A History of American Christianity

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The protest of the church was of no avail to defeat the machination of
demagogues. The iniquitous measure was carried through. But this was not
the end; it was only the beginning of the end. Yet ten years, and
American slavery, through the mad folly of its advocates and the
steadfast fidelity of the great body of the earnestly religious people
of the land, was swept away by the tide of war.

* * * * *

The long struggle of the American church against drunkenness as a social
and public evil begins at an early date. One of the thirteen colonies,
Georgia, had the prohibition of slavery and of the importation of
spirituous liquors incorporated by Oglethorpe in its early and
short-lived constitution. It would be interesting to discover, if we
could, to what extent the rigor of John Wesley's discipline against both
these mischiefs was due to his association with Oglethorpe in the
founding of that latest of the colonies. Both the imperious nature of
Wesley and the peculiar character of his fraternity as being originally
not a church, but a voluntary society within the church, predisposed to
a policy of arbitrary exclusiveness by hard and fast lines drawn
according to formula, which might not have been ventured on by one who
was consciously drawing up the conditions of communion in the church. In
the Puritan colonies the public morals in respect to temperance were
from the beginning guarded by salutary license laws devised to suppress
all dram-shops and tippling-houses, and to prevent, as far as law could
wisely undertake to prevent, all abusive and mischievous sales of
liquor. But these indications of a sound public sentiment did not
prevent the dismal fact of a wide prevalence of drunkenness as one of
the distinguishing characteristics of American society at the opening of
the nineteenth century. Two circumstances had combined to aggravate the
national vice. Seven years of army life, with its exhaustion and
exposure and military social usage, had initiated into dangerous
drinking habits many of the most justly influential leaders of society,
and the example of these had set the tone for all ranks. Besides this,
the increased importation and manufacture of distilled spirits had made
it easy and common to substitute these for the mild fermented liquors
which had been the ordinary drink of the people. Gradually and
unobserved the nation had settled down into a slough of drunkenness of
which it is difficult for us at this date to form a clear conception.
The words of Isaiah concerning the drunkards of Ephraim seem not too
strong to apply to the condition of American society, that "all tables
were full of vomit and filthiness." In the prevalence of intemperate
drinking habits the clergy had not escaped the general infection. "The
priest and the prophet had gone astray through strong drink." Individual
words of warning, among the earliest of which was the classical essay of
Dr. Benjamin Rush (1785), failed to arouse general attention. The new
century was well advanced before the stirring appeals of Ebenezer
Porter, Lyman Beecher, Heman Humphrey, and Jeremiah Evarts had awakened
in the church any effectual conviction of sin in the matter. The
appointment of a strong committee, in 1811, by the Presbyterian General
Assembly was promptly followed by like action by the clergy of
Massachusetts and Connecticut, leading to the formation of State
societies. But general concerted measures on a scale commensurate with
the evil to be overcome must be dated from the organization of the
"American Society for the Promotion of Temperance," in 1826. The first
aim of the reformers of that day was to break down those domineering
social usages which almost enforced the habit of drinking in ordinary
social intercourse. The achievement of this object was wonderfully swift
and complete. A young minister whose pastorate had begun at about the
same time with the organizing of the national temperance society was
able at the end of five years to bear this testimony in the presence of
those who were in a position to recognize any misstatement or
exaggeration:

"The wonderful change which the past five years have witnessed
in the manners and habits of this people in regard to the use
of ardent spirits--the new phenomenon of an intelligent people
rising up, as it were, with one consent, without law, without
any attempt at legislation, to put down by the mere force of
public opinion, expressing itself in voluntary associations, a
great social evil which no despot on earth could have put down
among his subjects by any system of efforts--has excited
admiration and roused to imitation not only in our sister
country of Great Britain, but in the heart of continental
Europe."[287:1]

It is worthy of remark, for any possible instruction there may be in it,
that the first, greatest, and most permanent of the victories of the
temperance reformation, the breaking down of almost universal social
drinking usages, was accomplished while yet the work was a distinctively
religious one, "without law or attempt at legislation," and while the
efforts at suppression were directed at the use of ardent spirits. The
attempt to combine the friends of temperance on a basis of "teetotal"
abstinence, putting fermented as well as distilled liquors under the
ban, dates from as late as 1836.

