a plea for 
 weekly communions. In that which follows, upon the 
 home and its affections, occurs the declaration concerning 
 marriage, before quoted. 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 149 
 
 The last part treats of the will, and the dilemma of its 
 freedom and bondage is thus turned : spiritual motives free 
 the will, carnal ones enslave it. The author ranges himself 
 with the Greek soteriologists by the following remarkable 
 judgment : " In bringing into Christianity the Stoic doctrine 
 of Fate, Augustine . . . inflicted a grievous wound 
 upon the simplicity of the Gospel." The will should in all 
 things be ruled by the law of liberty, which is the law of 
 Christ. 
 
 One can hardly doubt that Adams had his own father-in- 
 law in mind when he penned this ideal picture of psycholog- 
 ical harmony : " Who is the man that is naturally the best in 
 your circle of acquaintance? Why, it is that man that 
 unites, in the greatest perfection, these four governing 
 powers, — first, the Will — he that having a straight, definite, 
 decided course before him, pursues it with decision and 
 energy from day to day ; second, the Conscience, — who in 
 that course makes it his main object to go according to his 
 sense of right and wrong ; third, the Affections, — he who, 
 as regards his brethren, observes the great Christian rule of 
 ' loving his neighbor as himself ; and fourth, the Reason, — 
 who tempers all this into a harmonious and consistent 
 course by a considerate mindy 
 
 The above is a wonderfully accurate analysis of Kemper's 
 character, the key to which was, as we know, his absolute 
 steadfastness to duty, and as far as it goes is a most faithful 
 mental photograph, — but to complete the picture we have 
 to add certain spiritual qualities, especially that Christian 
 cheerfulness, that strain of childlike happiness, that was so 
 winning in him. He kept the heart of a boy after the 
 snows of more than sixty winters had descended on his 
 head. "We Christians," said St. Clement in his loveliest 
 passage, " having learned the new blessings, have the exuber- 
 
150 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 ance of life's morning prime in this youth which knows no 
 old age, in which we are always growing to maturity in in- 
 telligence, are always young, always mild, always new ; for 
 they must necessarily be new who have become partakers of 
 the new Word. And that which participates in eternity is 
 wont to be assimilated to the incorruptible : so that to us 
 appertains the designation of the age of childhood, a life- 
 long springtime, because the truth that is in us, and our 
 habits saturated with the truth, cannot be touched by old 
 age ; but Wisdom is ever blooming, ever remains consistent 
 and the same." 
 
 In this quinquenniad, the bishop was able to devote more 
 time and attention than before to building up the church in 
 the northern part of Wisconsin, and of his activity in this 
 direction the consecration of St. Paul's Church, Fond du 
 Lac, and St. James' Church, Manitowoc, both in the sum- 
 mer of 1852, maybe taken as illustrations. He had the 
 great gratification of reporting the foundation, the same 
 year, of a church college at Racine, " under the Rev. Dr. 
 Roswell Park, a distinguished and highly scientific Presby- 
 ter, whose entire devotion to his sacred duties of training 
 up the young men committed to his care in the nurture and 
 admonition of the Lord is full of the most gratifying 
 promise. To the generosity of the inhabitants of this 
 thriving and beautiful place we are indebted for a good 
 building, finely situated near the city, and on the border of 
 Lake Michigan." 
 
 This year, too, the first railroad in the state, begun at 
 Milwaukee the preceding year, crept by Nashotah in the 
 direction of Madison and the Mississippi. 
 
 An equally if not actually more prominent feature of the 
 bishop's work in this tract of time was the attention he paid 
 to his jurisdiction beyond the great river. He made as a 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 151 
 
 rule two visitations a year in Iowa and Minnesota. The 
 latter territory was beginning to repeat the history of Wis- 
 consin ; a similar heterogeneous human deluge was pouring 
 into it; and here, as elsewhere, experience proved that 
 European immigrants offered about the most intractable 
 material for the church to work with. For two years Breck 
 and his associates did yeoman's service, — but what were 
 they among so many? The resources of the mission were 
 overtaxed ; it was not reinforced ; at the end of that time 
 Merrick was taken ill and had to leave ; the fast growing 
 town of St. Paul made increasing demands upon the serv- 
 ices of his companion ; and the mission was practically 
 dissolved. In 1852 Breck himself became absorbed in 
 work among the Indians. " We intend going up the waters 
 of the Mississippi full three hundred and fifty miles above 
 this," he wrote from St. Paul, in March of that year, "for 
 the purpose of visiting bands of Indians, and selecting a lo- 
 cation. . . , We are willing to bury ourselves in the 
 woods along with the Indian, and live a wigwam life, if we 
 can only save him from ruin, which is his present condition, 
 soul and body." In the same letter he told of an event of 
 a picturesque character to which he was looking forward : a 
 meeting, in the wilds of Minnesota, of his own missionary 
 bishop and the bishop of Prince Rupert's Land, — "each 
 holding dioceses, as Professor Adams would say, the largest 
 since the days of St. Paul." 
 
 Bishop Kemper was warmly interested in the new depar- 
 ture, for the needs of the red men were a weight upon his 
 soul. Almost the only work that the church was doing for 
 them was done for the Oneidas of his diocese of Wisconsin, 
 and it grieved him that, year after year, he was unable to 
 visit the Indian territory. Breck threw himself into the 
 work with his accustomed ardor, and achieved results that 
 
152 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 deeply impressed the leading men of his territory. Before 
 long he had a class to present for confirmation, and in a 
 neat log chapel at Kaygeeashkoonsikag, the site of the Chip- 
 pewa mission, Kemper confirmed Mary Medemoyan State- 
 lar, Rebecca Odahbenanequa Manitowab, Charlotte Pewah- 
 bekokethegoqua Johnson, David Kahsequa, and John An- 
 negahbowk Johnson. Even these phonetic and orthogra- 
 phic terrors pale before the formidable name of the mission 
 station of Kahsahgawsquahjeomokag, or that of a place 
 whence Breck often had occasion to date his letters, — Nigig- 
 waunowahsahgahigaw ! In 1854 we hear mention, for the 
 first time, of a box of clothing sent by the ladies of a far- 
 away parish to a western missionary ; it was for some of the 
 Indians under Breck's care, and he returned grateful 
 acknowledgment. " Every article in this box has proved 
 highly serviceable," he wrote, "and could the ladies behold 
 the young girls in the schoolroom preparing their own 
 dresses under the admirable supervision of Miss Mills, their 
 teacher, and then see them washing and ironing them, in 
 order to appear in clean apparel for Sundays, they would 
 think this step a great advance upon the Pagan habits 
 of half nakedness and filth in the extreme of eighteen 
 months since. The women are well disposed to adopt the 
 white dress, and to wear shawls instead of the blanket." 
 
 By this time Bishop Kemper had laid the corner stones of 
 five churches in Minnesota, and there were, beside two army 
 chaplains, six clergymen in the territory, one of whom, 
 Breck's comrade, Wilcoxson, was acting as an itinerant 
 evangelist, and actually obtaining contributions for domestic 
 missions from the missions in his charge. 
 
 Even more than to Minnesota did the bishop devote him- 
 self to Iowa, laboring in this period, as he labored through- 
 out the previous one in Indiana, to foster its feeble churches 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 153 
 
 and build them into a diocese. The growth of the state 
 was phenomenal ; in the five years of which we are treating 
 its population more than doubled ; in the year 1850 nearly 
 two hundred thousand people poured into it as into a land 
 of promise. On roads where in 1851 a coach twice a week 
 was sufficient service, only three years later two coaches a 
 day were required. By that time the Chicago and Rock 
 Island railroad had been completed to a point opposite 
 Davenport, and the corner stone was laid of the first bridge 
 that was to span the Mississippi. What between Whigs, 
 Democrats, and Free Soilers, politics in the state were sim- 
 ply riotous. Presbyterians were very active in forming their 
 societies, Mormons carried on an aggressive propaganda, 
 while at Salubria a certain Abner Kneeland, the David 
 Strauss of Iowa, inaugurated an "age of reason" in which 
 Thomas Paine' s writings were to be substituted for the 
 bible, dances for prayer-meetings, and gamesome holidays 
 for Puritan sabbaths. It was remarked that in crossing the 
 Mississippi one traveled beyond the sabbath. 
 
 In 185 1 an unusually rainy spring was followed by a pro- 
 longed drought, and that was accompanied by a terrible 
 visitation of cholera. 
 
 At that date there was no copper money in circulation, 
 and the little three-cent silver piece was barely tolerated, 
 being seldom seen save at post offices and in church plates ! 
 
 These few points, taken at random, will serve to indicate 
 the difficulties with which Kemper had to contend in plant- 
 ing the church in the new state. The difficulty of ob- 
 taining and supporting clergy seems here to have been at 
 its maximum, and the little he was able to accomplish, when 
 contrasted with the rapid and almost fearful increase of pop- 
 ulation, was deeply humiliating to his soul. It is little 
 wonder that he sometimes wrote in despondent mood. 
 
154 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 " Were it not for the sure word of prophecy, and the pre- 
 cious promises of the Redeemer, I would wish to relinquish a 
 post which I sought not, and where I have almost thought 
 at times I commanded the forlorn hope." The average 
 annual contribution of the Episcopal church for mis- 
 sions was thirty thousand dollars, of which half went 
 for domestic missions ; the Roman church had annual offer- 
 ings amounting to more than seven times that total to apply 
 to its extension in the Americas, and principally in the 
 United States. In Missouri, Bishop Hawks suggested a 
 means, the only means in a weak diocese, he said, for 
 the relief of widows and children of deceased clergymen, 
 and that was for every parish to insure its rector's life, and 
 so remove a source of paralyzing anxiety. In Indiana, an 
 enterprising missionary at Evansville cast about for support 
 in ways described in the following instructive report : 
 " The timely relief which the citizens of this place gave me 
 a few weeks ago by a donation party, removed my design 
 of abandoning the missionary field for a position which 
 would afford me bread. I gave a course of lectures on 
 chemistry in the Medical College the first winter, in expec- 
 tation of remuneration ; but in this was disappointed ; for 
 the receipts by notes of hand and a few dollars in cash did 
 not more than cover my expenses. Education of an ele- 
 vated character is not sustained by this community, and 
 hence from this quarter I can reap no aid. I even tried 
 popular lectures during the winter, once a week, but made 
 nothing — there are so few to appreciate instruction of the 
 kind." Elsewhere in the same diocese a fellow missionary 
 achieved better success by a method that many might have 
 adopted and might still adopt to great and general advan- 
 tage : to lighten his people's burden in building a church, 
 he opened a school. 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 155 
 
 It is surprising that cultivated clergymen have not done 
 more for popular education. 
 
 At Crawfordsville, the missionary added to his Sunday- 
 school work a class in Church History. 
 
 In Iowa the bishop had also to encounter over again that 
 great obstacle to ecclesiastical plantation with which he had 
 had to contend in Indiana fifteen years before, — the contin- 
 ual moving of the population. The missionary at Burling- 
 ton gave forcible expression to the evil, while at the same 
 time he pointed out a certain compensation: "Could I 
 have retained the persons who have been connected with 
 my congregation since I have been in this place, my records 
 show that I should now have a congregation of more than 
 four hundred persons. We may justly hope that the many 
 individuals, thus scattered from us to the four winds, will 
 carry with them the instruction and benefits here re- 
 ceived, as good seed that shall ultimately bear fruit." 
 
 This process of ecclesiastical dissemination was abun- 
 dantly illustrated in the same state ; the nucleus of Trinity 
 parish, Iowa City, and of St. Paul's, Des Moines, was the 
 fruit " of the early labors of that pioneer of pioneers. Bishop 
 Chase," — was, in each case, a little knot of communicants 
 nurtured by him years before in Ohio ; and greatly would 
 it have rejoiced his heart and consoled his spirit to know it. 
 
 Of Augusta, a village not far from Burlington, the mis- 
 sionary just quoted reports : " The morals and general 
 interests of the place have been sadly injured by the Mor- 
 mons. ... It seems past recovering from the baleful 
 effects of their unholy influence." 
 
 The parish at Davenport had been in a bad way, with a 
 dilapidated place of worship, on which there was a debt, 
 and a diminishing congregation, favored by only one service 
 on Sundays and only three or four administrations of the 
 
156 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 Lord's Supper in a year ; but under the Reverend Alfred 
 Louderback it began rapidly to improve. He was in truth 
 an active, zealous, and intelligent missionary, and holds in 
 the early history of the diocese of Iowa a position not un- 
 like that of Roosevelt Johnson in Indiana or Lloyd Breck in 
 Wisconsin and Minnesota. He proved very helpful to 
 Bishop Kemper, accompanying him upon his visitations, and 
 doing efficient service in the founding of St. John's Church, 
 Keokuk. By the year 185 1 there were six missionaries in 
 Iowa, one of whom discovered that the disposition of the 
 people — "at least the better class of people," — was fav- 
 orable to the church. 
 
 The bishop laid the corner stone of a church of Gothic 
 design at Cedar Rapids that year, and in 1852 consecrated 
 the finished edifice at Keokuk. Meantime at Bloomington, 
 which had changed its name to Muscatine, there was rising 
 "a chaste and beautiful specimen of the old English style " 
 of ecclesiastical architecture, rendered possible by several 
 hundred dollars procured by the energetic missionary on a 
 begging trip at the East, the local vestry and congregation 
 having pledged twelve hundred. A sure sign of sincere in- 
 terest and spiritual growth was afforded by this congrega- 
 tion, in that it stood the searching test of bad weather ! 
 The missionary noted that during a trying winter, when 
 walking was exceedingly bad, attendance upon public wor- 
 ship was regular, and even increased. At this time, con- 
 sideration of '* the vast extent and utter destitution of the 
 western field " strengthened Louderback to resist a tempt- 
 ing invitation to return to his old parish in the East. We 
 have glimpses of him as he drove about the state with 
 Bishop Kemper in a buckboard. They always went pro- 
 vided with blankets, both woolen and of India rubber ; for 
 sometimes they had to lie on a bare floor, and often their 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 157 
 
 accommodation was not much better. One winter's night, 
 when they had found sheher in a poor cottage on the plains, 
 somewhere west of Dubuque, they were snowbound by a 
 sudden and violent storm ; in the morning all the water in 
 the house was frozen ; and they had to shovel a path 
 through the snow to the shed where they had put their 
 horse, to give him provender. In another place, the 
 bishop's sleep was anything but sound ; it was in a single 
 roomed cabin, and the children of the family were put up 
 in a loft formed of loose and rattling boards laid across the 
 beams ; and he lay below, in momentary expectation of 
 having them all down on him. So unassuming was he, that 
 when helped to "chicken fixin's " he would never express 
 his preference, and so it happened that a leg generally fell 
 to his share ; until at last his companion's spirit was stirred 
 within him, and he burst out : "Do give the bishop a bit 
 of breast, or we shall have him running all over the prai- 
 ries ; he's had nothing but legs this whole journey." 
 
 The Reverend Hugh Miller Thompson, like Dr. Adams, 
 an Irishman, who appeared in 1852 as missionary at Madi- 
 son, Wisconsin, having just been ordered deacon in Nasho- 
 tah chapel, bore like witness to the bishop's uncomplaining 
 and actually joyful endurance of hardship. In a report 
 dated at Portage, he gave the following vivid picture of 
 some of the experiences of a winter visitation in Wisconsin : 
 " On Monday I was to take the Bishop to Baraboo. The 
 river had frozen again, and he was expected at night. The 
 thermometer was fifteen degrees below zero. The ride was 
 seventeen miles, most of it along the banks of a frozen 
 river and over a bare prairie, with the wind blowing bitterly 
 the wrong way, right in our teeth. We could only get an 
 open buggy ; but the Bishop was ready at eight a. m. to face 
 the prairie. He preached twice, confirmed twice, addressed 
 
158 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 the candidates, and administered the communion ; and 
 having been on his feet till nine or ten at night, might be 
 called pretty good for a sexagenarian. 
 
 "We bundled 'the buffaloes' as best we might, and 
 started, and after a ' spicy ' ride, with the icicles hanging 
 round our faces, arrived in Baraboo. . . . The Bishop 
 has an appointment for to-night at Madison, and after seeing 
 him in the 'express,' to ride again forty miles in this bitter 
 weather, over the 'bluffs,' and preach in another vacant 
 parish when he has performed the journey, I rode home 
 alone, feeling that not one of his clergy should dare com- 
 plain." A report from Oshkosh helps to fill out the picture 
 of the same visitation ; having told of an Ash-Wednesday 
 sermon there by the bishop, the missionary continued : 
 " The next day he pushed northward, although it was very 
 cold, on a visit to the Oneidas, with all the hopeful cheer- 
 fulness, apparently, and vivacity of youth. Time seems to 
 deal very gently with him. Though much exposed, he 
 seemed quite well as he passed through this place on his re- 
 turn homeward." 
 
 When Kemper resigned the oversight of Indiana, one of 
 his attached clergy there, wishing to remain under his juris- 
 diction, and having received an appointment to the chap- 
 laincy of Fort Laramie, was transferred thither at his own 
 request. The post was nearly a thousand miles west of the 
 Mississippi, and this circumstance led the bishop to urge a 
 definition of the western boundary of his mission, which, 
 some thought, extended to the shores of the Pacific, Be- 
 fore many summers had passed, he received from that chap- 
 lain the following account of one of those shocking trage- 
 dies that have marked with blood the westward movement 
 of the frontier, — a "massacre of a young officer and his 
 entire command of twenty-nine soldiers by the different 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 159 
 
 bands of Indians who were assembled, near here, to receive 
 their annual presents. Several depredations had been com- 
 mitted by them during the season of emigration ; and on 
 this occasion a detachment was sent to the Indian villages 
 to claim, as prisoner, a recent offender ; and a hostile 
 demonstration on the part of the detachment, to enforce 
 their object, was the signal upon which upward of fifteen 
 hundred warriors rushed upon them, and in the most brutal 
 manner assassinated the whole command, mutilating their 
 bodies in the most savage and barbarous way. They then 
 helped themselves to the goods intended for them, as well as 
 rifled the stores of the neighboring traders and of the 
 American Fur Company ; and further designed to attack 
 and burn the fort, putting to death every white person, and 
 actually marched on this fiendish mission, but were provi- 
 dentially dissuaded from their purpose. The shocking 
 spectacle of the mangled and gory bodies lying over the 
 place of slaughter was exposed for two days, none daring 
 to remove or attempt to inter them. Alarms for the safety 
 of the fort and its remnant of inmates were frequent by day 
 and night messengers, and we all huddled together for 
 mutual defence in the ruins of the old adobe walls, fortify- 
 ing our position as well as we could. . . . Had the 
 attack been at first made upon us, we must all have 
 perished." 
 
 Before passing to a fresh period of our history, we must 
 duly pause to mark the demise of that old hero. Bishop 
 Chase. During the last years of his life he had to endure, 
 beside a sore burden of physical infirmity, many losses and 
 anxieties connected with Jubilee College, and much diffi- 
 culty in the choice of an assistant bishop. He himself was 
 evangelical, so to say, by heredity, having been brought up 
 by Puritan parents (and this, by the way, is the ultimate 
 
160 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 explanation of his preference of a sylvan location, far from 
 the corrupt world, for his colleges). Having been asked to 
 express his sentiments regarding a new "Society for the 
 Promotion of Evangelical Knowledge in the Episcopal 
 Church," he replied that he had no objection to it, for its 
 title was in accordance with the gospel, and its founders 
 were good men, — such men as Bishops Meade and Elliott 
 favoring its institution. He declared that in choosing 
 Henry John Whitehouse as his successor, he had been actu- 
 ated by a desire to secure "an evangelical man." His 
 choice was confirmed by a special convention called to meet 
 in September, 1851, — but straightway arose an outcry about 
 "undue influence," — nothing short, in fact, of a charge of 
 simony. There was talk of payments of money, and 
 pledges exacted from certain electors ; and so Chase's 
 episcopate closed in Illinois, as in Ohio, amid most unedi- 
 fying controversy. It transpired that he had had funds for 
 defraying the expenses of that special convention, which he 
 had employed as Constantine employed his in providing for 
 the traveling expenses and entertainment of the bishops 
 convened at Niccea. 
 
