The tercentenary book. Commemorative of the completion of the life and work of John Knox ... and the establishment of Presbytery in England ...

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Tciccritcnary booK. Conirriciiiorativc oi t
completion of the life and work of John I
the eslabiishmenl of Presby ler>' in Englan

5EVENIH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, PHILADA., DECORATED.

THE

,/

Tercentenary Book.

COMMEMORATIVE OF THE COMPLETION OF

THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN KNOX, OF THE HUGUENOT

MARTYRS OF FRANCE, AND THE ESTABLISHMENT

OF PRESBYTERY IN ENGLAND.

CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OP THE "TERCENTENARY CELEBRATION"
AS OBSERVED BY THE PRESBYTERIANS OF PHILADELPHIA, NOV.
20, 1872; THE ORATION OF PROF. S. J. WILSON, D.D., LL.D.,
AND HISTORICAL PAPERS OF THE REV. R. M. PAT-
TERSON, THE REV. J. B. DALES, D.D., AND
THE REV. JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LL.D.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE REV. HENRY C. McCOOK.

ILL USTliA TED.

PHILADELPHIA:

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION,

No. 1334 Chestnut Street,

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by

THE TRUSTEES OF THE

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION,
In the Office of the Librarian of Con<2;ress, at Washington.

WESTCOTT& Thomson, Sherman & Co.

Stereo! i/pers and Electrotypers, Philadn. Printers, Phila.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTORY. By the Rev. H. C. McCook, Pastor of the

Seventh Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia 9

JOHN KNOX : An Oration. By the Rev. Samuel J. Wil-
son, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Biblical and Ecclesiastical
History, Western Theological Seminary, Allegheny 63

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. By the Rev.
Robert M. Patterson, Pastor of the South Presbyterian
Church, Philadelphia 115

PRESBYTERIANISM IN THE UNITED STATES. By
the Rev. J. B. Dales, D.D., Pastor of the Second United
Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia 175

PRESBYTERIANISM IN FOREIGN LANDS. By the
Rev. James McCosh, D.D., LL.D., President of the Col-
lege of New Jersey, Princeton ' 209

1*

5

Til Eft LU

INTRODUCTORY

BY THE

Rev. H. C. McCOOK.

PASTOR OF THE SEVENTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA.

INTRODUCTORY:-

ri^HIS Memorial Volume, both as to the fact
-»- and the form of its existence, originated thus.
An overture from the Synod of Toledo, and also
one from the Presbyterian Historical Society,
Philadelphia, came before the General Assembly
of the Presbyterian Church in the United States,
at its sessions in Chicago, A. D. 1871, asking the
Assembly to take order for the celebration, during
the year 1872, of the Three Hundredth Anniver-
sary of the completion of the work and life of John
Knox, in Scotland ; the organization of tlie first
Presbytery in England, and the Martyrdoms of
St. Bartholomew's Day in France. Upon which
the following action was taken :

'' Resolved, 1. That the observance of this Ter-
centenary Year be recommended to all our Synods,
Presbyteries and Congregations.

Resolved, 2. That a committee of three, the
Moderator, (Rev. Z. M. Humphrey, D. D.,) being
Chairman, be appointed to secure an address or
addresses, to be delivered during the Sessions of
the Assembly of 1872.'^

10 THE TERCENTENARY.

The purpose of this action was to revive in the
hearts of the clergy, and awaken in the hearts of
the peoj^le an intelligent interest in the Noble
Army of Martyrs and Confessors, wdio from the
very earliest ages, have professed, defended and
suffered for the Scriptural doctrine and order
known as Presbyterianism. The ultimate aim
was to deepen the attachment of Presbyterians to
their Church and its pure and apostolic principles
of faith and government.

Presbyterians, as a people, have always been
distinguished for general intelligence in matters
concerning the Faith and the Church. But it
is to be regretted that the mass of the American
Branch of the Family, have not been sufficiently
well informed as to the History of their own
Church. This is due to several causes. The
sources of information, the original documents,
are not among us. Without these, he who writes
upon the incidents of the past, is perforce limited
to the narrow round of the magazinist, rather
than encouraged to the wider sphere of the his-
torian. This necessary guide, stimulus and sup-
port of historic study can only be had by a journey
across the Atlantic. The terrible and continual
struggle of a nation comjDaratively new, with the
physical rudeness of a new country covering a
continent, has allowed little leisure, or ability for
the accumulation and study of histoi-ical materials.

ORIGIN AND OBJECT. 11

The busy Present has pushed its claims upon us
so persistently, that our hands and thoughts have
been largely withheld from exploring the buried
Past. Moreover, the mixed nationalities that
are especially characteristic of the Presbyterian
Church, have been to no inconsiderable degree, a
hindrance to that concentration of interest and
ejffort, from which history profits so largely.
Scotland, England, Holland, France, Ireland,
Switzerland, Italy, all have poured their streams
of Presbyterian peoples into the currents of our
ecclesiastical life. They have blended into a com-
mon national organization, or have run here and
there and been absorbed by other denominations.
Our children, many of them, have in their veins
ancestral blood that represents all the chief trans-
atlantic sources of Presbyterianism. It runs in
sympathy with Covenanter, Puritan and Orange-
man, with Huguenot, Hollander and Vaudois,
and with each almost equally. It is therefore not
to be wondered at that American Presbyterians,
with such diffused sympathies and descent, and
under such adverse circumstances as above men-
tioned, should have ftiiled to show that concen-
trated and personal interest in the history of
Presbyterian ancestors, which, for example, is
possible to the members of the Church of Scot-
land.

Even with these hindering influences, however,

12 THE TERCENTENARY.

there is much to encourage wise effort in the di-
rection of promoting a love and knowledge of our
Church History. With increased wealth and cul-
ture and leisure there has come a deeper interest in
the Past. Thousands of tourists annually cross
the Atlantic, and return from the scenes and asso-
ciations connected with the men and events of
history, with quickened interest in all that belongs
to them. Here and there an enthusiastic scholar,
overcoming the obstacles of distance, burrows for
a season among the libraries of the Old World,
and gives noble testimony, as in the case of Mot-
ley in his History of the Hise of the Dutch Re-
public, of our ability to make valuable contribu-
tions to the world's current knowledge of the
history of both Church and State.

The variety of national and family traditions
and sympathies, which heretofore has hindered
the concentration of the thought and feeling of
American Presbyterians, will in the future pro-
mote a more enlarged, even if less intense interest
in the general history of the martyrs and confes-
sors of our faith and order. Through the Provi-
dential changes of two centuries and a half, the
Divine Head of the Church has already wrought
out upon our shores a " Pan-Presbyterianism "
than which nothing could be more complete.
Scotch, English, Irish, Dutch, Swiss, French,
Italian — elements from all these great Presby-

MINGLED ANCJuSTEY, 13

terian centres are here fused and kneaded to-
gether, and cast into the mold of the American
Church. It is inevitable that our sympathies
cannot be limited to the history of any one of the
above named fields of inquiry. We belon<'* to all
of them, and they all belong to us. And we
shall yet learn to cherish the historic records of
them all as ours. To the community of faith
there comes the kinshijD of blood to deepen and
strengthen that sentiment which must send forth
our interest and inquiries throughout the entire
annals of Christendom.

Indeed, there is no branch of the Christian
Church, certainly no one of the great Protestant
Family, whose history presents so many points
that may well command the attention, excite the
interest, and awaken the pride of its adherents
as does our own Presbyterian Church. And
there is none whose history is more catholic in
ecclesiastical annals. Without any disparage-
ment of our beloved brethren of other denomina-
tions we may yet affirm this.

If we look into the history of the Anglican
Church, we must search the records of the south-
ern half of a little island of Europe. If we
would read the noble and thrilling annals of Lu-
theranism, Germany for the most part holds out
to us tJie scroll. But within what country of
Europe can you shut up the grand historic doings

14 THE TERCENTENARY.

of the Presbyterian Church ? In what one tongue
can you read its annals ?

What passages in history, of whatever age or
people, can exceed in the thrilling interest of their
suri'oundings, and in their momentous conse-
quences to the race, the events that, for example,
the Italian may tell you, have been wrought among
the valleys and 2:>eaks of the AIjds of Piedmont ?
— that the Switzer will narrate as he paddles you
over his lakes or leads you along his mountain
passes, and speaks of Calvin, Zwingle, Farel,
Berne, Zurich and Geneva? — that the Nether-
lander will evoke around the noble form of Wil-
liam the Silent, or weave out of the stormv ad-
v^entures of the " Wild Beggars of the Sea" ?

What memories follow us through sunny France
as we trace the sufferings and the valiant strivings
of the Huguenots ! What tales the Scotchman
tells as we walk over hill and heather, and recall
the days of the Covenants ! AVith what mingled
feelings of pride and regret do we listen while the
Englishman recites how Presbyterians saved the
liberties of England, saw their Church established
in the realm, and then fell before the blow that,
while it smote to the earth, yet gave history that
imperishable tablet upon which is written the
heroism of the Two Thousand non-conforming
divines, who gave up position, influence, com-
fort that they might keep their conscience clean.

ORIGIN AND OBJECT. 15

And, filially, what Irish Presbyterian has not felt
his quick, warm blood beat quicker and glow more
warmly as he described the siege of Londonderry,
or sang of the Battle of Boyne AVater?

Surely with a spiritual ancestry drawn from
men and women of such heroic blood, with a
Church History thus associated with so many of
the noblest and most interesting eras and incidents
in the annals of the human race, we should be
unworthy of our high descent were we to let the
records of the past die away from our memories.
And yet, remembering how truly Catholic the life
and work of our beloved Church has been and is ;
remembering how broad have been the sympathies
of Presbyterianism with all who have labored for
political and religious liberty, with every man
striving for freedom of conscience and the right
of independent judgment, we shall not suffer this
laudable pride and interest in our Church to
degenerate into the spirit of the sectary and the
bigot. Dearer to us than any Denominational
name will ever be the hallowed title of the
Universal Brotherhood — Christian. But we
shall not be the worse Christians by being the
better Presbyterians. AVe sliall not be the worse
but the better Defenders of the Faith Catholic,
by cherishing tenderly and espousing warmly the
things that belong to our own spiritual House-
hold. Not less faithful I v but the more, shall we

^(y THE TERCENTENARY.

bear witness with others for the common truths
of the Evangel, by being true to the testimony
which now — as in all the past it has been — is our
only justification before the world for our existence
as a distinct Communion of the Christian Church.
There can be no other than good results follow-
ing this deeper and more intelligent interest in
our Ecclesiastical History. Whatever benefits
the study of History in general can confer, will
in large measure follow. The increased enlight-
enment of our own membership as to their doc-
trines and order ; a more fervent and intelligent
loyaky to their own Church ; a firmer adherence
to principle through tlie influence of the noble
examples of the martyrs and confessors of other
days ; a Catholicism which shall be none the less
hearty and true because held within the bounds
of Scriptural orthodoxy ; — these are advantages
of the utmost importance to the higher welfare of
our Zion. It was not therefore strange that the
action of the General Assembly above cited, look-
ing to these manifest benefits, was gladly received
by the thoughtful friends of the Church, and
arrangements for carrying out its provisions most
heartily entered upon. In the Assembly of 1872
convened in the city of Detroit, a special meeting
was held, at which addresses were made by Rev.
Edward P. Humphrey, D. D., of Louisville, Ken-
tucky, and Rev. Samuel M. Hopkins, D. D., of

GENERAL CELEBRATION. 17

Auburn, New York. The meeting was marked
by the most profound enthusiasm and interest.
The theme of Dr. Humphrey's address was
" John Knox ;" that of Dr. Hopkins, the " Hu-
guenots."

During the year, similar celebrations were held
by Synods, Presbyteries, communities and con-
gregations throughout the entire bounds of the
Church. Never before had there been so many
and so well used opportunities to spread among
the people intelligence of the noble men, the his-
toric deeds, and the Scriptural principles of the
Presbyterian Church. The people responded to
the efforts of the clergy, with a heartiness that
oftentimes swelled into enthusiasm. In every
case, so far as has been ascertained, the Tercen-
tenary celebrations were attended by large audi-
ences, whose interest in the subjects discussed was,
without exception, not only equal to but far beyond
the expectation of managers and speakers. The
several families of Presbyterians forgot their minor
differences, and met, sang, prayed, rejoiced, wept,
and applauded together, moved by a common rev-
erence for their common spiritual ancestors, devo-
tion to their Evangelical principles, and gratitude
to the Covenant Keeping God, who had blessed
the Church and the world with the priceless gifts
of such memories and such men. Multitudes of
hearts, young and old, received a new impulse in

18 THE TERCENTENARY.

the j)ath of duty and devotion, while they followed,
through their lives of conflict, suffering, triumph,
death, those old Knights of the Evangel, Defend-
ers of the Faith, Martyrs and Confessors of
Christ, Heroes and Saints of the Church Militant,
" of whom the world was not worthy."

Among the many Tercentenary meetings above
referred to that which was held by the Synod and
City of Philadelphia was the most complete in its
arrangements, remarkable for its success, and far-
reachins; in its influence. Indeed it assumed —
although such was not the original thought — a
national character and became in fact representa-
tive of the whole Church.

Early in the summer, the Presbyterian Minis-
ters^ Association of Philadelphia, appointed a
Committee of ministers and elders, of whom
Rev. William P. Breed, D. D., was Chairman, to
which was committed the general arrangements
for the proposed celebration. This Committee
reported, recommending that the celebration be
held on Wednesday, November 20th, the Three
Hundredth Anniversary of the establishment of
Presbytery, at Wandsworth, near London, Eng-
land ; the exercises of the day to be in the Seventh
Presbyterian Church, Broad Street and Penn
Square, above Chestnut ; the evening exercises to
be in the New House of the Presbyterian Board
of Publication, and in connection with the formal

PHILADELPHIA CELEBRATION. 19

opening of that building. The details of the pro-
gramme, as adopted and carried out, appear fully
in the following pages, which are simply a Me-
morial of the great occasion of which they are
the official report.

The day which had been chosen proved to be
propitious, cool but clear and bright. Invitations
had been sent to the professors in our Theological
Seminaries, to professors in a number of the Col-
leges, to the editors of Religious papers, and to
others of official or personal distinction. A num-
ber of these were present. There was a large
attendance of clergymen from New Jersey, New
York, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.
At ten o'clock the invited guests, together with
the ministers and elders present, to the number
of near four hundred, assembled at the Pres-
byterian House, and marched in procession to
the Seventh Church, Kev. William E. Schenck,
D. D., acting as Marshal, assisted by Rev. Drs.
R. H. Allen and Alfred Nevin. They were wel-
comed to the Church by the organ and choir, and
occupied the platform and seats which had been
reserved for them. The house was already filled
to its utmost capacity, and so continued during
the entire services of morning and afternoon.
Indeed, the interest manifested by the audience
was unabated to the very end, the close of the
exercises at a late hour in the afternoon, being

20 THE TERCENTENARY.

marked by as much enthusiasm, as the openiug
exercises of the morning. .

The meeting was called to order by the Hon.
William Strong, Associate Justice of the United
States Court, who had been appointed to 23reside
at the morning session. The opening devotional
services were : reading the Scriptures, Psalm
Forty-sixth, by Rev. T. W. J. Wylie, D. D., of
the First Reformed Presbyterian Church, Phila-
delphia ; Prayer by Rev. Z. M. Humj^hrey, D. D.,
Moderator of the Assembly of 1871, and pastor
of Calvary Church, Philadelphia; and Singing by
the congregation of the Old Hundredth Psalm,
beginning,

" All people that on earth do dwell
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice."

The Memorial Discourse was then delivered by
Rev. Samuel J. Wilson, D. D., LL.D., Profes-
sor of Biblical and Ecclesiastical History in the
Western Theological Seminary, Alleghany. The
oration produced a deep impression upon the vast
congregation, and at the close of the meeting the
desire was expressed on all sides that it should be
repeated in the Academy of Music. This desire
was subsequently consummated, on the evening
of January 22d, 1873, in the presence of four
thousand people, fully as many more, it was esti-
mated, being prevented from attending by inability

MORNING SERVICE. 2i

to secure tickets. The statement of tliis fact not
inappropriately belongs to a report of this Ter-
centennial, of which it was in fact, a sequel ; and
further, as showing the profound interest awakened
by the celebration itself. It was well worth all
the expenditure in money and time and labor,
had no other results obtained, to have secured the
grand fact of such an audience, swayed under the
power of such a speaker and such a theme, ap-
plauding to the echo the names, the deeds, the
kirk and the principles of our noble Presbyterian
sires.

The address of Dr. Wilson was followed by the
singing of the hymn,

" Come let us join our friends above
That have obtained the prize."

The hymn was sung to the familiar tune of " Dun-
dee,'' which Burns has immortalized in his " Cot-
ter's Saturday Night." The sentiment was in such
happy sympathy with the tone of the oration and
the feelings of the audience, that the people
caught up the melody with their whole hearts
and voices. Never before, perhaps, did

" — Dundee's wild-warbling measures rise."

from human lips with greater pathos and power.
Mau}^ were melted to tears. The Tercentenary
was already a success !

22 THE TERCENTENARY.

The services of the morning closed with the
benediction pronounced by that honored champion
of the faith, Rev. Geo. W. Musgrave, D. D. As
the congregation retired, a song written for the oc-
casion, entitled " Three Hundred Years Ago,"
was sung by the choir.

The services were resumed at 3 o'clock, after-
noon, the Rev. Wm. P. Breed, D. D., pastor of
the West Spruce Street Church, Philadelphia,
presiding. After prayer by Rev. Herrick John-
son, D. D., pastor of the First Church, a histori-
cal sketch of Presbyterianism in Philadelphia,
was read by Rev. Robert M. Patterson, pastor of
the South Church, Philadelphia. The congrega-
tion then sang the hymn :

" These Western States, at Thy command
Rose from dependence and distress,
Prosperity now crowns the land.
And millions join Thy Name to bless."

Rev. J. B. Dales, D. D., pastor of the Second
United Presbyterian Church, Philadelj)hia, fol-
lowed with a historical j)aper on '' Presbyterian-
ism in the United States." The hymn

'' Am I a soldier of the Cross,"

was sung to the tune of*' Martyrdom," after which
Rev. James McCosh, D. D., LL.D., President of
the College of New Jersey, Princeton, read a paper
on " Presbyterianism in Foreign Countries."

AFTERNOON SERVICE. 23

On motion of ex-Governor Pollock, the thanks
of the meeting were rendered to the speakers of
the day for their addresses. The motion was ac-
companied with a few eloquent words that more
truly than is usual in such ordinary courtesies,
expressed the great satisfaction and gratitude of
the auditors.

On motion of George H. Stuart, Esq., thanks
were rendered by a rising vote to the pastor, el-
ders, trustees and congregation of the Seventh
Church, for the welcome which had been extended
to the audience, and for the additional interest
and pleasure that had been given to the occasion
by the beautiful and appropriate decorations with
which the platform and walls were adorned.
After the Doxology the Benediction was pro-
nounced by E,ev. Thomas Murphy, D. D., pastor
of the Frankford Church.

Before the benediction, at the request of many
in the audience, the chairman called upon Mr.
McCook, pastor of the Church, to give the key to
the historical designs that entered into the deco-
rations. These designs had been prepared with
much labor and expense, and were a gift to the
''Tercentenary Celebration" by the gentlemen
of the Seventh Church. The general i)lan, with
the historic details, had been suggested by the
pastor. But for the exquisite taste with which
the details had been wrought into artistic shape.

•24 THE TERCENTENARY.

die Church is mdebted to Mr. John Gibson, Chair-
man of the Committee on Decorations. An en-
graving of the designs over the pulpit and plat-
form forms the frontispiece of this book.

The general purpose of the decorations was to
present to the eye an outline of the places, men
and events most distinguished in the different eras
of the Church, or most closely associated with
the special objects to be commemorated. It was
thought that the minds of the j^eople might thus
be reached through " Eye-Gate," while the speak-
ers should assail them through " Ear-Gate," and
the great aim of the Tercentenary furthered
in a way agreeable to the assembly, and not in-
appropriate to the occasion. It was remembered
that the day for which they were prepared was a
Jubilee, a celebration. And it was agreed — the
general committee also approving — that the j)eople
of the Seventh Church might so far depart from the
simple and undemonstrative ways of our staid
Presbyterian fathers, as to give the sacred edifice
a festal seeming.

A large platform had been erected for the ac-
commodation of officers, speakers, and invited
guests. On this, immediately in front of the
reading desk, stood three Century plants, a floral
symbol of the ''Tercentennial." Of the four
columns behind the pulpit, (see Frontispiece) the
two inner ones commemorated the Churches of

THE CONTINENT.

25

Scotland and Euoland, the two outer ones those
of the Continent of Europe and the United States.
Each cohimn was surmounted by a blue shield,
with gilt edging. On these were inscribed the
names of places of special note in the Church
history of the countries represented. Around
each column were passed eight canvas bands
painted blue, and bordered with scarlet, on which
were laid in white letters the names of worthies
of the Church. Between these bands were en-
twined wreaths of evergreen. Thus, on the
column rejDresenting the Continent, were, on the
shield, against the capital, the following,

On the shaft, first band, Waldenses ; second,
Huguenots ; third, Calvin ; fourth, Zwingle ;
fifth, Farel ; sixth, Coligni ; seventh, William of
Orange ; eighth, D'Aubigne. On the column
representing Scotland, on the shield,

26

THE TERCENTENARY

lONA

S^- ANDREWS

S' GILES

lona was the seat of the ancient Culdee Presby-
ters; St. Andrews the place at which John
Knox was called to the ministry and began to
preach, and where the reformed worship was first
set up under its prior James Stewart, afterAvard
the Good Regent Murray ; St. Giles the Edin-
burgh Church in which the great reformer ex-
ercised his ministry during many eventful years
of his life. The names on the shaft representa-
tive of Scotland were, first, Knox; second,
Hamilton — Wishart; third, Melville; fourth,
Regent Murray ; fifth, Gillespie — Bailie — Ruth-
erford— Henderson, — (the four Scotch Commis-
sioners to the Westminster Assembly, the latter
perhaps the central figure of the National Cove-
nant days) — sixth. Earl of Sutherland ; — (the
first signer of the Covenant) — seventh, Davidson ;
eighth, Chalmers.

ENGLAND.

27

The third column was thus arranged ; on the
shield,

-^i

ENGLAND

WESTMINSTER

The representative names were, first, Wiekliffe ;
second, Tyndal ; third, Pym ; fourth, Hampden ;
fifth, Calamy ; sixth, Gouge — (the moderator of
the first English Synod) — seventh, Reynolds;
eighth, William and Mary.

On the column appropriated to tlie United
States were, on the shield,

UNITED STATES

NEW ENGLAND
PURITANS

PHILADELPHIA

28 THE TERCENTENARY.

The tablet to the " New England Puritans," rep-
resented the very large element of Presbyterian
Puritans that entered into the original constitu-
ency of the Congregational Churches of New
England. The names on the columns were,
frst, McKemie ; second, Andrews ; third,
Witherspoon ; fourth, Tennent ; fifth. The
Alexanders ; sixth, MacMillan ; seventh Barnes ;
eighth, Bullard.

Along the cornice above the columns was dis-
played the Scripture text, Ephesians ii : 20, "Built
upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Chkist himself being the chief Corner
Stone."

In the large open space between the two inner
columns, immediately back of the pulpit, forming
the centre piece of the design, was the Blue Ban-
ner of the Covenant crossed with the American
National Colors. Below the intersection of the
flao;-staves was a beautiful floriated diamond-
shaped monogram, three Boman C's, [c C c]
having the double signification " Three Centu-
ries," and " Christ's Crown and Covenant," the
banner-cry of the Covenanters. The Covenant
Banner was of blue silk, made for the occasion,
the chief authority for the form, a scarlet St.
Andrew's Cross in a field of blue, being the
learned antiquary Sir Walter Scott, whose in-
formation concerning the banner borne by the

THE BANNER. 29

ftiithful defenders of the National Covenant
would ap23ear to be more trustworthy than his
representations, or more properly mis-representa-
tions, of the cliaracters of those gallant and per-
secuted men. It will be of interest to most readers
to read some of the references which were un-
covered in the search after the true form of this
banner, and which determined the construction
as above described. The following are from " Old
Mortality." At the head of Chapter V, stands
this quotation :

Arouse thee, youth !— it is no human call-
God's Church is leaguered— haste to man the wall ;
Haste where the Bedcross banners wave on high,
Signal of honored death, or victory !

James Duff.

In Chapter XXIV, this passage occurs in the
description of the siege of Tillietudlem Castle :
" With this answer the ambassador returned to
those by whom he had been sent. He had no
sooner reached the main body, than a murmur
was heard among the multitude, and there was
raised in front of their ranks an ample red flag,
the borders of ivhich were edged with bluer Chap-
ter XXVIII closes Avith th<3 following sentence :
"And when the sun arose, the 5mr/e^ and blue
colors of the Scottish Covenant floated from the
Keep of Tillietudlem."

In the opening sentences of the Thirty ^fifth

3*

30 THE TERCENTENARY.

Chapter of " Waverly," is this passage : *' Waverly
and his new friend followed him, though probably
he would have dispensed with their attendance.
They soon recognized in solemn march, first, the
performer upon the drum ; secondly, a large flag
of four compai'tments, on which were inscribed
the words : Covenant, Kirk, King, Kingdoms."

In one of the notes on " The Battle of Both-
well Bridge," in " The Minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border," there is a curious account of the origin
of the use of blue as the favorite color of the
Covenanters. This the author concludes w^ith the
remark : *' I have seen one of the ancient banners
of the Covenanters ; it was divided into four com-
partments, inscribed with the words — Chinst —
Covenant — King — Kingdom. fSimilar standards
are mentioned in Spalding's curious and minute
narrative, vol. ii., j)p- 182, 245."

In the Editor's Preface to the late beautiful
edition of " The Scots Worthies," by John Howie,
of Lochgoin, occurs this passage : In a pamphlet,
which first appeared fifty years ago, one of the
Howies has the honor assigned him of announcing
the tidings (of the Bevolution of 1688) to the
neighborhood around. " What do I see ?" said
the laird of Torfoot, alarmed at the approach of
a horseman, and making ready for any danger
that might be at hand — " What do I see ? But
one trooper ? And that motley crowd is a rabble,

THE BANNER. 31

not a troop. That trooper is not of Cla verse's
band : nor does lie belong to Douglas, nor to
Inglis, nor to Straclian's dragoons. He waves a
small flag. I can discover the scarlet and the blue
colors of the Covenanter'' s flag. Ha ! Welcome
you, John Howie, of Lochgoin. But what news ?
Lives our country ? Lives the good old cause ?"
"Glorious news !" exclaimed Howie; "Scotland
forever ! She is free. The tyrant James has
abdicated. The Stuarts are banished by an in-
dignant nation. Orange triumphs. Our wounds
are binding up. Huzza ! Scotland and King
William and the Covenant forever!"

The fact seems to be that there Avas the same
liberty and diversity in the selection of a stand-
ard on the part of various local bands among the
Covenanters, that we know to have existed among
the original troops of our own Kevolution, until
the several favorite flags had crystallized in the
present form of the national colors. It is possible
that the same result followed among the Cove-
nanters. But if so, the form finally adopted and
used has not been discovered by the writer, neither
from books at his command, nor from a consider-
able correspondence with such of our citizens of
Scotch descent as w^ere thought most likely to
know. It is hoped that some one to whom these
lines may come, can give the desired information.

Above these banners, in the same open space.

32

THE TERCENTENARY.

were arranged three tablets, especially commemor-
ative of the three principal objects which gave oc-
casion to the celebration. The tablets were sur-
rounded by borders on which were painted the
conventional floral symbols of the several king-
doms of Scotland, France, and England, and en-
compassed by wreaths of evergreen. On the right
was the tablet to the Church of Scotland, bordered
with the thistle, and inscribed :

The inscription certainly should have removed
the impression, which nevertheless inadvertently
found utterance in outside quarters, that the oc-
casion was a celebration of the " Third century
of Presbyterianism !" Succat is the surname of
St. Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland. He was a
Scotchman, born on the banks of the Clyde, near

ST. PATRICK. 33

Glasgow, A. D. 372, just fifteen centuries ago.
The bond that thus united the early Kirk of
Scotland and the Church of Ireland, may yet be
seen in the intimate relations between the Pres-
byterians of the two countries. This inscription
to Succat was intended to be a fitting recognition
of the large and worthy element in the American
Church whose ecclesiastical descent is drawn from
the historic men of old Ulster, and who are known
among us as the " Scotch-Irish." That St. Patrick
was thoroughly imbued with the principles of the
Culdees, and therefore a sound Presbyterian, is
apparent from the following quotation from Arch-
bishop Ussher : " We read in Nennius that at the
beginning St. Patrick founded 365 churches, and
ordained 365 bishops and 3000 (elders) presby-
ters." One bishop and about eight elders for
every church ! which looks very much like the
bishops and elders of our modern Presbyterian
congregations.

The central tablet was to the martyred Presby-
terians of France, and was surrounded by a border
of lilies. The word Huguenot is variously de-
rived ; by D'Aubigne from a French corruption
of the German word Eidgenossen — the Genevese
confederates being called Eiynots, confederates
Others derive it from Hugues, the name of one
of the Genevese leaders. The inscription upon
this tablet rejid,

34

''HE TERCENTENARY

On the left was the tablet to the English Pres-
byterians, surrounded with the conventional roses
of " merry England." It was inscribed as follows :

■^'\]

2000
NON CONFORMING

PRESBYTERIAN

DIVINES

AUGUST-24*

THE NONCONFORMISTS.

35

The event commemorated occurred shortly after
the restoration of Charles II., by whom a law was
enacted, known as the Act of Uniformity, which
required all clergymen not only to use the estab-
lished liturgy, but also to renounce and condemn
the Solemn League and Covenant, Presbyterian
ordination, and all efforts for changing the then
present establishment. About two thousand min-
isters, chiefly Presbyterians, whose consciences
would not allow them to conform to this act,
abandoned their churches and livings, and sub-
jected themselves to the sufferings and persecu-
tions which followed.

Below the Banner of the Covenant was placed
a model of the seal of the Church of Scotland, a
Burning Bush, with the Latin motto, '' Nee tamen
consumebatur," — And yet it was not consumed.

36 THE TERCENTENARY.

The seal of the Church of Ireland is similar to
this, the motto, however, being diffei-ent, ''Ardens,
sed virens " — Burning but flourishing ; a varia-
tion not inappropriately describing the warm and
fresh hearted children of the Green Isle.

Opposite this, beneath the American flag, was
what may perhaps be called the seal of the Ameri-
can Presbyterian Church, viz., the seal of the
Trustees of the General Assembly. It is a figure
of the brazen serpent lifted up upon a cross. The
motto surrounding it is not on the seal itself,
but was given to the artist, by the writer, to satisfy
his notions of harmony. The idea of the figure,
it was inferred, was this, that in the wilderness of
this new country our Presbyterian fathers had
been called to lift up the one only Remedy for
sin, the Hope of the nation as of every soul.
The quotation from the Vulgate " Vox clamantis
in deserto" — The voice of one crying in the
wilderness — ^was therefore given for a motto, as
expressing the thought that our beloved Church
had been in the past — and indeed is still — a voice
crying in the midst of our wild jorairies and for-
ests and mountains of the far West, " Prepare ye
the way of the Lord." As there was at that time
no thought of perpetuating these symbols through
this Memorial Book, the reader may look chari-
tably upon this liberty, and put it to the credit of
" poetic license." But seriously, would it not be

AMERICAN CHURCH SEAL.

37

well that the church should have this or some
otlier symbol which might be popularly known as
our Church seal? Or, is not the seal of the
Trustees of the Assembly entitled to claim this
character ?

Between the two columns on the right of the
platform were these tablets : above, a seal com-
memorative of the Waldensian Church, a Lily
growing in the midst of a bed of thorns with the
motto " Emergo" — I struggle through. This was
copied from a rough sketch made several years
ago by a minister of the Waldensian Church,
visiting this country, and was represented as
being a favorite seal or design of the Church.
The ancient seal is well known to be the flaming
torch, with the motto — " Lux lucet in tenebris "
— The light shineth in the darkness. The design
which was used, whatever may be its official

4

38

THE TERCENTENARY.

character, is certainly beautifully expressive of
the history of that ancient Presbyterian people.

Beneath this, was a tablet to the Dutch Church,
whose terrible sufferings under Alva, and whose
noble struggles and triumph under William the
Silent, present one of the most thrilling records
in the annals of Presbyterianism. In the early
stages of the conflict with the Spanish power, the
term " beggars " was applied to the opposition by
one of the Spanish party. At a banquet of some
of the Dutch nobles, in the heat of after dinner
excess, this indignity was discussed with much
warmth. Great was the indignation of all that
their enemies should have dared to stigmatize as
beggars, a band of gentlemen with the best blood
of the land in their veins. Their host, Brederode,
who apprehended the power of an original, strik-
ing and popular epithet, assured them that noth-

BEGGARS OF HOLLAND.

39

ing could be more fortunate. " They call us beg-
gars ! Let us accept the name. We will contend
with the inquisition, but remain loyal to the King,
even till compelled to wear the beggar's sack." He
then beckoned to one of the pages, who brought
him a leathern wallet, such as was worn at the day
by professional mendicants, together with a large
wooden bowl, which also formed part of their
regular appurtenances. Brederode immediately
hung the wallet around his neck, filled the bowl
with wine, and drained it at a draught. " Long
live the beggars ! " he cried, as he wiped his beard

and set the bowl down. '' Vivent les gueulx^
Then, for the first time, says Motley, from the
lips of those reckless nobles rose the famous cry,
which was so often to ring over land and sea,
amid blazing cities, on blood-stained decks,
the smoke and carnage of many a

through

40

THE TERCENTENARY.

stricken field. The humor of Brederode was
hailed with deafening shouts of applause. Shouts
of '^Vivent les gueulx^^ shook the walls of the
stately mansion. The shibboleth was invented.
Their enemies had provided them with a spell
which was to prove, in other days, potent enough
to start a spirit from palace or hovel, forest or
wave, as the deeds of the "wild beggars," the
'^ wood beggars," and the " beggars of the sea"
taught Philip at last to understand the nation
which he had driven to madness.*

Between the two columns on tlie left of the
platform were the following designs : Above, the
seal of the Presbyterian Board of Publication, an
open book with light radiating from beneath, on
the open pages the motto " Sit Lux," — Let there
be light !

■^ Else of the Dutch Republic, vol. i., p. 521,

WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY.

41

Beneath this was a tablet commemorative of
the Westminster Assembly, inscribed :

WESTMINSTER
ASSEMBLY

(St, 1643
22d, 1649

J

The Westminster Assembly of Divines was cre-
ated by the famous Long Parliament of England,
and met in the chapel of King Henry the Seventh,
Westminster Abbey, July 1, 1643. Afterward,
when the weather became cold, the sessions were
held in the Jerusalem Chamber. It consisted of
thirty-tw^o lay assessors, two of them re^Dresenta-
tives of Scotland, and one hundred and forty-two
divines, four of them Commissioners from Scot-
land. They were of all shades of opinion in
matters of Church government. The duty im-
posed upon this Assembly appears from the fol-
lowing extract from the ordinance of Parliament
by which it was convoked : " Whereas amongst
the infinite blessings of Almighty God upon this
Nation, none is, or can be, more dear unto us than

42 THE TERCENTENARY.

the purity of our religion ; and for that as yet
many things remain in the liturgy, discipline, and
government of the Church, which do necessarily
require a further and more perfect reformation
than yet hath been attained : And whereas it
hath been declared and resolved by the Lords and
Commons assembled in Parliament, that the pres-
ent Church government, by archbishops, bishops,
their chancellors, commissaries, deans, deans and
chapters, archdeacons, and other ecclesiastical offi-
cers, depending upon the hierarchy, is evil, and
justly offensive and burdensome to the Kingdom,
a great impediment to reformation and growth of
religion, and very prejudicial to the State and
government of this Kingdom ; and that therefore
they are resolved that the same shall be taken
away, and that such a government shall be settled
in the Church as may be most agreeable to God's
Holy AVord, and most apt to procure and preserve
the peace of the Church at-home, and nearer
agreement with the Church of Scotland and other
Reformed Churches abroad : And for the better
effecting hereof, and for the vindicating and clear-
ing of the doctrine of the Church of England
from all false calumnies and aspersions, it is
thought fit and necessary to call an Assembly of
learned, godly, and judicious divines, to consult
and advise of such matters and things touching
the premises, as shall be proposed unto them by

WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY. 43

both or either of the Houses of Parliament, and
to ffive their advice and counsel therein to both
or either of the said Houses, when, and as often
as, they shall be thereunto required."

The sentence in the above, which has been itali-
cized, presents what may be considered as the
main object of the AVestminster Assembly, viz.,
to frame such a system of Church Government
and Public Worship as might unite the King-
doms of England, Scotland and Ireland in re-
ligious uniformity. Nay, it looked even beyond
this, to a like uniformity among all the Reformed
Churches of Europe. It was a cherished thouglit
of many of the leading spirits of the Assembly,
notably of that great and good man, Alexander
Henderson, that Protestant Christendom miglit
be led, through the agency of the Westminster
Assembly, to form a substantial Union in matters
of Church government and worship. It was a
noble conception, which seemed at times to be on
the eve of consummation. It failed ; but the
presence of such a sublime and truly Christian
idea in the hearts of those Assembled Divines
must give an interest and dignity to their charac-
ters and deliberations which no detraction of ad-
versaries can belittle. And it is quite certain that
their conclusions, as embodied in the " West-
minster Confession," expressed the convictions of
the great majority of the most learned and godly

44 THE TERCENTE2;ARY.

men of that age, throughout the Protestant
world.

These conclusions were substantially accepted
and enacted by both Houses of the English Par-
liament, and Presbyterianism became the estab-
lished form of Christianity. The dissolution of
the Long Parliament by Cromwell, and the events
subsequent to the Restoration of Charles IL,
almost entirely overthrew the work of the Assem-
bly as to England. But Scotland heartily ac-
cepted its conclusions, its Kirk and Parliament
ratified its Confession, Discipline, and Catechisms,
and her noble children have cherished and upheld
them to this day with unabated sincerity and
affection. It is from Scotland rather than from
England that these honored symbols of the Gos-
pel Faith have been transmitted to our American
Church.

The following decorations in the Church re-
main to be noticed. A large " life size " bell
constructed of natui'al flowers, hung from the
centre of the ceiling, a fitting syml)ol of a Jubi-
lee. This beautiful design was an offering from
the First Church of Mantua. Around the gal-
leries and organ-loft were hung festoons of ever-
green, and hanging baskets containing plants and
flowers. In the vestibule of the church were these
decorations. Over the main inside door, a design
of *' Welcome," drawn from the message to the

NATIONAL COVENANT OF SCOTLAND. 45

ancient Church of Phihiclelphia, as recorded in
the third chapter of the Revelation — an open
door, out of which issued rays of light, in the
centre of the rays a key, combining the form of
a cross, all signifying the only Source of Know-
ledge, Faith and Opportunity, viz. : He that hath
the key of David. Below, on a scroll, was the
name " Philadelphia," and above, the text, " Be-
hold I have set before thee an open door." On
the key stone of the arch of the door were two
hearts bound together, symbolizing the place of
the City of Brotherly Love in the Key Stone
State, as well as the flict that Charity is the Key
Stone of the Christian Virtues. On the north
side of the door was a fac-simile of the famous
National League and Covenant of Scotland, with
the signatures of many of the principal original
signers. The persecutions of Charles I. and
Archbishop Laud in their endeavor to force Epis-
copacy and liturgical worship upon the unwilling
Presbyterians of Scotland, finally aroused the en-
tire nation to resistance. This resistance culmi-
nated in that grand act of Covenant before God,
and confederation with each other, which is known
as the '' National Covenant." It was adoptel and
signed at the Gray friars Church, Edinburgh, Feb.
28th, 1638. The meeting at which this was done
was one of the most i-emarkable of which History
has any record. When the vast audience within

46 THE TERCENTENARY.

the church, composed of the very flower of the
Scotch nobility and gentry, had all signed, the
document was removed into the churchyard,
spread upon a level grave-stone, and the signa-
tures of the multitude invited. The scene here
was even more impressive than within the church.
The emotions of the j^eople found vent, on the
part of some, in tears, of others in shouts of exulta-
tion, but among all, in a fervent, solemn uplook-
ing to the God of Covenants. The whole of the
large parchment was covered with names, con-
tracted into less and less space as the face of the
scroll became covered, until at last only initials
could be signed. Some wrote after their names,
^' till death ;^^ others opening a vein, subscribed
with their blood. The movement was universal.
The entire nation took the Covenant. Thus was
beo-un that revolution in Great Britain which led

o

finally to the Long Parliament, the death of
Charles L, Oliver Cromwell, and the secured
liberties of the United Kingdoms.

On the south side was a large printed copy
of the Declaration of Independence made
by the Presbyterian citizens of Mecklenburg
County, N. C, May 31st, 1775, thirteen months
before that made by the Federal Congress, in
Philadelphia, July 4, 1776. This document,
handsomely printed in blue, and enclosed in a
gilt frame, is on a parchment 28 by 40 inches.

MECKLENBURG DECLARATION. 47

It contains, beside tlie Declaration itself, fac-similes
of the signatures of the Committee who prepared
it, which we give on the accompanying pages, and
a historical note from Lossing's Field Book of the
Revolution, authenticating the now established
tact which has conferred such honor upon the
Presbyterians of North Carolina. The juxta-
position of this bold Declaration with the fac-
simile of the Scotch League and Covenant,
showed at a glance that the influence which Pres-
byterian principles had in invoking, stimulating,
and sustaining in the Old World the spirit of
Civil Liberty, wrought with like results in the
New World. The document, as might be ex-
pected in the city where stands the old Independ-
ence Hall, attracted great attention, and provoked
animated remark.'^

On the south side of the main outer door was
a large photograph of the old Seventh Church,
erected A. D. 1806, which stood in Panstead
court, between Fourth and Fifth streets, above
Chestnut. In this building the sessions of the
General Assembly were regularly held, whence it
was called the Assembly Church, or Tabernacle.

* A few additional copies of this Mecklenburg Declaration
were printed, and may be had on application to the writer, by
those who may wish to frame them for our Seminaries, Colleges,
public and private libraries and halls. A trifling expense for
frames might furnish all our Church Institutions, should some
liberal friend be found to undertake the matter.

o

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O

Ph

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Q

fa

o
o

I— I

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50 THE TERCENTENARY.

Here also occurred the famous separation of the
Presbyterian Church into the Old and New School
parties. The church was torn down without any
picture of it having been preserved. But a com-
plete restoration of the building was made from
an engineer's survey and architect's description,
lately discovered among some old paj^ers, from
which this picture was taken. OjDposite this was
a photograph of the Third Church, Pittsburg, in
which the Re-Union of the Old and New School
Branches was consummated.

The evening exercises of the celebration were
held in the new Presbyterian Publication House,
at No. 1334 Chestnut street. The opening of
this noble edifice was greeted by the public with
lively interest. Throngs of visitors poured
through the House during the day, and all ex-
pressed warm admiration of the completeness and
commodiousness of all its appointments. A com-
mittee of ladies had decorated the salesroom, halls
and offices with statuary, evergreens and flowers,
giving a gala air to the whole of the beautiful
building.

In the evening the House was literally
"jammed." The Assembly Room was the centre
of attraction, and was closely packed with ladies
and gentlemen, many of whom were obliged to
stand from seven to ten o'clock listening to the
addresses and the music. Large numbers being

EVENING MEETING,

51

■^-^-nir

'w^fww^7^^yT\''f^T] f^-r'r\P 'f^ -f^ fM^

f^i^M^

at,-^o^--\G> .G» - G> .. J. a^ o^-^^ej a

%ta^\4^'ii«- •*»*.. ..^ .

Presbyterian Pubi^icatiox IIousk, Philadki.phia.

52 THE TERCENTENARY.

unable to get in, a second meeting was organized
in the Eooms of the Board of Education.

The services in the Assembly Room were full
of interest. The Rev. Alexander Reed, D.D.,
President of the Board of Publication, jDresided.
After an opening piece of music from the choir,
which had kindly volunteered its services, the
opening address was made by the Rev. W. E.
Schenck, D.D., Corresponding Secretary of the
Board of Publication, who extended a warm wel-
come to the audience and 2;ave some account of
the House, its cost, and the uses to which its
several jDarts were to be apj)lied. The Rev.
Herrick Johnson, D.D., followed, speaking on be-
half of the Board of Education, wdiich was here
generously accommodated by the Board of Publi-
cation with fine apartments, without charge for
rent, fuel or light. The Rev. Cyrus Dickson,
D.D., of Xew York, one of the Corresponding
Secretaries of the Board of Home Missions,
tendered his con2;ratulations on behalf of the
Presbyterians of New York, and warmly alluded
to what his eyes had seen of the usefulness of the
colporteurs and publications of the Board of Pub-
lication, as diffused in the distant Territories and
on the Pacific coast of the United States. The Rev.
Henry M. Field, D.D., of New York, Editor of
the " New York Evangelist," next addressed the
audience, eloquently alluding, among other sub-

EVENING MEETING. 53

jects, to the painful absence on this occasion of the
" lost tribes " of our I*resbyterian Israel — the
southei"n portion of our Churcli. The Rev. John
Leyburn, D.D., of Baltimore, who was over twenty
years ago the Corresponding Secretary of the
Board of Publication, responded kindly to the al-
hision of Dr. Field in regard to the soutliern
brethren, and entertained the audience with hu-
morous reminiscences of the Board in its early
days. Further brief remarks were made by the
Kev. John W. Dulles, D.D., Editorial Secretary
of the Board, the Bev. James McCosh, D.D.,
LL.D., President of Princeton College, and the
Bev. Henry E. Niles, of York, Pa. These ad-
dresses were interspersed w^ith delightful music
from the volunteer choir. At the close, thanks
were voted to the committee of ladies who had
arranged the decorations — Mrs. S. C. Perkins,
Mrs. Strickland Kneass, Miss Mary Sutherland
and Mrs. S. B. Stitt ; and the meeting adjourned
after a season of thorough enjoyment.

At the meeting extemporized by those who
could not enter the Assembly-Boom, Avhich was
held in the rooms of the Board of Education, the
Rev. Thomas Murphy, D.D., presided. Short ad-
dresses, but earnest, eloquent and brimfuU of
the happy spirit that pervaded the multitude that
thronged all parts of the House, were made by
Dr. George Hayes, President of Washington and

5*

54 THE TERCENTENARY.

Jefferson College, Dr. Wm. O. Johnstone, Dr.
Alfred Nevin, and Ex-Governor Pollock.

Thus ended the formal celebration of the Ter-
centennial of the great events in the history of
the Presbyterian Church, which are naturally
grouped about the life and death of John Knox,
the sufferings of the Huguenots, and the estab-
lishment of Presbytery in England. Perhaps no
event ever so fully aroused and united the Pres-
byterians of Philadelphia. And tlie interest was
carried into the general community by the ex-
cellent re])0]'ts which appeared in leading news-
papers of the city, which were ably represented in
the various sessions of the meetins;. That the
beneficial influences of the Tercentennial have
not yet ceased to be felt is manifest in the deep-
ened and deepening interest among our people in
that which relates to their Church History. Let
us see to it that these influences are perpetuated !
There is opened to us a vein of truth, the solid facts
of history, in which too few ministers have thought
it worth while to mine for the benefit of the people.
But it has been shown beyond a question that the
hearts and minds of the people will respond to well
directed efforts to enlist their interest in the mighty
facts of God's Providence, as written in the His-
tory of His Saints. Let us be wise to enter again
into this field, which hitherto we have trodden only
for our own entertainment and instruction, and

HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

65

explore it with minds intent upon culling there-
from such materials as we may arrange into such
shape and comeliness as shall win the people to
receive them at our hands. Providence too is to
he studied. There is in that also a divine reve-
lation for us. As leading to, and illustrating
the Revelation of the Word, the teacher of God's
ways and truths will find it well repaying his
faithful study. If for nothing else, to set in play
some force that shall counteract the pernicious
influence of the frivolous literature in which so
many of our youth delight — the whipped-up-
froth of venial authors, whose productions are
dealt out at wholesale by the literary confection-
monsiers, wliose wares are found even in our
Sunday-school libraries.

The writer ventures to close this account,
with a word, calling attention to an agency
whose aim is in the direct line of the benefits
issuing from the Tercentennial — The Pres-
byterian Historical Society. A large collec-
tion of valuable books, manuscripts and relics,
gathered together by the indefatigable Librarian
and Treasurer, Samuel Agnew, Esq., — lies stored
away in bales and boxes, and well-nigh inaccessi-
ble, for lack of a suitable edifice in which the
collection may be displayed, preserved and made
available to the student of Presbyterian History.
The period is ripe for a well -concerted effort tc

66 THE TERCENTENARY.

place this valuable Society and its treasures in safe
and comfortable quarters.

The following description of the new Publica-
tion House, whose opening was such an important
feature in the Tercentennial, is appended :

The "Presbyterian Board of Publication" of
the late Old-school Branch of the Church, went
into operation in tlie year 1838. Its first place
of business was on Sansom Street, Philadel]3hia,
in a rented room. After a few years it purchased
a house on Chestnut Street above Eighth Street.
This building was not long after destroyed by
fire, when the house recently occupied at No. 821
Chestnut Street was erected on the same site, and
the business of the Board was continued therein
until after the Be-union, when it was removed
to this place. The " Presbyterian Publication
Committee" of the other Branch was organized
fourteen years later, in 1852, and was located not
long afterward in the building which then occu-
pied the lot on which this new house now stands.

The first General Assembly of the happily re-
united Church, which met in this city in 1870,
united the Board and the Committee, and recom-
mended the organized Board of Publication, '' as
soon as practicable, to sell its house and lot. No.
821 Chestnut Street, and to provide a larger
house, adequate to its now extended operations,

THE PUBLICATION HOUSE. 57

and to the prospective growth of its business, on
the premises Nos. 1334 and 1336 Chestnut Street,
or in that vicinity." This recommendation has
now been carried out, and the new house, now
completed, is to-day for the first time fully opened
for the uses for which it was erected.

This new Presbyterian Publication House oc-
cupies two lots, Nos. 1334 and 1336 Chestnut
Street, above Thirteenth Street, and directly op-
posite the United States Mint, one of the most
eligible business localities in the city of Philadel-
phia. It has a front of forty-four feet on Chest-
nut Street, and runs back two hundred and thirty-
five feet to Sansom Street. It is four stories high,
besides the basement. Its Chestnut Street front is
built of granite, brought from quarries in New
Hampshire, is adorned with columns of colored
and polished granite from Aberdeen, in Scotland,
and is greatly admired for its architectural beauty.
The architect who planned and has throughout
supervised the erection of the structure, is John
McArthur, Jr., Esq. Mr. Lewis Havens was the
contractor and builder.

The basement is fire-proof throughout, and will
be used mainly for the storage of stereotype plates
and printed sheets. The entire first fioor is occu-
pied by the bookstore ; the front by the retail,
and the rear end by the wholesale department.
In the second story, at the Sansom Street end, is

58 THE TERCENTENARY.

a large, handsome and well-lighted Assembly
Room, around the walls of which is arranged the
valuable Library of the Board of Publication,
with a number of elegant portraits which have
been presented as gifts to the Board by generous
friends. Among these are conspicuous the like-
nesses of Albert Barnes, Thomas Brainerd, D. D.,
William W. Phillips, D. D., George W. Mus-
grave, D. D., Thomas H. Skinner, Sr., D. D.,
John M. Mason, D. D., George Junkin, D. D.,
and the late Matthias W. Baldwin, Esq. This
commodious and beautiful room is used for the
meetings of the Board of Publication, of the
Ministerial Association, the Presbyteries of Phila-
delphia, and a variety of other gatherings con-
nected with the work of our denomination. On
the same floor is a Committee Room, for smaller
meetings ; a Travelers' Boom, with toilet conve-
niences for the use of clergymen and others
transiently visiting the city ; and the spacious
and well-ventilated oflices of the Board of Pub-
lication, Board of Education, and the Ministerial
Belief Fund. The two last named, which are the
only others of the General Assembly's benevolent
schemes now located in Philadelj^hia, have been
invited by the Board of Publication to occupy
apartments on this floor without charge for rent,
fuel or light. The third story, except one large
front room, which is rented out, and one other

THE PUBLICATION HOUSE. 59

room used as the office of the Woman's Foreign
Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church,
is used for the storage of merchandise connected
with the operations of the bookstore. The whole
of the fourth story is rented to a number of
tenants.

The cost of the House will be about $130,000,
exclusive of fixtures or furniture. The Building
Committee, consisting of Messrs. William E. Ten-
brook, Chairman, John D. McCord, Gustavus S.
Benson, Samuel C. Perkins, George Junkin,
Morris Patterson, John W. Dulles, D.D., and
William E. Schenck, D.D., under whose constant
and most careful supervision the edifice has been
erected, are entitled to the thanks of the whole
Church for the labor they have expended, and
for the beautiful, economical and commodious
erection those labors have secured. This new
Presbyterian Publication House is already great-
ly subserving not only the particular interests of
the beneficent and prosperous Board which has
erected it, but all those of the great and growing
Presbyterian Church in the city and region in
which it is located, and will furnish agreeable
headquarters and a denominational home to all
Presbyterians who may either reside in or occa-
sionally visit Philadelphia.

JOHN KNOX.

AN ORATION

BY THE

Rev. SAMUEL J. WILSON, D.D., LL.D.,

PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE WKSTEIIN
THKOLOGICAL SEMINARY, ALLEGHENY, PA,

JOHN KNOX.

A T the beginning of the sixteenth century
-^ Scotland was wrapped in the densest gloom
of intellectual and moral darkness. Feudalism,
ignorance, superstition, licentiousness and tyranny
— the worst elements of the Middle Ages — held
brutal sway throughout her borders. The bish-
ops and abbots, with half of the wealth of the
I'calm in their coffers, outranking princes and
nobles both in dignity and power, and setting at
defiance alike the laws of God and man, outraged
every principle of virtue and every dictate of
decency. Priests and friars, bestial in their
stolid sensualness, filled the land like the frogs
of Egypt. There were friars white and friars
black and friars gray — friars of every hue and
habit and description, and friars everywhere.

Monasteries and nunneries were counted by the
hundred, and each several one of them was a
leprous plague spot. The investigation into the
condition of monasteries in England which was
ordered by Henry VIII. disclosed a corruption

66 THE TERCENTENARY.

as festering and loathsome as that upon which
fire and brimstone were rained in Sodom. The
state of morals in the Scottish monasteries was, if
possible, worse.

The people had these bishops, abbots, priests
and friars for their teachers, leaders and exam-
ples in holy living. *' The priest's lips no longer
kept knowledge ;" and when immortal souls
"sought the law at his mouth," they were tanta-
lized with dead forms in a dead language, which
were as destitute of the spirit and grace of the
gospel as a mummy of the pyramids, wrapped in
cere-cloth, is destitute of warm, j)ulsing blood
and stirring passions. The Bible was almost as
unknoAvn as one of the lost Sibylline books. The
pulpit was obsolete. Instead of the sermon were
substituted gossip, scandal, ribald jest and ob-
scene comedy. By means of excommunication,
anathema and interdict — the most terrific eccle-
siastical machinery ever invented — the clergy
tyrannized relentlessly over the souls and bodies
of men. Priests ground the faces of the poor as
systematically and as sedulously as though they
had been called of God and ordained of men for
this specific service. The Church, which should
have been the friend and helper and teacher and
lifter-uj) of the people — which should have been
quick to discern their wants and swift to avenge
their wrongs— usC'l all its power to keep them in

JOHN KNOX. 67

ignorance, to foster their superstitions and to add
to the bitterness of their burdens.

This apostate Church, winking at every species
of vice, and tolerant of all forms of iniquity,
'* breathed out tlireatenings and slaughter"
against all who ventured to question her au-
thority or dared to seek for light and truth.
For all such she had the ready argument of
tyrants, fiy^e and swoi^d. Men w^ere burned at
the stake for having the New Testament in a
language in which they could read and luider-
stand it. Yet this vast despotism, with all its
elaborate machinery of oppression, was impotent
to arrest the progress of the truth. It could burn
men with balls of brass in their mouths to keep
them from ])reaching the gospel in the flames,
but it could not destroy or paralyze the truth for
which these men died.

But the day of Scotland's redemption was
drawing nigh. The echo of the voices of Wick-
liff and Huss sounded faintly along her shores.
By and by she caught glimpses of the light
which had been kindled in Germany, Switzer-
land and France.