 There was another version of the reason of the bishop's 
 selection, engendered amid the party conflicts of later years. 
 It was said that, having been informed that Dr. Whitehouse 
 possessed a fortune of fifty thousand dollars, (and three 
 thousand a year went much further then, before values had 
 been affected by Californian gold and the civil war). Chase 
 exclaimed with emphasis : " Let the godly man be elected ! " 
 The invention is only of value as indicating what some 
 people were ready to believe ; but if any mercenary motive 
 sullied the purity of Whitehouse's election, the subsequent 
 troubles in the diocese were a sufficient commentary upon 
 it, and only what might have been expected. And yet the 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 161 
 
 possession of a fortune is no disqualification for the episco- 
 pal office. 
 
 In 1844 Whitehouse had exchanged his rectorate of St. 
 Luke's Church, Rochester, for that of St. Thomas', New 
 York, — Upfold's old time parish. For many years he had 
 been an active, zealous and very efficient member of the 
 committee on domestic missions ; and this, in the estimation 
 of his friends, was his greatest qualification for a see still 
 essentially missionary. The chairman of the committee, 
 our old friend, Samuel Roosevelt Johnson, wrote him an 
 official letter of congratulation upon his elevation, regret for 
 the loss the committee would thereby sustain, and grateful 
 appreciation of the valuable services he had rendered it in 
 the past. He was consecrated assistant bishop of Illinois 
 in St. George's Church, New York, November the twentieth, 
 185 1, by Bishops Brownell, Eastburn, Hawks, Alonzo Potter 
 and others, including John Williams, who had been conse- 
 crated just three weeks before. It was none too soon, for 
 before the first anniversary of the event. Bishop Chase had 
 left the world. In the "Motto," a diocesan monthly that 
 he had edited for several years, the old bishop published a 
 piteous letter in the winter of 1852, unfolding his trials and 
 tribulations over his college property : mills worth many 
 thousand dollars had been destroyed, — floods had done 
 great damage in the lowlands, and the last summer's wheat 
 crop had failed upon the uplands of the domain, — while to 
 cap the climax, part of the property, upon which buildings 
 had been erected, was claimed by minor heirs of the former 
 owner by virtue of a deed which the bishop insisted must 
 be spurious, for he had taken every pains, when purchasing, 
 to secure a clear title. Final judgment in the case, however, 
 rendered in Chicago, was adverse to his cause, and he had 
 to buy over again or compound for more than three hundred 
 
162 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 acres of college land. Such were some of the losses and 
 vexations that beset the closing months of his busy life. 
 He died on the twentieth of September, leaving, after every 
 deduction has been made for faults of temper and method, 
 an imperishable name in the annals of American Christi- 
 anity. His body was laid to rest in the God's acre of the 
 college that he loved so well and labored for so untiringly ; 
 upon the monument that marks his grave is carved a cross, 
 with his life's legend: Jehovah Jireh, — "the Lord will 
 provide." 
 
 As Bishop Whitehouse moved about the diocese upon his 
 ensuing visitation, treading in the dead bishop's footprints, 
 he was a witness everywhere to the " profound respect and 
 warm, confiding affection" that he had won. Death 
 cleared the vision even of his enemies, enabling them at 
 last to behold him in the guise of eternity. In his episco- 
 pate of seventeen years in Illinois, he had consecrated six- 
 teen churches and confirmed nearly a thousand souls. 
 Whitehouse warned the diocese that henceforth it must rely 
 upon its own resources, for he could not bring himself to 
 make personal appeals for outside aid, as his predecessor had 
 done, by travel and correspondence. 
 
 The new bishop came to Chicago full of the idea of 
 founding a cathedral there. By the end of the year 1852 
 he had negotiated for a lot for an episcopal residence, and 
 in February following for an adjoining lot for a cathedral 
 church, pledging therefor the sums of six thousand and four 
 thousand dollars respectively, the latter with the condition 
 that said church should be built within ten years from date. 
 In his address to his convention, shortly after, he enlarged 
 on the necessity of an episcopal fund and " a bishop's 
 church and residence in the city of Chicago;" the church 
 to have free seats, daily services, and to be the centre of the 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 163 
 
 charitable, educational, and missionary work of the diocese. 
 He proposed himself to build the bishop's house, and in 
 the meantime he expected the diocese to excuse some delay 
 in his taking up his residence within it. 
 
 To this date, accordingly — 1853 — is to be referred the in- 
 ception of the first cathedral projected in the American 
 church. The proposition was subjected to a fire of criti- 
 cism ; beside being novel and foreign, it seemed to many to 
 be unnecessary and unnatural ; a popular objection was that 
 it was as absurd as the attempt would be to transplant an 
 English oak. Yet angrier criticism was excited by the bish- 
 op's continued residence in New York, whence he came to 
 make his periodical visitations. His excuse was that he had 
 a large family of growing sons and young children whose 
 education he had provided for and who must have a home 
 while being educated in New York. It may also be that 
 Mrs. Whitehouse was averse to moving West. Whatever the 
 rights or wrongs in the case, there sprang out of this non- 
 residence a luxuriant controversy, that threatened a sever- 
 ance of relations between the bishop and the see. The Illi- 
 nois convention of 1854 "affectionately" urged him to 
 live in the diocese : he took this as implying censure, and 
 proposed to resign ; the next convention entreated him not 
 to take that step : in reply he alluded to his " anxious con- 
 flict of duty," (diocesan with domestic). As all through 
 these years he was in receipt of no episcopal salary, he 
 thought that the diocese was unjustifiable in its criticisms. 
 He accused the rectors of Chicago churches of Congrega- 
 tionalism ; they complained that he was autocratic, or to put 
 it plainly, that his administration (like his predecessor's) 
 was self-willed. And so the grounds of misunderstanding 
 and ill feeling were deeply laid at the beginning of his epis- 
 copate. 
 
164 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 The full meaning of his reference to Bishop Ives' lapse to 
 Rome cannot now, in all probability, be discovered. Bishop 
 Kemper, characteristically, ignored that sad event : from his 
 addresses no one could ever gather that it had occurred. 
 Bishop Upfold animadverted on Ives' "apostasy and treach- 
 ery" ; and Bishop Whitehouse said: "He has gone out 
 from us because he was not of us. . . , I can honor 
 obedience to conscience even when it leads to what I must 
 count apostasy from truth. I bow in sorrow and shame 
 when the antecedents and issues are so foul that we take ref- 
 uge in the diseased mind as a grateful explanation." 
 
 During these years, Vail was in charge of a church in 
 Rhode Island, and repeatedly served as deputy to general 
 convention from that diocese ; Talbot, having while yet in 
 deacon's orders organized a church in Louisville, was called 
 in 1853 to the parish at Indianapolis, and the year following 
 received a doctor's degree in divinity; Whipple, who hke 
 Talbot had turned from a business career to the ministry, 
 was ordained and appointed rector of the church at Rome, 
 New York, and was doing occasional work in winter as a 
 missionary in Florida ; Armitage was graduated at Colum- 
 bia College and the General Theological Seminary, was 
 ordered deacon, and began his ministry in New Hampshire 
 and Maine. Lee had succeeded Whitehouse in the charge 
 of St. Luke's Church, Rochester, — a famous evangelical 
 parish. In 1852 he was chosen to preach the annual ser- 
 mon before the board of missions, at its meeting in Boston. 
 He took as his text the forty-seventh verse of the twenty- 
 fourth chapter of St. Luke's gospel : " Repentance and re- 
 mission of sins should be preached in his name among all 
 nations, beginning at Jerusalem." He ranked domestic mis- 
 sions first in the order of importance : it is the church's 
 primary duty to support them. But while charity begins it 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 165 
 
 does not end at home : " the true spirit of the gospel tends 
 to self-diffusion." As the apostles, while they began at 
 Jerusalem, did not wait until every one there was converted 
 before they pushed on, so the church should lose no time in 
 carrying Christianity to the heathen. And the two interests 
 interact : a church strong at home can do effective foreign 
 work, and foreign missions increase and deepen the strength 
 and spiritual life of the mother church. 
 
 In 1853, at the close of the session of general convention, 
 Dr. William Ingraham Kip was consecrated missionary 
 bishop of California, in Trinity Church, New York, by Bishop 
 Kemper, assisted by Bishops Upfold, Whitehouse and others. 
 It was the fifth consecration in which our hero took part. 
 In 1854 he could report that there were in Iowa three con- 
 secrated churches, and two more nearly ready for consecra- 
 tion, eleven clergymen, and a call for another one for the 
 flourishing village of Fort Des Moines, and confirmations 
 aggregating forty persons upon his last visitation. The 
 parish at Dubuque now became self-supporting. He pre- 
 sided that year over the primary convention of the diocese, 
 which met in the basement of the Presbyterian church in 
 Davenport. He bade its members seek for their ecclesias- 
 tical head a man of God, earnest, patient of fatigue, ready to 
 endure hardship, — and cautioned them against the intrusion 
 of any worldly motive, such as, for example, the income of 
 their candidate. Henry Washington Lee was the choice of 
 the convention ; his character could stand the test of Kem- 
 per's ideal, and he was further recommended by his sound 
 and sensible missionary sermon just quoted. An objection 
 raised by Louderback, that there was not the requisite 
 number of clergy canonically resident in the diocese, was 
 overruled ; Lee accepted the call, and on the eighteenth 
 of October, 1854, was consecrated, in his parish church at 
 
166 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERx\ CHURCH 
 
 Rochester, first bishop of Iowa, by Bishops Hopkins, Mc- 
 Coskry, Whitehouse, and others. It was the only consecra- 
 tion of a diocesan bishop for any of his missionary sees in 
 which Kemper had no part. 
 
 In 1854 Bishop Kemper was for the second time elected 
 diocesan of Wisconsin, and now accepted the election, with 
 the proviso that this should not involve the resignation of 
 his missionary jurisdiction. An unusual number of remark- 
 able men participated in making the early history of that 
 diocese, — the bishop himself, Adams, Breck, Cole, and 
 others that might be mentioned, — and in the above year 
 one of the most remarkable of them all came to cast in his 
 lot with it : the Reverend James DeKoven. He was born 
 in Middletown, Connecticut, in the year 1831. As a child 
 he appears to have been naturally religious, and as his mind 
 developed he gave evidence of a rare combination of quali- 
 ties, — active imagination and acute intellect ; so that it has 
 been said that the temperaments of the poet and the lawyer 
 met in him. His course at Columbia College was remark- 
 ably successful ; he won a high reputation for character and 
 scholarship, and for readiness and skill in debate. Imme- 
 diately after taking his bachelor's degree, in the summer of 
 185 1, he entered the General Theological Seminary; and 
 there his zeal and talents, rapidly unfolding, made him a 
 marked man. He manifested his enthusiasm for teaching 
 by gathering a class of poor boys from the city streets. 
 They met every Sunday afternoon, and he succeeded in 
 holding their attention by interweaving tales of adventure 
 with his religious instruction. He became so deeply inter- 
 ested in this work that for a time he was inspired w^ith the 
 idea of forming an associate mission in one of the worst, 
 poorest, and most crowded districts of New York. Failing 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 167 
 
 in this, he turned his gaze westward. Having been gradu- 
 ated in theology in the early summer of 1854, he was or- 
 dered deacon by Bishop Williams of Connecticut, and, de- 
 clining two inviting offers at the East, accepted a position at 
 Nashotah as tutor in Ecclesiastical History, in connection 
 with mission work at the neighboring village of Delafield. 
 He speedily gave fresh evidence of his zeal for church edu- 
 cation by starting a parochial school at the latter place. In 
 1855 ^^ was advanced to the priesthood by Bishop Kemper, 
 in Nashotah chapel. 
 
 The same year, ground was broken for the first permanent 
 building at that seminary, — Bishop White Hall ; funds for 
 the erection of which had been collected by Bishops Kemper 
 and Upfold. Its name bore witness to Kemper's loving 
 memory of his old preceptor, and was doubtless designed to 
 vindicate Nashotah's loyalty to American tradition, and to 
 set at rest the floating rumors about Romanizing tendencies 
 at the school. 
 
 The bishop reached, this year, the extreme northwestern 
 point of his diocese, — the new settlement of Superior, where, 
 for a wonder, the church was first upon the ground and its 
 building the first place of public worship. While sailing upon 
 the lake of the same name, he was caught in a sudden and 
 violent storm ; his fellow-passengers were beside themselves 
 with fear, expecting every moment to go to the bottom ; 
 but the bishop exhibited the perfect self-possession of faith ; 
 his soul was calm in the consciousness that he was going 
 upon God's work, and in the midst of a fearful commotion 
 of the elements he was not afraid. 
 
 There is little to add, further, to the story of the church's 
 extension throughout Wisconsin. It was a period of healthy 
 growth, of the lengthening of cords and strengthening of 
 stakes. In 1856 the parishes at Fond du Lac and Water- 
 
168 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 town became self-supporting, and these and other similar 
 evidences of increasing strength make up the staple of 
 diocesan history for several years. In 1857 a movement 
 for the endowment of the episcopate was begun. 
 
 In 1859, upon the resignation of Dr. Park, James De- 
 Koven assumed the office of warden of Racine College, 
 leaving Nashotah House only to draw more tightly the 
 bonds between the two institutions ; and at Michaelmas of 
 the same year Bishop Kemper laid the corner stone of the 
 tasteful Gothic chapel at Nashotah. 
 
 Beyond the borders of Wisconsin, the bishop repeatedly 
 visited Marquette, in the northern peninsula pertaining to 
 Michigan ; and his work in Minnesota during this lustrum 
 corresponded to that in Iowa in the preceding one. He 
 also visited Kansas ; his solicitude for the spiritual interests 
 of that territory was, no doubt, what determined him not 
 yet to resign his missionary jurisdiction. The gaze of the 
 whole country was turned upon Kansas ; the bill, passed by 
 congress in 1854, to organize it and Nebraska into territo- 
 ries, threw them both into the political arena to be scrambled 
 for by free soil and slavery partisans ; and the following year 
 saw a prelude to the civil war upon the prairies of Kansas. 
 
 The winter of 1855-56 was very severe, and the suffer- 
 ings of destitute settlers, in that time of border warfare, 
 beggar description. From both territories came appeals, 
 that winter, for the ministrations of missionaries of the 
 church ; and the cry from bleeding Kansas wrung the heart 
 of a noble clergyman of Connecticut, the Reverend Hiram 
 Stone. As soon as his resolution to exchange his pleasant 
 parish at Essex for the toils of a missionary in the agitated 
 territory became known, and he was accepted by the mis- 
 sionary bishop, St. Paul's parish. New Haven, volunteered 
 to provide his support. So great was the confusion and so 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 169 
 
 hot the strife upon the border, that Bishop Kemper directed 
 him to remain awhile in Wisconsin, until he himself could 
 reconnoitre. In July, 1856, the bishop set forth, was 
 joined by Bishop Lee at Des Moines, and together they 
 traveled to Council Bluffs, crossed the Missouri river, and 
 trod for the first time the soil of Nebraska. Omaha was 
 then a canvas city; it had not reached its second anni- 
 versary, yet it numbered considerably over a thousand souls, 
 who found shelter in booths and tents. The first service of 
 the church there, conducted by both the bishops, was 
 attended by a throng of people ; Bishop Lee preached, and 
 afterward Bishop Kemper administered the communion to 
 six persons. He then moved southward, visiting Bellevue 
 and Florence, where, as well as at Nebraska City, he 
 secured lots for church building, and entered Kansas, 
 which he had not seen for eighteen years. He preached at 
 Doniphan and Fort Leavenworth, and at the latter post 
 confirmed an officer and administered the Holy Eucharist. 
 He held service at the neighboring Leavenworth City, and 
 at Lecompton (then the seat of the territorial government) 
 baptized an infant. At Atchison he secured two lots for the 
 church. Beside these points, he visited Palmetto, Topeka, 
 Brownsville, Lawrence, (where there were as yet no church 
 people to be found), and Council City, where he read both 
 morning and evening prayer, preaching at both services, and 
 confirming, in a log cabin : and only did not administer the 
 communion because no wine could be obtained. Beside 
 these public and official duties of holding service, preaching, 
 and administering the sacraments, which he punctually per- 
 formed whenever opportunity offered, the bishop was also 
 often able to appear in the beautiful character, so congenial 
 to him, of a missionary pastor, consoling the bereaved, 
 visiting the sick and dying, and burying the dead. 
 
170 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 Wherever he went, he scrupulously avoided all reference 
 to the surrounding civil strife ; and this course won much 
 popular approval. 
 
 The summer was intensely hot, and through lack of fresh 
 and wholesome food the bishop contracted a prevalent com- 
 plaint known as "land scurvy." It was the first serious 
 breach in his health ; he was nearly sixty-seven years of age, 
 and was never afterward quite as well and strong as before ; 
 but that tour was the laying of the corner stone of the diocese 
 of Kansas. 
 
 Upon his return to Wisconsin, he directed Mr. Stone to 
 make Leavenworth his headquarters, and to itinerate thence. 
 For some time the congregation at that place worshipped in 
 a third-story room, which during the week was used for all 
 sorts of purposes, theatrical exhibitions included. The 
 town was growing rapidly, and rough and vicious characters 
 abounded. 
 
 In default of action by the general convention, the pre- 
 siding bishop, Brownell, recommended to Bishops Kemper 
 and Lee that they should give episcopal oversight to Kansas 
 and Nebraska respectively, their expenses to be defrayed by 
 the board of missions. In accordance with this understand- 
 ing, our hero again visited his appointed field in the spring 
 of 1857, and on the nth of May had the pleasure of laying 
 the corner stone of a church at Leavenworth, named for the 
 mother parish in New Haven, St. Paul's. He was much 
 enfeebled by the hardships of the tour. 
 
 1856 was a bubble year, in which money flowed freely, 
 and all manner of schemes for spending it were devised. 
 The church shared the stimulation of the sanguine business 
 world ; congregations began to build and repair churches, 
 and called rectors with promise of generous salaries ; and 
 even the missionary board, in novel and welcome contrast 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 171 
 
 with its customary monotony of patlietic appeal, expressed 
 its gratification at the offerings for the cause, which were 
 larger and more liberal, both from parishes and individuals, 
 than ever before. In the summer of 1857 the bubble burst ; 
 an abrupt stop was put to much railroad building and like 
 enterprises ; and the church suffered from the financial 
 depression, especially in the new states, with whose sanguine 
 spirit she had become imbued, and like which she had 
 embarked upon undertakings that now withered under the 
 sudden drought of capital. Many a church remained 
 unfinished, many a salary unpaid. But there is no ill with- 
 out its compensation ; loss and suffering brought men to 
 their senses, making them realize their dependence upon the 
 invisible ; and the year 1858 beheld one of the widest waves 
 of religious revival that ever swept over the land. All the 
 evangelical denominations made multitudes of converts, and 
 many accrued to the church, especially in the diocese of 
 Iowa, presided over by the evangelical Lee. The growth 
 of that diocese was phenomenal, — a threefold increase, more 
 or less, in only a little more than three years ! In the winter 
 of 1858 Bishop Lee could report twenty-five clergymen and 
 thirty parishes where, at his coming, there were eight and 
 twelve respectively. His episcopal fund, which started in 
 1854 with three thousand dollars subscribed by his eastern 
 friends, rolled up in three years to upward of thirty thousand. 
 The missionary at Des Moines offered a suggestion : that 
 rectors of eastern parishes should travel west and see the 
 condition and prospects of the church there, "instead of 
 spending so much time and money in going to Europe for 
 sight-seeing." He believed that the missionary cause would 
 be greatly promoted by such visits. Professor Francis 
 Wharton, of Kenyon College, made an evangelical expe- 
 dition into Iowa, in 1857, every^vhere distributing bibles, 
 
172 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 prayer-books, and publications of his school of religious 
 thought. 
 
 The progress of the church in Minnesota, if not as rapid 
 and striking, was healthy and steady. Here too the evan- 
 gelicals picketed their men, but did not succeed in securing 
 a majority. The careers of Breck, Wilcoxson and the 
 young Knickerbacker chiefly arrest attention. This lustrum 
 saw the failure of Breck' s work among the Indians, and the 
 luial discomfiture and downfall of his monastic ideal. He 
 marked, with many a melancholy shake of the head, how 
 his unmarried assistants "threatened love"; and before 
 long he himself succumbed. On the nth of August, 
 1855, he committed the grand betrayal, and was married to 
 Jane Maria Mills, (the missionary already referred to, in 
 one of his letters above quoted). So much for '-'the sys- 
 tem." The sale of ardent spirits to the Indians, which 
 went on unchecked by an indifferent or feeble government, 
 had exceedingly disheartening consequences. Under the 
 goad of strong drink, the Indian became, for the time being, 
 a maniac, and rushed headlong into all manner of sins and 
 crimes, so that it seemed as if in a moment a rum-seller could 
 level with the ground the painfully constructed fabric of 
 years of evangelizing and civilizing work. There was a 
 standing feud, moreover, between the Sioux and the Chippe- 
 was, among whom Breck had elected to labor ; and in the 
 year 1857 it rose to a pitch that neutralized the effect of all 
 his efforts, and rendered it impossible for him to remain in 
 that part of the territory. He accordingly retreated south- 
 ward, and started a fresh mission at Faribault, and in con- 
 nection with it a school which he named for the American 
 episcopal pioneer. Bishop Seabury. This he designed as 
 the basis of a theological seminary, — a plan which had to 
 encounter the opposition of his old-time colleague, Dr. 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 173 
 
 Adams, his successor at Nashotah, Dr. Cole, and even of 
 his bishop. These all held that Nashotah House was the 
 seminary of the whole northwest, and that no other institu- 
 tion of the kind was needed there. This disagreement 
 moved Breck to tears, but did not alter his opinion ; and in 
 the year 1858 he went east, to solicit funds for his school. 
 The tour revealed how deeply his career had stirred the 
 heart of the church, for it was like a triumphal progress in 
 which one ovation succeeded another. 
 
 The same year. Bishop Lee was absorbed in the task of 
 founding a college in his diocese, to be named for the patron 
 bishop of the evangelicals, — Griswold. It was located at 
 Davenport and incorporated in 1859. Kenyon, Kemper, 
 Jubilee, Racine, Griswold, — almost every western diocese 
 had its collegiate experiment in its salad days. 
 
 It was Timothy Wilcoxson who first pointed out the im- 
 portance of Faribault as a site for a mission. That faithful 
 and indefatigable itinerant sowed the seed of many a flour- 
 ishing parish in southern Minnesota. His central station 
 was at Hastings, where, after several years of effort, he was 
 rejoiced to have a small wooden church of Gothic design 
 ready for consecration by Bishop Kemper, by the name of 
 St. Luke's, in 1857. In accordance with his recommenda- 
 tion, a missionary was appointed for Winona that year ; 
 and in 1858 the Reverend Edward Randolph Welles came 
 from Western New York to make good proof of his ministry 
 at Red Wing. 
 
 In 1855, the missionary at the Falls of St. Anthony re- 
 ported that he had begun to hold evening services and that 
 he had secured a lot for a church at the rapidly growing 
 village of ISIinneapolis. A parish was organized there and 
 subscription toward a church building begun in the spring 
 of the following year, and in the summer the Reverend 
 
174 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 David Buel Knickerbacker, a native of New York state, 
 began his long and splendidly successful ministry in Minne- 
 apolis. He had just been graduated at the General Semi- 
 nary and ordered deacon by the bishop of New York. 
 Under the inspiration of his zealous cooperation the build- 
 ing of a place of worship progressed rapidly, and the com- 
 pleted fabric, of wood, in the Gothic style, was consecrated 
 by the missionary bishop, by the name of the Church of 
 Gethsemane, on the third Sunday in Advent. Only two 
 months after, the congregation made an offering for domes- 
 tic missions. In less than a year the number of communi- 
 cants increased from seven to fifty-three; the church was 
 filled to overflowing at every service ; and all indebtedness 
 was paid off. On a Sunday in July, 1857, the devoted 
 young rector was advanced to the priesthood, in his new 
 church, by Bishop Kemper. 
 
 Minnesota attained to statehood in 1858, but it was the 
 wake of the panic ; the current of immigration was checked, 
 and no money could be had to develop the resources of 
 the new state. The embryo diocese, however, continued 
 steadily to grow; there was, inevitably, much suffering 
 among the missionaries, yet more kept coming in, and there 
 were places for all ; by the end of the year there were 
 twenty clergymen connected with the diocese. The serious 
 spirit induced by the hard times contributed to the growth 
 of the church, as did also the rivalry of ecclesiastical parties 
 for the possession of the field. Bishop Kemper visited 
 Minnesota twice a year, as a rule; and in 1859 he presided 
 at a convention called to elect a diocesan bishop. Party 
 spirit ran high, but both sides could unite upon Henry 
 Benjamin Whipple, and he received the suffrages of the 
 convention. "The contest during the election," wrote 
 Kemper, "was an earnest one, conducted by men who in 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 175 
 
 the fear of God thought for themselves, who were uninflu- 
 enced by any worldly considerations, and determined to 
 elect one who, like themselves, possessed the pioneer spirit 
 of self-sacrifice for the love of Christ. . . . They will 
 soon, I trust in God, have in their midst, and for life, an 
 apostolic Bishop of their own unanimous and hearty choice, 
 and under whose administration, I believe, the Diocese will 
 flourish as a garden of the Lord." 
 
 The bishop was able to adhere to his resolution to visit 
 Kansas annually. He was there in November, 1858, — but 
 it was too late to accomplish much ; the autumn rains had 
 begun, and unusually heavy ones at that, and the roads 
 were impassable. The following summer he returned, and 
 visited every parish and mission. At Leavenworth he held 
 an ordination, at Wyandott consecrated a church, and at 
 these and several other places, — Lawrence, Lecompton, 
 Manhattan, — preached, confirmed, and administered the 
 communion. He visited Topeka, Junction City, Fort Riley, 
 Ossawattomie, Paola, Olathe and other points, preaching at 
 all. There were then nine clergymen in the territory, in- 
 cluding the chaplains at the forts, and at the request of the 
 majority he convoked and presided at an assembly that 
 proved to be the primary convention of the diocese. It 
 met at Wyandott in August, and in spite of the bishop's 
 dissuasives (he thought the step was premature, and his 
 forecast proved correct), formed a diocesan organization 
 and applied for admission to general convention. 
 
 There was great excitement, that year, over the discov- 
 ery of gold in what was then the western part of the terri- 
 tory of Kansas, known as "the Pike's Peak country," and 
 thousands of adventurers poured into that desolate region. 
 
 And now at last the time had come for our noble mission- 
 ary to put off his harness ; increasing years and failing 
 
176 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 Strength warned him that he must transmit to younger 
 shoulders the care of all his remaining churches beyond the 
 Mississippi, — that he must leave it to younger men, in 
 future time, to enter the vast regions that stretched away 
 northwestward and south westward, far beyond the utmost 
 bound of his original jurisdiction. In October, 1859, 
 one of the most interesting meetings of general con- 
 vention that were ever held took place in Rich- 
 mond, Virginia ; and there the bishop-elect of Minnesota 
 was consecrated by Bishop Kemper, assisted by Bishops 
 Cobbs, Whitehouse, Lee, and others. There too our hero 
 rendered his last report, and, with a parting plea for the 
 Indian work, for " Dacotah " and the population about 
 Pike's Peak, laid down his charge in the following words : 
 
 " I now, with deep emotion, tender to the Church my 
 resignation of the office of Missionary Bishop, which, un- 
 sought for and entirely unexpected, was conferred upon me 
 twenty-four years ago. Blessed with health, and cheered 
 by the conviction of duty, I have been enabled to travel at 
 all seasons through Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa and 
 Minnesota, and partly through Kansas and Nebraska. 
 
 " My days must soon be numbered, for in less than three 
 months I will be seventy years old. As age advances, I 
 trust I have an increasing love for our Divine Master, and 
 that Church for which he shed his most precious blood." 
 
 The grand result of that quarter of a century of labor 
 was thus summarized by the committee on domestic mis- 
 sions : 
 
 " When Bishop Kemper was appointed Missionary Bishop, 
 in 1835, with jurisdiction over Missouri, Indiana, Wiscon- 
 sin, and Iowa, neither of which was an organized Diocese, 
 there was but one of our clergy and one church in Missouri, 
 one clergyman and one church in Indiana, and neither church 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 177 
 
 nor clergyman in Wisconsin or Iowa. Twenty-four years 
 have passed away, and by God's blessing on the Church, he 
 now sees Missouri a Diocese, with its Bishop and twenty- 
 seven clergy ; Indiana a Diocese, with its Bishop and twenty- 
 five clergy ; Wisconsin, his own Diocese, with fifty-five 
 clergy ; Iowa a Diocese, with its Bishop and thirty-one 
 clergy ; Minnesota an organized Diocese, with twenty clergy ; 
 Kansas but just organized as a Diocese, with ten clergy ; 
 and the territory of Nebraska, not yet organized as a Dio- 
 cese, with four clergy ; in all six Dioceses, where he began 
 with none, and one hundred and seventy-two clergymen 
 where he was at first sustained by only two." 
 
 It remained for general convention to make provision for 
 the missionary remainder of Kemper's old jurisdiction, 
 which was now extended to cover the enormous tract of 
 country, boundless plain " and towering mountain range, 
 comprised to-day in the states and territories of Nebraska, 
 North and South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, 
 Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona, and presumably 
 Nevada, unless that was in Bishop Kip's charge, — alto- 
 gether a diocese of almost a million square miles ! Cer- 
 tainly, it was a day of magnificent distances. This stu- 
 pendous charge was put upon the shoulders of Joseph 
 Cruikshank Talbot, who by his energy, ability, and zeal, and 
 especially by his power to make himself all things to all 
 men, seemed to be marked for it both by nature and grace. 
 He was consecrated in his parish church, Indianapolis, on 
 the 15th of February, 1S60, by Bishop Kemper, assisted 
 by Bishops Hawks, Upfold, and others. In picturesque al- 
 lusion to the fact that his jurisdiction embraced all of the 
 territory of the United States that was not included in that 
 
178 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 of any other bishop, Talbot used laughingly to speak of 
 himself as the " Bishop of All Out-Doors." 
 
 He lost no time before brushing the eastern fringe of his 
 vast domain, paying a visitation to Nebraska and Dakota, 
 and planning a long journey overland, by military posts like 
 Fort Laramie, to Salt Lake, hoping to visit Pike's Peak 
 on his return, — plans to which the outbreak of civil war 
 put an abrupt quietus. It is not generally known that the 
 wave of secession, after surging up and down the Potomac 
 and Ohio valleys and across Missouri and Kansas, broke in 
 foam upon the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, In the 
 first year of the war a sharp struggle secured Colorado to the 
 union, but its rich mineral deposits made it so desirable for 
 the Confederacy that bodies of armed men from Texas 
 made repeated raids into it, keeping everything in a state of 
 commotion, and exciting the Indians by the news that their 
 great white father was no longer at Washington but at Rich- 
 mond. The petty chief at the old wigwam had lost his power, 
 they said, and his medicine was of no good. In spite of such 
 disturbances, or taking advantage of a temporary respite 
 from them, Talbot set out in 1863 upon a tremendous tour, 
 that amounted to seven thousand miles, through Colorado, 
 New Mexico, Utah and Nevada. Thousands of British 
 converts to Mormonism crossed the plains that year, " firm 
 in the faith of their abominable heresy. All seemed child- 
 like and deeply imbued with religious veneration," testified 
 the missionary at Omaha, who beheld them pass: "I have 
 never yet conversed with a lay Mormon whom I believed to 
 be a hypocrite." No mission of the church could be 
 started in Utah ; no street or field preaching was allowed 
 therein, and no house could be hired for service in Salt 
 Lake City, — which outwardly, said Talbot, " is the most 
 moral, orderly, and quiet city I have ever seen." No 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 179 
 
 saloon, gambling den or brothel existed in that community 
 of fifteen thousand souls, — "yet its inner life," went on the 
 same remarkable witness, " is most shocking to the Chris- 
 tian sense. Polygamy, open, unblushing, and defiant, ex- 
 ists in Utah." In 1864, the border and Indian troubles 
 reached their climax ; parties of emigrants were massacred 
 by the savages, their bodies horribly mutilated, and their 
 bones left to bleach upon the plains of Colorado, Kansas, 
 and Nebraska. 
 
 There was civil war meantime in the diocese of Illinois. 
 Too many biographers yield to the temptation to produce 
 " edifying " lives by the suppression of truth, by smoothing 
 out every wrinkle ; there prevails in this species of writing 
 an effeminate shrinking from plain facts, a tendency to gloss 
 them over ; important controversies are hushed up by side- 
 long reference to "certain difficulties." But it cannot be 
 that bishops, priests, and prominent laymen would indulge 
 in controversies if it were wrong to do so ; how then can it 
 be wrong to recount them ? If it were wrong, why did they 
 engage in them ? It is becoming less and less advisable or 
 possible for biographers to commit these sins of omission ; 
 people will not rest content until all " difficulties " have been 
 sifted to the bottom. They have an ineradicable suspicion 
 that there must be something the matter with a man Avho is 
 always giving and taking offence, who is always in hot water, 
 and only extricates himself from one controversy to plunge into 
 another. Such a career, they instinctively feel, is an index 
 to a spirit of self-seeking, whether what is sought be power 
 or money. Bishop Whitehouse repeated in Illinois much of 
 the troublous experience of his predecessor there and in 
 Ohio ; and one cannot but believe that there was something 
 wrong in the temper or methods of both bishops as well as 
 in the temper of their dioceses. By the year i860 the feel- 
 
180 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 ing against Whitehouse had reached its height ; he came 
 nearer than he reaUzed to adding one more to the Hst of 
 episcopal trials that make the church history of that genera- 
 tion painful reading. 
 
 It will be remembered that early in his episcopate he had 
 contracted for certain lots of land for a cathedral church 
 and episcopal residence, in Chicago. After only two years, 
 the lots had so increased in value (they were on the south- 
 east corner of Wabash avenue and Jackson street) that the 
 original owner refused tender of payment for them, openly 
 alleging said rise in value as his reason for so doing. 
 Meantime the nature of the city's growth in that direction, 
 rendering them less suitable for his purpose, disposed the 
 bishop to effect some compromise, — against which the stand- 
 ing committee of the diocese put itself on record. Some 
 years later, the deadlock still continuing, all the clergy of 
 Chicago advised a compromise, to forefend the aggravation 
 of litigation. With this land controversy was connected 
 that other one over the bishop's non-residence; and by 1859 
 that had become so bitter that the general convention took 
 cognizance of it, and resolved that bishops should live in 
 their dioceses. In February, i860, accordingly, Whitehouse 
 leased a domicile in Chicago ; in April following, he sold 
 his home of sixteen years in New York ; and in June agreed 
 to annul the long-standing contract for his Chicago property, 
 and to reconvey it to the former owner in exchange for six 
 thousand dollars. This is the famous " compromise tran- 
 saction," which raised a storm that shook his episcopal 
 throne. He was accused of sacrificing the interests of the 
 diocese; his course, it was murmured, was " open to mis- 
 construction " ("evil construction," he retorted); he was 
 suspected of diverting trust funds to his own use. He be- 
 came so accustomed, he said, to "scurrilous and agitating 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 181 
 
 articles in the secular and religious press," that he ceased to 
 pay attention to them. A prominent layman named Ker- 
 foot issued a pamphlet in which he charged the bishop with 
 a "tendency to close framing of bargains and contracts, — a 
 shrewdness singular in ecclesiastics." His plan for a cathe- 
 dral failed, the pamphleteer averred, because men detected 
 a second thought, some financial scheme or lust of power, 
 working in his mind ; and our " social-ecclesiastical system " 
 has been aggravated by his non-residence. A noticeable de- 
 cline of prosperity at Jubilee College was attributed to his 
 indifference ; yet more, it was alleged tliat the diocese itself 
 was in a stationary or backward condition ; and on the floor 
 of convention a member explained that contributions to dio- 
 cesan missions had fallen off because of "non -residence," 
 and might be expected to cease altogether owing to the 
 odium of "the compromise transaction." The bishop ac- 
 cordingly had to "explain and vindicate " his course before 
 his convention ; a committee of inquiry was actually pro- 
 posed ; and he prepared a protest against such inquiry as an 
 infringement of his rights as an individual and his privilege 
 as a bishop. The compromise was a "personal transac- 
 tion," and he solemnly protested against any interference 
 with the trust in his charge and all attempts to coerce him 
 to abnegate his full right. He feared, he said, that "fac- 
 tious objects" were involved, and he gave warning that 
 nothing should overbear his " inflexible sense of right and 
 duty." In view of the allegations of diocesan deteriora- 
 tion and missionary decline, he concluded a pamphlet that 
 he published in September with a vindication of the diocese 
 in general at the expense of the Chicago churches ; the 
 diocese had done its duty nobly and given evidence of 
 growth and strength, but in the nine churches of its chief 
 city only seventy-six souls were confirmed and only one 
 
182 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 hundred and eighty-nine dollars contributed to diocesan 
 missions in the year i859-'6o : " if there has been any suf- 
 fering or disappointment among the missionaries, I have to 
 say, frankly but kindly, the Chicago clergymen are respon- 
 sible." 
 
 Here were all the materials for an inflammable pamphlet 
 war. The Chicago clergy were indignant at the invidious 
 attack, and caught up the gage of battle. " That the 
 Bishop should even seem to wrong or find fault with the 
 Chicago Churches or clergy, on the eve of his advent 
 amongst us, is mysterious enough ; but that he should give 
 such an erroneous tabular view, in face of data to which all 
 can refer, is far more mysterious. That he should seem to 
 disparage the work of any of his clergy is a sad fact ; that 
 he has misquoted the records in order to do so is a still sad- 
 der fact. . . . We are compelled to say, ' frankly but 
 kindly,' that the Bishop's statements are erroneous. 
 The ditninution was fiot in Chicago, as the Bishop states, but 
 in the Country. And on this subject we feel bound to say, 
 what we should not under other circumstances have felt our- 
 selves compelled to say, viz : That tlie Confirmations in 
 Chicago, though larger in proportion to the whole number 
 than last year, are very much limited, owing to the plainly 
 expressed unwillingness of many to receive the holy rite, or 
 allow their families to receive it, from the hands of our 
 Bishop. To this fact, most of us must bear reluctant testi- 
 mony. As to our Diocesan Missions, we can only hope that 
 this attempt of the Bishop to depreciate our efforts will not 
 add to the difficulty we already contend with, in persuading 
 our people to contribute to the support of the Missionaries 
 he nominates. One more suggestion : if the Bishop's state- 
 ments are erroneous in these relations, may they not be in 
 other particulars ? " 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 183 
 
 This document was signed by Robert H. Clarkson, Clin- 
 ton Locke, Charles Edward Cheney, and all the other rec- 
 tors of the city churches. The last named had only just 
 accepted a call to Christ Church; in his convention ad- 
 dress, this year, the bishop had borne witness that " during 
 the few months of his pastorship," Mr. Cheney had "ex- 
 erted an encouraging influence in that promising neighbor- 
 hood." Little did he dream of the troubles still in store 
 from that settlement ! 
 