A youth of twenty, with the blood of earls
and dukes in his veins, invested with a high
ecclesiastical dignity from his childhood and w^ith
a long and brilliant line of j^romotion open be-
fore him, began to feel the stirrings of the new

68 THE TERCENTENARY.

spirit that was abroad among the nations, went to
Germany, sat at the feet of Luther and Melanch-
thon at Wittenberg, and caught the enthusiasm
of the eloquent converted Franciscan monk,
Francis Lambert, at Marburg, and returned to
Scotland all aflame with zeal to preach the gos-
pel. One afternoon a fire was prepared in front
of the old college in St. Andrews, and this young
man — only three-and-twenty years old — died at
the stake as only one of God's heroes can die,
and then history wrote, in ineffaceable characters,
the name of the proto-martyr of the Scottish
Keformation — Patrick Hamilton,

As had been predicted, " the reik of Patrick
Hamilton infected as many as it blew upon."
From his ashes sprung men armed with the pan-
oply of the gospel. The hierarchy could burn
men, but these very burnings kindled a light
which could not be put out. A learned and elo-
quent evangelist arose in the person of George
Wishart. When he preached, crowds hung upon
his lips, spellbound, by the hour. If churches
were shut against him, he preached in the streets,
on dikes or from city gates. His voice rang like
a trumpet through Scotland. It was one of the
few truly brave and grand voices that have been
heard in this world, but it was soon quenched in
fire. On the gentle slope in front of the castle
of St. Andrews, the sea sounding his requiem.

JOHN KNOX. 69

George Wishart gloriously sealed his testimony
with his blood. His persecutors, fearing that elo-
quent, clarion voice even in the flames, stopped
his utterance by tightening a cord around his
neck. Through the tapestried window of the
castle, reclining on luxurious cushions, Cardinal
Beaton witnessed the martyrdom, glutting his
lecherous eyes with the agonies of this illustrious
witness of the truth.

The Hierarchy, wielding the tremendous power
which had been won for it by Hildebrand and
Innocent III., bearing two swords, the temporal
as well as the spiritual, insolently lording it over
prince, priests and j)6opl6, and setting its face
like a flint against all enlightenment of the in-
tellect or soul, exercised a most cruel and heart-
less despotism. Its spirit was devilish. So long
as its magnates could roll in wealth, so long as
they could pamper their lazy bodies on the hard
earnings of the poor, so long as without restraint
or let or hindrance they could indulge their
brutal lusts and passions, they were content ; but
rather than lose an iota of their ill-gotten and
ill-used power, rather than have the people read
the word of God for themselves, they would see
Scotland lighted from one end to the other with
blazing stakes and fagots. They had the power
and they used it savagely. Their inquisition for
those who dared to preach Christ was as keen

70 THE TERCENTENARY.

and unerring as the scent of the bloodhound.
Every voice that was raised in behalf of truth
and righteousness was stifled in fire. Every
kindling of light was trodden out in blood. To
have the love of Christ in the heart, and to
dare proclaim it, was swift and sure destruction.

Whence, then, can deliverance come ? Where
can be found a man strong enough and brave
enough to grapple with this gigantic despotism,
whose mighty power has been the steady growth
of ages ? Has God in his quiver one such arrow ?
Has he, in all his kingdom, one such champion
hero?

A tutor in the family of Douglass of Lang-
niddrie, who had been a teacher of philosophy
at St. Andrews, until, becoming disgusted with
the jargon of scholasticism and the corruptions
of papacy, he abandoned the one and renounced
the other, became the devoted follower and
chivalrous sword-bearer of George Wishart.
When Wishart was arrested, he advised the tutor
to return to " his bairns," as he could no longer
be of any service to him. Very reluctantly, and
only after earnest remonstrances, the tutor fol-
lowed this advice. Besides teaching the classics,
he exercised his pupils daily in the Holy Scrip-
tures and indoctrinated them theologically by
catechetical instruction, and at stated intervals
these catechisings were public.

JOHN KNOX. 71

The times were now fraught with momentous
issues, and events big with the destinies of peo-
ples crowded thick upon each other. A few
months only after the day upon whicli Cardinal
Beaton, lounging on his velvet cushions, had
witnessed from his window in the castle, with
undisguised satisfaction, the burning of Wishart,
his own lifeless body, covered with the gaping
wounds of assassins' daggers, was hung as a public
spectacle from that identical window.

The tutor of Douglass, together with his pupils,
took refuge in the castle of St. Andrews, which
was then held by the enemies of the late cardi-
nal. Here he was soon recognized as one who was
eminently fitted to become the teacher and leader
of men and of princes, rather than to be the
tutor of boys. When the judgment of his friends
in this regard was solemnly announced to him,
and he was adjured to undertake the work of the
ministry, he burst into a flood of tears, shut him-
self in his chamber, and for days was overwhelmed
with the profoundest grief. Through the impor-
tunity of friends, and partly through the im-
pertinence of a certain champion of the papacy,
he was at length constrained to enter the pulpit
in defence of the truth. It was a memorable day
in Scottish history when he first preached in the
parish church at St. Andrews. Brave men held
their breath as they listened to his bold and

72 THE TERCENTENARY.

sweeping utterances. Such preacliing had not
been heard in Scotland for ages. "Others hewed
the branches of the papistry, but he struck at
the root." Some rejoiced and took courage, some
doubted, some hoped, some feared, many were
furious, but all felt that there was a new power
in the world, while a few chosen spirits recognized
John Knox as the ordained cliampion and leader
of the revolution then beginning in Seotland.

By the aid of French forces the castle of
St. Andrews was reduced, Knox was taken
prisoner, was loaded with chains and confined
as a galley-slave. Through hardship, ex-
posure and sickness his body was reduced to
a skeleton, but his spirit remained invincible.
Once the galley on which he was confined
came in sight of St. Andrews, and the spires of
the city being pointed out to him, he was asked if
he knew the place. With kindling eye he re-
plied : " Yes, I know it well, for I see the steeple
of that place where God first opened my mouth
in public to his glory, and I am fully persuaded,
how weak soever I now appear, that I shall not
depart this life till that my tongue shall glorify
his godly name in the same place." We admire
the indomitable spirit of Julius Caesar, who
threatened to their faces to crucify the pirates
who held him in their power as a prisoner ; but
these words of Knox, in the condition in which

JOHN KNOX. 73

he then was, breathe a grander courage than that
of Julius Caesar,

Released from the galleys, he spent five years
in England as an asylum from persecution, and
as a preacher in Berwick and New Castle he was
'' mighty in word ;" as cha])lain to Edward VI,
he " stood before kings ;" as a court preacher he
was as plain and fearless and searching as Lati-
mer ; as a theologian he was consulted in re«:ard
to the Book of Common Prayer and the Articles
of Keligion ; as a divine a brilliant line of pro-
motion was open before him in the Anglican
Church. Edward VI. proffered him a bishopric,
and any dignity in the English Church was within
his easy reach ; but he could accept none of these
without the sacrifice of honest and well-crrounded
convictions, and he therefore relinquished them
all " for conscience' sake," and remained loyally
and heroically true to these convictions in spite
of gold and glory. He remained poor and un-
titled ; but is there a title on earth that would add
any dignity to the simple name John Knox ?

When that "idolatrous Jezebel, mischievous
Mary of the Spaniard's blood," came to the
throne, Knox was compelled to flee from England.
He went first to France, thence to Switzerland
and thence to Germany. His exile on the Conti-
nent forms an important segment of his life, for
it threw him into contact with other Reformers

7

74 THE TERCENTENARY.

from all parts of the world, and afforded him
time for study and mature reflection. In the
matter of the church at Frankfort, he had an op-
portunity of testifying publicly against the false
and pernicious principles upon which the English
Reformation was conducted, and, in consequence,
he again proudly accepted exile rather than sac-
rifice or compromise a jot or tittle of his honest con-
victions. But the most important feature of this
part of his life was his intercourse with John Cal-
vin at Geneva. These two great men, whose influ-
ence has struck deeper into the currents of history
than any other two men then living, entertained
the most ardent esteem and friendship for eacli
other. Although Knox at this time was fifty
years old, he pursued his studies at Geneva as dili-
gently and enthusiastically as the merest tyro.
This seems to have been the sunniest part of his
stormy life. He was engaged in congenial studies
and he was surrounded with congenial compan-
ions, yet he relinquished these studies and the so-
ciety of congenial spirits in Switzerland, and re-
turned to Scotland just so soon as he felt that he
could be of service there.

Back once more in his dear native land, he
preached day and night, almost incessantly, and
the word grew mightily. No part of his life was
more fruitful of great results than this brief so-
journ in Scotland at this time. His clear vision

JOHN KNOX. 75

pierced through all disguises, shams and compro-
mises. His sharp, incisive judgment penetrated
to the very core of the issue. To him all compli-
ance with papal ceremonies was treason to the
cause of truth. With a steady hand, which never
missed its aim, he at one hlow cut the last tie
that bound the hesitating lleformers to the papacy.
Thus early in the struggle he settled, at once and
for ever, the policy of the Eeformation in Scotland.
There were to be no compromises, no temporizing
expediences. The work was to be genuine and
thorough. At this time, Avhen almost totally hid-
den from the world and unknown to it, he laid
deep and immovable the foundations of the Scot-
tish Eeformation. His glowing earnestness fused
the floating, incoherent elements of Reform into
consistency, symmetry and strength. A master-
hand was on the helm, and the noble ship, respond-
ing to his touch, assumed that course which she
held triumphantly to the end. All ecclesiastical
history since that day is a vindication of Knox's
policy of the Eeformation. It is the only true

policy.

Called to the pastorate of the English church
in Geneva in 155(3, Knox returned to Switzer-
land, where he remained for two years. While
there his time was occupied in preaching, in pas-
toral labor, in working upon the Geneva Bible,

76 THE TERCENTENARY.

and in uttering his terrible '' Blast of the Trum[)et
ao-ainst the Monstrous Resiiment of Women."

In the mean time the queen regent of Scotland,
*' crafty, dissimulate and false," having thrown
off her cunningly woven disguises, took the
first step toward the total extirpation of the Re-
formation in Scotland by summoning the Prot-
estant preachers to stand their trials at Stirling.
The queen regent, Hamilton, archbishop of St.
Andrews, and Beaton, archbishop of Glasgow,
notwithstanding bitter and rankling jealousies
among themselves, had joined hands for the pur-
pose of crushing out Protestantism utterly. The
plans were all matured. The plot was ripe. The
mine was about to be sprung. At this supreme
crisis the man whom God had been preparing,
by a long and severe discipline, to be one of his
ordained instruments in great achievements, steps
suddenly upon the scene. Elijah was kept hidden
in obscurity until he was to confront Ahab.
Moses had a forty years' discipline in the wilder-
ness, and came from the deserts of Midian to
stand before Pharaoh. Closes and Elijah wei-e
no more really chosen, ordained and prepared
ministers of God to act in great crises of the
Church than was John Knox. In slavery and in
exile his nature was seasoned and toughened to
the texture of true heroism. In his public cate-
chisinsis at Lano'niddrie, he first trained to poou-

JOHN KNOX. 77

lar speaking that voice which afterward shook
thrones and dashed to pieces the schemes and
policies of kings, queens, princes and nobles.

On the invitation of certain noblemen he re-
turned to Scotland " in the brunt of the battle."
His appearance at Edinburgh, as sudden and
as unexpected as the appearance of Elijah at
Samaria, created among his enemies as great a
panic as though it had been the invasion of a
hostile army. A good man in earnest, and with
a good cause, is as " the chariots of Israel and the
horsemen thereof," mightier than armies and na-
vies. Although under sentence of outlawry and
liable at any hour to be arrested and executed^
Knox resolved to stand with his brethren at Stir-
ling and share their dangers and their fate, *' by
life, by death or else by both, to glorify God."
But from this threatened danger the Lord pre-
served both him and them.

Amidst the throes of incipient civil war, and
in verification of his own prediction while a gal-
ley-slave, he returned to St. Andrews. The arch-
bishop peremptorily forbade his preaching in the
cathedral, and threatened that in case he should
dare to do so he would be shot down in the
pulpit by the soldiers. In defiance of the arch-
bishop's threat, and in spite of the remonstrances
of his friends, he yet preached.

This was the very crisis and pivot of the

78 THE TERCENTENARY.

struggle. At Augsbui'g the princes saved the
Lutheran Reformation, when the theologians
would have compromised or surrendered. Knox,
by his splendid intrepidity, saved the cause in
Scotland, when nobles as brave as the bravest
would have yielded to the demands of the arch-
bishop. John Knox at St. Andrews is a figure
as grand and towering as Martin Luther before
the diet of Worms.

The effects and results of Knox's j^reaching at
this time were marvelous. In the three days at
St. AndrcAvs — the primal see of Scotland — popery
was utterly overthrown, the Reformed worship
was set u]), images and j^ictures were torn from
the churches and monasteries were demolished.
Knox's doctrine was as fatal to popish suj3ersti-
tion as the fire which ran along the ground in
the j)lague of the hail was fatal to the vegetable
gods of Egypt. Wheresoever that doctrine went
— and it ran very swiftly — popish power and
popish idolatry, with all the paraphernalia there-
of, melted before it.

Li less than a month after his triumphal ap-
pearance at St. Andrews, Knox's voice was ring-
ing among the rafters of St. Giles and of the
Abbey Church at Edinburgh. Chosen at once
as pastor of St. Giles, he entered upon his labors
in that church which his name has made historic
throughout the Avorld, and where " his tongue

OLD ST. GILES, tDINBURGH.

JOHN KNOX. 81

was more than a match for Mary's sceptre," and
where so often " his voice in an hour j^ut more
life into men than six hundred trumpets couhl."

During the trying vicissitudes of civil war,
Knox was tlie one pillar of strength upon which
Scotland leaned with her whole weight. Wise in
counsel, utterly fearless in action, mighty in the
resistless torrents of his eloquence, the nation
turned to him instinctively as its God-given
leader. With a price upon his head, with hired
assassins waylaying his path, ever at the i)ost of
duty and of danger, '^ careless of his own carcass,"
thinking only of his dear Scotland, in the darkest
extremities of perilous times w^aking the expir-
ing courage of heroes with the trumpet peals of
his eloquence, he fought the good fight bravely
through, until within one year peace was pro-
claimed, popery was abolished by act of Parlia-
ment, and a confession prepared principally by
himself was adopted. There never was a nobler
fight or one that was more signal in its achieve-
ments. A complete revolution was accomplished,
popery was abolished, the Reformed Church had
a firm status and a complete Presbyterian organ-
ization. The battle was really gained. Hence-
forth the struggle was to maintain the ground
which had been won.

A more dangerous power, however, than fire
and sword was now to be encountered in the in-

82 THE TERCENTENARY.

sidious influence of a brilliant court which had
as its centre the beautiful and fascinating Mary
Stuart. The eagle eye of Knox perceived at once
the point of danger, and Mary, on the other hand,
as soon discovered the one power which stood in
the way of the accomplishment of her designs.
Knox was summoned to Holyrood, and in a long
conference Mary tried her best to intimidate and
awe him. She might as well have tried to shake
Salisbury crags with the breath of her nostrils.

When the news of the massacre of the Prot-
estants at Yassy in France reached Holyrood,
Mary had a grand ball to celebrate the event.
On the next Sabbath, Knox thundered in St.
Giles against those who " were more exercised in
fiddling and flinging than in reading or hearing-
God's most blessed word, and those who danced
as the Philistines their fathers danced, for the
pleasure which they take in the displeasure of
God's people." Mary sent for Knox the next day.
He retracted nothing, but told the queen to her
face that her uncles, the Guises of France, " were
enemies to God, and spared not to spill the blood
of many innocents," and then let her understand
very distinctly that " it was not his vocation to
stand at her chamber door and to have no further
liberty, but to whisper his mind in her Grace's
ear." That voice was for Scotland and the world.

" He departed," as he tells us in his " Historic,"

JOHN KNOX. 83

" with a reasonable merry countenance." " He
is not afraid !" whispered the papists as he passed.
Turning upon them, he replied, " Why shoukl the
pleasing countenance of a gentilwoman affray me ?
I have luiked on the faces of many angry men,
and yet have not been affrayed above measure."
That man could not be frightened. Next, Mary
plied all her exquisite art to flatter him, but in
this she succeeded no better.

Times grew critical. Many of the nobles were
proving recreant. Knox sacrificed some of his
dearest and sweetest friendships rather than yield
an inch or an iota to the growing encroachments
of the papacy. In his estimation one mass was
worse for Scotland than a hostile army. The
nobles were ready and anxious to compromise.
Parliament was pliable and plastic in the hands
of Mary. Knox alone stood in her way. He,
therefore, must be silenced or be put out of her
way somehow.

For the fifth time Knox was summoned to the
palace. In a torrent of tears and a tempest of
passion, Mary stormed and railed at him. Car-
ried beyond all bounds of prudence, she at last
spitefully exclaimed : '' What are you in this com-
monwealth ?" Grandly Knox replied : " A sub-
ject born w.thin the same, madam ; and, albeit I
am neither earl, lord nor baron within it, yet has
God made me — how abject soever I am in your

84 THE TERCENTENARY.

eyes — a profitable member within the same ; yea,
madam, to me it appertains no less to forewarn
of such things as may hurt it, if I foresee them,
than it doth to any of the nobility."

There is not in history a nobler answer.

For writing a circular letter, which he was
authorized to do by the General Assembly when
any exigency demanded such a measure, he was
arraio'ued and tried for treason. He made a
brave and able defence, and to the bitter disap-
pointment and chagrin of Mary, he was acquit-
ted. The queen had learned that Knox could
not be intimidated, neither could he be flat-
tered, or cajoled, or wheedled into compliance
with her wishes. She had also discovered that
she could not have him beheaded for treason in
Scotland.

She next entered into a conspiracy by which,
through a wholesale slaughter of the Protestants,
she hoped to get rid of her enemy. A league
had been formed betw^een the pope and the
Guises, by which Protestantism in France was to
be utterly rooted out by force. To this infernal
bond Mary set her fair and jeweled hand, and
that brought Scotland within the fatal scope of
the league. But there is a wheel within a wheel.
A jealousy between Mary and her husband. Darn-
ley, and the consequent murder of Pizzio, turned
the fierce currents of history into other channels,

JOHN KNOX. 85

and Scotland was saved from the horrors of a
massacre such as that of St. Bartholomew.

Under the regency of Murray the Church had
peace, and the revolution of 1560 was ratified.
There was still a strong and vicious papal party,
but by firmness the regent kept down all insur-
rections until he was taken off by the hand of
an assassin.

Under the regency of Lennox there was civil
war. The castle of Edinburgh was held at this
time by the queen's forces, and these forces were
under the command of the apostate Kircaldy of
Grange. Overwhelmed with grief on account of
the death of his beloved Murray, Knox had been
smitten with apoplexy, and was no longer able
to walk to church or to ascend the pulpit without
help. Yet he was as watchful and fearless as
ever. Not liking the reports which he received
of the preaching in St. Giles, Grange came down
to church one morning with a band of desperate
men to intimidate the preacher. The old man
rightly interpreted their presence as a threat,
and, his infirmities forgotten for the time being,
his wonted fires flamed forth again ; and leveling
his thunders right at Grange, he made the very
shingles on St. Giles tremble.

His friends now feared for his life. The castle
was full of Hamiltons, all thirsting for his blood.
He was shot at through the window of his own

S6 THE TERCENTENARY.

house. But he was totally unconscious of fear.
At length he was prevailed upon to leave Edin-
burgh, on the ground that his longer continuance
there would involve the lives of his friends. He
went to St. Andrews.

James Melville, who was then a student, has
preserved for us in his diary a very graphic ac-
count of the habits and appearance of the great
reformer at this time. He brings the scenes
vividly before us. We see the tottering old man
walking and sitting in the yard at St. Salvator's
college, calling the students around him, exhort-
ing them to be diligent in their studies, to know
God and his work in the country, and to stand
by the '^gude cause." With his heart yet young,
we find him encouraging the students by liis
presence at a play which was acted by them on
the occasion of the marriage of one of their re-
gents. We see him in his great weakness creep-
ing to the kirk, "slowly and warily," with a
" furring of martics about his neck," a staff in one
hand and his trusty servant su23porting him on
the other side. We see him lifted bodily by two
men into the pulpit, and then leaning wearily
upon it for support. We hear his tremulous,
faltering, uncertain tones as he opens the text ;
we listen as he " proceeds moderately for the space
of half an hour;" and then entering upon his
application, he warms and glows until he makes

THE HOUSE OF JOHN KNOX, EDINBURGH.

JOHN KNOX. 89

the Students *' grew and tremble so that they can-
not hold their pens to write," and kindling with
the rush and momentum of his thought, the spirit
triumphing over the half-dead body, we see the
shriveled limbs become instinct with life and
energy, and the whole man '' so active and vigor-
ous that he is like to ding the pulpit in blads and
fly out of it."

Providence opened up the way for his return
to Edinburgh before he died. He returned ac-
cording to an earnest invitation, and on the ex-
press and emphatic condition that he " should not
temper his tongue or cease to speak against the
men of the castle."

Once more he is back in his old pulpit, but his
voice can no longer fill St. Giles. To accommo-
date him with a smaller audience chamber, the
congregation prepared for him the Tolbooth
church. While these preparations are in prog-
ress, I invite you to accompany me for a little
while to the Continent,

When Knox was driven out of England by
" Bloody Mary," he found a grateful asylum in
France, where he formed many intimate and ar-
dent friendships. Perilous times cement kindred
spirits.

While Luther was lecturing on philosophy at
Wittenberg, the venerable Lefevre in France,
through the study of the Epistles of Paul, had

8 *

90 THE TERCENTENARY.

reached the central doctrine of the Eeformation,
justification by faith. Brigonnet, bishop of
Meaux, occupied the same theological ground.
When, therefore, this doctrine was proclaimed in
Germany, France responded to it with a quick
and live sympathy. The leaven of the gospel
spread rapidly from the professor in her great
university to the peasant in the furrow — from the
prince by the throne to the mechanic at his bench.
Margaret of Yalois, queen of Navarre, the witty,
the accomplished and the beloved sister of Fran-
cis I., was in full sympathy with the Reforma-
tion, and for some time she carried the sympathies
of her roval brother with her. But it was not to
be expected that the enemies of the gospel would
quietly witness these rapid conquests without put-
ting men to death '^ for the word of God and for
the testimony of Jesus Christ." As in other
countries, so in France, persecutions raged fiercely.
Loaded with every opprobrious epithet, charged
with crimes as atrocious as those which were laid
against the early Christians by the pagans, sub-
jected to tortures as refined in cruelty as those of
Nero, in spite of fire and steel and the balangoir,
the noble band of martyrs and confessors in
France heroically maintained their course, singing
psalms at the stake, " glorifying God in the fires,"
bearing their testimony to the truth, until their
enraged persecutors, in order to silence them, cut

JOHN KNOX. 91

out their tongues and flung them, yet quivering,
into their fUces. In the sixteenth century, France
was the bloodiest theatre of persecution of any
country in Europe save one.

Yet the blood of these glorious martyrs only
fertilized the soil for the propagation of the truth.
The smoke of their sacrifice disseminated the
principles for which they died. The Scriptures
were translated into French by Olivetan, the rela-
tive of Calvin. The Psalms, turned into metre
by Marot, " the poet of princes and the prince of
poets," were sung at the court and on the fashion-
able promenade of Paris, and were hummed even
by King Francis himself. The printing-press
was busy. It teemed with books and tracts.
Tracts were scattered like autumnal leaves in the
streets of Paris.

A j)lacard against the mass was one night
posted on the walls of the principal cities through-
out the kingdom, and even on the king's own
door. Francis was infuriated when he thought
of the insult against his own majesty, and was
alarmed and horrified when he thought of the in-
sult against the holy sacrament. As a public
expiation for this latter oflfence, he ordered a sol-
emn procession, which in its object, its spirit, its
incidents, its grotesque blending of extreme de-
voutness with savage ferocity, is one of the most
unique in history. Everything possible was done

^")2 THE TERCENTENARY.

to make it the most imposing spectacle of the
kind which had ever been witnessed in France.
The highest dignitaries in Church and State, em-
blazoned with the insignia of their offices, adorned
the ranks. Every shrine in Paris was emptied
of relics, and the procession was graced with all
the treasures of the reliquary, from the crown of
thorns to the beard of St. Louis. Under a canopy
borne by princes of the blood, the host was car-
ried by the bishop of Paris. In six public places
on the route of the procession as many altars were
erected for the repose of the sacrament, and be-
side each of these altars there was a scaffold, a
pile of fagots, and an iron beam, so arranged by
means of pivot and pulley that it could be raised
and lowered at will. When the head of the pro-
cession reached these altars successively, a Re-
former was tied to the end of the beam, and by a
see-saw movement was plunged again and again
into a bath of fire. These awful dippings were so
timed that, the ligaments being consumed, the
victim dropped into the blazing j)ile just as the
king was devoutly kneeling at the altar in adora-
tion of the host. The misguided, maddened
populace bowed down in the streets to worship
bits of wood and dead men's bones, while, at the
same time, they morbidly luxuriated in the exqui-
site tortures of those " of whom the world was
not worthy." Strange extremes meet in human

JOHN KNOX. 93

nature ! This spectacle engendered a morbid
taste for public slaughterings, which has many
times since converted France into an Aceldama, a
field of blood, and which has had as its legitimate
results the guillotine of the Revolution and the
awful butcheries of the Commune, three centuries
later.

A French refugee in Basle heard with keenest
pain reports of the awful sufferings of his friends
in France, and his indignation was kindled to a
white heat when the persecutors, with the king
at their head, attempted to palliate the atrocities
which they were committing by publishing the
basest calumnies against both the opinions and
practices of the Reformers. He determined that
these traduced and persecuted people of God
should be vindicated. To this end he wrote a
little book, and in a bold and immortal address
dedicated it to Francis II. This was the first
edition of what the world now knows as Calvin's
Institutes, the noblest apology ever penned by an
uninspired man.

The Institutes of Calvin at once gave consist-
ency and symmetry to the Reformed Church in
France ; and, in spite of sceptre and sword, ce-
mented by the blood of martyrs, it grew strong,
until it published its own apology, in its doctrines
as crystallized in the confession of 1559. At this
time, a single step in the right direction would

94 THE TERCENTENARY.

have emancipated France from the thraldom of
the papacy, but she knew not " the time of her
visitation." Behind the throne, upon which sat
a poor, weak, sickly, uxorious boy yet in his teens,
stood the Lorraines, with the duke of Guise at their
head, and they with consummate ability and craft
and utter unscrupulousness wielded the poAvers of
the government for the suppression of the gos-
pel. It was an ominous conjunction — the gloomy
despot, Philip II., on the throne of Spain, the
duke of Guise behind the throne of France, with
Mary Stuart, niece of Guise, as wife of the pup-
pet king, and the mother of Mary and sister of
Guise as queen regent of Scotland. It was a con-
junction which portended evil, and it brought
upon France " a day of wasteness and desolation,'^
a time when God's people " were scattered and
peeled, meted out and trodden under foot ;" a time
when every sanctuary of safety and of right was
ruthlessly invaded and wantonly desecrated ; a
time when clustering villages of peaceful, thrifty.
God-fearing citizens were razed as though they
liad been dens of wild beasts, and with an over-
throw so utter and complete that not a stone was
left to mark the spot where they had been, nor a
human being to tell the story of their destruction ;
a time when rivers in their courses w^ere dammed
up with the bodies of slaughtered saints ; a time
when tho lords and ladies of the court regal?d

0$S

JOHN CALVUJ.

JOHN KNOX. 97

themselves daily, amidst pleasantry and repartee,
by witnessing, from the windows of the palace,
the mortal agonies of tortured martyrs ; a time
when the atmosphere of tlie court became pesti-
lential from the stench of blood ; a time when
little children at their plays talked about and
familiarized themselves with the thought of death
by martyrdom.

The massacre of Vassy, in open and utter defi-
ance of the edict of January, which has been
called the Magna Charta of religious liberty in
France, demonstrated to the Protestants the abso-
lute necessity of self-defence. Longer non-resist-
ance would be suicidal. They rallied, therefore,
under the standards of their renowned leaders
Conde and the Colignis. Jeanne d'Albret,
queen of Navarre, put her^young son Henry into
the ranks as a soldier, and j^awned her crown
jewels to raise money for the war. Charlotte de
Laval, urging her husband, the admiral Coligni,
to take up arms in defence of the suffering Pro-
testants, was asked by him : " Ai-e you prepared
to endure confiscation, flight, exile, shame, naked-
ness and hunger, and what is worse, to suffer all
this in your children ? Are you prepared to see
vour husband branded as a rebel and dra2:2:ed to
a scaffold, while your children, disgraced and
ruined, are begging their bread at the hands of
their enemies? I give you eight days to reflect

9S THE TERCENTENARY.

Upon it; and when you shall be prepared for such
reverses, I will be ready to set forward and per-
ish with you and our friends." Charlotte in-
stantly replied : *' The eight days are already ex-
pired. Go, sir, where your duty calls you.
Heaven will not give the victory to our enemies.
In the name of God I call upon you to resist no
longer, but save our brethren or die in the at-
tempt." The admiral was in his saddle the next
morning. There were heroines as well as heroes
in those days.

The baleful theory of uniformity — the theory
that there was only room in France for one
Church, and that the Roman Catholic Church —
divided the nation into two hostile camps and
plunged the country into a series of civil
wars. Spain sympathized with and aided the
Catholic party, Philip II. urging upon France
the policy of extermination which he was carry-
ing out in the Netherlands. England and the
Netherlands sympathized with and aided the Prot-
estants, the latter country sending her immortal
prince of Orange to take the field. It was a strug-
gle great and memorable both in the principles
at stake and in the distinguished leaders on each
side. It was the genius, heroism and godly enthu-
siasm of the Bourbon and the Coligni on the one
side, and the Machiavellian craft, intrigue and dev-
ilish hate of the Guise and the Medici on the other.

WILLIAM OF ORANGE.

JOHN KNOX. 101

Wars follow each other in rapid succession.
" Blood toucheth blood." The fields Dreux, St.
Denis, Jarnac, Moncontour and Arnay le Due
rendered the valor of the Huguenots historic.
Conde and D'Andelot are dead on the field.
Then there comes a lull in the din of battle, a
short respite from war. Negotiations are going
on concerning a marriage alliance which is to
unite the two parties and give lasting peace to
France. The admiral Coligni is invited to the
court, and has repeated interviews with the young
king Charles IX. He urges upon Charles the
policy of uniting France and the Netherlands in
an alliance against Spain. Catharine, the queen-
mother, on the other hand, used all the witchery
of her power to thwart that policy and to poison
the mind of Charles against Coligni.

One loves to dream of the results that would
have attended the policy of Coligni. France
Protestant and in alliance with the Netherlands,
and the allied armies of the two countries led by
such men as the prince of Orange and Coligni !
What a different history of Europe we would be
reading to-day, and what a different map of
Europe our children would be studying to-day !

The admiral Coligni was at this time the head
and soul of the Huguenot party. He had gained
the ear, and by his frank, high-toned Christian
chivalry was rapidly winning the heart, of King

102 THE TERCENTENARY.

Charles. The queen mother, her son the duke of
Anjou and the young duke of Guise took the
alarm. Charles must be rescued from the potent
mfluence of Coligni at all hazards, and these three
spirits balk at nothing which will further their
plans. They resolved upon the assassination of
the admiral, but through unsteadiness of aim the
assassin only succeeded in severely wounding him.
The conspirators had hoped to destroy the Hugue-
nots by striking down their illustrious chieftain.
In this they were foiled. They then determined
to compass their ends by a general massacre, which
was to begin with, the Huguenot nobility then
assembled in Paris on the occasion of the mar-
riage of the gallant Henry of Navarre with the
sister of Charles IX. The beginning being made
in Paris, the massacre was to become general
throughout the provinces.

Catharine, with all the magic power which she
exercised over her children, and with all her con-
summate Medician art, began to work upon the
king to wrest from him the fatal order. She ap-
pealed, in turn, to every motive and passion.
With exquisite skill she touched every spring of
his being — his fears, his suspicions, his pride, his
vindictiveness, his vanity, his jealousy, until, mad-
dened, phrensied, in a delirium of rage, vexation
and mortification, he exclaimed with a horrible
oath, that since they thought it right to kill the

JOHN KNOX. 103

admiral, he was determined that every Huguenot
in France should perish with him, so that not one
should be left to reproach him with the crime.

This happened an hour before midnight. Ar-
i-angements were instantly completed for the
murdering to begin the next morning. The
signal was to have been given from the great bell
of the Palace of Justice at daybreak, but Catha-
rine, in her impatience and nervousness, ordered
the tocsin to be sounded from the belfry of a
neidiborino; church an hour and a half earlier.
Then Catharine and her two sons, Charles IX.
and the duke of Anjou, stole to a window of the
Louvre and tremblingly peered into the dark and
quiet streets. All was as still as death until they
were startled by a single pistol-shot. A sudden
spasm of remorse seized the guilty trio, and they
sent word to Guise that he should proceed no
further with massacre. But it was too late.
Guise, with his leash of sleuth-hounds, was al-
ready well on his way to the hotel of the admiral.
The soldiers who had been stationed to gunrd the
hotel betrayed their trust, and became the eager
accomplices of the murderers. Awakened by the
noise at the gate and in the halls, Coligni, yet
weak from wounds, had arisen from his bed, had
thrown around him his dressing-gown and was
sittino' in an arm-cliair when the assassins en-
tered. He did not move. There was not the

104 THE TERCENTENARY.

tremor of a muscle. There was not the quiver
of a nerve. He looked into the faces of those
desperadoes as calmly as though they had been
his children coming to kiss him good-night, and
regarded their naked swords and daggers with as
much composure as though they had been the
arms of his mother extended to embrace him.
One of the most desperate of these desperate men
was wont to say that he had never seen man meet
death with such constancy and firmness.

The assassins made sw^ift and thorough work of
it. In the court below. Guise and a few of kin-
dred spirit sat upon their horses. Up from the
horsemen comes the eager, impatient cry : '' Have
you done it?" "It is over," was the reply that
dropped from the window. Again comes up the
cry : " But here is Guise, who will not believe it un-
less he sees it with his ow^n eyes. Throw him out
of the window." And the gashed body of the best
and the greatest man then in France was thrown
down upon the pavement of the court beneath
as though it had been the carcass of a dog. , Not
yet satisfied, Guise dismounted, stooped down, and
in the darkness of the early morning peered into
the face of the dead hero. The face being bloody
beyond recognition. Guise coolly took his handker-
chief from his pocket, wiped the blood from the
features and again scrutinized them narrowly
" 'Tis he. I know him," he said, and as he rose

JOHN KNOX. 105

gave the body a kick, then vaulting into his
saddle, and shouting, " Courage, sokliers ! We
have made a good beginning. Now for the
others !" he galloped from the court-yard.

The blood of the great, the good, the immortal
Colisini was the first that was shed in this awful
massacre. His body was afterward subjected to
every indignity and insult which satanic malig-
nity and ingenuity could suggest.

The preparations and arrangements for the
massacre were extensive, elaborate and complete.
They ^vere made by those who had a genius for
laying snares and weaving nets and setting traps
and achieving success in murder on a grand scale.
Ever since the great procession of exj^iation under
Francis II., the people of France had been un-
dergoing a continuous education which was fitting
them to become actors in tragedies of horror.
The inflammable populace of Paris were as ripe
for a carnival of blood as tinder is ready for a
spark. The houses of the Huguenots were all
marked. The papists had as a badge a strijD of
white linen round the arm and a wdiite cross in
the cap, while in the windows of their houses
flambeaux were burning for the double purpose
of designation and of giving light to the murder-
ers in the streets. The signal was sounded from
every steeple in the city. ''Kill! kill! Down
with the Huguenots! Down with the Hugue-

106 THE TERCENTENARY.

nots !" were the watchwords. Suddenly, Paris was
converted into hell. The halls and staircases of
the Louvre were slippery with the best and
noblest blood in France. There was no more pity
for the toothless babe than for the bearded man.
Dead and dying bodies rained from the windows.
In some places blood reached the shoe latchets.
But I draw a veil over the horrible, sickening de-
tails.

Fast as couriers could carry the news, the hell-
ish contagion spread throughout the provinces.
In each city and town and village the scenes of
Paris were repeated, until, according to some esti-
mates, as many as one hundred thousand were
slain. And certainly it will not lessen our sad
interest in this awful tragedy to know that the
victims of it were Presbyterians in doctrine, wor-
ship and discipline.

When the news reached Spain, Philip II. was
beside himself with joy. He regarded the mas-
sacre as the highest possible exemplification of
Christian virtue. At Pome the pope and cardi-
nals went in state to church and had Te Deums
sung and masses said in honor of the event ; and
genius, in the person of Vasari, was employed to
perpetuate the memory of it by a painting on the
walls of the Sistine chapel, and there, on those
walls, stands that painting, the damning evidence
of the pope's complicity in the massacre. A

JOHN KNOX. 107

medal was also struck to commemorate the event.
But when the news reached England, the court
went into mourning, and Queen Elizabeth did her-
self and her nation immortal honor by adminis-
tering a stinging rebuke to Charles IX. through
his ambassador. When the news reached Edin-
burgh, Knox was overwhelmed with grief, be-
cause many of his personal friends had been
slauofhtered. Once more the old man was carried
to the pulpit and lifted into it, and then he
poured out the red-hot lava of his indignation
against the perpetrators of the hellish outrage,
and denounced the judgments of Heaven against
the cruel murderer and false traitor, the king of
France, consigning him to the eternal " execra-
tions of posterity to come." This was one of his
last public services. After this he preached the
installation sermon of his colleague and successor
in the Tolbooth church. That was his last public
service.

In devout meditation, in hearing God's word,
in joyously entertaining his friends — for Knox was
eminently a genial and social man — in connseling
his session and his colleague, in trying to reclaim
Kircaldy of Grange, in solemnly admonishing
Morton, who was about becoming regent, in taking
affectionate leave of relatives and friends, — the
few days that remained to him on earth were occu-
pied. With exclamations and ejaculations dri[)-

108 THE TERCENTENARY.

ping Avitli the very myrrli of the gospel constantly
on his lips, he lay waiting till "God's work was
done." With a clear intellect and an unclouded
spirit he triumphantly ended his " long and pane-
ful battel."

In the middle of a paved street in Edinburgh
the passer-by reads, upon a square stone, this in-
scription :

J. K.
1572.

Beneath that spot, over which now trundles the
commerce of a great city, were once laid the re-
mains of him who " Never feared the Face of
Ma^."

He has been dead these three hundred years.
During all this time history has been busy with
his life and his character. These have been
fiercely assailed and eloquently defended. For
three centuries his work has been speaking for
him with ever-increasing volume of meaning and
of eloquence. He needs no other monument.
He needs no other apology.

He is charged with rudeness and coarseness
toward the elegant lady, Mary Stuart queen of
Scots, but there is absolutely nothing in the rec-
ords to justify such a charge. He was firm — firm
as the Pentland hills ; he was inflexible — inflex-
ible as the fully-developed, storm-strengthened
oak; and having learned, as he tells us, from

JOHN KNOX. 109

Isaiali and Jeremiah, to " call wickedness by its
own terms, a fig a fig, and a spade a spade," he
did speak in all plainness as both his '^ vocation
and conscience craved," but always with dignity
and courtesy, nevertheless. With some soft senti-
mentalists it is an unpardonable offence that he
should have made Mary weep and " shed never a
tear himself." Hear his own defence : " Madam,
in God's 23resence I speak ; I never delighted in
the weeping of any of God's creatures — yea, I
can scarcely abide the tears of my own boys,
whom my own hand corrects, much less can I re-
joice in your Majesty's weeping ; but seeing that
I have offered you no just occasion to be offended,
but have spoken the truth, as my vocation craves
of me, I must sustain, albeit unwillingly, your
Majesty's tears rather than I dare hurt my con-
science or betray ray commonwealth through my
silence." If that be coarseness, perpetual thanks-
givings to God that John Knox had the grace to
use it! "Better," said Regent Morton, "that
women weep than that bearded men be forced to
weep."

But I submit that such a man as this is not to
be measured by the rules of etiquette or by the
laws of gallantry. Knox had more serious busi-
ness than playing the courtier. Every time that
he stood before Queen Mary he carried the spirit-
ual destiny of millions on the tip of his tongue.

10

110 THE TERCENTENARY.

He was there to defend truth which had taken
hold of every fibre of his being. He might have
pleased Mary, but by doing so he would have be-
traved the cause of Protestantism in Scotland, and
that would have involved the cause of Protestant-
ism in England. So long as Elijah the Tishbite
and John the Baptist need no apology for coarse-
ness, John Knox shall need none.

But suppose he had faults? They are but
specks on the surface of the sun. The sun makes
the earth rich in all beauty and fertility, notwith-
standino' and Knox made Scotland " blossom as
the rose." " Knox is the one Scotchman to whom
of all others his country and the world owe a
debt," says the weird hero-worshiper, Thomas
Carlyle.

" It was not for nothing that John Knox had
for ten years preached in Edinburgh and his
words had been echoed from a thousand pulpits.
His was the voice which taught the peasant of the
Lothians that he was a freeman, the equal in the
sight of God w^itli the proudest 23eer or jDrelate
that had trampled on his forefathers. The mur-
ders, the adulteries, the Bothwell scandals, and
other monstrous games which had been played
before Heaven there since the return of the queen
from France, had been like whirlwinds fanning the
fires of the new teaching. Princes and lords only
might have noble blood, but every Scot had a

JOHN KNOX. Ill

soul to be saved, a conscience to be outraged by
these enormous doings, and an arm to strike with
in revenge for them. Elsewhere the plebeian ele-
ment of nations had risen to power through the
arts and industries which make men rich ; the
commons of Scotland were sons of their religion,
while the nobles were splitting into factions, taking
securities for their fortunes or entangling them-
selves in political intrigues ; the tradesmen, the
mechanics, the poor tillers of the soil, had sprung
suddenly into consciousness with spiritual convic-
tions for which they were prepared to live or die.
The fear of God in them left no room for the fear
of any other thing, and in the very fierce intoler-
ance which Knox had poured into their veins
they had become a force in the State. The poor
clay which, a generation earlier, the haughty baron
would have trodden into slime, had been heated
red hot in the furnace of a new faith."* Tlius liis-
torians who have no sympathy with Knox's creed
are constrained to recosrnize the inestimable value
of his work and his teachings. Sucli services as
he rendered to his country and to the world might
condone for a little rudeness in the presence of a
woman whom he believed to be, and whom history
has adjudged to be, a murderess.

He is charged, moreover, with intolerance.
But of what was he intolerant? Of error and
corruption that were rank and pestiferous, of tyr-

* Froude.

112 THE TERCENTENARY.

anny which treated the soul of man as a mere
plaything of kings, lords and prelates. He did
well to be intolerant. He could have done
nothino; less, and have remained a true man. His
intolerance consisted simply in his carrying out
unflinchingly the only principles upon which a
reformation worthy of the name could have been
achieved in Scotland.

His Presbyterianism was not derived from Gen-
eva. He did not learn it from John Calvin.
He found it where Ulrich Zwinglius found his
Presbyterianism — ^in his Greek Testament. He
made the discovery when he was teaching his
"■ bairns " at Langniddrie. His views on this
subject were fully matured when he was in Eng-
land, before he had ever seen Calvin. And so
strong were his convictions on the subject that
the offer of a bishopric could not tempt him to
modify his policy in the slightest. He and those
who aided him in preparing the Book of Disci-
pline, as Row said, " took not their example from
any Kirk in the world — no, not from Geneva —
but drew their plan from the sacred Scriptures."
Knox, therefore, could make no compromise with
i:>opery without a total betrayal of principles in
defence of which he counted not his life dear
unto him.

And this Presbyterian system of doctrine and
government is the strongest and safest defence

JOHN KNOX. 113

against popery which has ever been reared.
Knox detected the weakness of the English Eef-
ormation. Events have amply justified his fears
and vindicated his views. The Anglican Church
has, in a measure at least, become a training-
camp for the papacy. In the great reaction
against the Eeformation which was directed by the
Jesuits, Presbyterianism saved Protestantism. It
formed a bulwark against which the maddened
waves beat and dashed and broke in vain. Had
Knox faltered in Scotland, Protestantism would
have been swept from England as the whirlwind
sweeps dry leaves from the highway.

The time may not be far distant when the de-
cisive struggle will be between the armies of
Antichrist and the compact and serried hosts
of this our beloved Presbyterianism. Contem-
plating, therefore, the life of Knox, one of the
grandest ever lived on this footstool of God, and
catching inspiration and enthusiasm from our
theme, let us close up our ranks and stand firm,
ready to repel assault or to charge to victory.

10*

Presbyterianism in Philadelphia.

BY THE

Kev. EGBERT M. PATTERSON,

PASTOR OF THE SOUTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA.

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA.

I. PKOPHECY AND FULFILLMENT.

IN the year 1702 a missionary of the English
" Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts," writing from Burlington, New
Jersey, said : " The Presbyterians here come a
great way to lay hands on one another ; but, after
all, I think they had as good stay at home for all
the good they do. In Philadelphia one pretends
to be a Presbyterian, and has a congregation to
which he preaches."

In the following year another missionary of
the same society journalized in this city a fact and
a prediction : " They have here a Presbyterian
meeting and minister, one called Andrews ; but
they are not like to iricrease hei^e^

A truer and more potential prophet declared to
the little church and its angel : " Behold ! I have
set before thee an open door ; and no man can
shut it." Therefore, Presbyterians have had such
an "increase" that they are now the strongest
religious denomination in the city, and Philadel-

117

118 THE TERCENTENARY.

phia is the largest Presbyterian city in the United
States.

There are here three ecclesiastical organizations
which are Presbyterian in name as well as in
fact — the one w^hich for facility of designation,
we call the Reunited (the late Old and New
School, now happily in one) branch, the United,
and the Reformed (Synod and General Synod).
Their latest returns sum up as follows : The Re-
united, 95 ministers, 69 congregations, 19,365
communicants, 23,833 Sabbath-school members,
and $992,777 raised last year for congregational
and other purposes, and reported to their Sessions ;
the United, 10 ministers, 11 congregations, 2759
communicants, 2171 Sabbath-school members,
and $49,563 raised and reported ; the Reformed,
10 ministers, 12 congregations, 3439 communi-
cants, over 1000 Sabbath -school members, and
$46,517 reported.* The aggregate of the three
are, 115 ministers (80 of whom are Pastors),
92 congregations, 25,563 communicants, over
26,900 Sabbath-school members, and $1,089,-
000 contributed last year. They have church-
edifices which will seat over 66,000 persons. In
addition to these buildings, the Reunited branch
opens to-day to the public a most capacious and

* The statistics for the Reformed branch are incomplete and
below the real figures. They could not be fully obtained for all
the congregations.

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 119

complete structure for its Board of Publication,
which is one of the most imposing ornaments of
Chestnut street, and which is to be the central sun
whence are perpetually to flow the rays of truth
for the Presbyterian illumination of the country.
It has an Hospital, on land conveyed by one who
was among the most active of its ministers, mu-
nificently endowed at its commencement by one
of its largest-hearted laymen, and managed by a
Board of Trustees at whose head is one of the
most zealous and eminent of its living servants.
And it will shortly have a Home, the foundation
of which has been laid by one of its ministering
women, for the aged and destitute of her own sex.

There is also in the city an Independent Pres-
byterian church which has been, and is, a great
power for Christ, (the Bev. John Chambers'.)

Our view, to be complete, should also include
two other denominations which are not called
Presbyterian, but which have doctrinal symbols
that are Calvinistic and forms of government
that are Presbyterian, viz., the Dutch Beformed
and German Beformed. They have 17 ministers,
17 churches, at least 4794 communicants, and
4572 Sabbath-school members ; and they re-
ported last year, the Dutch, for congregational and
benevolent purposes, $27,107, and the German,
$6,288 for benevolent objects alone.

The full Presbyterian strength of the munici-

120 THE TERCENTENARY.

pality exhibits, therefore, 133 ministers, 109
congregations, over 30,300 communicants, over
31,500 Sabbath-school members, and $1,122,252
raised and reported last year. The valuation of
their churcli properties cannot be less than six
millions of dollars."^

The history of the " increase" from " a Presbyte-
rian meeting and minister, * one called Andrews,' "
in 1702, to this imposing array of 1872, would
make a volume of the deepest instruction and
most thrilling interest. Disjointed articles and
sketches of a few particuLar congregations have
appeared, but no history of the one progressive
Presbyterian movement has been written. All
that can be done in this paper is, as from an ex-
alted position, to take a bird's-eye view of it.

II. THE BEGINNINCx OF THE CITY AND CHURCH.

Philadelphia was founded in 1682. Settlements
in its neighborhood, and within the limits of what
is now the city, had been made before William
Penn received the grant of the Province ; by
Friends in Shackamaxon, or Kensington, and by
Lutheran Swedes in Southwark. But when Penn
arrived, in 1682, he found only eight or ten caves

* " The eccentric General Lee was buried in Christ Church
ground. ' He wished not to lie within a mile of Presbyterian
ground, as too bad company.' " (Watson's Annals. ) His bones
could not find a quiet resting-place now — Presbyterian churches
are too abundant here !

PRESBYTERfANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 121

dug on the banks of the Dehiware, and one hous6
at what is now Front and Dock streets.

There is a tradition that tlie great founder of
the city preached the first sermon that was heard
within its bounds.

Not only were the Friends the predominant
religious society at the outset, but the members
of other persuasions united with them in worship.
In 1684, when the town contained not a thousand
inhabitants, the Friends' meeting, which was the
only one in existence, would number eight hun-
dred persons, a large proportion, of course, com-
ing from the country.

But as early as 1691 serious dissensions broke
out in the Society. George Keith, a Scotchman,
a teacher in the Friends' School and a member
of their Meeting, raised a dividing agitation by
the promulgation of views for which he was ex-
pelled from the Society. The immediate effect
of this was to give a great impulse to Ej^iscopacy.
Keith became a clergyman in the Church of
England, and drew large numbers with him into
that organization. Taking advantage of this,
" the Society for the propagation of the Gospel
in Foreign Parts," which was organized in Eng-
land, in 1701, not especially for work among the
heathen, but, as Bishop Wilberforce declares, to
spread Episcopacy among the colonists, made the

greatest efforts to build up that sect here.
11

122 THE TERCENTENARY.

There were, however, a few of the early settlers
in Philadelphia whose preferences were for other
forms of Protestantism — not many indeed ; the
earliest mention is of " nine Baptists and a few
Independents in the town." They w^ere shaken
off and shaken together into their own organiza-
tions by the dissensions which split the Friends'
Meeting.

The first known Presbyterian minister in the
colonies was the Pev. Francis Makemie. A native
of Ireland, he came to America soon after his
licensure in 1681, and settled in Maryland.
There he founded the churches of Pehoboth and
Snow Hill ; and thence, as a centre, he did a large
amount of missionary w^ork in the other colonies.
In one of his tours he visited Philadelphia, in
1692, while it was in its highest state of religious
fermentation; and it is probable that he then
gathered together the little band of Presbyte-
rians. Certain it is that in 1697 they had been
organized into a congregation, and in alternation
with the Baptists and Congregationalists were
meeting in a frame building, which was called
the '' Barbadoes Lot Store," on the north-west
corner of Second and Chestnut Streets. In that
year, Watson says, the town contained a " Swedish
Lutheran Church, Episcopal, Baptist, Presbyte-
rian and two Quaker, one of them being George
Keith's separation."

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 123

In the autumn of 1698, Mr. Jedediali An-
drews, a young Licentiate from Massachusetts,
commenced to preach to the Presbyterians. The
position socially was not encouraging, for a con-
temporary wrote in that year, " The Church of
England and the Quakers bear equal share in the
government." The little congregation was treated
with contempt by the adherents of the Anglican
Church, which was endeavoring to establish itself
as the Church of the colony.

Mr. Andrews was ordained to the work of the
ministry and installed as pastor of the congrega-
tion in 1701. That was also the year in which
Philadelphia received its charter as a city, with
Edward Shippen for its mayor. The history of
the city of Philadelphia, and the history of Pres-
byterian pastorates in it, commence together.

The population of the place then consisted of
five thousand inhabitants, living in seven hun-
dred houses, which lay snugly and compactly be-
tween the Delaware Piver and Dock Creek, now
Dock Street, from the mouth of the latter up to
Market Street.

There is a record of the ordination, in 1704, of
two elders, one of whom was John Snowdon.

In the same year the congregation erected a
frame church on the corner of Bank Street and
Buttonwood, now Market Street. This was called
"The Old Buttonwood Church," because of the

124 THE TERCENTENARY.

buttODAVood trees of large dimensions which stood
around it. It was enlarged in 1729, rebuilt in
1793 in Grecian style, and on account of the en-
croachments of business taken down in 1820,
w^hen the present church at Washington Square
was constructed.

That old frame building was probably the scene
of the organization of our oi'iginal American
Presbytery, whose first recorded roll contains the
names of four ministers and four ruling elders.
How enraptured must those glorified souls be as
they now look down upon our land and behold,
in j)lace of their one little Presbytery, 542 Pres-
byteries and Classes, with 8481 preachers of the
Gospel, 9305 congregations and 966,313 commu-
nicants ! *

Here let us pause to pay a tribute to William
Penn and his associates and successors. Phila-
delj^hia was the cradle of American organized
Presbyterianism. Here were formed its first
Presbytery, probably in 1705 or 1706, its first
Synod in 1717, and its fii^t General Assembly in
1789. Here too met all the Assemblies of the
now Keunited Church, except three, down to the
year 1834. And it is under the laws of Penn-
sylvania that the trustees of our supreme body
are incorporated. Attention has not, however,

* These figures are for 1870. They were incomplete then, and
are below the aggregates now.

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 125

been pointedly called to the fact that there was
no other city in the colonies in which our eccle-
siastical courts could have been freely constituted
and conducted. It was in 1707, subsequent to
the organization of the Presbytery, that our
Makemie was imprisoned by Lord Cornbury, in
New York, as a ''strolling preacher," so that he
might not spread our "pernicious doctrines!"
Makemie did not reach the Presbytery that year
until the second day of its session, and he left it
to go to New York to staud trial for the crime
of preaching the Gospel without a license from
the Anglican lord ! In the colony of New York,
too, " up to the very moment of the Declaration
of Indejiendence, Presbyterians were denied a
charter of incorporation." In Virginia, in Mary-
land after 1689, in Carolina after 1703, they were
treated with intolerance. But Penn came hither,
in his own words, " to lay the foundation of a
free colony for all mankind." He was intrigued
against by " the hot church party," as he styled
them. They even sought at one time to have
the Province transferred to the jurisdiction of
Cornbury, who w^ould doubtless have treated Mr.
Andrews as a "strolling preacher," and have
ti2:htened the bands around his conorcfijation as a
dissenting conventicle. But they failed. Penn's
"free colony" was preserved, and, therefore, be-
longs to this city the ^^eculiar honor of having
11 «

126 THE TERCENTENARY.

cradled our Church in its infancy. Philadelphia
Presbyterians, while differing from William
Penn's peculiarities, have especial reasons to
venerate his name.

III. THE CHURCH IN THE LAST CENTURY.
The growth of the city during the first half
of the last century was slow. In 1749, after an
existence of 67 years, it contained only 2076
houses and 15,000 people, and Fourth street Avas
its western limit. Nor was the j^rogress of our
Church rapid. In 1705 there were five adult
baptisms in it, and four in 1706.* The erection
of the church building had a popular influence.
The supercilious English missionary who in 1702
had spoken with such contemj^t of Mr. Andrews'
ordination, and thought Presbyterians " had as
good stay at home for all the good they do," became
alarmed in 1705. He then wrote : '' There is a
new meeting-house built for Andrew^s, and almost
finished, which, I am afraid, will draw away a
great part of the church, if there be not the
greatest care taken of it." It was necessary to en-
large that building in 1729. Mr. Andrew^s, w^ho
did a great deal of itinerant missionary work
through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, obtained

* The reported additions in the various branches, during the
past year, to the Communion Table on profession, were 1998,
and the baptisms of infants 2065, and of adults 394.

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 127

in 1734 a colleague in his pastoral office. In
1736 a division of sentiment as to who should be
associated with him led to the formation of
another church, under the Rev. Kobert Cross,
which, * however, in the subsequent year, was re-
united to the First, under the joint pastoral care of
Messrs. Andrews and Cross. But financially the
congregation continued to be exceedingly weak.
A contribution of £30 was received by the synod,
in 1714, from the Rev. Thomas Reynolds, of
London, for the use of ministers in this country.
It was divided among the three " most needy "
congregations ; and one of them was the Phila-
delphia church. In 1737 it had also to receive
£50 from the synod to enable it to purchase a
graveyard.