 The clerical circular brought out an episcopal broadside, 
 under date of October lo, rebutting the charge of inaccu- 
 racy, pointing out that though the bishop had the right to 
 nominate missionaries, their appointment rested with the 
 board, and that actually, aware of " the strange jealousies in 
 which his lot was cast," the bishop had been so cautious 
 that he could not remember having ever absolutely nomi- 
 nated a single missionary. " One more suggestion : If the 
 Bishop's statements are correct in these relations, may they 
 not be in other particulars?" He condemned the "pas- 
 sionate tone" of the circular as "incongruous with the 
 ministry of Christ. . . . The mystery will change 
 sides, if the Clergy who have so peremptorily affirmed it as 
 not only existent, but done with malice prepense, should not 
 acknowledge their fault and return to a better mind." The 
 ground of the whole difficulty, he declared, had been "a 
 struggle between 'Congregationalism' and 'Episcopacy,' in 
 which the former had an old vantage ground, and kept the 
 Bishop at bay, thwarting in various ingenious modes the 
 fixing his seat in your city. . . . Now, however, this 
 has passed. Unassisted, he has provided himself a home, 
 and brings his family with him. I am not certain that you 
 are all pleased with this solution of the vexed question." 
 
 A friend and admirer of the bishop's now rushed into 
 
184 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 print in his defence in a circular with the sensational head- 
 ing, in large letters, "Episcopal Troubles in lUinois." "By 
 many it is well understood that the contest against his non- 
 residence has been waged for the sole purpose of perpetuat- 
 ing it. , . . The reason for his non-residence is simply 
 this : neither the diocese, nor Chicago, nor any committee, 
 has ever made him a bona fide offer of a residence, rent 
 free. . . . Had a suitable house been provided in 
 Chicago, Illinois would have had her Bishop and his fam- 
 ily ' At Home ' years ago, for they have ever been ready 
 and willing to come. But had the ' Bishop's Church ' been 
 erected, as it should have been, other edifices would have 
 remained on paper, and certain rectors been ' overshadowed 
 by his eminent abilities.' 
 
 ' ' It is, without controversy, the duty of every rector to 
 favor with his influence and means the educational institu- 
 tions of the diocese whose honors and emoluments he is 
 sharing ; but several of the rectors at Chicago are Trustees 
 of the College at Racine, and especially favor Nashotah ; 
 while others prefer Kenyon. This being so, the alms and 
 influence of Illinois being perverted to build up '\^'isconsin, 
 how can the low estate of Jubilee be charged to the neglect 
 of Bishop Whitehouse?" But by this time the hoarse, 
 rumor of approaching war began to drown the shrill notes 
 of this unseemly squabble. 
 
 To one who looks back from the present day, the great 
 strength of the democratic party in the lake states and Iowa, 
 up to the very eve of the war of secession, is cause for as- 
 tonishment. Up to i860, Douglas controlled majorities or 
 large minorities in all of them, and the election of Lincoln 
 in November of that year marked a political revolution the 
 cause of which is well expressed by the sentiment of the 
 Iowa legislature : That the state was bound to maintain the 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 185 
 
 union, which, like her rivers, should be inseparable, by 
 every means in her power. Two constraining motives were 
 adduced for this resolution : that otherwise the mouth of 
 the Mississippi would pass under the control of an alien 
 power, and that the dangerous principle of secession would 
 be established. If at any time the eastern states were to 
 follow the example of the southern, those in the midland 
 would be left without free communication with the sea. 
 Furthermore, secession removed no cause of war ; slavery, 
 with the difference of sentiment it engendered, would still 
 exist ; and in case of friction there would be no arbiter but 
 the sword. The only reason for separation was the triumph 
 of the republican party, which meant the exclusion of slavery 
 from the territories ; and how access to them would be at- 
 tained by separating from them, how the South would win 
 the point in dispute by seceding, was difficult to see. The 
 vista of the future loomed lurid and blood-red, and the 
 whole movement seemed one toward anarchy. 
 
 "The continued existence of slavery," said Governor 
 Robinson of Kansas, "according to its own partisans, re- 
 quires the destruction of the union. New guarantees are 
 demanded, on threat of secession ; the time has come, 
 therefore, for the destruction of slavery." He was among 
 the first to see this so clearly and to express it so forcibly. 
 Kansas became a state in January, 1861 ; and in the ensu- 
 ing four years' struggle contributed more men, in proportion 
 to her population, than any other state in the union, to put 
 down secession and slavery. Those were years of confu- 
 sion, incessant alarm, and guerilla warfare upon the border; 
 the most shocking event was the surprise of Lawrence by a 
 body of Missourians in August, 1863, the massacre of nearly 
 two hundred of its inhabitants, and the burning of the town. 
 
 The firing on Fort Sumter aroused the fiercest feeling in 
 
186 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 Iowa, and that state furnished sixteen regiments of infantry 
 and six of cavalry during the first year only of the war. 
 The feeling in Wisconsin also was at fever heat ; companies 
 were formed in advance of demand by the general gov- 
 ernment; camps were established at Milwaukee, Madison, 
 Fond du Lac, and Racine; and fully half of the voting 
 population of the state served in the war. Minnesota like- 
 wise was stripped of men and arms, — and this was the signal 
 for a terrible outbreak of the Sioux Indians ; their medicine 
 men predicted that they would reoccupy their ancient lands, 
 which would be cleared of the pale-faces ; and in six hours, 
 on the 1 8th of August, 1862, eight hundred whites were 
 slaughtered. By the panic that ensued, Dakota and the 
 northwestern portion of Minnesota were practically depopu- 
 lated, and immigration was checked by the struggle. Bishop 
 Whipple charged the government with creating among the 
 Indians a worse condition, by its system of dealing with 
 them, than slavery bred among the negroes. It is cheering 
 to know that many settlers were saved by Christian Indians, 
 who gave warning of threatened raids. 
 
 In July, 1863, a confederate force threatened southern 
 Indiana, — and sixty-five thousand men rose, at the call of 
 Governor Morton, to defend their state. 
 
 When the great conflict was over, the sentiment of the 
 West was well summed up in the words of a distinguished 
 lowan, to the effect that "Iowa is not relentless, — but she 
 does ask that there shall be no confusion in our national 
 morality between right and wrong : between the effort to 
 destroy our national life and that to preserve it, — between 
 those who fought to break up the union and those who died 
 to save it." 
 
 It is rather remarkable that the low-church bishops were 
 most outspoken in loyalty to the union. Bishop Mcllvaine 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 187 
 
 of Ohio was the most pronounced of all ; he even served the 
 government on a semi-diplomatic mission to England, to 
 seek to influence the sentiment of churchmen there. To 
 many it seemed as though his zeal impelled him into a con- 
 fusion of politics and religion. "Our duty is plain," said 
 Bishop Lee of Iowa: "it is to uphold the constitution and 
 the civil authority." On the eve of the struggle, he issued 
 the following prayer for use throughout his diocese : 
 
 " O most mighty God and merciful Father, whose wise 
 and righteous Providence governeth all things in heaven and 
 on earth : save and deliver us, we humbly beseech Thee, 
 from the dangers to which, by our sins, we are exposed, and 
 let unity, peace and concord prevail throughout our land. 
 Spare Thy people, good Lord, spare them, and let not Thy 
 heritage be brought to confusion. Preserve our nation from 
 desolating judgments, from discord and contention. May 
 we be a united and happy people, showing forth Thy praise 
 and dwelling securely under the shadow of Thy wings. 
 Pardon our manifold transgressions, and deliver us from 
 every evil ; or if Thou shouldest visit us in judgment, 
 remember mercy ; through Jesus Christ, our only Mediator 
 and Redeemer." 
 
 Bishop Lee then turned aside to lay this wreath upon the 
 grave of Nicholas Hamner Cobbs : " The gentle and loving 
 Bishop of Alabama was taken from the evil to come. His 
 beautiful life is a precious legacy to the Church and to the 
 world." 
 
 He criticised the action of the southern dioceses, in form- 
 ing an independent organization, as hasty, irregular, un- 
 canonical and schismatical ; ordinances of secession, he 
 maintained, were not sufficient to justify ecclesiastical 
 separation, for a revolution must be crowned with success 
 before there can be a new nation and a national church. 
 
188 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 As the war went on, he noticed that one of its injurious 
 effects was to decrease the number of appHcants for con- 
 firmation. 
 
 Bishop Whitehouse had his tribute to pay to the saintly 
 Cobbs, as one in whom "gentleness and firmness, sim- 
 plicity and power, zeal and discretion, strength and 
 humility, wisdom and innocence," were beautifully com- 
 bined, — a remarkably penetrating and accurate judgment. 
 On the death of Bishop Otey he remarked : " the diptych 
 of American episcopacy is full of honorable renown." 
 
 The relations of the pioneer bishops of the South and West 
 were very friendly ; what Kemper and Otey were to each 
 other has long since been told, and both Kemper and Upfold 
 felt for Bishop Elliott the highest admiration and regard. 
 
 Whitehouse regarded the war as a divine chastisement of 
 a spiritually adulterous people ; we are a corrupt generation, 
 — but, he added, "the government must be sustained." 
 Political separation illustrates the evil of heresy and schism. 
 " Intense individualism, despising of government, mockery 
 of prescriptive right, insubordination, disbelief in divine 
 appointments, are working their fearful consequences; the 
 discipline of this trial may bring about an improvement." 
 But he observed, as the war went on, that it was not work- 
 ing righteousness. There was a noticeable decline of piety, 
 reverence, and integrity ; infidelity was on the increase, or 
 was at least more open. Baser elements of society were 
 brought to the surface ; large fortunes were made through 
 the war ; and there was much apparent temporal prosperity, 
 — but beneath all was a disturbing sense of suspicion and 
 insecurity. The tenure of ministers was more uncertain, 
 and congregations divided upon political lines. 
 
 After the battle of Gettysburg and the capture of Vicks- 
 burg he prepared this prayer : 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 189 
 
 '< O Lord God of our salvation, we bless thy holy Name 
 that it hath pleased Thee to hearken to the prayers of an 
 afflicted people, and to grant us such present help as causeth 
 us to hope for thy full deliverance from our miserable con- 
 fusions. . . . May thy goodness lead us to repentance 
 and amendment of life. . . . Take away all ignorance, 
 hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word, and so fetch 
 home, blessed Lord, those who have gone out from us, that 
 we may again become one in the goodly heritage which 
 Thou gavest to our Fathers. 
 
 " Do, O Lord, for our country and for us all what 
 seemeth to Thee good in thy love and our need. . . . 
 Visit with thy consolation the sick, the wounded, the 
 prisoner, the poor and distressed, and all deprived of 
 relatives and friends. Be the Father of the fatherless, the 
 God of the widow, and the solace of parents bereaved of 
 their children." 
 
 In the spirit of this petition, offerings for the sanitary work 
 of the army were constantly made in the churches of Illinois. 
 
 Upon the proclamation of a national fast day, to be 
 observed on the last day of April, 1863, Upfold set forth 
 this special prayer, for use in Indiana : 
 
 "Almighty God, who dost command us to humble our- 
 selves under thy mighty hand, that Thou mayest exalt us in 
 due time ; we, thy unworthy servants, desire most humbly 
 to confess before Thee in this the time of sore affliction in 
 our land, how deeply as a nation we deserve thy wrath and 
 indignation. In the great calamities which have come upon 
 us we acknowledge thy righteous visitation, and bow down 
 our souls under the mighty hand of our holy and merciful 
 God and Father. Manifold are our sins and transgressions, 
 and the more sinful because of the abundance of our privi- 
 leges and mercies under thy providence and grace. In 
 
190 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 pride and living unto ourselves ; in covetousness and world - 
 liness of mind ; in self-sufficiency and self-dependence ; in 
 glorying in our own wisdom, riches, and strength, instead of 
 glorying only in Thee ; in making our boast of thy unmerited 
 blessings, as if our own might and wisdom had gotten them, 
 instead of acknowledging Thee in all, and seeking first thy 
 kingdom and righteousness ; in profaneness of speech and 
 ungodliness of life ; in polluting thy Sabbaths, and receiv- 
 ing in vain thy grace in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ ; 
 we acknowledge, O Lord, that as a nation and people we 
 have grievously sinned against thy divine Majesty, provok- 
 ing most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. 
 Righteousness belongeth unto Thee, but unto us confusion 
 of face. Because thy compassions have not failed, there- 
 fore we are not consumed. Make us earnestly to repent, 
 and heartily to be sorry for these our misdoings. . . 
 May those who seek the dismemberment of this our national 
 union, under which this people, by thy Providence, have 
 been so signally prospered and blessed, be convinced of 
 their error and restored to a better mind. Grant that all 
 bitterness and wrath and anger and malice may be put away 
 from them and from us, and that brotherly love and fellow- 
 ship may be mutually restored, and established among us to 
 all generations." 
 
 Bishop Hawks declared that the desolation wrought by 
 war was to be seen at its worst in a border diocese, espe- 
 cially, it seemed to him, in his own. The year i86i-'62, 
 he moaned, was the most sorrowful of his life, so far, freighted 
 with anxiety and care ; his country distracted, the church 
 of God desolate: "Missouri bleeds at every pore." He 
 noted strangely diverse effects of the conflict upon different 
 parishes : some were excited by it to feverish activity, others 
 were apathetic and languid. Some congregations were di- 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 191 
 
 vided, some completely scattered and extinguished. Con- 
 secrated buildings were used as barracks or otherwise vio- 
 lated. Many of the clergy left the distracted diocese, and 
 their places were not supplied ; young men went off to the 
 war, and there were no candidates for the ministry. He 
 lamented that, when hard and active work would have been 
 a relief to him, opportunity to make visitations was taken 
 away. He echoed Bishop Whittingham's sentiment : " We 
 have sinned in proud self-sufficiency and boasting compla- 
 cency in our institutions." God has been forgotten. Under 
 plea of "the pressure of the times," laymen cease to sup- 
 port public worship. 
 
 Bishop Hawks believed that churchmen were more con- 
 siderate toward their slaves than members of other Chris- 
 tian bodies were; and he defended the southern dioceses 
 against the charge of schism, which he distinguished as 
 separation from the catholic church, and not from a na- 
 tional organization. 
 
 The diocesan organization of Kansas proved to be imma- 
 ture. In i860, its clergy elected the Reverend Francis 
 McNeece Whittle, rector of St. Paul's Church, Louisville, 
 as their bishop, — but the laity did not concur. At a later 
 convention, the Reverend Heman Dyer of New York, Sec- 
 retary of the Evangelical Knowledge Society, was elected, 
 but declined the appointment. The troubled diocese then 
 put itself under the charge of the bishop of Iowa, who did 
 his duty by it faithfully. In the winter of 1861 he wrote 
 over four hundred letters in behalf of the sufferers from 
 famine in Kansas, and obtained from twenty dioceses more 
 than five thousand dollars, which sum was administered to 
 the most needy by the clergy. 
 
 Many parishioners of Trinity Church, Lawrence, were 
 slain in the massacre at that devoted town, in 1863, "by 
 
192 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 Quantrell and his band of fiends," as the rector bore wit- 
 ness. " The blood of our slaughtered brethren at Lawrence 
 is crying to heaven for vengeance," exclaimed Bishop Lee: 
 " May your homes escape the desolations of the destroyer." 
 He obtained aid from the East for the survivors. 
 
 Of seventeen parishes and missions of the church in Kan- 
 sas at the opening of the war, eight became defunct during 
 its course. 
 
 Equally deplorable was the effect of the great struggle 
 upon the church's educational institutions. The president 
 of Kenyon went to the war, and in two years the attendance 
 at that college had fallen off nearly fifty per cent. "Jubilee 
 College is struggling against fearful odds," said Whitehouse, 
 and he thought that its only hope of safety lay in a removal 
 to some city, preferably Chicago, which would solve the 
 problem of supplies, labor, boarding of students and visitors, 
 etc. "No inducement can be offered," he continued, 
 " strong enough to attract and hold in the centre of an iso- 
 lated domain, removed from all social excitement and con- 
 venience, a body of young men sufficiently large to supply 
 continuously the classes of a University." The theological 
 seminary, he maintained, ought by all means to be moved 
 to Chicago. Bishop Hawks' college at Palmyra declined, 
 and its property was sold ; pledges for Griswold College 
 were not paid ; Racine also was sorely tried, and but for the 
 heroic exertions of its warden would have failed. 
 
 In 1 86 1, Bishop Green of Mississippi recalled his candi- 
 dates for orders from Nashotah. Beside such decrease in 
 numbers the income of the seminary diminished and the 
 debt accumulated to such an extent that in the gloomy 
 spring of 1863 its faculty consented literally to go to grass, 
 — to relinquish all salary, and live upon the produce of the 
 school farm, if the students would stay and work it. They 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 193 
 
 had just expressed their readiness to attempt it, when Dr. 
 Cole received a letter that brought tears of relief and thank- 
 fulness to his eyes. It enclosed a draft for three thousand 
 dollars, with promise of another as large, from a friend in 
 the East who did not wish his name to be known, and who 
 gave as his reason for this gift, " the war." With praise to 
 God and gratitude to their unknown benefactor, professors 
 and students returned to their accustomed round of prayer 
 and study. 
 
 Bishop Kemper was heartbroken at the news of the bom- 
 bardment of Fort Sumter, but according to his principle of 
 reserve on such matters (and a man's principles crystallize 
 with advancing years), made no allusion to it, or to the 
 death of Cobbs, at the meeting of his convention immedi- 
 ately after. He charged its members to withdraw their 
 thoughts from the world and its transactions, and to delib- 
 erate on eternity. Excellent advice, — but being too nar- 
 rowly interpreted, his addresses in war-time are marked by 
 a tame, insipid, and exclusively local tone and interest at 
 which one chafes. Doubtless abstraction on such occasions 
 from worldly passions is right and necessary, but to ignore 
 emotions that every one is feeling, to maintain rigid 
 silence about matters of national life and death, and issues 
 that wander through eternity, seems weak, unnatural, and 
 even perverse. There is a better mean than the extremes 
 of Mcllvaine and Kemper. 
 
 The bishop's health all through these years was a cause of 
 anxiety to his family. He was subject to what his daughter 
 described as "lost turns," which came on with a vague 
 feeling and resulted in transient mental vacancy or loss of 
 consciousness. The attacks were not epileptic, apoplectic or 
 paralytic in their character, but were akin to vertigo ; the 
 first came on just after he had participated in Talbot's con- 
 
194 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 secration,— his eldest sister had for some time had similar 
 seizures ; and naturally his family was anxious every time 
 that he started upon a visitation. Strange to say, these at- 
 tacks ceased in 1865, so that his health was poorest just 
 during the war. Yet in the spring of 1862 he gave an ac- 
 count of himself in a letter to a lady of Philadelphia that 
 abounds in the blitheness that was his charm. He explains 
 that his time is taken up with small and feeble parishes, to 
 each of which he seeks to give a Sunday, and that his cor- 
 respondence is steadily increasing, so that he is as busy as a 
 bee. Hence he expects indulgence : " I know you will par- 
 don a youngster of seventy-three. Ask me all imaginable 
 questions concerning Christ Church, Philadelphia, during 
 the early years of my ministry, and I will answer them with 
 the greatest pleasure. ... If you will have my photo- 
 graph—I have not one by me to enclose,— my children con- 
 sider the one in which I am unrobed the best. 
 