Moi'eover, the church was agitated by a severe
internal commotion. The Rev. Samuel Hemphill
came from Ireland to Philadelphia in"l734. He
brou«:ht with hnn the Arian and free-thin kin ij:
sentiments that had commenced to work with
their deadly leaven in the Irish Presbyterian
Church, and which were not fully cast out of that
body until Henry Cooke arose in this century as
the champion of orthodoxy. Mr. Andrews had
already applied for an assistant. In ignorance of
Mr. Hemphill's erroneous views, he invited him
to occupy his pulpit a part of each Sabbath. But
the man's poisonous utterances soon broke forth.

128 THE TERCENTENARY.

The " free-thinkers, deists, and in general the
worst part of the community, flocked to hear him,
while the better part of the congregation stayed
away." Mr. Andrews felt bound to prosecute
him before the synod. The charges were sus-
tained, and Mr. Hemphill was suspended. But
the trial was an earthquake both in the church
and the city. Members of the other denomina-
tions and the outside world mingled in the con-
troversy. A Quakeress appeared before the syn-
odical commission with a claim to be heard in fa-
vor of Mr. HemphilL Benjamin Franklin wrote
in his newspaper, and even issued pamphlets, in
defence of the errorist. But the discovery of pla-
giarism did for him with the world what the
proof of heresy would not do. Though he could
preach fluently, he could not write. Some of the
sermons which had been so attractive to his ad-
mirers were found in the published works of
the Arians, Dr. Clarke and Dr. James Foster.
" This, like a frost, nipped his popularity, and his
adherents fell off like withered leaves at once."
But the agitation was trying to Mr. Andrews.
It wearied him, and almost drove him from the
field. And it must have been a staggering blow
to the church for a while.

Our cause, however, received a decided impulse
toward the middle of the century by a large im-
migration, and especially by the wonderful re-

PRESBYTEBIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 129

vival which accompanied the labors of the cele-
brated George Whitefield.

" The influx from abroad from 1718 to 1740 was
wholly Protestant and largely Presbyterian. . . .
^ In September, 1736, one thousand families sailed
from Belfast. . . . On the 9th of that month one
hundred Presbyterians from Ireland arrived at
Philadelphia." Ireland thereby lost, and Phila-
delphia gained, some of its best inhabitants. The
British government was made uneasy by the ex-
odus. The little Philadelphia church was glad-
dened by the reception of a portion of it.

The state of religion in the colonies, as well as
in the mother country, had been distressingly
low. But under the preaching of Jonathan Ed-
wards and the Tennents, and other kindred
spirits, a remarkable quickening had commenced
even before the visit of Whitefield. His grand
gospel eloquence, however, greatly stimulated and
extended it.

His jDrogress in the colonies was a triumphal
march. Processions of horsemen escorted him.
Judges suspended their courts when he preached.
Immense crowds, in churches and in fields, hung
upon his lips. Dr. Stevens, in his " History of
Methodism," calls him " the greatest preacher, it
is probable, in popular eloquence, of all the
Christian ages." He was in this city, on his
first visit, less than a month, but he shook it to

130 THE TERCENTENARY.

its foundations and agitated the surrounding
country. The population of tlio city was less
than 15,000. Congregations of 10,000, of course
drawn from the country as well as from the
city, gathered around the j)i'eacher on " Society
Hill." It is Benjamjn Franklin's testimony that,
" from being thoughtless or indifferent about re-
ligion, it seemed as if all the world were growing
religious, so that one could not walk through the
streets of an evening without hearing Psalms sung
in different families in every street." No books
sold but the religious, and such was the general
conversation. Dancing-schools were discontin-
ued ; balls and concerts were given up. For a year
after, there continued to be a daily public re-
ligious service, and three services on the Sabbath.
Twenty-six associations for prayer were formed.

The moral and religious improvement which
accompanied Whitefield was admitted, but the
latitudinarians of the day censured him for his
affinity with '' the hot-headed predestinarians."
Kalm, a contemporary Swedish traveler, says that
" the genuine Calvinism of Whitefield and Ten-
nent, and their ardent zeal for vital, j)ractical
godliness, was called * New Light.' "

This decided Calvinism of the flying evangel-
ist brought him into fervent symj^athy with the
Presbyterians who had already been quickened;
and they were further quickened through him.

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 131

Kalm said in 1751, " The proselytes of this man,
or the ^ New Lights,' are at present merely a sect
of Presbyterians." The two pastors of the First
church condemned some of his peculiarities and
measures (as both he and Gilbert Tennent them-
selves did in their later days), and they did not
sufficiently estimate the great work the Lord was
doing by him ; nevertheless, they j)ermitted him
to preach in their building.

But serious differences accompanied the re-
vival. Sad dissensions on presbyterial and syn-
odical powers and ministerial qualifications and
modes of examination, after agitating the synod
for years, rent it in 1741. On the first of June
in that year, in that " Old Buttonwood Church,"
and amid great excitement, the little body which
represented our whole denomination in America
(only twenty-six ministei*s and eighteen elders
were present) was torn asunder into two frag-
ments. They were both made up of as sincere
and earnest Christians as the Church has ever
had. They were all zealous for the truth, and
there was really no fundamental difference be-
tween them. But they misunderstood each other
and exaggerated their differences, and thought
for a little while that they could not walk to-
gether. Having no religious papers, they carried
their controversy into the secular press. Frank-
lin's Gazette became the vehicle of sharp and

132 THE TERCENTENARY.

acrimonious attacks on each other, for which the
writers, in a few short years, were bitterly peni-
tent. The dissensions through the country were
such as would most profoundly humble Christians
if they were to happen now. The people of Phila-
delphia were especially agitated. All this, united
with the increase of population and the great ad-
dition to the number of professing Christians,
necessitated the formation of a new congregation.
The Second church was, therefore, organized in
1743, under the pastoral care of the Rev. Gilbert
Tennent, "the terrible and searching preacher"
of the day, of one of whose discourses even
Whitefield said, " Never before heard I such a
searching sermon."

The first j)lace of worship of the new congre-
gation was " The ^ Great House,' in the western
part of the town^'' on Fourth street below Arch,
which had been erected the preceding year,
through Whitefield 's special efforts, as a grand
preaching station for itinerants, but which,
through the shortness of subscriptions to pay for
it, failed of its object, and in 1750 became the
" Old Academy," in 1759 the College of Phila-
delj)hia, and in 1779 the University of Pennsyl-
vania. But the new congregation, through the
enthusiastic efforts of their pastor, built, and in
1750 occupied, " a spacious and very expensive
church edifice" on the north-west corner of Third

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 133

and Arch streets. The chosen site was a farm,
" Dr. Hiirs pasture," as it was called. Mr. Ten-
nent himself lived " out in the country," at what
is now Fourth and Wood streets. The city had
then about fifteen thousand inhabitants; and five
years later Fifth street was its western extremity.
Before the erection of the new church, Mr.
Andrews, the senior pastor of the first congrega-
tion, had been called away from the scene of
labor, of strife and of temptation. Born in
Massachusetts in 1679, and graduated at Harvard
in 1694, he had come to Philadelphia when he
was twenty-four years of age. If Dr. Franklin's
opinion is to be depended upon, he was not an
attractive preacher. But Dr. Franklin was loose
in his religious views. Hemphill, the Arian
plagiarist, was his fiivorite, and when his voice
was silenced in the church, the philosopher ceased
to attend its services. But whatever may have
been the jxilpit powers of the first Philadelphia
pastor, he was abundant in labors. In addition
to the performance of tlie ministerial work in his
own congregation, he traveled freely as an evan-
gelist through the surrounding country. He was,
moreover, until very near his death, recording
clerk both of the presbytery and of the synod,
of which latter body he was also the first mode-
rator. He was especially eminent as a peace-
maker. In this ofifice he endeavored to deal with

12

134 THE TERCENTENARY.

his Old and New Side brethren, with neither of
whom he seems heartily to have sympathized at
the outset. But when the schism was complete,
he went with the Old Side. His death took place
six years afterward, in 1747, but not before a
cloud which fell upon him had been removed by
his humble penitence.

His colleague from 1737, the Kev. Robert
Cross, was the leader of the Old Side, and jDroba-
bly the author of the celebrated *^ Protestation"
which brought matters to a crisis in the synod.
He had been born in Ire,land in 1689, and had
come to this country when he was twenty-eight
years of age. He was first settled in New.Castle
from 1719 to 1723, when he removed to Jamaica,
L. I. In that field he won an excellent reputa-
tion, and his labors were blessed with a precious
revival of religion. In 1734, before the Hemp-
hill difficulty arose, a majority of the church in
Philadelphia desired to settle him as associate
pastor; but a strong minority were in favor of
the Hev. Jonathan Dickinson. The synod,
therefore, refused to translate him. The conse-
quence was that his supporters were the next year
erected into a separate congregation, and in 1736
they made out for him an independent call. This
the synod unanimously approved in 1737, and he
left Jamaica. The struggle between the two
places for his services had been great and lon^s:

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 135

continued. A celebrated Quakeress said of liini;
what has substantially been said of many since
his day, " His people almost adored him, and im-
poverished themselves to equal the sum offered
him in the city; but failing in this, they lost him."
Before the time for his installation arrived the
two congregations were happily reunited, and he
was settled with Mr. Andrews over the one
church.

After the death of Mr. Andrews, in 1747, Mr.
Cross continued to be the only pastor of the First
church until 1752. Then the Kev. Francis
Alison was associated with him. Mr. Alison
had been born in Ireland in 1705. He was,
therefore, forty-seven years of age when he set-
tled in Philadelphia, and he lived and labored
here in the church and in the University of Penn-
sylvania for twenty-seven years, until his death, in
1779, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. He
was eminent not only as a scholar and an educa-
tor, but as a man of practical benevolence in the
church, a public-spirited citizen in the State and
a powerful supporter of religious freedom.

The two colleagues were very pronounced in
the movements which led to the division of the
synod. But they were also active in the heal-
ing of the schism in 1758. Dr. Alison preached
a sermon before the two synods on May 24th of
that year, as the union was being consummated.

136 THE TERCENTENARY.

The discourse was published under the title,
" Peace and union recommended." At the
second session of the reunited body, in 1759,
Mr. Cross was chosen moderator, but " on account
of his age and bodily infirmity he declined the
honor." He was then sevent}^ years of age. For
the same reason, we suppose, in the following
month, on the 22d of June, he resigned his
pastoral charge. He lived, however, eight years
longer, dying in 1766. *' He excelled in pru-
dence and gravity and a general deportment, was
esteemed for his learned acquaintance with the
holy Scriptures, and long accounted one of the
most respectable ministers in the province."

Mr. Tennent was still pastor of the Second
church when the reunion was accomplished. He
had done more than any other man to produce
the schism : it is to his honor that, Avhen con-
vinced of his error, he labored hard to correct it.
In him a true, fervent piety was engrafted upon
an Irish nature which was naturally hot, impul-
sive and inclined to be censorious and overbear-
ing. Therein lay his power under the Spirit of
God, and also his weakness. At first without any
sjDCcial spirituality as a pastor, he was, through a
sharp attack of sickness, profoundly humbled
before God. Thenceforward he was unwearied in
his labors, persistent in purpose and tremendously
powerful in preaching. Traveling with White-

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 137

field to Boston, the effects of his sermons rivaled
those which attended the eloquent evangelist.
But he misjudged his brethren who were not at
one with him on every point, and fell into the prev-
alent error of setting up the personal peculiarities
of his own religious experience as the standard
by which they were to be judged. A wonderful
change, however, followed his settlement in the
city. It is said that his preaching was not as
forcible and animated as it had been, and no such
results accompanied it as had been witnessed else-
where. But a sweet charity grew ujoon him.
His controversial spirit died out. Although he
had reached the age when men's habits of mind
and of action are generally supposed to be un-
changeably formed (he was forty years of age
when he came to Philadelphia, having been born
in Ireland in 1703), he exhibited a great trans-
formation of character. He therefore earnestly
labored for the reunion of the two synods, and on
the accomplishment of the measure he was com-
plimented by being chosen the first moderator of
the reunited body. He lived for six years longei",
and died while still pastor of the Second church,
in 1764, though the last three years of his life
were years of great bodily infirmity and weak-
ness.

In the mean time, the First church, which ad-
hered to the Old Side in the division, continued

12 *

138 THE TERCENTENARY.

to grow, largely through immigration from Scot-
land and Ireland, after the formation of the Sec-
ond, which was in connection with the New Side.
In 1759, the year following the resignation of
Mr. Cross, the Rev. John Ewing was settled as
Dr. Alison's colleague. Mr. Ewing was a native
of Maryland, where he had been born in 1732.
Two years after his settlement a movement com-
menced which resulted in the completion, in
1768, of the Third church, at Fourth and Pine,
" for the benefit of inhabitants down on the
hill."

" Down on the hill !" Philadelphia was not
naturally the dead level which it is now. It Avas
a rolling tract of land. It rose in a high bluff
from the Delaware. Creeks ran through it. It
had its marshy spots. The site on which the
present First church was erected in 1820 had
once been a pond.

The Third church was at the commencement a
collegiate organization with the First. Hence,
its first pastor, the Rev. Samuel Aitken, in 1768,
alternated with Dr. Alison and Mr. Ewing in
supplying both. But in 1771 the new congrega-
tion independently called the Rev. Geo. Dufiield
to be their pastor. Mr. Dufiield had been born
in Pennsylvania in 1732, and was settled in Car-
lisle. Althou2:h the reunion had been accom-
plished, the fiery feelings that accompanied the

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 139

schism were not entirely extinguished. An earn-
est revivalist and a popular preacher, Mr. Duf-
field's sympathies had been with the New Side.
In Mr. Tennent's closing years, when he was dis-
abled from much of the active work of the pas-
torate, the Second church twice called the bold
Carlisle preacher to be his associate pastor. These
calls were unsuccessful ; the one from the Third
congregation, at a later day, prevailed. But it
was unacce23table to the First church ; and Mr.
Duffield commenced his ministry here in the midst
of one of the most remarkable disturbances that
the church has ever witnessed.

No further progi'ess in this branch of our
Church during the last century can be chronicled.
The revolutionary troubles were brewing. Their
immediate influence, and their subsequent effects,
were depressing and destructive to religious in-
terests. The remaining thirty years of the cen-
tury passed without the demand arising for in-
creased church accommodations.

Dr. Ewing continued to be pastor of the First
church until 1802, when he died, in the seventy-
first year of his age. In 1773 he had associated
with him, as assistant, the Rev. Robert Davidson,
D.D., who had been born in Maryland in 1750,
and who in this field, and as professor in tlie
university, and afterward as vice president of
Dickinson College, attained a splendid reputation

140 THE TERCENTENARY.

as a linguist and a scientist. He died in 1812,
while pastor of tlie church in Carlisle.

In the Second church, after Mr. Tennent's
death, the Rev. John Murray was settled for a
year. He was followed, in 1769, by the Rev.
James Sproat, a native of Massachusetts, where
he was born in 1722, and converted under Mr.
Tennent's preaching during his New England
tour. He confined his studies to theology, in
which he received the doctorate in 1780, and was
noted for his gift of prayer and his eminent prac-
tical piety. The Rev. Ashbel Green was asso-
ciated with him in the pastorate in 1787 and
until 1793, when Dr. Sproat fell at his post under
an attack of the yellow fever. We have now
reached men of eminent and widespread reputa-
tion in the Church who have not yet passed out
of the memory of the present generation, and it
will be sufficient simply to indicate their pas-
torates. Dr. Green continued in the Second
church until 1812, having associated with him
first the Rev. J. N. Abeel, in 1794-5, and then
from 1799 the Rev. Jacob J. Janeway, D.D.
The successor of Dr. Duffield in the Third church
was the Rev. John Blair Smith, D.D., from 1791
to 1795, and again, after three years' absence as
president of the newly-founded Union College,
New York, from May to August, 1799, when he
was carried oif by the yellow fever.

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 141

Concurrent with the events in the one branch
which have thus been narrated were the follow-
mg : The Market Square church, Gerinantown,
was organized as a German Eeformed congrega-
tion in 1733. The First German Eeformed in
the old city proper was built in Race near Fourth,
in 1747. The Scots church was founded in con-
nection with the Associate presbytery in 1750, and,
weak though it was, in a few years lost by a
secession of members forming what is now the
First United Presbyterian church. The German
Eeformed also built the Frankford church, in
1770. In 1798 a little band of Covenanters com-
menced to worship together, and shortly afterward
called as their pastor Rev. Samuel B. Wylie —
afterward the Dr. Wylie eminent as a leader in
that branch of the church, and as a professor and
vice provost in the University of Pennsylvania ;
but they were so few in number that, even on the
Sabbath after the ordination of their pastor, in
1802, they met for their preaching service in the
bedroom of one of their members, not more than
twelve feet square, and in that littla space " tliey
were not crowded."

IV. WEAKNESS OF THE CHURCH SEVENTY YEARS

AGO.

At the close of the eighteenth century our
churches were gasping for breath. The population

142 THE TERCENTENARY.

of the city more tlian doubled between 1776 and
1806. It increased in those thirty years from forty
thousand to about ninety thousand. But it is
doubtful whether the Presbyterian communion
rolls were as large in the latter year as in the
former. The new building which the First
church erected in 1793 contained one hundred
and sixty-three pews, and could accommodate
nine hundred persons; but in 1801 it had only
ninety communicants. In the same year the
Second church, which at its organization had 160
members, numbered only 200. The Third church,
w^hich had been formed in 1762 with SO families,
had in 1802 only 165 communicants. The three
entered this century less than 500 strong in a
population of 69,408. The Frankford church in
1807 had not members enough to hold the offices
required by law ; the number of adherents to it
was only 46 in 30 families.

Two comparisons will forcibly suggest the weak-
ness of our denomination at that time :

Albany has now about the same number of
inhabitants (69,423) that our city had in 1800;
but Albany has 2379 Presbyterian communi-
cants.

Our neighboring city of Camden, through
which also beats the blood that is our life, con-
tains 20,000 people, but it has about as many

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 143

Presbyterians as Philadelphia liacl 70 years ago,
with three and a half times the population.

V. CAUSES OF THE DEPRESSED CONDITION.

The causes of this check and decline were vari-
ous. The rapid statement of them will exhibit
other important facts in the history.

1. The seventeen years' division of the denomi-
nation (1741 to 1758) had a specially prejudicial
influence on the churches of this city. This had
been the centre of the excitement, and long after
the wound of the schism was healed its scar re-
mained. Two presbyteries of Philadelphia con-
tinued to exist, " composed severally of the liti-
gant parties, and the aged members on both sides
retained something of the old bitter feelings
toward each other." There were some very un-
pleasant contests between the particular congre-
gations. The members of the First church w^ould
not aid the Second in the collection of money to
build the Third. The unhappy dispute between
the First and the Third, which commenced before
the breaking out of the revolutionary war, w^as
not settled for twenty years, and it kept up a per-
sonal alienation between Drs. Ewing and Duf-
field. Nor were there wanting internecine strug-
gles in the congregations themselves. Those who
are fed on the genuine milk and strong meat of
Presbyterianism become necessarily men of in-

144 THE TERCENTENARY.

tense convictions. Priding themselves in their
strength, however, they have been apt to array
their convictions too strongly against each other
on personal questions and points that touch not
the essentials of their system. It is a marked
proof of the divine origin of our faith and order
that God, looking upon our sincerity and honesty,
and pardoning our misdirected zeal, has overruled
even our internal strifes to the advancement of
the one great cause in which we agree.

2. Down to the era of the Hevolution the ad-
herents of the Church of England, not only in
other colonies, but in Pennsylvania, notwith-
standing Penn's liberal charter, contended for
the rights of an Establishment.

Early in the century George Keith, the author
of the dissension among the Friends, and subse-
quently a missionary of the English society,
traveled among the Friends, intruding into their
meetings and attempting to interrupt their services
or to speak at the close of them ; and when the
heads of meeting interfered to prevent him, he
claimed that they were rude and were resisting
Queen Anne, because, forsooth, he held a com-
mission as missionary from a society which was
chartered by the crown ! Not to let him speak
against Friends in Friends' meeting was rebellion
against the queen ! This is a sample of the gene-
ral assumption of the Ej3isco23al clergy of that day.

PRESBYTERFANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 14,5

They complained that it was iDersecution not to
aliow them to be superior here, as they were in
England.

Tlie efforts which the Episcopalians thus made
* were a j^crpetual annoyance to Penn and his suc-
cessors. They met with a powerful support in
England, and they won such a practical re-
cognition of their claim here that, down to the
separation fj-om the mother country, the annual
mortuary tables which were published gave the
reports of the Episcopal congregations, connecting
with them also their " christenings," and attached
those of the other denominations as a kind of
appendix to them. We meet in a standard work
with such a record as this : " In 1729-30 the in-
terments in one year, from December to Decem-
ber, were 227 ; in Church ground, 81, in Quaker,
39, in Presbyterian, 18, in Baptist, 18, and in
strangers' ground (the j^resent Washington Square,
an adorned graveyard for them now), 41 whites
and 30 blacks. ... It is worthy of remark that
although the influence of Friends was once so
ascendant as to show a majority of the popula-
tion, yet it seems from the above that the Church
must have been then most numerous."

Now, remember that " the distinction of ranks
w^as kept up in the colonies with the precision and
etiquette of a German principality of four miles
square;" that down to the Revolution the churches

146 THE TERCENTENABY.

here were " little else than appendages to churches
of the like character in the mother country;" and
that abroad our denomination was still suffering
from the sting of persecution, while the influence
and the money of England were under the con-
trol of the Establishment: and you can realize the
tremendous social and financial disadvantages
under which our Church labored.

3. The 23rotracted revolutionary war demoral-
ized all the churches, and especially the Presby-
terian. Its ministers were patriotic to the back-
bone. Theie was not a Tory among the pastors
of this city. Several of them w^ere so pro-
nounced from the beginning that when the
British took possession of the j^lace they were
compelled to fly, and their churches were ruined
by the occupancy and intentional abuse of the
foreign army. A Methodist writer candidly
says : " When the British took j)ossession of
Philadelphia in 1777, after the battle of Brandy-
wine, though they dispossessed the Methodists of
St. George's, making it a riding-school for their
cavalry, it is said they showed some regard to
them (probably on account of the side Mr. Wes-
ley espoused in this contest, which seems to have
been the cause that led them to favor the Wesley
chapel of the Methodists of New York) by
giving them the use of the First Baptist church
in Lagrange place, in Front street, to worship in,

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 147

thus sliowino; them a little more favor than was
manifested to the Baptists and Presbyterians."
The Presbyterians received no favor. Their
congregations were broken up and scattered. In
1777, during the Bi'itish occupancy, only 21,7G7
persons could be found, by an olHcial census, in
the city, althougli the population the year before
was 40,000. Almost half the people were fugi-
tives, and many of them never came back to
their old homes.

Moreover, when peace returned, money did not
return with it. The financial condition of the
country was crushing for years. The pastors even
of this city were wretchedly supported. The Rev.
Ashbel Green was called to the Second church
in 1786, and the Rev. John Blair Smith to the
Third in 1791, on salaries equivalent to $800.
The Rev. William Marshall, pastor of the Scots
church from 1779 to 1786, never received more
than $225 a year. Nor were the salaries promptly
paid. A man so prominent, and who became so
powerful, as Ashbel Green, has left on record the
fact that his wife told him one morning that
"she was without money to go to market, and
without a stick of firewood in the house;" and
that in his distress he went out into the street
and told his story to one of his elders, who, mor-
tified by the tale, advanced enough from his own
pocket to meet the pressing wants of the family.

148 THE TERCENTENARY.

Generally, the pastors of an earlier day united
teaching with pastoral work. Probably that was
necessary for their support, but it prevented them
from giving their full energies to labors that
i-eally demanded them alh

4. The successive visitations of the yellow
fever in 1793, 7, '8, '9 and 1802 continued this
prostrating work of the revolutionary war. Dr.
Sj^roat, of the Second church, with his family,
and Dr. John Blair Smith, of the Third, fell vic-
tims to the terrible scourge. The city was largely
deserted. Its streets were a desolation. Among
the inhabitants who remained at home spiritual-
ity seemed to be almost entirely dead. In 1797
all the churches, except one Methodist and the
Second Presbyterian, w^ere closed. . Dr. Green
tells us that he never preached with more direct-
ness and earnestness than that year, while the
pestilence was stalking among the people; and
yet he did not know of a soul that was savingly
impressed by that preaching.

5. Infidelity, as a moral scourge, was almost
equally destructive. Bancroft Avell says that
" the school that bows to the senses as the sole
interpreter of truth had little share in colonizing
America ;" but the religious skepticism which pre-
vailed in connection with it, in the eighteenth
century, fell with a blighting influence upon the

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELnilA. 149

land. The officers of the revolutionary army-
were largely infected by it. After our struggle
for independence, sympathy witli the French po-
litical movements inoculated the country witli the
poison of French irreligion. So widespread had
this become tliat our General Assembly of 1798
issued an address on the subject, and appointed a
day of fasting and prayer on account of it. In
this city free-thinking had a specially strong
foothold. Its advocates mingled among the
church-people, and had an influence in their con-
gregational arrangements. As far back as 1735,
Mr. Andrews sj)eaks of " the infidel disposition
of too many here ;" and alluding to Mr. HemjD-
hill, he adds : " Some desiring that I should
have assistance, and some leading men not dis-
affected to that way of Deism as they should be,
that man was imposed on me and the congre-
gation. Most of the best of the j)eople were soon
so dissatisfied that they would not come to meet-
ing. Free-thinkers, deists and nothings, getting
a scout of him, flocked to hear." Later, just at
the close of the century, and while this city was
the seat of the national government, the evan-
gelical ministers found it necessary to form an
association for the adoption of measures to coun-
teract the spread of infidel notions through a
certain newspaper which was {patronized by Sec-
retary of State Jeflerson. Rampant infidelity

150 THE TERCENTENARY.

had more iiifluence than — the Lord be praised — it
has now.

6. The standard of morality both in the Church
and the world was low. The churches had not
so much power, because they were not really so
spiritual as they have since been. The line be-
tween the religious and the irreligious was not as
distinctly drawn. Clergymen of a certain class
fought duels in the last century. Lotteries were
freely resorted to for the purpose of raising money
for religious uses. In this way even such a
Presbyterian church as the Second, and such an
Episcopal church as Christ's, raised the money
wlierewith to secure bells. Drunkenness was not
degradation. What a state of society there must
have been when the gentle and harmless Moravi-
ans " had to give up their night-meetings because
s me young fellows disturbed them by an instru-
ment sounding like a cuckoo, which they sounded
at the end of every line of the hymns " ! The
worshipers of God were not protected by the civil
power. The chains which Ave have heard about,
as having once kept vehicles from passing churches
during the hours of service on the Sabbath, were
not drawn until the very close of the century.

"The good old times !" The good times are
now, and the better are ever coming.

An idea of the relative strength of the different
denominations at the beo-innino; of the revolu-

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 151

tionary war may perhaps be formed from the
mortuary and baptismal tables of 1774-5. The
Episcoi)alians reported 207 burials in their
grounds (Christ's and St. Peter's, 176, St. Paul's,
29) ; the Lutherans, 196 (the German Lutheran,
173, and the Swedes, which has since become an
Episcopal church, 23) ; the Presbyterians, 158
(First, 58, Second, 29, Tnird, 61, Scots, 10); the
Quakers, 129 ; the German Reformed, GO ; the
Romanists, 44 ; the Baptists, 8 ; the Moravians,
4 ; \Yhile in the potter's field there were 390 in-
terments. TJie " christenings " reported were, by
the Lutherans, 390 (the German, 345, the Swedes,
45) ; the Episcopalians, 323 (Christ's and St.
Peter's, 231, St. Paul's, 92) ; . the Presbyterians,
126 (the First church, 47 ; Second, 17 ; Third,
39, Scots, 23) ; German Reformed, 93 ; Roman-
ists, 57 ; Moravians, 5. The Methodists are not
particularized, I suppose because they had no
burial-ground and were still closely associated
with the Episcopal Church, though they com-
menced to preach here in 1767, and at the first
conference in 1773 they reported 180 full mem-
bers in the city.

It will be an interesting hint of the size of the
city during the revolutionary war to note that
"the western improvements -scarcely extended
half a mile from the Delawai-e, and it was a
country walk for citizens to go to the hospital,

152 THE TERCENTENARY.

the Swedes church or the shipyard at Kensing-
ton." In 1777 there were 3508 houses in what
was then the city proper, 781 in Southwark and
1170 in the Northern Liherties — in all the dis-
tricts, 5459, of which 287 were stores. The
churches w^ere — '*four Presbyterian, three Epis-
copal, two Catholic, one Lutheran, one Methodist,
Baptist, Moravian, German Calvinist, Swedish
Lutheran."

VI. PEOGRESS IN THIS CENTURY.

But for the reasons which have been given, at
the beginning of this century, the various de-
nominations were on a plane. The history has
a new point of departure. And from that time
the progress of Presbyterianism in every ele-
ment of strength has been unequaled.

In the largest space which might be presumed
upon for this paper, I could not trace the organ-
ization and history of the churches that have
been formed in this century, even in the general
way in which I have followed the first three with
their pastors. All that I can do is to summarize
the results and show the general progress by
periods. Even in this summary way, moreover,
I must restrict myself to the one reunited branch,
for only in reference to its congregations have I
been able to obtain the figures. I endeavored to

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 153

secure tlie statistics of all, and succeeded with some,
but failed in others. I wish to make precise and
accurate statements, and not to indulge in esti-
mates or guesses based upon partial reports. Let
it, therefore, be understood that the following
statements refer to the reunited branch of the
Church alone ; though, as far as I can judge, the
accurate figures of the other branches would by
no means weaken the general view of our Pres-
byterianism which will be given.

The ojDcning year of the century was marked
by the organization of a new church, the Fourth,
with the Rev. George Potts as pastor, but no
great impidse was given in the years immediately
succeeding. Between 1788 and 1816, 400 or 500
houses were erected annually in the city, but only
five new churches of our denomination were called
for. In 1816 the city, including Soutlnvark and
the Northern Liberties, extended three miles
alons: the Delaware and about a mile east and
west, and contained 15,000 houses, and probably
100,000 people. There w^ere then in it more than
30 churches, and 8 of them were Presbyterian.

Summarizing the new churches by decades, we
find that two were organized betw^een 1800 and
1810, seven between 1810 and 1820, four between
1820 and 1830, eleven between 1830 and 1840,
ten between 1840 and 1850, twenty-two between
1850 and 1860, fourteen since 1860.

154 THE TERCENTENARY.

Three have also been received from other
branches. Seven have been disbanded or con-
solidated with others. There are now sixty-nine
in all, four of which are in what, it ought to be
hoped, is only a state of suspended animation.

The living stones which com230se these organ-
izations have increased in a greater degree.

The first year in which all the churches re-
ported the number of their communicants to the
presbytery was 1806. The total was 722. Last
year the number was 19,365.

Observe the great increase which this is in pro-
portion to the number of inhabitants in the city.
The population in 1806, according to a directory
for that year, was between 90,000 and 100,000.
In 1870 it was 674,022. In the former year we
had, therefore, not more than one communicant
in every 124 of the population ; we have now one
in every 35. Or to put the matter in another
form : The census of the city is seven and a half
times as large now as it was then ; our communion
rolls are almost twenty-seven times as large.

If we cast our eye back midway in the century,
we find that in 1836, just before the division, the
reports were very incomplete. Several churches
failed to make any. Those which sent up their
returns numbered 4331 communicants. The
division did not permanently stay the progress
of the denomination. Each party, as the other

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 155

by its subsequent course admitted, was contend-
ing for great truths, though without the proper
guards and connections. God blessed the truths
and removed the errors, and has phiced us in one
body again with the truths, as we hope, rightly
related and interlaced.

Greater still has been the development of the
benevolence of the Church. This is true not
only absolutely, but relatively, both in proportion
to the number of members and the wealth of the
people.

In 1789 the churches which were then in the
city raised £16 19s. for the benevolent causes
which were managed by the Assembly.

In 1807 the whole presbytery of Philadelphia
(which consisted of 20 churches, 16 of them in
the country, with 1500 communicants) rejDorted
only $871 for the same purposes.

In 1825 w^e had 17 churches, with 3946 com-
municants. They were reported as contributing
$1048.

For years after the division, one of the branches
did not publish in the statistical tables the
moneys contributed for benevolent objects. This
was not done until 1853. In that year the
two branches had 46 churches, with 11,096 com-
municants, wdio contributed $40,503.

There w^ere, in 1860, 60 churches, with 15,519
communicants. Their contributions were $79,377.

156 THE TERCENTENARY.

In 1870, the year of reunion, the numbers re-
ported were 17,982 communicants, and $190,170
of contributions.

Last year, with our 19,365 members, our be-
nevolent cohimns amounted to $473,300. This
is 450 times as much as in 1825, although the
communicants are only five times as many ; almost
twelve times as much as 1853, while the commu-
nicants are not doubled ; and six times as much
as in 1860, with an increase in communicants of
about one-fourth. It is, moreover, twice as much
as was reported by the denomination in the whole
land in 1837, when it had over 220,000 mem-
bers. It may be added, too, that down to 1815
the annual expenditures for missions in the whole
denomination rarely exceeded $2500.

The first year in which both the then separate
branches published the moneys raised by their
churches for their own congregational purposes
Avas 1865. The amount of that column in all the
churches in this city was $216,036. Last year it
was $519,478.

The other columns in 1865 ran up to $231,100,
making, with the congregational expenditures,
a total of $447,136. The same total last year
was $992,777. The amount has, therefore,
much more than doubled in seven years. The
field of labor is great and growing. May the
next seven years far outstrip the last seven

PEESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 157

111 the contributions for the support of the work !
The standard wliich lias been reached is by no
means the tithe of tlie means of the Church.

The piety and the activity of our membership
cannot be set forth in figures. We have no ther-
mometrical scale on which growtli in grace can
be graduated. But if conversions of souls and
contributions to God's cause be any evidence of
a faithfulness blessed by the Holy Spirit, there
must have been in this Church a c-reat and ofrow-
ing active piety. If that has been accompanied
by a neglect of the contemplative and meditative
elements of the Christian character the fact
should humble us. Deepening spirituality is
needed as well as growing numbers and increas-
ing contributions.

VII. THE GREAT EVANGELICAL CHUECHES OF

THE CITY.

While portraying especially the progress of
Presbyterianism, we will not forget the one faith
that unites the other evangelical denominations
with us. The impression exists to some extent
that the Church is being rapidly outstripped by
the world, and that a constantly increasing
proportion of our population is passing beyond
the influences of the sanctuary. The following
facts show, on the contrary, that a larger propor-
tion of the inhabitants of the city are members

14

158 THE TERCENTENARY.

of the churches now than were at the beginning
of the century :

The first year for which I have been able to
find the official reports of the Baptist churches is
18a7. The Methodists then reported 2170 mem-
bers in the city ; the Presbyterians, 746 ; the Bap-
tists, 488. The total was 3404, or about one in 26
of the population. Last year there were in the
churches of our reunited branch alone 19,365
communicants; under the Methodist conference,
18,976 ; in connection with the two Baptist asso-
ciations of the city, 14,798 — a total of 53,076, or
one in 12 of the population. The city has seven
times as many inhabitants ; these three leading
denominations together (without counting our
United and Keformed branches) have seventeen
times as many members as in 1807.

I would like to have included in this the figures
of all the churches. The only others that I have
been able to obtain are those of the Episcopalians
for last year, though not for the beginning of the
century, when they were the strongest denomina-
tion. The number of communicants in that
branch of the Church is 16,936. Including that
number, the total of these four great denomina-
tions is over 80,000. Thus one in eight of the pop-
ulation is a communicant in one of these churches.
Add their Sabbath-school children and the fami-
lies that are under their direct influence, and it

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 159

will be found that the means of grace are brought
in constant contact with a very large portion of
the people. There are still too many outside of
all ecclesiastical lines — enough to demand the un-
intermitted missionary labors of Christians ; but
the proportion of them is not so great as it was
seventy years ago. This should encourage us to
labor and pray and hope for greater progress
still. The army of Christ has not been retreat-
ing. It has not been acting on the defensive.
It has gone on conquering. Let its members be
stimulated and encouraged for the further con-
quests to which its Leader calls it.

The united ecclesiastical money-reports of these
denominations in the city of Philadelphia for
the last year, are also imposing. They are as
follows: The Reunited Presbyterian, $992,777;
United, $49,563 ; Reformed, $46,517 ; Dutch Re-
formed, $27,107 ; German Reformed, $7225 (be-
nevolent only reported) ; Episcopalian, $592,000 ;
Methodist, $354,000; Baptist, $300,000— in all,
$2,369,345.

The figures show not merely that the Church
of Christ in its various branches is making de-
cided progress, but that Presbyterianism has in
every element of strength been blessed with a
greater advance than any other denomination.

Manifestly, Calvinism, if gld — and old it is,
older than Calvin, older than Augustine, older

160 THE TERCENTENARY.

than Paul, older than time itself — is not worn
out. It has great power in winning souls to
Jesus and developing in them the Christian, life.
The Presbyterian form of government, if rigid
and iron-clad, has largely multi^^lied its willing
subjects.

We almost hesitate to give the comparative
facts and figures, lest we be charged with boast-
ing. But we are telling the simple story of God's
Avork in us and by us and for himself, and as we
tell it we cry out humbly and gratefully. What
hath God wrouoht !

If Philadelphia be a fair representative of
American society, Presbyterianism is pre-emi-
nently adapted to America.

VIII. CHARACTERISTICS OF PHILADELPHIA PRES-
BYTERIANISM.

Certain characteristics of the Church which
God has so abundantly blessed w^ill close this
paper. Here are the prominent features which
have given Presbyterianism its power in this city:

1. The watchmen upon its walls have been
noble men.

It is the ministry that largely gives character
to a Church. On the list of our Philadelphia
pastors are found 221 names. Of these ^S have
already been wafted through heaven's pearly gates
into the visible presence of their Lord, 72 are

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 161

laboring in other posts, 60 are still in the pastoral
work here. On no field of the same extent, in
no catalogue of the same number, do we believe
there can be found a band of men equal to them
in intellect, in moral worth, in spiritual activity
and in permanent usefulness.

Nineteen of them have been called to the
venerable chair of the moderator of the General
Assembly — one-sixth of all who in the whole
national Church have received that honor.

The roll of the already glorified (called from
earth while still in the pastorate here) commences
with the first pastor of the First church and ends
with the late emeritus pastor of the same chui'ch,
Albert Barnes : the life-long student and popular
interpreter of the word of God ; a man of strong
convictions and mild in his strength ; attaching to
himself as with bands of steel one branch of the
denomination, and preserving the unbroken re-
spect of the other through all the days of separa-
tion ; spared to behold the two reunited, and to
mino'le with us all for a little while in ministerial
converse, through which his speech distilled as
the dew, but then, in the first fhisli of our re-
union joy, translated without seeing the pain of
death.

Among the living ex-pastors are men that are
hard at work in other pastoral fiekls and in col-
leges and theological seminaries at home and

162 THE TERCENTENARY.

abroad, some of them among the first biblical
and theological scholars of the day.

The Church here has drawn many of its min-
isters from other parts of the Lord's vineyard.
But it has raised up not a few for its own home
use, and has sent to other places a large number
of eminent workers. Among the earlier on this
list may be mentioned John Rodgers, whose pecu-
liar honor it Avas to be moderator of the first
General Assembly. From the later and the liv-
ing sons of the Church in Philadelphia may be
selected for loving mention, without the risk of
being considered invidious, the world-wdde name
of one who is recognized as a primate among
theologians, and who has been the instructor in
their seminary life of two thousand American
ministers — Charles Hodge : Clarum et venerabile
nomen !

The moral character of the long line of pastors
has been even more elevated than their intellectual
standing. You can count on the fingers of one
hand all against whom, from the beginning to the
end of these 170 years, any charge of impropriety
was ever made.

2. As the ministers themselves have in general
been highly educated, so they and their churches
have uniformly co-operated in the educational
movements of the city.

The University of Pennsylvania is not a secta-

FRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 163

rian institution, though it seems lately to have
come especially under the influence of one of the
Christian denominations. It was established as a
State institution, and it is greatly indebted to
Presbyterians — how much is partially suggested
by the Honorable Judge Ludlow's remarkably
beautiful address at the late inauguration services
of the new building. But I beg leave to i^lace
in his gallery a grand old portrait which he has
left out of its frame. The Rev. Francis AJison
was one of the first scholars of his day. Presi-
dent Stiles pronounced him " the greatest classi-
cal scholar in America, esj^ecially in Greek," and
'Mn ethics, history and general reading a great
literary character." In 1756, when he was fifty-
one years of age, the University of Glasgow gave
him the degree of doctor in divinity. He was
the first American minister who was so honored,
and such was his position, and so highly esteemed
was the honor, that the synod of Philadelphia
passed a resolution of thanks for it. The synod
had in 1744 placed him at the head of a school
which it engrafted on a previously existing gram-
mar school of his own in New London, and in
which instruction was to be given " in the lan-
guages, philosophy and divinity." From that
school went forth some of the most eminent men
in Church and State of the close of the last and
the beginning of the present century, among

164 THE TERCENTENARY.

them " Charles Thompson, secretary of the first
Congress ; Eev. Dr. John Ewing, provost of the
University of Pennsylvania ; Dr. Ramsey, the
historian ; Dr. Hugh Williamson, one of the
framers of the Constitution of the United States
and historian of North Carolina ; Kev. Dr. James
Latta, eminent as a divine and a teacher, and
Thomas McKean, George Read and James Smith,
signers of the Declaration of Independence."
Such was Dr. Alison's reputation that when the
academy in Philadelphia was about to be estab-
lished, Dr. Franklin sought, and in 1752 se-
cured, him for the position of principal. When it
was transformed into a college in 1755, he be-
came vice provost and jDrofessor of moral philoso-
phy, and during a part of the government of Dr.
Smith he seems to have acted as provost. While
in this position he was also associate pastor of the
First church. His pupil and his successor in
that church, the Pev. Dr. John Ewing, became
the first provost of the university when the col-
lege was so transformed in 1779. He was a
prodigy of learning. Dr. Miller says that " at
the age of twenty-six, before he undertook the
pastoral charge, he was selected to instruct the
philosophical classes in the College of Philadel-
phia during the absence of the provost, the Pev.
Dr. Smith." Afterward, " besides presiding over
the whole university as its head with dignity and

PRESBYTERIANISM IN nilLADELPHIA. 165

commanding influence, he was professor of natural
philosophy in the institution, and every year de-
livered a course of learned and able lectures on
that branch of science. But this was not all.
Perhaps our country has never bred a man so
deeply as well as extensively versed in every
branch of knowledge commonly taught in our
colleges as was Dr. Ewing. Such was his famil-
iarity with the Hebrew language that I have been
assured by those most intimately acquainted with
his habits that his Hebrew Bible was constantly
by his side in his study, and that it was that
which he used of choice for devotional jmrposes.
In mathematics and astronomy, in the Latin,
Greek and Hebrew languages, in logic, in meta-
physics and moral philosophy, he was probably
more accom23lished than any other man in the
United States. When any other professor in the
university was absent, the provost could take his
place at an hour's w^arning, and conduct the in-
struction appropriate to that professorship with
more skill, taste and advantage than the incum-
bent of the chair himself. His skill in mathe-
matical science was so pre-eminent and acknow-
ledged that he was more than once employed with
Dr. Bitteii house of Philadelphia in runnuig the
boundary-lines between several of the States, in
which he acquitted himself in the most able and
honorable manner. He was one of the vice ])resi-

166 THE TERCENTENARY.

dents of the American Philosophical Society, and
made a number of contributions to the volumes
of their ' Transactions ' which do honor to his
memory." Dr. Ewing continued to be provost
for twenty-three years, until his death, in 1802.
Then, down to the year 1852, almost without an
interregnum, Presbyterians were provosts or vice
provosts of the university. Here we have the
names of John McDowell, LL.D., Pobert Pat-
terson, Dr. Robert M. Patterson, Samuel B.
Wylie, D.D., and John Ludlow, D.D. Let
this be accepted as typical of the educational
position of Philadelphia Presbyterians.

3. Because of the solid intellectual character
of its pastors, and because of the intellectual and
logical character of its system, Presbyterianism
has always attracted to itself a large proportion
of the intelligence of the city.

In the last century and in this we meet with
frequent hints of the eagerness with which the
first men of their time sat under the preaching
of our pulpit orators. And to-day, as in the
past, ruling elders and adherents of our churches
grace every county, State and federal court that
we have. Their names are among the brightest
on the rolls of our lawyers and physicians. To
enumerate them would be to draw out a catalogue
which would be an address in itself; we could

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 1G7

not select a few without omitting others equally
eminent.

The denomination is, however, and always has
been, very largely a Church of the working classes.
They make up the bone and sinew of the greater
number of its congregations, and they must con-
tinue to do so if we are to maintain our numeri-
cal, money and working progress.

4. The conservative character of its pulpit has
given our denomination great power.

The Bible teaches all the morality that the
world needs. The seeds of every true reforma-
tory movement are in the inspired book. Chris-
tians should not be willing to accept rationalistic
humanitarians as leaders, nor to descend from tlie
revealed vantage-ground to work with them on
their platform for the world's regeneration. In
this spirit the Presbyterians of this city have
acted. Among its pastors have been men whom
some of their conservative brethren may have
considered radical on current moral and political
questions ; but even they have not swept the plat-
form over the pulpit, nor sunk the accredited
ambassador of the skies in the demagogue of the
hour. The two classes have kei)t the Church
where it should be in contact with social ques-
tions. Radicalism of belief and of purp: se, united
with conservatism of action (God's own mode of
dealing with sin and sorrow), has been the charac-

168 THE TERCENTENARY.

teristic of Presbyteriauism in its struggles with
the evils of society, and this has greatly helped to
build it up in this steady, quiet and substantial
city.

5. The bitterest opponent of Presbyterianism
in Philadelphia could not charge it with a want
of patriotism. The dissolute Charles the Second
understood the connection between our theological
system and republicanism when he said that for
this very reason Calvinism was a religion unfit for
a gentleman. History, while contradicting his con-
clusion, has abundantly substantiated his premises.
And in this city, from the beginning, our Church
is a proof of the essential republicanism of Pres-
byterianism.

At the commencement of the struggle for in-
dependence it was considered doubtful which
side the merchants of Philadelphia would take.
The question caused great anxiety in the East
and at the South. But the synod of Philadelphia
met in May, 1775, just a month after the battle of
Lexington, and without hesitation or trimming
unanimously placed itself on the side of the
colonies, and in a pastoral letter to its churches
used these words : '' In particular, as the Conti-
nental Congress now sitting at Philadelphia con-
sists of delegates chosen in the most free and un-
biased manner by the body of the people, let
them not only be treated with respect and en-

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 169

couraged in their difficult service, not only let
your prayers be offered up to God for his direction
in their proceedings, but adhere firmly to their
resolutions, and let it be seen that they are able
to bring out the whole strength of this vast
country to carry them into execution." Incul-
cating in connection with this a spirit of humanity
and mercy, they used words which are sometimes
quoted in ignorance of their origin : " That man
will fight most bravely who never fights until it
is necessary, and who ceases to fight as soon as
the necessity is over."

So pre-eminent was the patriotism of Presby-
terians, so great w^ere their sacrifices, so ^^opular
had they become in their political relations, that
the fear existed, at the cessation of hostilities,
that our Church might seek the honoi*s, the
emoluments and the power of an Establishment ;
but the synod of 1781 took the opportunity to
disavow this, and to affirm its adherence to the
grand principles of religious liberty which under-
lie our institutions.

The Philadelphia pastors and churches had
their shai-e of those sufferings, and did their share
of that work. The scholarly Dr. Ewing, while on
an educational visit to England in 1773, expos-
tulated with Lord North, and defended the colo-
nies in the circles of the learned. Dr. Davidson,
for his devotion to the cause, was compelk'd to

15

170 THE TERCENTENARY.

leave the city when the British entered it. Dr.
Duffield's clarion patriotic voice was heard in
prayer for the colonies as a chaplain to the Con-
tinental Congress, in ringing exhortations to the
people of his charge, and in the camp while the
cannon of the enemy were directed against it.

Coming down to our own time, when the gov-
ernment was struck at eleven years ago, where, in
this broad land, were found pastors and people
who flew more quickly to its support, and stood
by it more persistently to the end of the strug-
gle, than those who constituted the Presbyterian
churches of this city ?

And now there are none niore ready to hold
out the ungloved hand and to grasp with an
affectionate embrace the alienated brethren of
the South, in forgetfulness of the past, and to
bind the Church, as well as the State, in a heart-
unity more thorough than ever.

6. A very decided denominationalism has cha-
racterized Philadelphia Presbyterianism.

This has, however, always been associated with
the broadest catholicity. Our system unchurches
no Christian. But its catholicity has gone farther
than the hearty and constant recognition of the
ministry and ordinances of other churches. Be-
fore the middle of the last century, in extraordi-
nary circumstances, the presbytery of Philadel-
phia, with the consent of synod, ordained a man

PRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 171

with Lutheran views, so that he might be able to
labor among his destitute co-religionists in the
country. Amid the bitter feeling which charac-
terized the commencement of that century, it is
recorded that on one occasion, " when Christ
church could not be used, the Presbyterians
offered the use of their church to the vestry."

Further examine the names of the manao^ers
and the working members of the charitable union
societies of the city, and see where they belong.
Look into the columns of contributions, and see
from whom the money comes. Their strength is
Presbyterian. Decided denominationalism and
catholic charity have been happily blended in the
working of our Church in Philadelphia.

7. Presbyterians seem to others to depend
mainly on slow accretion and quiet culture for
their growth. Our doctrine of the church-mem-
bership of the children does make this very
prominent. But the congregations in this city
have been richly blessed by revivals. The largest
numerical increase, from the founding of the
Second church down to this day, has come
through special awakenings. The most successful
pastors, and the growing churches, have looked
for the mightily quickening presence of the Holy
Spirit, exciting believers to increased efforts, and
converting many souls at one time. They have
believed in extra and continued meetini^s for

172 THE TERCENTENARY.

prayer and preaching, by which impressione
might be deepened, and Satan and the world
foiled with weapons of earnestness and persistence
superior to their own. The doctrines to which
our Church is so j)re-eminently devoted that its
governmental name has become their most noted
designation are emphatically the reviving and
awakening truths of the Bible. The earnest
preaching of them has built up our congregations.
The persistent proclamation of them still, in con-
nection with those special efforts to which the
Spirit leads, will be the means of continued
power.

IX. UNION.
Philadelphia once consisted of a number of in-
dependent municipalities, with conflicting in-
terests and antagonistic movements. But the
steady growth of their population, and the press-
ing together of their compactly built houses,
welded and consolidated them into one great mu-
nicipality. The older inhabitants have now
almost forgotten, the younger have never known,
tlie boundary lines between the city proper and
South wark, Moyamensing, Passyunk, Kensington,
the Northern Liberties, Spring Garden, Blockley.
And instead of Penn's orio;inal idea of a town
with " nine streets, two miles in length, running
east and west from river to river, and twenty-
three a mile long intersecting them at right angles

FRESBYTERIANISM IN PHILADELPHIA. 173

from north to south," we have a solid mass of
about 130,000 buildings that first crept slowly
away from the Delaware, and then leaped over
the Schuylkill, and spread beyond Germantown.
In this formerly divided country, as in the
country at large, Presbyterianism also had its
divei'se settlements. Its adherents came from
England and New England, from Scotland, Ire-
land and Wales, from Germany, Holland and
France. They brought with them different lan-
guages and religious peculiarities that had grown
out of old national questions. By these they
were crystallized into separate organizations. One
of these organizations, moreover, twice divided,
but twice found it could not remain divided. In
this city the struggle which attended the second
disunion, as well as the first, was sharp. Here
the doctrinal controversies which help)ed to rend
the national body were brought to a focus. Here,
in the churches, the presbytery, the synod and
the Assembly, there was for years a contest which
excited the feelings of our ministers and people,
and consumed power that should have been used
in aggressive work upon the world. Here sat the
two antagonistic Assemblies in 1838. Here was
carried on the strife in the civil courts for le^-al
recognition. But here, also, amid the enthusiastic
hospitality and the beaming joy of our people;
met the one reunited Assembly of 1870. The

15 *

174 THE TERCENTENARY.

reunion then consummated is seamless. !No man
can mark the line where the once separated parts
are joined together. This reunion increases
the craving for a wider union, the consummation
of which we fervently pray the Lord will hasten.
And these services are an earnest of it. On this
memorable day, in the Seventh Church, whose
Hanstead Place edifice was the scene of strife
thirty-four years ago, not only those who were
then torn apart, but members of the other
branches of the denomination, unite in commem-
orating great events which make us feel that,
with all our minor differences, we are one. The
memorials of Knox, of the St. Bartholomew
martyrs and of the Wandsworth Presbytery
remind us of the historical grandeur of our com-
mon name. In faith and in order, in heart and
in purpose, we ai^e united. The occasion is a
great and inspiring one for our cause in this old
and permanent and growing stronghold of our
system. But grander will be the day which shall
witness the organic consolidation of us all in one
Pkesbyteeian Church in the City of Phil-
adelphia.

PRESBYTERIAN ISM

IN

The United States.

BY THE

Rev. J. B. DALES, D. D.,

PASTOR OF THE SECOND UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF
PHILADELPHIA.

PRESBYTERIANISM IN THE UNITED
• ' STATES.

rpWELVE years ago, next month, there con-
-L vened in the oldest Presbyterian church in
this city one of the largest assemblies that was ever
gathered here from that branch of tlie Church,
to commemorate the first meeting of the Gene-
ral Assembly of the Church of Scotland. That
first Scottish assembly was held in the city of
Edinburgh on the 20tli of December, 1560.
With its six ministers and thirty-four ruling
elders, it then began, in a thoroughly organized
form, that work which — in its never ceasing to
originate or foster general education, free institu-
tions, civil liberty and the enlightening, evangel-
izing and thus elevating of all to whom it comes —
has already long made Presbyterianism to be a
name and a power of mighty import throughout
the world. Most a j)propr lately also has tJds day
been set apart for the commemoration of that
event which occurred at the little villa2:e of
Wandsworth, on the Thames, about four miles

177

178 THE TERCENTENARY.

from the city of London, when on the 20th of
November, 1572, eleven elders — some teaching
and some ruling — gathered together and form-
ally constituted, in the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ, the first presbytery in the history of
Presbyterianism on purely English soil. That
event was rajDidly followed, in some of the most
marked and effective senses, by the spreading
abroad of the simple word and ordinances of
grace, the raising up of a band of many of the
ablest and noblest of ministers, the infusing among
the masses of the people the great ideas of civil
and religious rights that have been the crown and
the glory of the British name, and finally the
convening (through the Parliament of England
and the largely moulding influence of the five
commissioners from the Church of Scotland) of
that assembly of divines which met in Jerusalem
Hall, Westminster Abbey, July 1, 1643. That
assembly, in the five years, six months and
twenty-one days of its course, formed and gave
to the world the confession of faith, those mem-
orable catechisms and that directory for worship
which, with some modifications and scarcely any
serious omissions, have in their subordination to
the holy Scriptures constituted the broad and
unshaken jilatform and bond of union for Pres-
byterianism in every age and on every shore of
earth where it has lifted its standard since, down to

THE UNITED STATES. 17S

this hour. All hail, then, this clay, and its great
work three hundred years ago !

But passing to the subject more especially as-
signed for this hour — viz..

The History of Presbyterianism in these
United States— it may be stated here that, as
•if God would have tliis then comparatively new-
found continent prepared, almost from its first
occupancy and by the character of its earliest
settlers, for becoming, as it has since so largely
been, one of the models of the world for liberty
of conscience, for general education and for uni-
versal equality in civil and religious rights, he so
directed in his Providence that a leading and
mighty element for it all should be in thorough
training and ready to act well its part when it
should be called for. That element we believe
was simple Presbyterianism— the Presbyterian-
ism that glowed in its letter and spirit upon
the sacred page, and that helped to make the
early Christian churches the lights of the
world. After the long night of the Middle Ages
under the Eoman Anti-Christ also, and as most,
in the very nature of things, in identity with
that great system of truth which Calvin drew
from the Bible, it was formally set up by him
in Geneva, by Farel in France, by Knox in
Scotland, and it is believed would have been in-
troduced largely by Cranmer in England if he

180 THE TERCENTENARY.

could have done it. It was a system that, in-
de23endent alike of the State and all prelatic
assum23tions, and aiming at freeing the masses
everywhere from the shackles of religious super-
stition, from general ignorance and from all spirit-
ual despotism, sought only to educate and really
elevate men to their best estate. While pointing to
the horrid atrocities of France and Holland, to the
fires of the Bloody Mary at Smithfield, to the
little less than fiendish jDersecutions of the min-
ions of Charles in Scotland, and to the unprinci-
pled and outrageous wrongs perpetrated upon the
nonconformists of England in England's shame-
ful and dark Bartholomew's day — August 24th,
1662 — it showed itself the unalterable enemy of
all these, and that it possessed an unshrinking and
mighty power to hold to truth, to freedom and to
God — never so firm as in the conflict, never so
really great as when in the fire.