 " I am off in the morning for Fond du Lac on Lake Win- 
 nebago, and have the prospect of a ride on Monday over — 
 no, through — very muddy roads in an old-fashioned stage. 
 But these advantages are not hardships. I am blest with 
 almost uniform health, and I now require, after the experi- 
 ence of twenty-seven years, much traveling and a little 
 roughness to keep me cheerful and happy. Can there be a 
 greater privilege than to be enabled to delight in doing the 
 duty of that state of life to which our blessed Lord has 
 called us ? 
 
 "I am now writing by candles and without spectacles, — 
 they were put aside six years since. I would be ashamed 
 of being so egotistic had you not called me out." 
 
 In the autumn of the same year he wrote to his old friend 
 and fellow-worker, Dr. Samuel Roosevelt Johnson, address- 
 ing him by his pet diminutive : 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 195 
 
 " My dearest Rosey: 
 
 "Your letter of 1 2th July ought to have beenanswered, butas it 
 did not require immediate attention, and I was at the time very busy 
 in visiting parishes — and was not as I used to be — for considerable 
 prostration came over me both in mind and body — so far indeed that I 
 began then and have ever since acknowledged myself an old man — I 
 laid by your letter, and soon after started on a tramp which was quite 
 equal to days of old. After many most uncomfortable days of deten- 
 tion I arrived in sight of Superior City, now a very decaying place. 
 I say in sight, for when two miles off the captain of the Planet de- 
 clared the storm was too great to permit him to go into the harbor. 
 So a few of us young fellows went down by a rope into the jolly boat 
 in the midst of a heavy rain — pushed off in the utmost confusion of 
 baggage and passengers — after a while got out some oars — and with 
 waves dashing over us and occasionally aground, were finally landed 
 in safety. When my work there was done — and I confirmed ten — I 
 had the choice of waiting eleven days for the boat — or coming home 
 by land. Four days in most primitive vehicles brought us to St. Paul 
 in the midst of the Indian excitement. Think of four in a room, two 
 in a bed — and live stock to boot ! Was it not equal to the best days 
 of Hoosierdom ? But I won't detain you any longer. I reached 
 home wonderfully renovated — and every night I was absent I slept 
 well. ... 
 
 " While I embrace with gratitude and much pleasure your very kind in- 
 vitation, I cannot but think there is some doubt about my coming on. 
 The rebels may have Philadelphia and even New York in possession 
 by that time — or I may before starting have a forgetfulness which has 
 attacked me two or three times within as many years, and which tho' 
 soon over, makes my children anxious — and should it return would 
 doubtless induce them to persuade me to stay at home." 
 
 A church paper called "The North-Westem Church" 
 was started at this time, for the dioceses west of Ohio. It 
 was adopted by the diocese of Wisconsin as its organ, and 
 was recommended by Bishop Whitehouse as evincing " abil- 
 ity and right spirit." 
 
 Five of Kemper's clergy were now serving as chaplains in 
 
196 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 the army, yet still we remark an obstinate closing of his lips 
 about the war. The year 1863 went by, with its dejecting 
 reverses and thrilling successes, and still he issued no spe- 
 cial prayer for use in his diocese, holding that the book of 
 common prayer made sufficient provision. From his public 
 utterances thus far one would never imagine that his coun- 
 try was engaged in a struggle for existence, the most tre- 
 mendous of recent times, but would draw the conclusion 
 that he and his clergy were ecclesiastical lotus-eaters, medi- 
 tating only the purchase of lots for parsonages and cemeter- 
 ies, — that Wisconsin was an arbor deeply pleached, where 
 the fiercest storms of the outer world died away in a merely 
 unusual rustling of leaves. But after the war had gone on 
 for three years he was pulled out of his shrinking policy ; 
 his ignoring position proved untenable. " The war has oc- 
 cupied our prime attention," he admitted, in 1864: "Indi- 
 viduals and families have removed. Some parishes are all 
 but destroyed, and want of laborers is painfully evident. 
 Yet some churchmen are growing rich. We are living in 
 fearful and trying times ; there are few but have relatives 
 and friends in our country's service. Yet we are pledged 
 in the house of God to draw our minds from worldly sub- 
 jects, and especially from whatever may be rightly called 
 mere politics." 
 
 One cannot but feel that under this jealous seclusion of 
 the spiritual, this scrupulous separation of ecclesiastical from 
 national interests, there lay that mistaken and injurious 
 contempt of political life and inadequate conception of its 
 significance that give point to the sneer of one who was 
 asked what Episcopalians believe. " I can't tell you 
 what they believe," he replied, " but I can tell you what 
 they don't believe in : they don't believe in religion and 
 politics." 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 197 
 
 Now at last the bishop produced a special prayer, which 
 is certainly a model of its kind : 
 
 "O God, who art the blessed and only Potentate, the 
 King of kings and Lord of lords, the Almighty Ruler of 
 Nations, we bless and magnify Thy glorious Name for all 
 the mercies and blessings which Thou hast bestowed upon 
 us even in this period of our sorrow and humiliation. We 
 render Thee our grateful thanks that peace and order have 
 been preserved in this portion of our land, that honest labor 
 has been plenteously rewarded, and that Thy Church has 
 been permitted to serve Thee in all godly quietness. En- 
 able us to show our thankfulness to Thee for these and all 
 Thy other mercies by sincere repentance of the sins which 
 have justly brought Thy chastening hand upon us, by loving, 
 active sympathy for all in trouble and affliction, by earnest 
 efforts and hearty prayers for the restoration of the 
 unity, peace and welfare of our beloved country, and 
 by the renewed devotion of ourselves to Thee in an 
 humble, holy and obedient walking all our days ; through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with the Father and the 
 Holy Spirit be all honor and glory, world without end. 
 Amen." 
 
 The manuscript of the above is singularly plain, though 
 colorless, one might almost say characterless ; the letters 
 a, c, e, i, m, n, o, r, s, u, w, are often indistinguishable 
 in it, the looped letters being often left open at the top, 
 and all degenerating into a series of short up and down 
 strokes. 
 
 Li the autumn he wrote again to Dr. Johnson, at the 
 General Theological Seminary. We note a characteristic 
 criticism of the bishop of Maryland, and a delightfully 
 irreverent reference to the bishop of Indiana (whose disease 
 was the gout) : 
 
198 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 " DeLAFIELD, Wis'N, 22d Oct., '64. 
 
 " My own dear Rosey : 
 
 " Among other missionaries I have one up the Mississippi on the 
 borders of Minnesota. It was my intention as usual to visit him this 
 spring, but the river was so low I determined to wait for more water. 
 Finding that apparently I would wait in vain, I gave notice of my 
 coming, but the P. O. department proved to be so treacherous and 
 uncertain that my voyage was delayed many weeks, and I have only 
 now returned after all but three weeks' wandering. Here among 
 many others, I find your favor. . . . 
 
 " There was a probability of my being in New York about this 
 time to attend the semi-centennial meeting of one of your societies, 
 but my detention north prevented — besides, the invitation was not 
 quite sufficiently cordial and urging. Next year I shall hope, D. v., 
 to be in both the great cities once more and for the last time, in all 
 probability. 
 
 " Only think ! Three of our few young men at Nashotah are 
 drafted ! As we cannot pay for them we contemplate if possible ad- 
 mitting them to orders, as they are all seniors. 
 
 " I believe if Mr. Baker would come here at once he could obtain 
 most useful employment. Mineral Point, Watertown, and Manitowoc 
 are vacant, besides Christ Church in Janesville ; and if he wished to 
 try his hand at missionating I could give him a choice of two or three 
 stations. 
 
 " Dr. Adams says that Bishop Whittingham should never have 
 left the Seminary. All his friends will doubtless rejoice when he 
 returns. He threw himself into the pohtical concerns of Maryland 
 with the simplicity and thoughtlessness of a child. 
 
 " I occasionally hear of and see Uncle George. He is brilliant, 
 cross and diseased ; and I fear does not receive that respect from the 
 clergy of his diocese he so richly deserves. 
 
 " I am perhaps as busy as ever ; and altho' I do not do as much as 
 I once did, I have infinite cause for gratitude and praise for the health 
 I enjoy and my almost entire freedom from pain. 
 
 " Believe me, most truly and affly. and forever yours, 
 
 " Jackson Kemper." 
 
 It must not be supposed that the church in the West was 
 stationary or retrogressive throughout the war. It enjoyed 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 199 
 
 many compensating advantages, chief of which, counter- 
 balancing indeed all the evils wrought by the conflict, was 
 the abatement of ancient prejudices among the population. 
 Division along political lines, superseding for the time all 
 other divisions, had a wholesome effect, religiously, in 
 taking men's minds off from points of ecclesiastical differ- 
 ence that had been enormously exaggerated by having 
 long been favorite subjects of feverish controversy. The 
 war put a quietus upon that suspicion and dislike of the 
 church as English, that was an inheritance from revolution- 
 ary days. Bishop Upfold's witness, in his convention ad- 
 dress of 1863, is to the point : 
 
 " With us all is sober prose and hard labor. Yet we are 
 not without some evidences of being out of the woods — at 
 least of beginning to emerge. Since my entrance on the 
 Episcopate, thirteen and a half years ago, sixteen churches 
 have been erected, paid for, and consecrated, several of 
 them elegant and substantial structures of brick or stone, 
 and three others are awaiting consecration. 
 
 "The strong prejudices against our communion, more 
 prevalent in Indiana than perhaps most western states, ap- 
 pear to be on the wane," — and he adduced the fact that of 
 late he had remarked large congregations, largely composed 
 of strangers, during his visitations, — a thing unseen and un- 
 heard of at the beginning of his episcopate, — affording 
 opportunities to make the evangelical doctrines and impress- 
 ive services of the church better known. 
 
 Upfold published this year a " Manual of Devotions," 
 modeled upon that of Henry Thornton of Clapham, with 
 which he had lately become acquainted and with the " fervor 
 and evangelical spirit " of which he was greatly delighted, — 
 as that was modeled on the book of common prayer. 
 
 The war had a benign effect in distracting attention from 
 
200 AN APOSTLE OF THE AVESTERN CHURCH 
 
 the episcopo-clerical feud in the agitated diocese of lUinois. 
 Frustrated in his plans for a grand edifice, Bishop White- 
 house began negotiations, in 1861, for the purchase of the 
 Church of the Atonement, on Washington street, Chicago, 
 which he converted into the Cathedral Church of Sts. 
 Peter and Paul. The year after, the cathedral organization 
 was completed by the appointment of four canons, and a 
 lay body, consisting of eight curators, to take charge of 
 temporal affairs. The treasurer was styled "bursar" ; the 
 title "guild" was introduced into American ecclesiastical 
 terminology; and a surpliced choir and dignified ritual 
 were introduced. In the episcopal address to convention in 
 1863, attention was called to the fact that "the Bishop's 
 Church" had been beautified; stained glass windows had 
 been set in its walls, polychrome decoration applied to walls 
 and ceiling, an exquisite snow-white font presented, — and 
 antiphonal chanting was the rule. 
 
 In this latter year. Dr. George David Cummins was re- 
 ceived into the diocese of Illinois and settled as rector of 
 Trinity Church, Chicago. He was born in Dela\Yare in 
 1822. His father was a member of the church, but his 
 mother and sisters were Methodists, and after graduation 
 from Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, in 1841, he became 
 a circuit rider in their communion. Taste for a liturgy at- 
 tracted him to the church, and late in the year 1845 he took 
 deacon's orders, in the evangelical diocese of Delaware. 
 He served successively as rector of churches in Norfolk, 
 Richmond, Washington, and Baltimore ; and received the 
 degree of doctor of divinity from Princeton College. On 
 coming to Chicago, he became a close friend of Dr. Clark- 
 son and Mr. Cheney. 
 
 In 1864, a committee of the same diocese brought into 
 convention a sensible report about Sunday-schools, pointing 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 201 
 
 out that their two chief weaknesses were lack of seconding 
 in the home, and of proper relation to the church through 
 her rectors. In every parish, the rector should be the head 
 of the Sunday-school, and should conduct a normal class 
 for teachers, — for there was great complaint that the teach- 
 ers themselves were not taught, and consequently their in- 
 struction suffered grievously in the mind of their pupils by 
 comparison with that given in the day-schools. There 
 should be better classification or grading, that advanced 
 scholars be not retarded by the dull and negligent ; and it 
 should be distinctly understood that the function of the 
 Sunday-school is to conduct its unbaptized members to bap- 
 tism, and the baptized to confirmation ; and that attendance 
 at its exercises should by no means be regarded as a substi- 
 tute for attendance upon the services of the church. 
 
 In his address, the same year. Bishop Whitehouse raised 
 a note of warning against the "licentious and rationalistic " 
 tendency of the volume entitled "Essays and Reviews": 
 the inspiration of the bible and everlasting punishment, he 
 said, are not matters of opinion ; and because in America 
 the Church is even more exposed than in England to the 
 "malaria of perverse science," he charged his clergy to 
 resist demoralization and to stand for the plenary inspiration 
 of the scriptures. 
 
 A school of religious thought had arisen in England that 
 found its philosophic ground in the doctrine of the divine 
 immanence in nature, and hence was regarded with sus- 
 picion, dislike, and dread by adherents of the transcendental 
 schools. It was undogmatic, and aimed to get at the spiritual 
 substance of religion rather than to dwell upon its phenomena, 
 — and hence was called hazy. Everywhere it found and 
 asserted natural and rational elements in religion, and 
 affirmed that the supernatural and natural are not different 
 
202 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 in kind, — and so was accused of pantheism. Its most 
 objectionable, concrete affirmation probably was, that every- 
 one is by nature a child of God ; which seemed to be in flat 
 contradiction to the catechism, and to undermine the accepted 
 view of the sacraments. It maintained strongly that there 
 was a human element in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, 
 and a divine element in the sacred books of other peoples, 
 and hence cultivated with ardor the new sciences of Biblical 
 criticism and comparative religion, — seeming to its elder 
 rivals to be merely leveling and destructive. Practically, it 
 sought to come in touch with the progress of culture and 
 society, to establish better relations with natural science and 
 philosophy, especially as represented by German thinkers, 
 and to come into better accord with the state and with this 
 present world, so as to be able to influence them. Inevitably, 
 it was charged with being of worldly complexion and mo- 
 tives, and its type of natural piety was turned into ridicule 
 as "muscular Christianity." Essentially and at its best, it 
 was simply a fresh exemplification of the quite natural and 
 also supernatural principle of growth and change in religion, 
 inevitable in the application of old truth to new conditions, 
 and perfectly consonant with scripture, the practice of the 
 church, and common sense. But as it was expounded in 
 " Essays and Reviews," it did undoubtedly appear to be of 
 purely critical, combative and destructive propensity. A 
 catena of sentences from the once famous volume will 
 illustrate what has been said : 
 
 "Thorough study of the Bible, the determination of the 
 limits of what we mean by its inspiration, and of the degree 
 of authority to be ascribed to the different books, must take 
 the lead of all other studies. The great force is the intellect. 
 We cannot encourage a remorseless criticism of Gentile 
 histories and escape its contagion when we approach Hebrew 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 203 
 
 annals. The essential strength of the religions of India, 
 Arabia, Hellas, and Latium lay in the elements of good 
 which they contained. Liberal criticism traces revelation 
 historically within the sphere of nature and humanity. 
 Confused thought and furious passions disfigure most of the 
 great Councils. Some reconsideration of the polemical 
 element in our Liturgy, as of the harder scholasticism in our 
 theology, would be the natural offspring of any age of 
 research in which Christianity was free. Mr. Darwin's 
 masterly volume on ' The Origin of Species ' must soon 
 bring about an entire revolution of opinion in favor of the 
 grand principle of the self-evolving powers of nature. An 
 alleged miracle is an object, not an evidence of faith. Sub- 
 scription to the Thirty-nine Articles should be given up : 
 stronger minds are reluctant to enter an order in which 
 intellect may not have free play. A national church is 
 properly an organ of the national life. The Bible contains 
 erroneous views of nature. Natural conscience questions 
 the eternity of hell torments. Interpret the Scriptures like 
 any other book." 
 
 Radical as these sentiments sounded when the book 
 appeared in i860, it is still difficult to understand, at the 
 present day, the frenzied panic they created. The bishop 
 of Oxford characterized the publication as a "lurid jet of 
 the great Antichrist " ; an address to the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, denouncing it, received the signatures of ten 
 thousand clergy ; and suits were brought against two of the 
 essayists. They were acquitted by the privy council, in 
 1864, of verbal contradiction to the Articles, were imme- 
 diately condemned by convocation, and excitement was at 
 its height, and spread to America. This year accordingly 
 is memorable as that of the introduction of the so-called 
 Broad Church movement into the American church. 
 
204 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 We have seen what Bishop Whitehouse thought of it. 
 Bishop Upfold also took the alarm, and charged his con- 
 vention as follows : 
 
 "We live in troublous times, requiring of us great 
 circumspection and care in our responsible calling. It is 
 the boast of many that this is an age of free thought and free 
 inquiry ; and some are disposed to make the most of this 
 assumed liberty of opinion and doctrine, and run it into 
 dangerous licentiousness. It becomes us therefore, my 
 brethren of the Clergy, to set our faces as a flint against 
 this disorganizing spirit, which is working such mischief to 
 the cause of Christ and his Church, and resist all temptations 
 to bold theological speculations such as have recently become 
 rife across the Atlantic, in the indulgence of pretentious 
 intellectual pride, disposing men to be ' wise above what is 
 written,' and to depart ad libitum, from the recognized 
 standards of the faith, our creeds and articles of religion, 
 which are all founded on the only infallible rule of faith, the 
 inspired Word of God. Be it our care in all our teachings 
 to avoid all such vain, rationalistic philosophizing and 
 sentimental fancies, , . . display of captious criticism 
 on the inspired Word of God, or any other ostentatious in- 
 tellectual display." And at the same time Bishop Kemper 
 warned his convention that there were now "some who call- 
 ing themselves by the name of Christ dare impiously to 
 assert that our Blessed Lord did 7iot cause all Holy Scriptures 
 to be written for our learning, and that therefore we may 
 question some of the truths of that inspired volume and deny 
 some of its clearest statements." Shun as a pestilence, he 
 exclaimed, such "pride and arrogance, inordinate self- 
 conceit and total want of reverence, — the crying sins of our 
 age, — and conform to the minutest injunctions of the Prayer 
 Book." We have not as full a record of Bishop Lee's senti- 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 205 
 
 ments, but we know that he denounced both rationalism and 
 ritualism — which was also just beginning to rear its head — 
 as "dangerous enemies of the faith." On the whole, the 
 evangelicals, for reasons which we cannot pause to elaborate 
 here, though startled, were not so excited and unbalanced 
 by the rise of the new school as their rivals the high church- 
 men were. Dr. Vail indeed dared to think and to proclaim 
 that the church needed to be broadened. 
 
 After a rectorate of several years at Taunton, Massa- 
 chusetts, Vail removed to Iowa, toward the close of 1863, 
 to assume the rectorship of Trinity Church, Muscatine. In 
 September, 1864, the convention of the diocese of Kansas 
 acted upon Bishop Lee's recommendation to proceed to the 
 choice of a bishop, while expressing heartfelt gratitude to 
 him for his deep interest and watchful care through the 
 years of utmost depression in the diocese. A committee 
 nominated Thomas Hubbard Vail ; the election was unani- 
 mous ; he accepted it, and was consecrated in his church at 
 Muscatine, on the fifteenth of December, by Bishops Kemper, 
 Whitehouse, Lee, and Bedell, thus becoming the first diocesan 
 of Kansas. It was the first consecration that took place west 
 of the Mississippi river. 
 
 The most important event in the history of the American 
 church in the years immediately after the civil war was the 
 breaking up of Bishop Talbot's colossal and unwieldy juris- 
 diction, and its distribution among four missionary bishops. 
 Bishop Upfold had to have an assistant. Rheumatic gout 
 held him in its clutch. For years he had struggled against 
 it, but in 1865 was forced to surrender. The last diocesan 
 convention he attended met at Richmond, in his state, in 
 June of that year. Its principal business was to elect an 
 assistant bishop. Talbot was universally popular ; the peo- 
 
206 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 pie of his old parish at Indianapolis were intent upon getting 
 him back ; and he received and accepted the election. In 
 July following, Upfold consecrated Grace Church, Indian- 
 apolis ; the month after, he held an ordination to the priest- 
 hood in the same city, on both occasions remaining seated 
 while preaching ; and these were his last public official acts, 
 and the last times that he appeared in church. Most of the 
 remainder of his life was spent in his house, in a wheeled 
 chair. At the meeting of general convention in October, 
 1865, Talbot was formally transferred to Indiana, and three 
 missionary bishops were appointed for his old jurisdiction : 
 Robert Harper Clarkson for Nebraska and Dakota, George 
 Maxwell Randall of Rhode Island, then rector of the Church 
 of the Messiah, Boston, for Colorado and adjacent territor- 
 ies, and Daniel Sylvester Tuttle of New York, for Montana, 
 Idaho and Utah. Clarkson was consecrated in the single 
 church of which he had been rector — St. James', Chicago, 
 — by Bishops Hopkins, Kemper, McCoskry, Lee, Whipple, 
 and Talbot. The absence of his own diocesan from the 
 number is noticeable ; it was an open secret that White- 
 house had used all his influence in the house of bishops to 
 secure the appointment for liim, and thus remove the sharp- 
 est thorn from his episcopal pillow ; he knew his man, — 
 that Clarkson 's sense of duty would constrain him to accept 
 such a mission. Mr. Tuttle was so much below the canon- 
 ical age that his consecration had to be postponed until 1867. 
 The following year, at the meeting of general convention, 
 Ozi William Whittaker of Massachusetts, then rector of a 
 church in Nevada, was appointed missionary bishop of the 
 latter state; his consecration took i)lace in 1869. Bishop 
 Whittaker had temporary charge of Arizona. 
 
 This domestic missionary expansion is interesting to us 
 as the direct, logical outcome of Bishop Kemper's great 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 207 
 
 work ; but it had yet wider bearings. The suppression of 
 the war of secession made the nation buoyant with the con- 
 fidence of conscious strength, and this vital spirit was im- 
 parted to the church. Certain it is that at this period the 
 church took on larger proportions, became less provincial 
 and Anglican, more continental and American, and was 
 more in her element in the more experienced nation, while 
 at the same time the latter was readier to receive her teach- 
 ing and adopt her practice. In the five years after the war, 
 twenty-three bishops were consecrated in this country, com- 
 pared with sixty-nine from the beginning up to the year 
 1865 ; that is, in the short period of five years there were a 
 third as many consecrations as in the three-quarters of a 
 century before. 
 
 Clarkson's opposition to his bishop, whether it were justi- 
 fied or not by the latter' s autocratic policy, could not but 
 have a narrowing effect upon his nature, which now, re- 
 lieved of every such negation, expanded grandly. His rare 
 pastoral faculty now had ample room for exercise, albeit in 
 as untoward a field, so it was said, as ever Christian bishop 
 looked upon. The extremes of temperature upon the wide, 
 unprotected prairie were inimical to human happiness and 
 life ; once, while on a summer visitation in Dakota, Bishop 
 Clarkson had to endure heat of the prostrating height of 
 one hundred and four degrees, while often in the win- 
 ter season cold waves would depress the temperature in 
 Nebraska to thirty degrees below zero. Nor was this 
 all : these sharp extremes were accompanied by violent 
 disturbances of the atmosphere, by "blizzards" and 
 tornadoes that proved terribly destructive. One of 
 these storms injured tAvo churches badly; another blew 
 in the windows of some mission buildings and speedily re- 
 duced the whole group to a piteous wreck ; even the chapel 
 
208 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 bell, weighing four hundred and sixty pounds, was whirled 
 far away. Population was in the migratory stage : a mis- 
 sionary could report that he had found five hundred souls 
 and a large hotel in a town only three days old ; and as 
 likely as not, in as many weeks or months every one would 
 have moved away. Settlements were far apart, and were 
 largely composed of young men who had come out to seek 
 their fortune (or other people's) ; there was scant respect for 
 prerogative, for ancient institutions; every man had to 
 stand upon his own merits. It was the same frontier con- 
 dition with which we are already acquainted j Clarkson re- 
 peated in Nebraska, thirty years later, Kemper's experience 
 when he first came west. It was trying, no doubt, but it 
 was also a bracing experience to the right kind of men, such 
 as those two were. 
 
 The following was a not uncommon kind of tour in the 
 early years of Clarkson' s episcopate : to ride in his own 
 wagon (for it was before the day of the Union Pacific rail- 
 road) over the pathless prairie all day long without seeing a 
 human habitation, guided on his way by compass only ; to 
 be overtaken by a furious thunderstorm; at night, after 
 supping on whatever food he had brought Avith him, to sleep 
 upon the ground, under his wagon, or, if he were very for- 
 tunate, to find a shanty in whose loft he might take shelter, 
 and from a wretched bed might watch the stars crossing the 
 cracks between the boards that formed an apology for a 
 roof; after such a trip, to reach a settlement where a school- 
 house could be had for a service ; to sweep its floor and 
 make a fire with his own hands ; then to go about the town 
 advertising the service and urging people to come ; to light 
 the building with candles he had brought for such an emer- 
 gency; to conduct evening prayer and preach one of those 
 sermons of which men who cared little for religion said that 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 209 
 
 they never heard them without longing to be better. The 
 people were desperately poor, and could do nothing for the 
 support of a clergyman ; so the bishop had to find both the 
 man and his salary, and had to be content with such ability 
 as he could get. His great heart and hopeful spirit show 
 through the words of one of his early addresses : " The con- 
 ditions and prospects of our beloved Church are very en- 
 couraging in this splendid state of Nebraska, — as fair a heri- 
 tage of the Lord's as the sun anywhere shines on. Nebraska 
 will soon leap to the side of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa 
 in population and wealth. . . . Congregations who 
 will become attached to the Prayer Book and the Church 
 may be gathered in any rural locality of the state " ; and so 
 he urged upon his clergy that every one of them should 
 consider himself a missionary for the country surrounding 
 his parish. 
 
 In 1867, the territory became a state, and Lincoln was 
 laid out as its new capital, by politicians Avhose heads were 
 filled witli dreams of corner lots, and fortunes thence ensu- 
 ing. In 1868, the primary convention of the diocese was 
 held, and it was discovered that there were nineteen clergy, 
 thirty-two parishes and missions, and about seven hundred 
 communicants composing it. It was admitted into union 
 with general convention immediately after. Clarkson re- 
 mained East for awhile, to unite with A^ail and Randall in 
 some episcopal consecrations, and to plead the cause of 
 Nebraska Avith such success that churches in New York, 
 Brooklyn, Hartford, Philadelphia and Baltimore gave him 
 funds for namesakes in it. 
 
 Bishop Vail noted sharper contrasts of wealth and pov- 
 erty as a result of the war, and also an increase of free- 
 thinking and abatement of old prejudices. In his diocese, 
 in the new, agricultural state of Kansas, there was no cap- 
 
210 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 ital to draw upon ; the immigrants were poor, and he had 
 to depend upon aid from the East for church-building and 
 payment of salaries. He felt deeply the need of mission- 
 aries ; it was agonizing to him to see the church being left 
 behind by the population, — to see that she might be first 
 upon many flourishing fields, and through lack of men and 
 means to be unable to improve such splendid and transient 
 opportunities. He wanted to found parish schools, a fe- 
 male seminary and a theological school. As he itinerated, 
 he would hold service and preach in town halls and county 
 courthouses, and Baptist and Methodist societies would 
 sometimes give him the use of their buildings. On a visita- 
 tion in the western, sparsely settled part of the state, he 
 took provisions and fodder with him, having a saddle horse 
 for change and relief beside his wagon. Often it would be 
 too hot to drive by day, and he would travel by night, 
 camping on the prairie grass, using his buffalo robe for a 
 bed, — a necessary protection against the heavy, chilly dew 
 that fell toward morning. Once when lost on the prairie he 
 was lighted on his way by flashes of lightning from a dis- 
 tant storm. Again, he made a tour of four hundred miles, 
 taking two weeks, in stage, carryall, and open wagon, 
 through rain and burning sun, — and all to confirm three 
 persons. It was worth while, he said, for each of them 
 might prove a centre for a congregation, a stone in the spir- 
 itual temple. It is no wonder that he was well beloved 
 throughout both state and diocese. His wife won, by her 
 good works, the enviable title of " the Angel of Kansas." 
 
 In 1868, Bishop Vail made a visitation in Missouri at the 
 request of Bishop Hawks, who was in failing health and 
 died soon after, in St. Louis, at the age of only fifty-five 
 years, broken in spirit by the calamities that had befallen 
 his diocese. Whatever the cause, he wearily and despond- 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 211 
 
 ently said, Missouri is certainly a very hard field for church 
 culture, a stony vineyard, its clergy the worst sustained of 
 those of any diocese, and many of them in penury. But 
 for his private means, then almost exhausted, he could not 
 have labored there so long as a bishop ; his visitations often 
 proved costly burdens. 
 
 Vail pronounced his obituary: "Bishop Hawks was a 
 man of superior talent and of unusual gifts of eloquence. 
 With a high sense of honor and of gentlemanly refinement 
 he united the lovely characteristics of the Christian heart 
 and life." And Upfold referred to his death, "after a 
 painful and protracted illness, superinduced and aggravated 
 by the peculiar circumstances of his diocese for several years 
 past, arising from the convulsions of the late civil war, 
 which created almost insurmountable hindrances to the 
 work of the Church, and made a soil always ungenial still 
 more unproductive." 
 
 Bishop Whitehouse appealed for aid for the prostrate 
 church in the South, especially in South Carolina, where 
 ten churches had been burned and communion vessels stolen 
 during the war, where the clergy were forced to labor with 
 their hands for bread, and the colored race seemed to be 
 relapsing into heathenism. He observed keenly and medi- 
 tated much upon the effects of the civil struggle upon the 
 church and society in the West. Vice flaunted, character 
 was unsettled, licentiousness and its hellish accompaniments, 
 intemperance, gambling, and profanity, had been spread by 
 the war. We need, he said, in this "flush sense of 
 strength," to cultivate humility, and to remember that the 
 church never has been or can be popular in a world where 
 her Lord is not enthroned. Depreciation of the marriage 
 tie was spreading, and divorce was easy and frequent ; the 
 clergy were to oppose this " movement of infidel socialism," 
 
212 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 of corrupt nature and animal impulse, by refusing to assist 
 at the marriage of a divorced person, unless it were the in- 
 nocent party in a case of adultery. The demoralizing con- 
 sequences of war, however, were not without compensating 
 accompaniments, — the cloud had a silver lining ; the evils 
 of disunion had been exposed, and a deep moral impression 
 created. Military discipline was conducive to order and 
 ceremonial and the subordination of the individual. Thou- 
 sands had been familiarized with the prayer-book by its use 
 in camp and hospital and on shipboard ; and all these cor- 
 rective influences favored the western church. The bishop 
 was much exercised over the relation of the church to so- 
 ciety ; the whole question of public and social amusement, 
 he said, was very pressing, — for some churches were being 
 turned into clubs. How, he asked, shall we "employ the 
 social element without pandering to worldliness and fri- 
 volity " ? 
 
 He returned to the charge against the Chicago clergy : 
 there had not been a single candidate for holy orders from 
 any parish in Chicago, trained in the same, during his epis- 
 copate. He called for a clerical training school and a chap- 
 ter house for his cathedral, and branched off into a learned 
 excursus on deans, cathedral and rural, concluding with a 
 recommendation of four rural chapters for his diocese, at 
 Chicago, Ottawa, Peoria, and Springfield respectively. 
 
 In 1866, he was engaged in extensive travels in Europe, 
 through Spain, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, and Rus- 
 sia, prosecuting researches into the validity of Swedish or- 
 ders and the relations of the American and Grseco-Russian 
 churches. On Candlemas day, 1867, being the guest of 
 Archbishop Longley, he took part in the consecration of 
 three missionary bishops in Canterbury cathedral. The 
 primate was contemplating a meeting of English and colo- 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 213 
 
 nial prelates, and it was owing to his guest's representations 
 that the plan was enlarged, and that American bishops were 
 included in the invitation to the first Lambeth Conference. 
 Bishop Whitehouse preached the opening sermon of the con- 
 ference, in the chapel of Lambeth Palace. The degree of 
 doctor of divinity was conferred upon him by Oxford 
 University that year, while the University of Cambridge 
 gave him the doctorate of laws, which it also gave to several 
 other American bishops, among them Mcllvaine, Kemper, 
 Lee and Talbot. 
 
 Bishop Kemper did not attend the conference. His ex- 
 penses thither and back were offered him, but he did not 
 take advantage of the offer ; had it been a council of the 
 church, he said, he would have gone. So it turned out that 
 his long life was spent entirely in his native land. 
 
 As after the subsidence of a long and violent storm the 
 ocean is deeply agitated, and a heavy ground-swell will 
 wash the beaches and dash upon the rocky coast for days, 
 so, long after the civil war, society was stirred to its founda- 
 tions and borne away from its former moorings, — but the 
 old bishop was oblivious of these changes. It had been like 
 the extraction of a tooth to him to make any public refer- 
 ence to the contest, and he ignored its cessation : no expres- 
 sion of gratitude for the return of peace is to be found in his 
 convention address of 1865. In the autumn of the year he 
 journeyed to Philadelphia, for the purpose detailed in the 
 following letter to Dr. Johnson, putting by an invitation to 
 visit New York : 
 
 " Dearest Rosey : 
 
 " Your affectionate and very gratifying letter was duly received, 
 and did circumstances permit I would certainly accept the kind invi- 
 tation it contained. I came on to General Convention contrary to 
 the wishes of my children, and devoted myself to the business of the 
 
214 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 House of Bishops and the Board of Missions. I have been punctual 
 in my attendance (just following the example and principles of Bishop 
 White), and I must say, if others had done the same, we could now 
 adjourn ; but with the exception of a few of us, members come in when 
 they please, go away when they please or absent themselves when 
 they please : and then when present are talking with their neighbors, 
 writing letters, or making long speeches. My patience and my 
 strength are exhausted, and I am convinced it is my duty to hasten 
 home as speedily and directly as possible." 
 
 The absorbing interest of the year 1866 in the diocese of 
 Wisconsin was the election of an assistant to its aged bishop. 
 DeKoven was nominated, and he nominated Wilham Cros- 
 well Doane; Bishop Clarkson's name was also proposed, 
 and secured three votes, to DeKoven's five. Opposition to 
 the latter was strong by reason of his practices of eucharistic 
 adoration and auricular confession. These were the points 
 of difference between him and Dr, William Adams, who 
 was personally offended by DeKoven's visits to Nashotah, 
 to hear the confessions of students there. The name of 
 William Edmond Armitage, rector of St. John's Church, 
 Detroit, having been proposed to the convention, was favor- 
 ably received, and soon secured the requisite number of 
 suffrages. Columbia College, his alma mater, conferred the 
 degree of doctor of sacred theology upon the bishop elect, 
 and on the 6th of December he was consecrated in his par- 
 ish church at Detroit by Bishops Kemper, McCoskry, Lee, 
 Whipple, Talbot and Clarkson. It was the eleventh con- 
 secration and the last in which the venerable Kemper took 
 part. On his way he revisited Indianapolis, and was deejtly 
 touched and pleased by the cordial, filial welcome he re- 
 ceived. Often, indeed, his declining years were brightened 
 by meetings with sons and daughters of the church whom as 
 a missionary bishop he had baptized or confirmed. He 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 215 
 
 now desired all missions and schools in the diocese to look 
 for support to Bishop Armitage, who immediately made a 
 thorough visitation, to acquaint himself with his new field, 
 and especially assigned him the organization of church work 
 in the city of Milwaukee, whose geographical divisions, 
 large foreign population, subordination to the influence of 
 Chicago, and lack of church edifices "fit to stand among 
 its private residences," were great hindrances to the growth 
 of the church. The new bishop immediately set about to 
 procure himself a cathedral ; started a new periodical, ' ' The 
 Church Register " ; and procured funds for a new building 
 at Nashotah, — Shelton Hall, in which he reserved and fur- 
 nished a room for himself. 
 
 In 1868, a movement to divide the diocese gathered 
 strength. Two years before, the convention pronounced it- 
 self in favor of a division, which met Kemper's approval ; 
 and now he greeted, as "a true return to primitive times," 
 some signs of a diocesan organization at Fond du Lac. 
 Bishop Armitage had the "see-principle" much at heart ; 
 and under these auspices a document was prepared, to be 
 submitted to the coming general convention, recommending 
 a return to the old idea of the episcopate as the apostolate, 
 or missionary order ; its seat to be the city, as the centre of 
 civilization, in contrast to the restrictive, territorial concep- 
 tion still prevailing ; the multiplication of bishops to go on 
 until there should be one in every city of the land, each 
 with his cathedral church as the focus of the spiritual and 
 educational life of the diocese. Four such sees, it was con- 
 cluded, were needed immediately in Wisconsin. This was 
 the famous " Wisconsin Memorial " ; it brought out plainly 
 the paramount interest of the western church in matters of 
 ecclesiastical polity. 
 
 In 1868, too, DeKoven matured an ambitious design rel- 
 
216 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 ative to Racine College. He had taken charge of it as a 
 diocesan school, a feeder to Nashotah seminary ; but now, 
 under the influence, without doubt, of the ideal of the Uni- 
 versity of the South, which was just being revived, he aspired 
 to make of it the "Church University of the West." It 
 was exempted, accordingly, from local, diocesan control, 
 and became a general institution under the charge of bishops 
 and other trustees in several dioceses. 
 
 Kemper had thought that the general convention of 1865 
 would be the last that he would attend, but three years later 
 his health continued so firm that he was able to attend that 
 of 1868 also, and to take advantage of the opportunity to 
 see his old friends in New York and to revisit the scenes of 
 his boyhood, — how changed to the outward eye by the prog- 
 ress of two generations ! Aware that it was the last time, he 
 made a pilgrimage to Norwalk, and stood by the grave of 
 the wife whom he had laid to rest there thirty-six years be- 
 fore. He was spared to behold the fruit of his thirty years' 
 labor in Wisconsin, presiding over his diocesan convention 
 in 1869, his assistant bishop by his side, and surrounded by 
 the remarkable number of sixty-eight clergy. After this, 
 the last assembly of the kind at which his venerable figure 
 and benignant countenance, with its crown of snowy hair, 
 were seen, he journeyed to Minnesota, at its bishop's re- 
 quest, to consecrate the cathedral church of Our Merciful 
 Saviour at Faribault, on the feast of St. John the Baptist, 
 and to preach an ordination sermon from its pulpit. 
 
 This was the second cathedral in the American church, 
 and the first to be built for the purpose. 
 