This was the element called for ; and accord-
ingly, at a time when prelacy, with its kingly
affinities, its aristocratic ideas and its Church
exclusiveness, and when Romanism, with its
often lamb-like beginnings for later deadly
workings, were already in the field or preparing
for it, God seemed to sift the Old World
that he might gather out the most severely
tested and tried to settle the New. Such
were the Huguenots of France, the Reformed

THE UNITED STATES. 181

of Holland, the Puritans of England, some of
the Germans of Central Europe and successive
generations of many of the noblest and best of
Scotland, and in still larger numbers good men
and true from the north of Ireland, whom he
manifestly led to find homes for themselves and
their long lines of descendants, and thus to plant
the Presbyterianism of their Church and their love
in the midst of the New World. That these
representatives of different nations were Presby-
terian is beyond any question.

In the case of the Protestants of France, be-
sides owing very largely their knowledge of the
gospel to Calvin and his associates, it is a well-
attested fact that at the first meeting of the synod
of the French Protestant Church, which was
held on the 25th of May, 1559, in the city of
Paris, the form of church government adopted
was thoroughly Presbyterian in all its parts.
The ruling as well as the teaching elder was dis-
tinctly recognized. The perfect parity of all
ministers was as distinctly declared ; and in the
constitution of the church courts, the " consistory,"
which was required to be elected by the people over
which it was to rule, corresponded exactly with the
session, the '' colloquy '' with the presbytery, and
the " national synod " with the General Assembly.

In Holland also not only was the whole system

of theology and church polity, as given to the

ifi

182 THE TERCENTENARY.

world by the synod of Dort in 1618, and de-
clared to be the doctrinal basis of the Reformed
Church of Holland, thoroughly Calvinistic, but it
was as decidedly Presbyterian. Its "consistory '^
was identical with the session and its "classis" with
the presbytery. So, too, the Puritans of England
were long after their rise unquestionably largely
Presbyterian. Robinson distinctly affirmed that
his church at Leyden — the mother church of the
Plymouth colony — was of the same government
as the Protestant Church of France. Fourteen
years before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers
in New England, Brewster was chosen an elder
by the congregation; and when, nearly two years
afterward, or in 1609, he was chosen also to be
an assistant of Pobinson, he declined to adminis-
ter the sacraments expressly on the ground that
the ruling elder's office, which he held, did not
entitle him to do that which he believed belonged
only to the minister or teaching elder. With
this office and with these views, Brewster came to
this country with the Pilgrim colony, and thus
he helped to form the Plymouth church. Thence-
forward for a long period, acting on this princi-
ple, the early churches in Salem, Charlestown,
Boston and elsewhere in New England, had
ruling elders, while, in 1646 and 1680 respect-
ively, all the ministers and an elder from each
church met in synod at Cambridge, and by dis-

THE UNITED STATES. 183

tinct act recognized the Presbyterian form of
church government. They went so far, especially
in the synod of 1680, as to adopt the confession
of faith of the Westminster Assembly of divines.
In high loyalty to Presbyterian ism also, as no
one ever doubted, was every emigrant to this
country from the Church of Scotland, and that
no less noble body, the Presbyterian Church of
Ireland.

Such were the leading men, in their general
views of doctrine and church government, at the
times they successively sought the settlement of
this Western world. However much these views
may have since been modified and changed, and
even disapproved, by some of their successors, in
the lapse of these 300 years, yet such were always
largely the well-known Huguenots, who, after
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by the
perfidious Louis XIV., on the 22d of October,
1685, emigrated in considerable numbers to this
country, and settling more especially in the city
of New York and its vicinity, and in South Caro-
lina, laid the foundations of some of the earliest
Presbyterian churches and gave to the country
some of the noblest names that have adorned its
pulpit and honored its national halls. Such un-
questionably were the early settlei's from the Re-
formed Church of Holland, especially in New
York and New Jersey; such also in good degree

184 THE TERCENTENARY.

were even the Pilgrim Fathers, as seen in the
further Ikct that even down to these days, in va-
rious parts of New England, " Presbyterian,"
" Independent" and " Congregational]* st" are terms
interchangeably used ; and such were largely the
Protestant emigrants from Scotland and Ireland,
who settled in various parts of New England and
more generally in the Middle and Southern States,
showing that the Presbyterian element had much
to do in the settling of the largest and most influ-
ential portions of our country.

From all this, however, we turn gratefully to-
day to trace the Presbyterian system as it so
earnestly and with such important results flowed
to this country from the Presbyterian churches
of Scotland and the synod of Ulster in Ireland.
Doubtless at first the early coming of Presbyte-
rianism hither was largely in the person of indi-
viduals, sometimes seeking an improvement of
their worldly condition, sometimes longing for a
freer air and a wider range of spiritual privileges,
and sometimes forced, as by the savage heartless-
ness and cruelty of a Claverhouse and Dalzell,
when, set on like hounds from the kennel of a
royal Charles and a prelatic Laud, they hunted
for the life's blood of many of the most eminent
saints of God. But from whatever cause, they
came, sometimes singly, sometimes in families, and
sometimes in congregations, as when, on the 16th

THE UNITED STATES. 185

of May, 1764, the Presbyterian church of Bally-
bay in Ireland rose up, pastor, elders and members,
and sailing as they were, about 300 in number,
from Newry, came to this country and settled down
in Salem, Washington county. New York, and
never to this day have had any other organization
than that they then brought with them.

Early, however, from these emigrating bands, as
they remembered the ways of Zion from which
they had been so far removed and longed to be
led again by tlie still waters and in the green pas-
tures of the means of grace that had so gladdened
their early days, and to which under God they
felt they owed their all, there now often went
back earnest and entreating calls for ministers to
come over and help them. Nor were these calls
in vain. Touched with the pressing necessities of
the case, and in many instances yearning for these
people as for far-off sheep of their flocks, minis-
ters themselves sometimes rose up ; and though it
was felt, and probably was, in reality, of far greater
hazard and hardship to undertake that mission
then than it would be now to go to the heathen
world, yet many good and faithful men did it, and
came. Sometimes, too, church courts solemnly
appointed men to this work, and so rigidly did
they exact compliance with their appointments
that again and again they severely disciplined
those who failed to go as the destitute had called,

10*

186 THE TERCENTENARY.

and as the courts of the Lord's house had com-
manded.

Nor was this course without its weighty fruits.
Ahnost all the early ministers w^ere from abroad.
In the very first Presbytery that was organized,
five of the only six ministers that composed it
were from the Presbyterian churches of Ireland
and Scotland. More than half a century after-
ward every one of the first members of the Asso-
ciate, the Reformed Presbyterian and the Associ-
ate Reformed presbyteries, and indeed of all the
earlier synods of these churches, w^as directly
from these old churches of the fatherlands, while
all their doctrinal and ecclesiastical features bore
the clearest impress and type of their stern and
noble originals. Nor is this all. Much as is the
credit due to other religious systems and to colo-
nists from other lands, yet never will the United
States fully know how much is owed to these men
and their immediate descendants in the early in-
tegrity of the people, in the stern and unyielding
form of our Republican government, in the origi-
nating and fostering of the highest style of liberal,
educational and reformatory institutions, and in
the enunciation and maintenance of the princi-
ples of civil and religious freedom of the most
ennobling character and for the largest numbers
of the masses of the people.

In that long list was the Rev. Francis McKemie

THE UNITED STATES. 187

from Ireland, a man whom no blandishments of
favor or threats of prisons by the prelatic gov-
ernor of New York conld either entice or terrify ;
an Anderson, who, when Episcopacy would not
grant (as lately as in 1720) an incorporation to
Presbyterianism in the now magnificent metropo-
lis of our country, and would not allow even the
ground upon which it might build a house for the
worship of God, boldly took it himself and made
it over to the Church of Scotland, to be held by
it for a Presbyterian church in New York ; a
Gillespie, whom the godly Allison of this city
styled " that pious saint of God " ; a William
Tennent, of whom Whitefield said, " I can say of
him and his brethren as David did of Goliath's
sword ' none like them ' ; " and later a Wither-
spoon that towered among his fellows in almost
unequaled splendor, whether he be viewed as a
herald of the cross, a signer of the Declaration
of American Independence, or as president of
the College of New Jersey. Then came Marshall
and Annan and Proudfit and the Masons, father
and son, two men among the wisest and ablest
that have ever filled an American pulpit or
pastorate, or adorned a theological chair ; and
then a Dobbin and McKinney and Black and
McLeod and a Samuel B. Wylie, who so lately
still walked among us esteemed and hon-
ored of all. Still later we have the livinsj men

188 THE TERCENTENARY.

of this day and of not less mighty strength — a
Hall, whom the electric telegraph so recently
brought from Ireland to fill one of the best of
pulj^its with the simplest but weightiest preaching
of the cross, and that other honored name with
Scottish blood that this day stands among us one
of the very first in the list of able educators and
great men that have presided over Princeton's
Nassau Hall.

But why jDarticularize further the men who,
crossing the wide ocean that separated us from the
Old World, started at the first and ever since
have fondly cherished, in deepest sympathy with
all the right-hearted and good of our own
country, everything that was truly inviting and
promising in letters and morals, in State and in
Church, for all in this land and to all the world ?

Nor is it of less marked interest to trace the
commencement, progress and present state of
Presbyterianism in its several branches in the
United States. Branches, we say, for on this day
of grateful comminglings of hearts and hands it
is to be mentioned with regret that as scarcely
sooner had Protestantism emerged from the long
night of Dark Ages, and taken form as it did in
the beginning of the great Beformation, than there
began to be differences of views, and at length
parties and separate bodies, as was seen in the
churches of Germany, France, Holland and Brit-

THE UNITED STATES. 189

ain, — as, too, in later times, the Presbyterian
Church tJiat had stood forth so nobly one in Scot-
land in 1560, became divided into several parts,
— so here, even while the colonial governments
were still existing, these separate branches or
parts of the originally one Church were found
taking type from the churches in the mother
countries and starting up in this land, sometimes,
too with a lamentable degree of rancor and dis-
tance from one another such as should never
have characterized those that had so often rallied
together in the conflicts for truth, for freedom and
for right under the blue banner of the Church of
Scotland and Presbyterian Ulster, and to the
heart-rousing cry, " For Christ's crown and cove-
nant."

First in this list in date and deserved promi-
nence and influence stands the Presbyterian, or
as many love in the depths of their hearts
to hail it now. The Reunited Presbyterian
Church. Its first presbytery was organized in
this city some time between the years 1698 and
1705, and embraced six ministers, four of w^hom
exercised their office on the Eastern Shore of
Maryland, one in New Castle, Delaware, and the
other in this city. It was a day of small things,
but time passed on, and on the 17th of Septem-
ber, 1717, when that one presbytery had swelled
out into three — viz., Philadelphia, New Castle

190 THE TERCENTENARY.

and Long Island — then nineteen ministers, and
more or less of ruling elders with them, convened
in this city and formed the first pu7'ely Presbyte-
rian synod in these United States — the synod of
Philadelphia.

Again time passed on, and on the 21st of May,
1789, when the one presbytery had grown into
sixteen, and the one synod into four — viz.. New
York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Virginia and
the Carolinas — thirty-one duly appointed dele-
gates, consisting of 21 ministers and 10 elders,
met in the Second Presbyterian church in this
city. After a sermon by the venerable Dr. John
Witherspoon from 1 Cor. iii. 7, the first General
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the
United States was constituted, and the Kev. Dr.
John Rogers, of New York, was chosen the first
moderator.

Still time passed on, and now, though there have
been trials that have sometimes shaken to its
foundations almost every ecclesiastical organiza-
tion, and agitations and strifes that at times have
wellnigh overwhelmed the country and its gov-
ernment, yet that Church has held on her way
until this day, her heralds preach the gospel in
nearly every State and Territory in all this land,
her influence is felt to the ends of the earth, and
her organization is among the first and mightiest
of the Presbyterian bodies in forming one of the

THE UNITED STATES. 19J

brightest and most widely-sliiniug and nobly use-
ful lights of the world.

Next in order of time and in present numbers
IS The United Presbyterian Church. This
church is composed of the Associate and Associ-
ate Reformed churches. In the Associate the first
ministers to labor in this country were Alexander
Gellatly and Andrew Arnott, who came under
appointment from the Anti-Burgher synod in
Scotland, and on petitions urgently sent from New
London, Octorara and other places in Eastern
Pennsylvania. They landed in Philadelphia in
the summer of 1753, and in the following No-
vember organized, as the synod had instructed
them, a presbytery entitled the "Associate presby-
tery of Pennsylvania, subordinate to the Associate
synod of Edinburgh." Most earnestly thence did
they devote themselves to their work, and others
steadily joined them. On the 20th of May, 1776,
their number had grown to thirteen. The pres-
bytery was then divided into two — viz., Pennsyl-
vania and New York. And now a crisis came.
On the outbreak of the war of the Revolution, it
was found that communications could not be kept
up with the mother Church at home, that minis-
ters could not be had from abroad to meet the press-
ing calls for them on every side, and that the feel-
ings of patriotism which so largely glowed in the
bosoms of ministers and people for the country of

192 THE TERCENTENARY.

their adoption could not be repressed. It wag
deejily felt that they should have a separate and
independent existence — an existence adapted to
their condition and necessities in this land. Ac-
cordingly, negotiations Avere entered into for a
union with the presbytery of the Reformed Pres-
byterian Church — a presbytery that had been or-
ganized in 1774 with three ministerial members,
one from Scotland and two from Ireland. These
negotiations were partially successful ; and at
length, at Pequa, Pennsylvania, on the 13th of
June, 1782, a union was consummated, and the
new organization stood forth with a name from
its two composing parts combined, viz., The Asso-
ciate Reformed Church.

Unhappily, however, this union was not com-
plete. Each body had its opposing parts, and
thus both the Associate and Reformed Presbyte-
rian bodies were perpetuated.

But that Associate Reformed, or, as it was long
and widely termed, " the Union Church," held on
its way and did good service. In October, 1783,
its three presbyteries and fourteen ministers were
organized into a synod called " The Associate
Reformed Synod of North America." At its
meeting in Green Castle, Pennsylvania, May 31,
1799, this synod issued its formal standards, con-
sisting of the Westminster Confession of Faith,
unchanged except in regard to the civil magis-

THE UNITED STATES. 193

tracv ; the catechisms and the directories for
church government and divine worship, simplified
or adapted to present circumstances ; and then the
whole was styled " The Constitution and Stand-
ards of the Associate Reformed Church in North
America."

Three years afterward the synod was divided
into four, and in May, 1804, delegates from each
of the eight presbyteries — viz., Washington, New
York, Philadelphia, Big Sj)ring, Kentucky, Mo-
nongahela and First and Second Carolinas — met
at Green Castle, Pennsylvania, and formed the
General Synod of this Church. At this its first
meeting it was resolved to establish a theological
seminary.

On the first Monday of November, 1805, there
was formally opened, in the city of New York,
that theological institution which thence, under
Dr. J. M. Mason, gave to the American Church
J. M. Matthews, W. W. Phillips, George Junkin,
Samuel Findley, David Macdill, John T. Pressly,
D. C. McLaren, Joseph McCarrell, and many
other expositors of the word of God and educators
of men as able as any whom this country has pro-
duced. Thence through successive clianges this
Church pursued its course, at one time nearly con-
summating a union with the Presbyterian Church
(in 1822) ; then at a later day gathering up all its
own scattered fragments, with the single exception

17

194 THE TERCENTENARY.

of the synod of the South ; and in May, 1855, it
entered into a happy General Synod again. It had
theological seminaries at Newburgh, New York,
Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, Oxford, Ohio, and
Monmouth, Illinois, and prosecuted well its work
both in the home and foreign field. At length,
when three-quarters of a century had rolled away,
and nearly twenty years of j)rayerful negotiation
had been carried on, this Associate Reformed and
the Associate Church (from which in fact it really
came, and with which it was ever largely one in
psalmody, communion and other great matters of
faith and practice) now, with great cordiality and
new life, most happily flowed together in the city
of Pittsburg, and on the 26th of May, 1858,
formed " The United Presbyterian Church of
North America" — a Church that has now 8 syn-
ods, b5 presbyteries, 641 ministers and licentiates,
755 churches and 72,896 communicants, with
boards of home and foreign missions, education,
publication and church extension, 593 Sabbath-
schools, with 53,288 scholars in them, property
valued at $4,096,000, and a total of contributions
during last year of $869,136, or an average of
$11.92 from each member, and an average salary
of $898.29 for every pastor within its bounds.

Next in the Presbyterian family stands The
Reformed Presbyterian Church. Its first
minister was the He v. John Cuthbertson, from

THE UNITED STATES. 195

the Keformed presbytery in Scotland, who landed
in this country in 1752. Its first presbytery was
organized in 1774. In 1782 all its ministers
united with all the Associate ministers, except
Revds. Wm. Marshall and Thomas Clarkson, in
forming the Associate Reformed Church. But
other ministers came from both Scotland and Ire-
land, and in 1798 the presbytery was reorganized
under the title The Reformed Presbytery of
North America.

Ten years passed away, when with a good in-
crease of devoted ministers, and the one presby-
tery grown into three, the synod of the Reformed
Presbyterian Church was organized May 24,
1809 ; and in 1825 the General Synod, a body
to be composed of delegates from the several pres-
byteries.

Eight years afterward, or in 1833, an unhappy
division took place in this Church, mainly on the
question of civil government, one body styling it-
self the Synod and the other the General Synod
of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. In the
former, " The Synod," there are 100 congregations,
90 ministers, 403 elders, 221 deacons, 8782 com-
municants, 4581 Sabbath-school scholars. Its
total of contributions for the past year were
$201,532.11, and it has one college, one theologi-
cal seminary, together with an influential mission
at Latakia and its vicinity in Syria. In the

196 THE TERCENTENARY.

latter, " the General Synod," there are nearly 50
congregations, 42 ministers and licentiates, one
divinity school and a very useful foreign mission,
in connection with the Presbyterian Church, in
India.

With these branches of the Presbyterian family
there should also be mentioned The Associate
Peformed Synod of the South — a body that
was originally one of the four synods of the Gen-
eral Synod of the Associate Reformed Church.
Since 1821 it has been an independent synod.
At present it has 70 ministers, churches in nearly
every State in the South, and a college and theo-
logical seminary at Due West, South Carolina.

Besides these branches of the Presbyterian
stock, there is also The Cumberland Presbyte-
rian Church. This church had its origin in
difficulties within the bounds of the presbytery of
Transylvania, in Kentucky, near the beginning
of this century. Its first meeting of presbytery
was held February 4, 1810. Its first synod was
formed in 1813, and its first General Assembly in
May, 1829. Last year it had 1116 ministers, 1863
congregations, 96,335 communicants, 26,466 chil-
dren in its Sabbath-schools, and five colleges and
theological seminaries.

It only remains to say that the General Assem-
bly of the Presbyterian Church in the United
States, generally known as the " Southern Pres-

THE UNITED STATES. 197

byterian Church," a thoroughly Presbyterian
body, has had a separate existence since the year
1861. It had its origin in the state of things
that accompanied and was due to the late unhappy
war. It embraces a most important section of
country in the Southern States of our Union, and
is doing a good home and foreign work. It has
at present 11 synods, 6Q presbyteries, 912 minis-
ters and licentiates, 1545 churches, 91,208 com-
municants, 55,943 children in its Sabbath-schools,
and last year raised an annual contribution for
benevolent purposes of $1,034,390.

Such is the Presbyterian ism of these United
States, and, in brief, its history and present con-
dition. Here we might close, but that injustice
would be done to the Church that bears this name
and to this occasion, if we did not notice for a few
minutes some of the characteristic facts in its his-
tory. I refer to the " Presbyterian Church in the
United States of America."

1. Its Origin was in a marked sense of God.
Its early ministers were almost without exception
asked for of God and of the mother Church at
home. In some instances seasons of solemn fast-
ing and prayer, with the single burdened desire
of the worshipers that God would send them
ministers. God heard their prayers, ministers
came, churches were organized, and thus it waa
largely in answer to prayer that the Presbyterian

17*

198 THE TERCENTENARY.

Church was thoroughly planted, on what, under
the blessing of God, has richly proved to her the
fruitful soil of this western world.

2. This Church has been emphatically one of
Progress. In their ordinary privileges the first
members of this Church were exceedingly limited
and tried. Even their privileges were in the
most meagre forms. Says Dr. Wines : " Their first
temples were the shady groves, and their first
pulpits a rude tent made of rough slabs, Avhile the
audience sat either upon logs or the green turf.
Not even log churches were erected until about
the year 1790. Even in winter the meetings
were held in the open air. Not one in ten had
the luxury of a^ overcoat. The most were obliged
to wear blankets or coverlets instead." Now there
are thousands of well-built and convenient houses
of worship, some of which are among the most
magnificent in the country. In numbers, too,
what a change has taken place! At the first
meeting of the General Assembly of the Presby-
terian Church, May 21, 1789, there were 4 syn-
ods, 23 presbyteries, 177 ministers and licentiates,
and 419 congregations. Now in the same body
there are 35 synods, 166 presbyteries, 4441 min-
isters, 323 licentiates, 4730 churches, and a mem-
bership of 468,164 communicants. Then there
was not in all its bounds a single Sabbath-school,
in the modern sense of the term ; now there are

THE UNITED STATES. 199

large numbers of tliem, with 485,762 scholars.
Then the whole sum reported at the first meeting
of the assembly as contributed during the pre-
vious year was £176 7s. 6d. ; now, at the meeting
in May last, the sum re]3orted was a total of
$10,086,526. Even the minutes of that first
General Assembly, as published, are comprised in
a printed abstract of six pages, while those of the
assembly of May last swell out into a volume of
464 pages.

Nothing behind this have been the signs of
progress in other branches of the Presbyterian
family. At the first meeting of the Associate
synod, which was organized in Philadelphia, May,
1801, there were 17 ministers in all, in 4 presby-
teries— viz., Philadelphia, Chartiers, Kentucky
and Cambridge. In the Associate Reformed
Church, at the time of its first synod, which was
held in Philadelphia in October, 1782, there were
14 ministers and 3 presbyteries. At the time of
their union, however, in 1858, there were in the
former body 21 presbyteries, 198 ordained minis-
ters, 293 congregations and 23,505 communicants,
and in the latter, one General Synod, 4 synods, 28
presbyteries, 253 ordained ministers, 367 congre-
gations and 31,284 communicants. At the first
meeting, in 1782 and 1801 respectively, there was
not in either of these synods a single religious
publication of any kind or any foreign mission.

200 THE TERCENTENARY.

and only one theological seminary. At the time
of their late union there were in them together, 2
monthly periodicals and 4 weekly newspapers, 4
foreign missions, with 9 foreign missionaries and
their families, and 4 theological seminaries.

In the Keformed Presbyterian Church also,
which in 1782 was left without a single minister,
and at the reorganization of its presbyteries in
1798 had only 3 ministers in all its j)ai'ts, there
are now 132 ministers, about 150 congregations,
15,872 communicants, and a total contribution
during the past year to the cause of Christ of
about $300,000.

While, however, these contrasts may well be
gratefully noticed, yet it may be questioned for a
moment whether all this progress has been in
every respect a real or even a desirable gain. For
instance: while of the 1116 ministers of the
Cumberland Presbyterian Church last year only
241 had pastoral settlements and 876 were without
'padoral charges (though largely with charges, as
stated supplies), and while this unsettled, non-pas-
toral state characterizes a large body of the minis-
ters in several of the Presbyterian bodies of this
day, yet in those early times nearly every min-
ister had his congregation as a ]3astor, or was
thoroughly engaged in the evangelist's hard work
over widely-extended sections of country. While
now there are often strong temptations for minis-

THE UNITED STATES. 201

ters to preach in the essay and perhaps sensational
style, then the aim seemed to be, under a deep
sense of the awful responsibilities of the ministe-
rial office and the necessities of the hearers, simply
to expound the word of God, and Avith that word,
as the only sword of the Spirit, to deal with the
consciences and the souls of men. While now
the candidate for the ministry often seems to have
little more to do than listen to lectures and have
the professors do much or perhaps most of the
hard studying, then young men were largely
taken in the charge of particular ministers and
trained by the very hardest toils and trials in
the practice as well as the theory both of the pul-
pit and the j)astorate. In one word, then religion
had far fewer attractions in its outward forms and
far less of ease in the performance of its manifold
duties. But it may well be asked whether it had
not, in the hands of a McKemie, a Davies, a Fin-
ley, a Tennent, a Marshall, a McMillan, a Mc-
Leod, the Masons, and a host of others of like
precious faith and zeal, more of a living, mighty
reality and power within and without — in the
pulpit and in the world.

3. The Presbyterian Church has evei- had a
deep concern for general Educatio^^, and espe-
cially for an educated ministry. In- no sense
could she have been true to her noble descent from
the synod of Ulster and from Scotland had it been

202 THE TERCENTENARY.

otherwise. Almost from the very beginning of
the organization of any of her bodies in this
country, steps were taken in this direction.
Hence Tennent was early at work in his Log Col-
lege on the Neshaminy, Blair at Fogg's Manor,
Pennsylvania, Finley at West Nottingham,
Maryland, and the gradual foundation of the
College of New Jersey was laid first at Elizabeth,
New Jersey, in 1746, then in Newark in 1747,
and finally at Princeton, 1757.

All these, with similar institutions in Western
Pennsylvania and as far south as Kentucky and
the Carolinas, were Presbyterian, and all aimed
specially and first of all, besides promoting general
education, to raise up a well-trained ministry. So
with theological seminaries also ; for while for a
long period young men studied with certain min-
isters privately, under direction of presbytery, yet
as early as 1784 the Reformed Dutch Church
took steps for the founding of a theological semi-
nary, first in New York and afterward in New
Brunswick, New Jersey, appointing the Rev. Dr.
John H. Livingston to be its first professor. The
Associate Church in 1794 founded its first semi-
nary at Service Creek, Beaver county, Pennsylva-
nia, with the happiest results, and placed the Rev.
Dr. John Anderson at its head. The Associate
Reformed Church in 1805 founded in the city
of New York, under Dr. John M. Mason, a semi-

THE UNITED STATES. 203

nary that was long prolific in producing able min-
isters. Tlie Presbyterian Church did the same in
1812, at Princeton, New Jersey, under the excel-
lent Dr. Archibald Alexander, whose praise and
works are in some measure in all the churches.
And thus it has continued until this day in
the various Presbyterian bodies. Besides almost
countless academies and seminaries for the higher
training of both sexes, there are now in these
United States no less than 33 formally incorpo-
rated colleges and universities and 19 theological
seminaries under the banner of Presbyterianism.

4. This Church has ever been signally a mis-
sionary Church. Very largely it was the mission-
ary spirit that brought its early ministers to this
country from the Old World. Almost commen-
surate with their work then of looking after the
emigrants, or early settlers from abroad, was the
idea among many of them of having the gospel
preached to the Indians.