 In the gathering of clergy on that occasion, the bishop 
 missed his old-time protege, James Lloyd Breck, who, 
 nearly two years before, had left Minnesota for the far 
 West. After the death of his first wife, Dr. Breck had mar- 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 217 
 
 ried again, — he, who once regarded second marriages as 
 next to adultery ! No doubt he was actuated by the homely 
 sentiment that one might as well be killed for a sheep as for 
 a lamb. And now the old pioneer fever flashed up again in 
 his veins, and, feeling impeded by the thickening mesh of 
 civilization in Minnesota, he turned his visage to the land 
 of gold, and vanishes from our view in the golden lightning 
 of the setting sun. 
 
 It is difficult for us to realize to-day the veneration felt 
 toward Bishop Kemper by the whole church in those closing 
 years of his earthly course. Nothing like it has been seen 
 since, and to find a parallel in the more distant past one 
 would have to go back to the days of his ideal, Bishop 
 White. In his letter just quoted, he made a filial reference 
 to his old leader ; and in sooth his position in the early 
 history of the western church is of the same unique, never- 
 to-be-repeated character as that of White in the eastern in 
 the first half-century of the republic. It is true that he 
 never presided over a general convention, but after the death 
 of Brownell in January, 1865, he was the senior in age of all 
 the American bishops. He was over two years older than 
 the next presiding bishop, Hopkins, who died in January, 
 1868, and nearly five years older than his successor. Smith 
 of Kentucky. The reverence felt for him throughout the 
 whole commonwealth of Wisconsin, by men of every class, 
 was beautiful and affecting ; he could travel about the state 
 for weeks without its costing him a cent, for people would 
 not take payment from him for conveyance and entertain- 
 ment. The rough lumbermen of the backwoods would 
 stand, with uncovered heads, waiting for him to say grace 
 before they would sit down to eat. And this sentiment was 
 deepened by proximity ; those who knew him best revered 
 him most. The community at Nashotah and every one in 
 
218 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 the neighborhood, down to domestics and laborers in the 
 fields, felt for him affection mingled with awe ; and Renan 
 has well said that the judgment of one's humblest friends, 
 in respect to character, is almost always that of God. It is 
 ■ a pleasure to dwell upon the Indian summer of that holy 
 life ; the whole career is as beautiful, as finished, and as per- 
 fect in its close as a work of art. In those halcyon years, 
 that serene old age after the labors of life's day, Jackson 
 Kemper verified the exquisite sayings of Joubert, that the 
 winter of the body is the autumn of the soul, that life's 
 evening brings with it its lamp, and that no one is truly 
 happy in old age except the priest. His children were 
 about him, and his sisters, though growing very feeble, 
 were with him to the end. The board of missions pensioned 
 him to the amount of five hundred dollars a year, and his 
 diocesan salary was better paid, so that he was in easy 
 circumstances, financially, and free of every worldly thought 
 and business care. He continued to take pious care of his 
 health, walking to and from Nashotah as long as his strength 
 permitted, and driving regularly with his daughter. So he 
 enjoyed immunity from rheumatism and dyspepsia. He 
 read and wrote until the last, keeping up his interest in the 
 daily news, enjoying books of wholesome fun like the 
 "Innocents Abroad," and deriving the greatest pleasure 
 from articles in Littell's Living Age. He was especially 
 interested, during those latter years, in books about Pales- 
 tine, such as Robinson's "Physical Geography of the Holy 
 Land," and in Rawlinson's " Ancient Monarchies of the 
 East." He read the latest theological works until within a 
 couple of years of his death, never went on a visitation with- 
 out carrying some with him, which he would give or send 
 to his isolated missionaries. Some time in 1868, happening 
 to put his hand over one eye, he discovered, with a shock 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 219 
 
 of surprise, that the sight of the other was gone. From that 
 time he gave up trying to make out manuscript and fine 
 print, and was read to more and more. His memory of the 
 middle part of his life began to be obscured, the early years 
 of his episcopate and especially his southern tour being 
 seemingly blotted from his mind ; while he remembered his 
 boyhood in New York and early ministry in Philadelphia with 
 luminous clearness, and never forgot passing engagements. 
 One little infirmity of temper betrayed his declining age : 
 the perfection of courtesy himself, he was impatient with bad 
 manners, and would sometimes rebuke them sharply; but 
 afterward was always sorry for his irritability. 
 
 The last year of his life, the portrait that is most familiar 
 through reproductions was painted, for the state historical 
 society at Madison. It presents his strong profile, softened 
 by the pathos of age, — the mass of white and wavy hair that 
 was such a decided beauty to the very last, the prominent 
 brows, the almost Roman nose, firm lips and chin. 
 
 The year 1869 saw the beginning of the most serious 
 internal dissensions that ever vexed the church in America, 
 — a veritable ecclesiastical civil war, a reflection of the war 
 of secession. The Reverend Phillips Brooks left Philadelphia 
 that year, after a ten years' service, to become rector of 
 Trinity Church, Boston ; and the outlines of the broad 
 church movement in this country began to be more clearly 
 defined. It originated as a philosophic, irenical school, a 
 peace party, whose primary thesis was that there was room 
 for both the warring sections, high and low, within the 
 comprehensive church ; and it had accordingly to undergo 
 the common fate of reconcilers, to be suspected and abused 
 on both sides, and to arouse peculiar animosity in the 
 stronger party. It was characterized by deep, sincere, 
 single-hearted, and pervasive, albeit undogmatic, devotion 
 
220 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 to the person of Christ, and charity toward all who were 
 called by his name ; and to plain people this seemed more 
 like true Christianity than the most thorough, intimate, and 
 minute, inspired and infallible understanding of the hypostatic 
 union, lacking that grace. Preaching was its strength, and 
 its universal theme, the upbuilding of Christian character. 
 It brought forward the old evangelical estimate of the infinite 
 value of the individual soul, while envisaging the individual 
 in his social relations as the evangelicals had never done. 
 In the breadth of its sympathies and conciliatory strivings 
 it tended to obliterate distinctions : it was indifferent to 
 points of ecclesiastical polity, forms of government, usages 
 in worship ; in its genial optimism it overlooked the dark 
 side of human life, and questioned the justice of eternal 
 punishment. Its indefiniteness in matters where clearness 
 and consistency are greatly to be desired, accounted for and 
 partly justified the opposition of the high church party. 
 
 The catholic movement was passing into a new phase, — 
 induced, no doubt, by the rise of the little horn of broad 
 churchmanship. The less the latter made of forms, the 
 more did its adversary cultivate them, making dogmas of 
 apostolical succession and the real presence, and enveloping 
 the latter in a cloud of symbolic ritual. It also rejected 
 philosophy. " Advanced " churchmen were more interested 
 in intensive than extensive spiritual culture ; in the multipli- 
 cation of eucharists and other services, in early celebrations, 
 in the ornaments of the altar, church music, and all forms 
 of ecclesiastical art and organization, and in the practice, 
 both exterior and interior, of personal piety, by means of 
 the confessional, books of devotion, and the like. It was a 
 pity that these developments were accompanied by a notice- 
 able decline of pristine missionary zeal, any subsidence of 
 which is such a suspicious symptom, and that they seemed 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 221 
 
 to be associated with a docetic, Apollinarian, or mono- 
 physitic Christology, an unerring sign of a Sabellianizing 
 theology. The most conspicuous feature of the new party, 
 to enlarge a little, was its exaltation of the eucharist with 
 insistence upon fasting reception, to an apparent depreciation 
 of other worship and justification of the charge of its low 
 church opponents that it was propagating a superstitious 
 notion of the effect of the sacraments, which they stigmatized 
 as "sacramental justification," — the idea that the mere 
 physical reception of the consecrated wafer justified the soul 
 in the sight of God. Very offensive to a vast majority was 
 the corresponding tendency to assimilate the worship of the 
 church to that of Rome ; to adopt her gorgeous vestments, to 
 set the altar ablaze with eucharistic lights, to elevate the con- 
 secrated species in token of the completion of the sacrificial 
 offering for the quick and the dead, to practice her bowings, 
 genuflections, prostrations, and burning of incense, all in 
 recognition of the present God. 
 
 These innovations excited apprehension and a reactionary 
 sentiment akin to indignation among conservative bishops 
 of the catholic school, such as our hero and Bishop Whit- 
 tingham. The sacrifice of the cross is not repeated, said 
 Kemper, but commemorated in the eucharist ; and he ad- 
 jured his diocese to adhere to the ritual of the fathers of the 
 American church. White, Seabury, Hobart, Ravenscroft, 
 Brownell, and Otey, not to depart from what delighted 
 them, not to add to, alter, or omit any of the prescribed 
 order of worship. Usages in the church of England, he 
 continued, are without authority for us ; and again he ex- 
 claimed. Avoid ritual novelties. Armitage echoed these 
 sentiments, with certain qualifications : lawlessness is worse 
 than ritualism, said he, and we cannot expect to have ritual 
 petrifaction. Bishop Whipple handled the subject in the 
 
222 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 broadest, most statesmanlike way, in addressing his conven- 
 tion : " Every school of religious thought and feeling has its 
 own peculiar mission. The Church needs it, the world 
 needs it, and it can do a work which no others will do. It 
 is the misfortune of human nature to elevate its own private 
 opinions into matters of faith, and to claim from all others 
 subjection to its rules of action. . . . There must be 
 within the Church all the liberty necessary for Christian 
 work. We must permit men, so far as is consistent with 
 the preservation of the faith and the unity of the Church, 
 liberty of opinion and action." Whitehouse's sentiments at 
 this period show how far he had traveled since his evangel- 
 ical days at Rochester : great difference of ritual practice, 
 he said, is a result of catholic liberty; and while " exagger- 
 ated attention to the minutiae of dress and ceremonial must 
 be painful to a serious mind, this deep movement aims at 
 the expression of the highest truths, the retrieval of unheeded 
 privilege, the quickening of sacramental life ; " it restores 
 what the church has had in abeyance, and deepens the spell 
 of religion ; so "I dare not esteem it lightly nor crudely 
 condemn it." It is destined to enter permanently into our 
 church life. When he discovered, however, that the con- 
 sensus of episcopal opinion was against all innovations in 
 public worship, he questioned his convention as follows : 
 "Suppose, in the face of this [prohibition], that the minis- 
 ter burns candles at the Holy Communion, or waves the 
 censer, or bends the knee before the consecrated elements, 
 or elevates the paten for adoration, or mutilates the bap- 
 tismal service, or holds the prescribed services of the Lit- 
 urgy subject to his own taste and self-will, — what is the 
 Bishop to do, . . . and what is tlie minister to do ? 
 Obey, or invoke public sympathy against the tyranny of his 
 Bishop? And what are the laity to do? Respect the 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 223 
 
 Church's discipHne, or rail, and lay her honor in the 
 dust ? ' ' But Upfold was very bold ; several years before 
 this crisis he had put himself on record, warning his clergy 
 against "certain novel usages" that were spreading, and 
 causing misapprehension, prejudice, and reproach. Among 
 them was nocturnal celebration of the communion on Holy 
 Thursday, " in defiance of church authority. Bad example 
 is contagious, and so this will not be tolerated in my juris- 
 diction. I regret to say . . . that decoration of the 
 Communion Table or altar, chancel, font, and pulpit with 
 flowers on Easter Sunday, as an assumed symbol of the 
 glorious event we commemorate, has been introduced, with- 
 out the sanction of this Church ; purely an exercise of private 
 judgment, dictated by an exuberant imaginativeness, and to 
 my mind, a very questionable taste, . . . — the practice 
 of Romanists, and those who have eagerly looked Rome- 
 ward, many of whom have ultimately gone over, body and 
 soul, to that corrupt communion. Can fading flowers be an 
 emblem of that which fadeth not away? Who thinks the 
 more of the Resurrection for such an exhibition ? It will 
 not be allowed in this diocese, — I will not visit or officiate in 
 any parish, administer confirmation, etc., on Easter Sunday 
 or other occasion, where this floral display is attempted." 
 
 Doubtless the good bishop's acerbity is to be accounted 
 for by a twinge of gout. 
 
 Lee feared that ritualism would do our church " incal- 
 culable injury," inculcating false eucharistic doctrine, — that 
 of a carnal presence ; and Clarkson fervently echoed an ap- 
 peal to " stress the time-honored term, Protestant, because 
 apostates revile it and discard the Reformation, whence 
 come our liberties." And another bishop, in the vehe- 
 mence of his centrifugal motion, flew off" at a tangent and 
 formed a new asteroid in the ecclesiastical firmament. 
 
224 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 Dr. George David Cummins, of Trinity Church, Chicago, 
 had been elected assistant bishop of Kentucky, and was 
 consecrated in Christ Church, Louisville, on the 15th of 
 November, 1866, by Bishops Hopkins, Smith, Lee, Talbot, 
 Quintard, and Clarkson. At that date he still believed that 
 he could work, untrammeled, with men of different views, 
 in the same church ; and it is certainly not without interest 
 to behold in his changing sentiments, as in a glass, the evo- 
 lution of schism, — as rapid, in this case, as the growth of its 
 ritualistic counterpart. Bishop Cummins was possessed by 
 a dread and abhorrence of ritualism, and its portentous ad- 
 vance unsettled him in his catholic position of unity in es- 
 sentials, liberty in non-essentials, and charity in all things, 
 for he was persuaded that its essence was spiritual evil. 
 For a time he believed in fighting error in the church within 
 her pale, and, declining an overture of separation, he strug- 
 gled for five years to put down ritualism in Kentucky, but 
 without avail; and becoming disenchanted, discouraged 
 over the condition of the church in general, and convinced 
 that ritual error could not be eradicated from her, he con- 
 cluded that there was nothing for him but to part company 
 with her. He was on his way to this conclusion when a 
 collision with the redoubtable bishop of Illinois precipitated 
 its formation. In the summer of 1869, communications 
 passed between the two relative to an invitation Cummins 
 had received to attend a meeting of an evangelical mission- 
 ary society in Chicago. Whitehouse waved him away from 
 his diocese, warned him not to trespass on the premises. 
 Cummins returned a notice of his intention to preach in that 
 city on a specified date, in behalf of missions. Thereupon 
 Whitehouse inhibited him from officiating in Chicago. This 
 action excited intense feeling among all who were concerned, 
 and some who were not ; Bishop Clarkson thought that his 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 225 
 
 old bishop ought to be brought to trial for such uncanonical 
 breach of ecclesiastical comity. Cummins paid no atten- 
 tion to the inhibition, and preached in Trinity, his former 
 parish church. 
 
 It is noteworthy that it was in the effervescent West, so 
 full of unrestrained youthful energy, and given to extremes, 
 that these religious movements revealed their inner nature, 
 — that their implicit logic became explicit. And the push- 
 ing, young metropolis of the West was their storm centre. 
 Around the figure of the inflexible, Hildebrandine White- 
 house the tempest raged, and he was in his element, as he 
 always was in a scrimmage. Diverse opinions have been 
 entertained of his attitude during that crisis, some holding 
 that if he had been of conciliatory temperament the storm 
 would never have arisen, while others maintained that his 
 prophetic soul divined the coming schism, and that his 
 prompt action discomfited the conspirators and prevented 
 the disruption from assuming the proportions it otherwise 
 would have done. For now Mr. Cheney of Christ Church, 
 Chicago, assumed what the French call an intransigent at- 
 titude, omitting the word < ' regenerate ' ' in his administra- 
 tion of baptism, manifesting an intention of forcing an issue. 
 This is the significance of Bishop Whitehouse's reference to 
 mutilation of the baptismal service, in his passage above 
 quoted. Mr. Cheney certainly gave greater depth and dig- 
 nity to the dissenting movement by adding to Cummins' re- 
 pugnance to ritual a doctrinal ground of difference. These 
 leaders and their followers disliked the terms " priest," 
 " absolution," "regeneration by baptism," " the body and 
 blood of Christ," and absolutely repudiated the sense that 
 their opponents put upon them. Their weakness lay in the 
 admission, by secession, that that sense was the only one 
 that the terms would bear ; by their act, they abandoned the 
 
226 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 point in dispute, and surrendered the church, so far as in 
 them lay, to their sacerdotal and ritualistic enemy. Mr. 
 Cheney practically insisted that the term "regenerate" 
 could only be taken in the sense he repudiated, and so 
 omitted it from the office. The morality of such omission 
 needs no comment, in the case of one who had upon his 
 soul the vow of the priesthood, faithfully to minister the 
 sacraments as the church had received them. Nothing had 
 been added to the meaning of the word since he took that 
 vow, ten years before. He was under no necessity what- 
 ever to adopt a new meaning, or any of the ritual he dis- 
 liked. His action therefore must always seem to have been 
 inspired by the true schismatic spirit of separation for opin- 
 ion's sake, whose motto is. No fellowship with those who 
 differ about definitions. Never was the broad church the- 
 sis more needed and less heeded. He left a canonist and 
 ecclesiastical lawyer like his bishop no option, and in 1869 
 Whitehouse began to proceed against him, but was stayed 
 by a writ of injunction. It was Greek meeting Greek. 
 
 Between the acting of a dreadful thing 
 And the first motion, all the interim is 
 Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream ; 
 The genius and the mortal instruments 
 Are then in council ; and the state of man, 
 Like to a little kingdom, suffers then 
 The nature of an insurrection. 
 
 When in that interim of suspense the bishop gave and 
 acted upon a notice of a canonical visitation of Christ 
 Church, it must have been a thrilling, not to say blood- 
 crisping scene, to see him enter the church and the rector 
 and congregation rise in stern silence to receive him. Not 
 a candidate was presented for confirmation, and the atmos- 
 phere was charged with emotional electricity. 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 227 
 
 An unforeseen result of the trial was to crystallize all his 
 other clergy in support of their bishop, so that at the close 
 of his career Whitehouse had a united diocese at his back. 
 And the inexorable prelate, as his enemies regarded him, 
 '* as cold as ice and as polished as marble," has been seen 
 to sit upon the floor and fondle and play with the little chil- 
 dren of one of his laymen. 
 
 Another providential use of all the divisions sketched 
 above was that they took the minds of churchmen off of 
 lines of political and sectional divergence, and turned them 
 again to matters of ecclesiastical interest. And as the civil 
 war in the case of the nation, so did these troubles make 
 manifest the inherent strength of the church. 
 
 Bishop Kemper was taken from the evil to come; for 
 certainly the five years after his death were the most trou- 
 bled period in the history of the church in America. It 
 almost seemed as though his departure removed a re- 
 straint upon party passion. But if on the one hand he was 
 spared much that would sorely have afflicted his spirit, he 
 was not permitted to see the wonderful growth of the West 
 on the other. He had labored, and others were to enter 
 into the fruits of his labor. At the very time of his depar- 
 ture, the frontier of culture was stealing over the West. 
 Villages that he had known were becoming towns, and towns 
 great cities ; until shortly, throughout his old jurisdiction, 
 Indianapolis, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Minneapolis, St. Louis, 
 Kansas City, and Omaha were to cluster around the mighty 
 Chicago, all boasting their splendid avenues, parks, public 
 buildings and monuments, churches, colleges, libraries, art 
 galleries and exhibitions, music halls, theatres, opera- 
 houses, and all the insignia of a high civilization, most con- 
 genial to the catholic church. He had organized six dio- 
 ceses, consecrated nearly a hundred churches, ordained 
 
228 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 over two hundred priests and deacons, and confirmed nearly 
 ten thousand souls. At the end of another generation and 
 of the century, the number of dioceses was doubled in the 
 fields where he had labored, and in the twelve were 
 over seven hundred churches, nearly six hundred clergy, 
 sixty-five thousand communicants, and every two years 
 more persons were confirmed than he had confirmed in the 
 whole of his long episcopate. 
 
 The trip to Faribault proved to be the last journey of any 
 length that Kemper took, — the last time that he was out of 
 his own diocese. The following August, he had a seizure 
 of some sort in the train, while on his way to Milwaukee, 
 and after that failed gradually and perceptibly, and resigned 
 to Armitage the visitation of all points at any distance from 
 Nashotah. Still, for several months more, his health was 
 relatively fair, and he was able to comply Avith requests for 
 visitations, at which, it was observed, he spoke with a pecul- 
 iar earnestness, and his accents seemed to come from beyond 
 the grave. He was spared to see his eightieth birthday, the 
 Christmas Eve of 1869, and the sun of the new year of 
 1870, the last he was to behold in this life. In the winter 
 and spring of that year his appetite failed, and he began to 
 be filled with a nervous restlessness, the result of weakness. 
 His last public official act was a confirmation, near his 
 home, on the third of April. Still for several weeks he 
 continued to discharge all the official duties that he could 
 by means of a pen, which he finally laid aside on the i8th 
 of that month, and after that by the aid of an amanuensis. 
 His mind continued clear to the end, books and letters were 
 read to him, and he kept up his interest in the affairs of the 
 diocese. He went to bed, those closing weeks, at five 
 o'clock in the afternoon, and after five hours' sleep was up 
 and about, eager to have some on« read to him. The need 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 229 
 
 of repentance was much on his mind that last month, and 
 among his last words were these : 
 
 "I have everything to be thankful for; the presence of 
 my Saviour, the help of his Holy Spirit, and a hope full of 
 immortality." 
 
 On Wednesday, the i8th of May, he took finally to his 
 bed. On Friday Dr. DeKoven came from Racine to see 
 him for the last time ; he begged him for his blessing, and 
 the bishop rambled off into the ordination service. The 
 day after, he entered the realm of unconsciousness. The 
 last three days were passed in complete coma, induced by 
 excess of urea in the blood, and he breathed his last early 
 in the afternoon of Tuesday, May the 24th. 
 
 Those who gazed upon his features after death said that 
 it seemed as though twenty years had been taken from his 
 age. 
 
 Six bishops, the presiding bishop. Smith of Kentucky, 
 Whitehouse of Illinois, Lee of Iowa, Vail of Kansas, Clark- 
 son of Nebraska, and Robertson, the new bishop of Missouri, 
 were present at the funeral, the following Tuesday, Avith 
 more than seventy clergymen and two thousand people. 
 The service was begun in Nashotah Chapel, various parts in 
 it being assigned to the different bishops. A single hymn 
 was sung, — Kemper's favorite "Rock of Ages," — and it 
 was taken up by the throng outside the chapel with thrilling 
 effect. Then the vast procession moved to the cemetery, a 
 quarter of a mile away, and Bishop Whitehouse committed 
 his body to the dust. 
 
 At a memorial service held at the meeting of the diocesan 
 convention the ensuing June, Dr. Hugh Miller Thompson, 
 professor of ecclesiastical history at Nashotah, was appointed 
 to preach a sermon from which we are fain to quote the 
 following beautiful passages : 
 
230 AN APOSTLE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 
 
 " There are deaths that come upon us with the sense of a 
 completed harmony, when the work is done, when the story is 
 all told, when the long, full day's travel is finished. 
 They are deaths to thank God for — these deaths that end a 
 long and fruitful life with a perfect close. They come 
 with the calmness of summer sunsets that end the day, with 
 the dreamy regret of the Indian summer that ends the year. 
 They seem to belong to the diviner harmonies of the other 
 world, to be visitations of God's eternal order here among 
 the uncertainties and confusions of time. 
 
 "It is such a death we commemorate here in this memorial 
 service, and I believe there is no one present who does not 
 thank God that it came to our departed father. So har- 
 moniously his beautiful life closed, so orderly and peacefully 
 was the journey traveled and ended, so calmly, in a hale old 
 age, with threescore years of faithful service behind him, 
 did the summons come, that in our deep and sore sense of 
 pain and loss to ourselves, there is still this underlying con- 
 tent, because the death was beautiful as the life was, be- 
 cause the one fitted the other, and God made both complete. 
 
 " For nearly sixty years, Bishop Kemper served at the 
 altar. For nearly thirty-five of those sixty years he was a 
 bishop. His active life covered a period of the greatest 
 changes in his own country and the world, his whole life 
 nearly the entire history of the American episcopate. 
 
 " Our witness, though man's witness is nothing to him now, 
 is that he bore himself right manfully, loyally, and faith- 
 fully, as a true Bishop and ensample for the flock, and that 
 the memory of his faithful life is a precious legacy to us and 
 to our children, for all time to come." 
 
 Talbot told the people of Indiana that "no bishop in the 
 line of our American episcopate has succeeded in concen- 
 trating upon himself more entirely than he, the love and 
 
BISHOP KEMPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 231 
 
 veneration of the Church." And Clarkson said: "He 
 did more than all other men in the land to mould the 
 churchly life of seven great dioceses. . . . O that 
 every bishop who shall minister on this fair domain may 
 inherit, even though in small degree, something of his 
 fidelity, his single-mindedness, and his self-consecration ! " 
 And Vail took an even wider view : " His life furnishes a 
 most important link, not only in the history of our American 
 church but in the history of the Church Catholic of this 
 age, as it develops its grand missionary work for the benefit 
 of the world." 
 
 And so the great central luminary, having thrown off 
 successive rings of planetary dioceses, had sunk to rest, 
 without a cloud to dim his disk. The Christian Odyssey 
 of the great West was over, and its lakes and streams and 
 plains knew him no more. The Napoleon of a spiritual 
 empire had passed away, — and who would not prefer Kem- 
 per's crown to Bonaparte's ? The missionary bishop of a 
 jurisdiction greater than any since the days of the apostles, 
 — and St. Paul himself had not traveled as widely and as 
 long, for Kemper had gone three hundred thousand miles 
 upon his Master's service, — was gone to his reward. Well 
 had his life borne out the meaning of his name : "Kemper," 
 " A Champion." With the great apostle to the Gentiles he 
 could say : 
 
 I HAVE FOUGHT A GOOD FIGHT, 
 
 I HAVE FINISHED MY COURSE, 
 
 I HAVE KEPT THE FAITH. 
 
A SAINT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH. 
 Bishop Cobbs and His Contemporaries. 
 
 Bv THE REV. GREENOUGH WHITE, 
 
 Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of the South, 
 
 Author of an " Outline of the Philosophy of English Literature" 
 
 etc.. Editor of " Matthew Arnold and the Spirit of the Age." 
 
 Pages 183, . . $1.00. 
 
 The story of a noble, sweet, and spiritual personality, whom it is a 
 benediction to know. The first Bishop of Alabama is duly set in the 
 group of famous Episcopal pioneers, Otey, Polk, Elliott, etc., of the 
 Southern States ; and glimpses of the religious, literary, and social en- 
 vironment are afforded, in order to mterpret the subject to readers of a 
 later generation. It is both a sympathetic biography of a beautiful 
 life, and a chapter of American Church history. The following quota- 
 tions will show what eminent Churchmen think of the book. 
 
 Rt. Rev. John Williams, D. D., LL. D. : I have read with great 
 pleasure and edification the Rev. Greenough White's admirable vol- 
 ume. Any one who was privileged to know Bishop Cobbs will be 
 thankful for so excellent a statement of his remarkable and attractive 
 character. I trust the work will have a wide circulation. 
 
 Rt. Rev. H, B, Whipple, D.D., LL.D. : I have seldom read a 
 book of such deep interest, and none which gives such a vivid picture 
 of the history of the pioneer Bishops of the South. It is helpful, and 
 makes one thank God for the good examples of His servants. 
 
 Rt. Rev. C. T. Quintard, D.D., LL.D. : Bishop Cobbs was in- 
 deed the St. John of the Southern Episcopate, and his character is 
 drawn to the life — the life of an Apostolic Bishop of the Holy Catholic 
 Church. The style of writing is most attractive, and I trust the book 
 may find many readers. 
 
 Rt. Rev. W. S. Perry, D.D., etc., Historiographer of the Amer- 
 ican Church (in '• The Iowa Churchman ") : A faithful portraiture of 
 a saint of God. We took up this handsome volume purposing but a 
 cursory glance at its contents ; but so interesting was the matter, so 
 perfect the style, so fascinating the picturing of one of the leaders of 
 God's sacramental host, that the book was not laid down till the last 
 page and the last word were reached. Professor White has given his 
 
readers a series of brilliant chapters of American Church history, as 
 well as a model memoir of a great-hearted Bishop of the Church of 
 God. (/« a letter dated April 21, 1898, Bishop Perry added) : I am 
 more and more delighted with the volume. 
 
 Rt. Rev. H. Y. Satterlee, D.D. : A valuable contribution to a 
 field in the history of the Church too little known or studied. Inter- 
 esting as a record of an interesting period in our national life, it is 
 doubly interesting as a personal record of the life of a holy man in a 
 prominent position in that formative time. And I am confident that 
 the work will be more and more appreciated as time goes on, and the 
 old chapters of our history take on their true proportional importance. 
 
 Rev. Morgan Dix, D.D., D.C.L. : I read the book with deep in- 
 terest and great pleasure. ... It has peculiar merits, and in ad- 
 dition to presenting a lifelike picture of the subject of the memoir, it is 
 particularly valuable as throwing light upon the history of the Church 
 in the South during a very trying time. 
 
 Rev. W. R. Huntington, D.D., D.C.L. : This picture of the 
 state of the Church in the South just before the Civil War is most 
 graphic ; and the skill shown in grouping his various contemporaries 
 around the central hero deserves much praise. 
 
 Rev. W. P. DuBose, S. T. D. : Those who have lived, and 
 whose memory goes back through many of the scenes described, will 
 discover very few inaccuracies either of fact or feeling in this book. It 
 is written with as much sympathy as understanding, and its greatest 
 merit is its exact truth. It possesses by no means only an ecclesiastical 
 or religious interest : it is a distinct contribution to the general history 
 as well of the section of which it treats. 
 
 Rev. H. S. Nash, D.D. (in a letter to the author): I like your 
 book, like it heartily. You have brought out the man and framed him 
 well. I trust you are meaning to write some day a life of some typical 
 Western Churchman of the earlier days. 
 
 Rev. W. W. Webb, B. D. ; A very vivid and most instructive 
 picture of Bishop Cobbs and his time. The book seems most just and 
 fair in its criticism both of men and movements. I hope that we may 
 have as lifelike and true a picture of Bishop Kemper some day. 
 
 Rev. Charles Gore, D.D., Canon of Westminster : The life of 
 Bishop Cobbs gave me an interesting insight into a situation about 
 which I had known almost nothing. 
 
 JAMES POTT k COMPANY, 285 Fourth Avenue, New York. 
 
ROME, CONSTANTINOPLE, AND THE RISE 
 OF PAPAL SUPREMACY, 
 
 A Lecture Delivered by the Reverend 
 
 GREENOUGH WHITE, 
 
 Before the Church Club of New York, and published in its volume 
 entitled " The Rights atid Pretensions of the Roman See." 
 
 The lecture opens with a picture of the condition of the 
 Roman Empire, economic and poUtical, moral and social, 
 literary and aesthetic, at the time of the establishment of 
 Christianity, and passes on to a description of the founding 
 of Constantinople, the character of its church, and the re- 
 lations of the latter to the sees of Rome and Alexandria. 
 Glimpses are afforded of the Arian, Nestorian and Euty- 
 chian controversies, and of great personalities such as Sts. 
 Chrysostom and Augustine ; and the latter's influence upon 
 the upbuilding of the papal supremacy is indicated. The 
 causes of the rise of the ascetic ideal and dogmatic celibacy 
 are elucidated. Finally, the character and policy of Inno- 
 cent I. and Leo the Great are outlined, and the claim made 
 for the latter to be considered the first of the popes is dis- 
 cussed. The lecture concludes with an account of the bar- 
 barian invasions, the Monophysite reaction, and the breach 
 of communion between the Greek and Latin churches in 
 A. D. 484. 
 
 E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO., Cooper Union, Fourth Avenue, New York. 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AND THE SPIRIT OF 
 THE AGE, 
 
 Papers of the English Club of Sewanee, 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, and Articles upon Clough's 
 
 AND Arnold's Poetry, by its President 
 
 THE REVEREND GREENOUGH WHITE, 
 
 8°, . . . $1.26. 
 
 Our generation has been one of portentous changes, and this volume 
 is an earnest effort, the first of its kind, to apprehend the nature and 
 significance of these changes. Another aim of the book is to afi'ord 
 material for comparison with the unpublished work of other literary 
 clubs, and to point out to them the utility, for their purpose, of a study 
 of the greatest of English literary critics. It is gratifying to note that 
 these aims are already in process of fulfilment, and that, in the opinion 
 of competent critics, leaders of literary clubs and readers in general 
 cannot aftbrd to overlook its suggestions. 
 
 "•The English Club of Sewanee' is one of those local organiza- 
 tions made up of all the women who want to think, and the few men 
 who are willing to help them, which abound in our American life and, 
 vi^ith some fuss, fads, and fribbles, do great good. The Club has pub- 
 lished its essays. A few are by professors in the University of the 
 South. The rest are by women of the nobler Berean type. Tlie essays 
 are like many others by like bodies, but it is most wise to publish them 
 because it makes good, honest work visible, stimulates by example, 
 and aids in that wide diffusion of an universal cultivation on which 
 the success of the great experiment rests." — Book A'ews, Phila. 
 
 " They serve admirably to show the degree of culture which may 
 be attained in an association of this kind conducted upon proper prin- 
 ciples, and the book will be valuable as an aid to societies and associa- 
 tions the country over that have similar aims." — Times, Pittsburg. 
 
 " A very comprehensive survey of the manifestations of what may 
 be called the modern spirit. . . . The value of such closely re- 
 lated studies must be evident to all who discern the significance of the 
 present moment in the spiritual history of the country; for there are 
 many signs that we are going through that spiritual crisis which comes 
 to a people passing out of an age of strenuous toil into an age of cul- 
 ture." — J'/ie Churchman, Nnu York. 
 
 " Interesting and significant as regards development of literary taste 
 and culture in the southern part of our country." — Literary World, 
 Boston. 
 
 " This is the first time, we believe, that Arnold can be said to have 
 been seriously discussed as a force in letters by any literaiy club in 
 America, though we have had a sufficiency of Browning societies and 
 Ibsen clubs." — Mail ajiJ Express, N'ew York. 
 
 " Thoughtful and suggestive papers, representing careful and schol- 
 arly work. . . . There is much in them which is of more than 
 passing value." — The Covgregationalist, Boston. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, 27 & 29 West 23d St., New York. 
 
OUTLINE OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF ENG- 
 LISH LITERATURE, 
 
 By GREENOUGH WHITE, 
 Author of"A Sketch of the Philosophy 0/ American Literature." 
 
 Part I : The Middle Ages. 
 
 lamo. Cloth, vl + 366 pages. Introduction price, $1.00. 
 
 The motive of this treatise is to determine the bounds of 
 the great historical divisions of English Hterature, to discover 
 the silent features, the peculiar characteristics of each epoch, 
 to trace the connection in thought between each, and to view 
 all against a background of European history, literature, and 
 art. It is believed that the causes of historic change, the 
 principles that control the succession of ages, the revolutions 
 of thought, sentiment, and action, are here clearly discrim- 
 inated; so that in this little book, in a word, a sound 
 philosophy of mediaeval history is suggested. 
 
 W. J, Courthope, Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford : 
 It would be quite impertinent in me to criticise the manner in which 
 the work has been executed, but I may be allowed to express my ad- 
 miration of the orderly manner in wliich its very diverse materials are 
 arranged and of the agreeable style in which the narrative is conducted. 
 To accomplish this result in so vast a subject as English literature as a 
 whole is in itself a proof of the most skilful workmanship, and I can- 
 not too strongly express my conviction that this comprehensive survey 
 is based upon sound knowledge and just reasoning. 
 
 Edward Dowden, Professor of English, Trinity College, Dublin : 
 It interested me much, and seemed to me something new and needful, 
 — not merely a work of erudition, but a contribution toward interpret- 
 ing the results of erudition — a book not merely of knowledge, but of 
 ideas. . . . Especially on this ground — as an elucidation of knowl- 
 edge — I value the work. The way in which it keeps the European 
 movement present to the reader's mind, with England as having a part 
 in it, is of great importance. 
 
 Edmund Gosse, Anther of a " History of English Literature in the 
 Eighteenth Century," etc. : I have read the book with pleasure. It 
 appears to me to deal freshly and brilliantly with the old, worn lines 
 of history. 
 
 Leslie Stephen, Author of " I/ours in a Library," etc. .■ The de- 
 sign is good, the style is good, and the matter interesting. 
 
 GINN k COMPANY, Publishers, Boston, New York, Chicago, London. 
 
SKETCH OF THE 
 PHILOSOPHY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, 
 
 By GREENOUGH WHITE. 
 
 ISmo. Flexible clotli. iv + 66 pages. Introductiou price, 30 
 cents. By mall, postpaid, 35 cents. 
 
 This essay points out the connection between our country's 
 literature and history, and shows how new forms in letters 
 and arts have arisen as advancing thought required. It may 
 be used as a key to the whole subject, as well as to the ex- 
 c;ellent and extended treatises upon it and the numerous 
 complications that have recently appeared. It is a book that 
 will interest the general reader (it can be read at a single 
 sitting), and the experienced teacher will find it highly valu- 
 able in inculcating in more advanced classes habits of sound 
 and scholarly appreciation of American intellectual life. 
 
 Professor F. J. Child (in a letter to the author) : I think you are 
 a little incautious in your preface. But when we come to the history 
 you are entirely temporate and discriminating. Your rapid sketch 
 presents the production of two hundred years lucidly and very agree- 
 ably. 
 
 Professor Charles F. Richardson, author of a " History of Ameri- 
 can Literature " : It is refreshing, when so much so-called " criticism " 
 is second-hand, to come upon a discussion like this, presenting conclu- 
 sions often new and always based on direct reading. 
 
 Professor Moses Coit Tyler, author of a " History of American 
 Colonial Literature " : I can honestly say that I am struck most 
 agreeably by the soundness of its fundamental conception of the spirit 
 and motive of American Literature. It is much to be wished that our 
 people could catch that fruitful idea here properly put at the front, that 
 there is a living and illuminating connection between our country's 
 history and its literature. 
 
 Mr. Edmund C. Stedman, author of " L'oets of America," etc., etc.: 
 The pricis seems to me to be successful and to go to the root of the 
 matter — i.e., to show the philosophy of the development of the success- 
 ive phases of our national literature. 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes : An interesting study of some of our 
 earlier and more recent authors. 
 
 John Greenleaf Whittier : It was difficult to compress in the space 
 of a brief essay all that might be said of the development and trend of 
 cur literature and thought, but so far as it goes it is a valuable and 
 well-considered paper in proof of the fact of an unborrowed and inde- 
 pendent American Literature. 
 
 GINN k COMPANY, Publishers, Boston, New York, Chicago, London. 
 
AN EPIC OF THE SOUL. 
 
 This cycle of eighty short poems, of a new form, re- 
 cords the experience of one who has sounded the depths 
 of doubt and despair, and emerged into light on the fur- 
 ther side. 
 
 Their publication seems timely, for the age itself is 
 apparently going through a like experience ; and it is be- 
 lieved that they will prove a source of spiritual comfort 
 and consolation to many a kindred, troubled soul. 
 
 We are permitted to say that the author is known in 
 more than one department of literature. 
 
 Printed in best style, on feather-weight paper, with 
 deckle edges, and bound in white vellum, gilt top, with 
 title on back and on cover in gold. Price, $i.oo net. 
 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER, 2 and 3 Bible House, New York. 
 

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