Foremost in the ranks of the first formal mis-
sionary organizations, " The New York Mission-
ary Society, '^ formed about the beginning of this
century, were the several branches of the Pres-
byterian fiimily. Scarcely had the ** American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions "
been organized in 1810, when ministers and elders
of these Churches gave it their sons and daughters
to become its missionaries, and its substance to

204 THE TERCENTENARY.

help forward its noble work of evangelizing the
heathen. And how mightily has this spirit de-
veloped since that day ! On one evening about
the year 1831 three good and now sainted men,
two of them honored ministers and one a ruling
elder, were walking in deep thought together on
the broad vestibule of the First Presbyterian
church in this city. One of them said it was
deeply impressed upon his heart that the Presby-
terian Church in this country, in her own place
as a Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and if she
would be true to her Lord and herself, should be
engaged in the work of sending the gospel to the
heathen. To his grateful surprise, each of the
others responded that the same idea had been
deeply impressed upon him. "Then let us rise
and to the work," was the spontaneous cry of
them all ; and pledging themselves to Christ and
to one another, from this day they went forward.
What they did will never be fully known until
seen in the light of the great day, but it is a
marked fact that on the 24th of September, 1831,
the synod of Pittsburg, to which they all belonged
at the time, organized the Western Foreign Mis-
sionary Society. At the meeting of the General
Assembly in 1838 that society was made the
Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, and now
that branch of the Presbyterian Church alone
-has 114. missionaries in the foreign field, with 33

THE UNITED STATES. 205

ordained native ministers and 59 licentiates, at
61 mission stations, with 4203 communicants in
native churches, 10,681 scholars in mission schools,
and during lapt year alone had $4o 1,334.84 put
into its foreign mission treasury.

Nor was this portion of the- Presbyterian
Church alone in this great service. In 1843 the
Associate Church, and in 1844 the Associate Re-
formed, entered upon the foreign work, and now
the United Presbyterian Church has its missions
in Syria, India, Egypt and China. Later still the
Reformed Presbyterian Church in its own inde-
pendent character followed ; and at this time
every branch of the Presbyterian family in these
United States is engaged directly or indirectly in
endeavoring to comply with the ascended Re-
deemer's last command, by bearing the word of
life throughout the world, and in doing its part in
helping to gather in God's elect from the four
winds of heaven.

Finally, this Church has ever been a Union
Church. While, true to their national instincts,
Presbyterians have, of all men, pre-eminently
thought and acted for themselves, nnd never more
so than in matters of faith, doctrine and worship,
yet the aim of the Presbyterian Church as a
whole in this country has ever been toward union.
In less than 20 years after McKemie landed on
this continent the scattered Presbyterians were

18

i^06 THE TERCENTENARY.

united in the first presbytery that was organized.
In less than 9 years from the time when, in
1741, the old synod of Philadelphia and New
York was so sadly and, as many felt it, bitterly
divided, movements were made by yearning
hearts for a reunion, and in 17 years, or in 1758,
that reunion was most happily consummated,
wdiich became the rich germ of the General
Assembly of 1789.

The Associate Reformed Church, which long
stood out before the world as a most useful branch
of the Presbyterian Church, was itself the fruit
of that union of Associate and Reformed Presby-
terians which was partially effected in 1782. The
United Presbyterian Church now lifts its banner
to the world and hastens to unfurl it over destitute
districts of our own and foreign lands, as the re-
sult of the union of the Associate and Associate
Reformed Churches in 1858. The Reunited
Presbyterian Church presents this day the beau-
tiful spectacle to God and the world of two bodies
that, amid all the threatening thick gloom of a
long dark night, parted from one another in 1838,
and then after long and anxious years had passed,
and as new light and a far better, brighter day
seemed to dawn, came together again most happily
in 1870, for glory, it is believed, to God in the
highest, and that under his hand and far more
widely than ever before there may be, through

THE UNITED STATES. 207

lier instrumentality, peace on earth and good-will
amons; men.

And now, on this auspicious day, who may not
hope for and anticipate still better unions in times
coming ? Only let there be increased confidence
among all the various parts of the Presbyterian
family in one another, a growing and more and
more generous and faithful regard for each other's
convictions, interests and work, and a more and
more widely manifested and thorough co-opera-
tion with one another in all benevolent and
Christian, and especially Presbyterian, movements
for good to men and for glory to God in all this
land and throughout the world, and then there
will a time draw on — and God grant it speedily
may ! — when in all the long lines of their different
national descents and ecclesiastical names, all
Presbyterians in these United States, of German
and French, Holland and Dutch, English and Pu-
ritan, Scotch and Scotch-Irish, — all, all, shall be
everywhere and in everything one, — one in name
and in fact, in spirit and in work, in devotion to
the truth and in zeal for the cause of the livins:
God, and stand together side by side, liand in
hand and heart with heart ; while under the rich
baptism of the Holy Ghost, in their strong love
for one another as brethren, and in their working
together for the maintenance and diffusion of the
common truth and for the salvation of the world,

208

THE TERCENTENARY.

the one name of the whole as a true and most
useful and glorious part of the city of our God
shall be everywhere and onward to the end, Je-
hovah Shammah — " The Lord is there^

All hail the blessed day ! The Lord hasten it
in his time.

The Waldenjian Symbol.

Presbyterianism in Foreign Lands,

BY THE

Rev. JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LL.D.

PRESIDENT OF THE COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY.

PRESBYTERIANISM IN FOREIGN LANDS.

i LL Americans are anxious to visit Europe at
^ least once in their lifetime. I 2:>ropose to
take those who are disposed to go with me to the
land of their " fathers' sepulchres." I undertake
to convey you across the ocean Avitliout any of the
usual inconveniences of a sea voyage. But on
reaching the other side I am not to guide you to
the scenes and objects visited by the vulgar crowd
of travelers who, I am sorry to say, do not raise
the American character in the estimation of tlie
Old World. As all travelers of taste rush to
Switzerland, I would conduct you thither; not
to visit those towering mountains which, as they
shine so purely white in the sunshine, are more
contiguous to the sky than the earth ; but to notice
the still grander objects presented in the charac-
ter and works of the Reformers of Religion in
the sixteenth century, who convey us still nearer
the heavens. I do not profess to be able to lead
you to Calvin's grave, for (so I believe) " no man
knoweth his sepulchre unto this day." We are
to contemplate not the dead hut the living man

211

212 THE TERCENTENARY.

who might say, si monumentum requiris circum"
spice. I am not to seek to whiten 'Uhe sepul-
chres of the fathers," but to call your attention
to their still living sj^irit walking abroad through
many lands.

It is the peculiarity and the excellence of the
Reformed Church that it took its doctrines, its
government and its discipline directly from the
fountain of the Word, and not from the streams
of tradition which have become polluted with
earthly ingredients in their course through time.
Calvin is acknowledged to be, par. excellence, the
exegete of the Pj-otestant Church, and his Com-
mentary ranks as high now as it did the day of
its publication. His Institutes, and the kindred
works of the age on theology, all profess to draw
their systems from the volume of inspiration.
Searching the Scriptures for the form of church
government they found that there was a sanction
given to councils guarding the truth and watch-
ing over the general interests of the house of God
(Acts XV.) ; that tne phrases bishop (Episcopos)
and elder were interchangeable (Acts xx. 28) ;
that there was a parity among ministers, and that
besides those who labored in word and doctrine,
there were others, not teaching but ruling elders
(1 Tim. V. 17), who had a place in the discharge
of the business of the church.

It is a circumstance worthy of being noted and

PRESBYTERIANISM IN FOREIGN LANDS. 213

remembered that a form of government virtually
Presbyterian was adopted by all the Eeformed
Churches, with the exception of the Church of
England and the Scandinavian churches, and
these adopted Episcopacy to keep up a connection
with the church from which they had separated.
From Geneva the Word sounded over many of
the Cantons of Switzerland, over the most intel-
ligent provinces of France, along the Ehine and
on to the Netherlands and Holland. The Re-
formed Churches have had a chequered history
in each of these countries. In France and the
Netherlands they were exposed to terrible perse-
cutions, which they endured in the spirit of the
martyrs of the early church. It is said that the
blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church,
and I am convinced that the blood of these men
lies as a seed in the soil and will yet spring forth
in a new life. The remembrance of the courage
and adherence to principle shown by them will
inspire others to follow their example. France,
which promised to stand so high among the na-
tions, has been characterized internally by insta-
bility, and has had to come through one convul-
sion after another ever since she expelled her best
citizens, the Huguenots, the salt of the land, from
her borders. I am convinced that she will not
reach rest, that she will be driven from a slavish
superstition to a scoffing skepticism, and from a

214 THE TERCENTENARY.

despairing infidelity back to an unsatisfying cre-
dulity, till such time as the great body of the
people have the Bible to instruct them, and a
Sabbath on which to read it.

Without seeking to disparage the character of
the great Continental Reformers we may discover
some defects in their views and conduct. I regret
that neither Luther nor Calvin uttered so certain
a sound as they should have done in regard to the
obligations of the Sabbath. Anxious that it
should be kept, they fell into the grievous mis-
take (so I regard it) of founding it not on the
granite rock of Sinai, but on a shifting expediency
which might be blown like the sand by the wind
of personal taste and convenience, or of popular
demand. When I travel on the continent of
Europe, and see so many of the people toiling at
all kinds of works on the Sunday forenoon, and
then dissipating in the beer and dancing gardens
on the afternoon and evening, I ask what time have
they for reading the Bible and for serious reflec
tion ; and I am told in reply that even the Prot-
estant people, having no Sabbath, do not read the
Scriptures so habitually as in this country, nor
incorporate its teachings with their opinions and
life.

Many in this country will be apt to detect a
further defect in the theoretical belief and prac-
tical accompaniments both of the German and

PRESBYTERIANISM IN FOREIGN LANDS. 215

Swiss Keformers. They will tell you that they
allowed too close a connection between the spirit-
ual and temporal kingdoms'; in other words, be-
tween the Church and State. No doubt it will be
said, on the other side, that as both of these are
under the one God, they may lawfully unite for
common ends. It will be urged further, that
when Protestants were few and scattered and poor,
in the midst of powerful and bitter Romish ad-
versaries, they needed the protection of kings and
queens, who were predicted as becoming nursing
fathers and nursing mothers of the Church. Isa.
xlix. 23. Without entering on this controversy
of ages, and without venturing to pronounce a
condemnation on the great men who labored to
bring the two powers into union, I feel myself
called on to deplore that the Church should ever
have consented to become subject to the State in
the s])iritual matters committed to it by Christ.
Statesmen, failing to distinguish, perhaps incapa-
ble of distinguishing, between truth and error,
countenanced error quite as readily as truth ; nay,
often, specially fostered error, especially in the
form of rationalism, as in no way likely to trouble
them with its zeal and its courage. The great
body of church members would never have con-
tributed of their substance to support the cold
Socinian ministers, who on account of their in-
difference were warmly cherished by })oliticians.

'216 THE TERCENTENARY,

From whatever cause, rationalism with its wither-
ing influence spread extensively for ages in the
Keformed Churches of Switzerland, Germany
and Holland ; and state support kept together men
who believed and men who did not believe in the
divinity of Christ, men who believed and men
who did not believe in the inspiration of Scripture.
But whatever maybe the difference of opinion as
to the wisdom of the Reformers, there will be
none in this assemblv as to what should now be the
action of the Continental Churches. In former
ages many were afraid that if the scattered
churches were severed from the State, they would
be crushed under the heel of civil or ecclesiastical
despotism. But there is no risk of this in our
day. Even Bismarck, great man though he be,
must be taught that he has no right to dictate to
the churches, Po]:)ish or Protestant, but must leave
them to their free action, claiming only to punish
those wdio disobey the civil law of the country,
whether they be lay or ecclesiastical.

Let the churches of France, Germany, Switzer-
land and Holland be made to feel that they are
to depend on the living members of the church,
and I venture to predict that in an age from this
date rationalism and infidelity will die out for
want of support in the professing Church of God.

For ages past the Protestant Church of France
had its fervor cooled and its energy crippled by

PRESBYTERIANISM IN FOREIGN LANDS. 217

the dreadful corpse of infidelity, to which it
has been tied. But thanks be to God, the liv-
ing Church has cast off the dead incubus and
is ready to go forth in newness of life on all
Christian enterprises. Lazarus has come fortli
from the grave, and what is now required is that
we loose him and set him free. The French
Evangelical Church, delivered from an unnatural
connection, will be brought into natural and hearty
communion with her sister evangelical churches
throughout the world. There must surely be
something of a like process to separate the living
from the dead in the churches of Germany and
Holland, so crippled by rationalism. For years
past there has been in Holland a devoted band
of men who have come out from the Established
Church with its rampant infidelity.*

The transition from Geneva to Scotland is an
easy one, and there we meet with John Knox,
worthy of being placed alongside of Luther and
Calvin — greater indeed than either in action :
the " reformer of a kingdom," as Milton called
him, one " who feared not the face of man." The
character of Knox, appreciated by the best (but not
by the worst) of Scotchmen, and thoroughly de-
fended by that most accurate of historians. Dr.
McCrie, has been misunderstood by others, espe-

* The Reformed Churches in Austria (espechilly in Hungary),
amounting in all to two thousand, are in a very interesting state.

19

218 THE TERCENTENARY.

cially Episcopalian- Englishmen, who have taught
us to look upon Knox as a vulgar bear, and I may
add, upon Oliver Cromwell as a hypocritical fox.
But a strong reactionary tide has set in of late
among literary men. It was set in motion by
Carlyle, who certainly has no sympathy with the
principles of Knox, but greatly admires his hero-
ism. The first Englishman who understood the
character of Knox was Mr. Froude, who has pro-
claimed him a man of tender feelings and a perfect
gentleman, and the most far-sighted statesman of
his age, who not only sustained the Church of
Scotland in its infancy, but by his firm policy
maintained Protestantism in England when it was
in imminent danger. Knox impressed his own
character upon the Scottish Church and through
it upon the Scottish character. Henceforth we
have a Church distinguished beyond any other for
its principle and for its fearlessness. It held, as all
the Churches of the Reformation did, that the
State should support the Church ; but it held as
resolutely that in spiritual matters the Church
should be independent, free to follow the Master's
will as revealed in the Word. The Covenanting
struggle, in which the ministers and the best of
the people combined to resist the attempt to im-
pose a lordly prelacy upon them, and had in con-
sequence to submit to twenty-eight years of per-
secution, was the most memorable occurrence in

PRESBYTERIAN ISM IN FOREIGN LANDS 211)

the history of the country (Sir Walter Seott never
understood this), and the main agent in giving a
character to the nation. English historians — siieJi
as Macaulay, who speaks lightly of the Puritans
as standing up for the rights of conscience — have
not yet come to see the importance of that Cove-
nanting contest. While the Puritans of England
contented themselves with passive resistance, the
Covenanters openly resisted the tyrannical meas-
ures of the house of Stuart, and held up the hlue
flag on their mountains till the English people
had to demand a Revolution.

In the following century two bands, the Seces-
sion (in 1733) and the Relief (in 1752), left the
Established Church, or rather were driven out of
it, because they would not submit to have the
nominees of Patrons thrust upon congregations
contrary to the will of the people. These two
bodies united in 1847, and now constitute the
United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which
has upward of six hundred congregations. In 1843,
between four hundred and five hundred of us, after
a ten years' contest for the spiritual independence
of the Church and the liberties of the j^eople, gave
up our livings and formed the Free Church of
Scotland, which has now nearly nine hundred
congregations, and by a scheme devised by Dr.
Chalmers, aims at securing in an unendowed
church what an endowed church provides, a

220 THE TERCENTENARY.

decent sustenance for an educated ministry in the
poorest districts of great cities and among the
scattered populations of the rural districts.

The Church of Scotland thus consists of
three considerably large bodies : the Established
Church, the United Presbyterian Church and the
Free Church, besides a devoted band of Cove-
nanters, who did not see their way to join the Es-
tablished Church at the Revolution Settlement.

The Established Church of Scotland was
greatly weakened by yielding to tlie encroach-
ments of the civil courts and by tlie disruption
that followed. But it still holds a considerable
portion of the population of Scotland — not one
half, but more than one third. It has within it
a body of able and accomj^lished ministers, and
some of its professors of theology are expounding
the old doctrines in a clear and faithful manner.
But the Church is in an ambiguous position, hold-
ing the State endowments with only a minority of
the people adhering to it. Since the disruption of
the Church of Scotland, and especially since the
Church of Ireland was disestablished, every one
sees that the davs of Established Churches in
Great Britain are numbered. To uphold them,
certain ministers of the Scottish Church have
been drawing toward and aping the character of
the Broad Church party in the Established Church
of England, and have been asking such men as

PRESBYTERIANISM IN FOREIGN LANDS. 221

Dean Stanley and Professor Jowett to preach in
their pulpits. When the party shall be fully de-
veloped, it will resemble, as much as a body in
the nineteenth century can resemble a body in
the eighteenth, the 3foderates who for two or three
ages so restrained the earnest piety of Scotland.
Meanwhile, it is 23leasant to reflect that the Church
retains its old standards, the Westminster confes-
sion and catechisms, and I believe that nearly all
the children of its members are instructed in the
Word of God and in the Shorter Catechism.

The United Presbyterian Church is an ac-
tive and energetic body, having influential con-
gregations in some of the great cities (such as
Glagsow) and villages. Though as a Church it
has not adopted Voluntaryism, yet the great body
of its ministers and members are opposed to the
union of Church and State in any circumstances.
It is heartily in favor of an organic union with the
Free Church, and longs for fellow^ship with all
evangelical communions.

The Free Church of Scotland. — I confess
that I cannot speak of this Church coolly. I still
regard it as in a sense the Church to which I
belong, albeit that I am now an office-bearer in
the Presbyterian Church of America. It was
my privilege when a very young man to take
part in the struggle, first when a student defend-
ing the cause in the Theological Societies of Edin-

19*

222 THE TERCENTENARY.

burgh University ; and then as a minister, seek-
ing in concert with the Rev. Dr. Guthrie and a
few young men to excite an interest in the cause
in an important district in the east coast of Scot-
land. When the crisis came, I gave up my living,
one of the most enviable in the Church of Scot-
land, and labored to plant churches in the sur-
rounding country. That Church has been holding
on its course resolutely and consistently for nearly
thirty years. It is said, by those who know it
best, to need a special outpouring of the Spirit,
to rouse it from formality and keep it from trust-
ing in the sacrifices it has made.

You Americans wonder that the various
branches of the Scottish Church do not unite.
Let us look at the difficulties, real or supposed, in
the way. The Church of Scotland has always
regarded it as one of its highest offices to hold
and defend the truth, which is one and the
same in all ages, and it insists that the truth should
be maintained all the more resolutely in times
of prevailing defection. It cannot be doubted
that it has done a mighty work by its firmness in
this respect. Those who sacrifice truth for the
sake of union will find that the union is not a
lasting one, or a profitable one while it lasts.
The office-bearers of the Free Church, when in
the Established Church, held by tlie doctrine of
a State Church, and some of them feel it to be

PRESBYTERIANISM IN FOREIGN LANDS. 223

inconsistent to join a cliurcli the great body of
the members of which have abandoned this prin-
ciple. The answer is, I believe, complete. First,
they are not required, in joining the Union, to
abandon their principle. Secondly, those whom
they join hold as resolutely as they do — and I
may add that the American churches do the
same — that every government should honor Christ
and his laws. All acknowledge that every ex-
isting Established Church is Erastian and cor-
rupt, and the controversy turns on the theoretical
point whether the principle of State Endowment
is so important that those who hold it may not
lawfully enter into a union in which they are
allowed to hold the principle, but in which are
some who do not hold it. In spite of the diffi-
culties which have arisen, I am convinced that
the Union will at no distant date be accomplished.
The United Presbyterian Church and the Cove-
nanting Church, and the great majority of the
ministers, elders and members of the Free
Church, are in its favor.

Presbyterianism: in England had considera-
ble power in the seventeenth century. A large
body of the Puritans were attached to it. But
they were hindered from meeting as Presbyteries,
and the ministers satisfied themselves with the
liberty allowed them to i^reach the gospel ; and the
religious life took the Independent form of gov-

224 THE TERCENTENARY.

ernment. During the whole of the last century
and the first half of this, Presby terianism had to
struggle in England against very adverse circum-
stances. But it has all along had a place, and it has
now a firmer hold than ever, having more than
doubled its numbers during the last few years.
The Presbyterian Church of England is a self-
governed body, but is in close fellowship with the
Free Church of Scotland. The United Presby-
terian Church in England is still a part of the
United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The
two bodies in England are on the very best terms.
They have not united simply because they have
been waiting for the union of the parent churches
in Scotland. But as the mother churches have been
slow in their movements, there is a prospect of
the daughters taking the matter into their own
hands, and uniting at once. If they do so, the
act will, I believe, have a powerful reflex influ-
ence on the people of Scotland.

The Welsh Calvinistic Chuech has had a
history full of stirring incidents, of labors and
trials, of difiiculties and success. It has now a
thousand churches. It sprang up in a country in
which the Church of England exhibited its worst
corruptions. Bishops and clergymen who would
not have been tolerated in England were sent in
the last century to Wales, where they were not so
fully under the inspection of public opinion. The

PRESBYTERIANISM IN FOREIGN LANDS. 22&

praying jDeasantry felt that they must do some-
thing to strengthen what was ready to die, and God
raised up such heroic men as Howell Harris, Daniel
Rowlands and Howell Davies, who preached and
prayed and sufiered obloquy in the spirit of
Whitfield, who visited and encouraged them.
Taking their views directly from the Bible, they
became Calvinistic in doctrine and Presbyterian
in government. In Wales preaching exercises a
greater influence than in any country with which
I am acquainted, reminding us of the effects pro-
duced by eloquence in ancient times and in the
early Church. Fifteen or twenty thousand may
gather at their Quarterly Meeting; and when
John Elias used to preach, the mighty mass was
moved and bowed down as the trees of the forest
are by the tempest. The Church has not been
able to secure everywhere an educated ministry,
but they are busily employed in setting up Theo-
logical Seminaries and Colleges in Wales; and
they are longing, as 1 can testify, for a closer con-
nection with their sister churches throughout the
world.

The IiiisH Presbyterian Church is the
oldest and one of the fairest of the daughters of
the Church of Scotland. The American Presby-
terian Church will not forget that it is through
the Irish Church she claims descent from that
Church, which is the mother of us all. Having

226 THE TERCENTENARY.

been connected with that Church for sixteen
years, I can speak with a full knowledge of its
workings, and I am able to testify in the strongest
manner of the spirit by which it is actuated and
the zeal which it manifests. Many of its younger
ministers were my pupils. I watch their career
with deep interest, and am delighted to observe
some of them occupying the very highest posi-
tions in the Church. It long clung to the Royal
Bounty bestowed by the Crown, but three years
ago it was deprived of this, and has not felt the
loss. It has organized a General Sustentation
Fund, out of which the ministers receive more
than they did from the Government. That
Church has a great work to do in Ireland, and
I believe it will do it. You will meet nowhere
with a more devoted ministry. They do their
work with all the life of the Irish character.

The Colonial Churches of Scotland and
Ireland. These are to be found chiefly in Canada
and Australia. Set up by the individual churches
at home, they were at first inclined to perpetuate
in the Colonies the divisions of the old country.
But they have been gradually driven from this
by conviction and the force of circumstances, and
in each of the colonies in British America, in
Australia and in New Zealand, the churches are
organized into one. Having shown an enlarged
and truly liberal spirit in joining with one another,

PBESBYTEBIANISM IN FOREIGN LANDS. 227

they are prepared, I believe longing, to be delivered
from a state of isolation in their remote spheres
of action, and to unite with the other Presbyterian
churches. The Presbyterian Church of Canada
is the largest in the colony next to the Romanist ;
and I have long thought that much good might
arise from a closer association in fellowship and in
work between it and the Presbyterian churches
in the United States. The ministers in these
British Colonies have, in many places, a rough
and self-sacrificing work to perform, but they are
doing it in the same manner and spirit as your
ministers in the Far West. To make their churches
permanent, and to give them more of a native
and less of an imported character, they are estab-
lishing Colleges and Theological Seminaries, and
are everywhere promoting education after the ex-
ample of the mother church. You will remem-
ber that this country was once a colony of Great
Britain, and I cherish the idea that the Presby-
terian Church of Australia may, at the antipodes,
do a work similar to that which has been done by
the Presbyterian Church in this country.

In this extensive journey we have been obliged
to travel — as most Americans do — very rapidly.
It is reckoned that if you sum up these churches
and then add to them those of America, they
amount to twenty thousand congregations, and a
po23ulation of thirty-four millions. If you add

228 THE TERCENTENARY.

the Lutherans who, in many j)arts of Germany,
are one with the Reformed, and who are nearer to
Presbyterianism than they are either to Episco-
pacy or Independency, we have a population of
fifty-five out of one hundred and seven millions
of Protestants, or an actual majority of the Prot-
estants of the world. I insert a valuable statisti-
cal table taken from "The Government of the
Kingdom of Christ, an Inquiry as to the Scrip-
tural, Invincible and Historical Position of
Presbytery, a Prize Essay by Pev. James Moir
Porteous."* This is a very valuable work con-
taining a defence of the Presbyterian form of
government, and full information as to the
state of the Presbyterian churches all over the
world.

What a power for good, every one will say, if
only these churches can be made to combine in
their action. In inquiring what we should do as
we look to this immense community, I think we
should have three grand aims before us. The
first is_to_separate the Evangelical Churches from^
that Pationalism which is so marring the useful-
ness1)f Protestantism all over the Continent of^
Europe. The second is to deliver them, if not
from State connection, aj least from State control,
which has ever been protecting Pationalism with
its coTdness and its deadening influence. A third

^ Edin. : Jolinstone & Hunter ; London : James Nisbet & Co.

PRESBYTERIANISM IN FOREIGN LANDS. 229

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230 THE TERCENTENARY.

and a grand effort must be made. We must com-
bine the scattered energies of theseTEiTrty-four
millions for the overthrow of the powers of dark-
ness and the spread of the Gospel throughout the
world. Let us pray for this end, and at the same
time labor for it.

It has long been a favorite idea of mine that
all the Presbyterian churches might be brought
together at a Pan-Presbyterian Council, at which
each of them"might be represented. Let it be
understood that I do not propose breaking
up the separate churches of British and Con-
tinental Europe, or of this country. I would
no more think of this, than I would of sepa-
ratino; the States of our Union. In our Gen-
eral Government and in our State Governments,
we have a model to which we might look, in settling
the relation which the several churches might
bear to the central church organization. Some
grand principles might be agreed to ; let them be
few and simple. Of course there must be a doc-
trinal basis. But this should not consist in a
new creed or confession. Let each church retain
its own standards, and be admitted into the Union
only "^n condition that these einbrace the cardinal
trutlis_of_ salvation. There must also be certain
princij)les of church order pre-supposed : such as
the parity of ministers, and government by repre-
sentative councils, in which ministers and elders

PRESBYTEBIANISM IN FOREIGN LANDS. 231

have a joint place. But the mode of carrying
out these principles must be left to each organiza-
tion— in this way securing that we have in the
church, as in all the works of God, unity with
variety. The Grand Council should have au-
thority to see that their fundamental j)i*inciples
of doctrine and of government are carried out in
eacTi of the churches, and might cut off those that
deliherately departed from them in act or in pro-
fession. But beyond this it need have no other
disciplinary power. Without interfering at all
with the free action of the churches, it might
distribute judiciously the evangelistic work in
the great field, which is the world : allocating a
sphere to each, discouraging the plantation oT"
two churches where one might serve, and the es-
tablisliment of two missions at one place, while
hundreds of other places have none. In this
way the resources of the church would be kept
from being wasted, while her energies would be
concentrated on great enterprises. When cir-
cumstances require it, the whole strength of the
church might be directed to the establishment of
truth and the suppression of error and prevalent
forms of vice. More important than all, from
this heart of the church might proceed an im-
pulse reaching to the utmost extremities, and
carrying life to every member.

I believe that the idea of such a union has oc-

^32 THE TERCENTENARY.

curred to many within the last few years. I do
not claim to myself any superiority of wisdom ;
but for the last ten years I have been speaking
and writing on this subject in a variety of
quarters. I was met with a rightTrish cheer
wHen r proclaimed it in the General Assembly
of the Irish Presbyterians. I unfolded my views
more lully in an article in the Weekly Review, an
able organ of the Presbyterian Church published
in London. I believe I spoke of it at the meet-
ings of both General Assemblies at St. Louis in
1866. I scarcely expect to live so long as to see
it accomplished ; but there are some here, I verily
believe, who will see it with their eyes.

My Scottish partialities would lead me to think
that Edinburgh, the city of Knox and of Chal-
mers, might be the most appropriate place for the
first meeting of the Presbyterian General Assem-
bly. But if our common mother there say that
her children are not yet prepared to meet to-
gether, then let one of her daughters open her
house for the reception of the family. Let the
largest Presbyterian church in the world issue
the invitation, and let the meeting-place be the
City of BrotherJ|,juLave.

''I'ml^uS n!'Tl'^'"' S^'"'"a'7-Speer Library

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