But it soon appeared that the immense gain of banishing ardent spirits
from the family table and sideboard, the social entertainment, the
haying field, and the factory had not been attained without some
corresponding loss. Close upon the heels of the reform in the domestic
and social habits of the people there was spawned a monstrous brood of
obscure tippling-shops--a nuisance, at least in New England, till then
unknown. From the beginning wise and effective license laws had
interdicted all dram-shops; even the taverner might sell spirits only to
his transient guests, not to the people of the town. With the
suppression of social drinking there was effected, in spite of salutary
law to the contrary, a woeful change. The American "saloon" was, in an
important sense, the offspring of the American temperance reformation.
The fact justified the reformer in turning his attention to the law.
From that time onward the history of the temperance reformation has
included the history of multitudinous experiments in legislation, none
of which has been so conclusive as to satisfy all students of the
subject that any later law is, on the whole, more usefully effective
than the original statutes of the Puritan colonies.[288:1]

In 1840 the temperance reformation received a sudden forward impulse
from an unexpected source. One evening a group of six notoriously hard
drinkers, coming together greatly impressed from a sermon of that noted
evangelist, Elder Jacob Knapp, pledged themselves by mutual vows to
total abstinence; and from this beginning went forward that
extraordinary agitation known as "the Washingtonian movement." Up to
this time the aim of the reformers had been mainly directed to the
prevention of drunkenness by a change in social customs and personal
habits. Now there was suddenly opened a door of hope to the almost
despair of the drunkard himself. The lately reformed drunkards of
Baltimore set themselves to the reforming of other drunkards, and these
took up the work in their turn, and reformation was extended in a
geometrical progression till it covered the country. Everywhere meetings
were held, to be addressed by reformed drunkards, and new recruits from
the gutter were pushed forward to tell their experience to the admiring
public, and sent out on speaking tours. The people were stirred up as
never before on the subject of temperance. There was something very
Christian-like in the method of this propagation, and hopeful souls
looked forward to a temperance millennium as at hand. But fatal faults
in the work soon discovered themselves. Among the new evangelists were
not a few men of true penitence and humility, like John Hawkins, and one
man at least of incomparable eloquence as well as Christian earnestness,
John B. Gough. But the public were not long in finding that merely to
have wallowed in vice and to be able to tell ludicrous or pathetic
stories from one's experience was not of itself sufficient qualification
for the work of a public instructor in morals. The temperance platform
became infested with swaggering autobiographers, whose glory was in
their shame, and whose general influence was distinctly demoralizing.
The sudden influx of the tide of enthusiasm was followed by a disastrous
ebb. It was the estimate of Mr. Gough that out of six hundred thousand
reformed drunkards not less than four hundred and fifty thousand had
relapsed into vice. The same observer, the splendor of whose eloquence
was well mated with an unusual sobriety of judgment, is credited with
the statement that he knew of no case of stable reformation from
drunkenness that was not connected with a thorough spiritual renovation
and conversion.

Certainly good was accomplished by the transient whirlwind of the
"Washingtonian" excitement. But the evil that it did lived after it.
Already at the time of its breaking forth the temperance reformation had
entered upon that period of decadence in which its main interest was to
be concentrated upon law and politics. And here the vicious ethics of
the reformed-drunkard school became manifest. The drunkard, according to
his own account of himself (unless he was not only reformed, but
repentant), had been a victim of circumstances. Drunkenness, instead of
a base and beastly sin, was an infirmity incident to a high-strung and
generous temperament. The blame of it was to be laid, not upon the
drunkard, whose exquisitely susceptible organization was quite unable to
resist temptation coming in his way, but on those who put intoxicating
liquor where he could get at it, or on the State, whose duty it was to
put the article out of the reach of its citizens. The guilt of
drunkenness must rest, not on the unfortunate drunkard who happened to
be attacked by that disease, but on the sober and well-behaving citizen,
and especially the Christian citizen, who did not vote the correct
ticket.

What may be called the Prohibition period of the temperance reformation
begins about 1850 and still continues. It is characterized by the
pursuit of a type of legislation of variable efficacy or inefficacy, the
essence of which is that the sale of intoxicating liquors shall be a
monopoly of the government.[290:1] Indications begin to appear that the
disproportionate devotion to measures of legislation and politics is
abating. Some of the most effective recent labor for the promotion of
temperance has been wrought independently of such resort. If the cycle
shall be completed, and the church come back to the methods by which its
first triumphs in this field were won, it will come back the wiser and
the stronger for its vicissitudes of experience through these threescore
years and ten.

FOOTNOTES:

[264:1] "An impression was made that never ceased. It started a series
of efforts that have affected the whole northern mind at least; and in
Jackson's time the matter came up in Congress, and a law was passed
disfranchising a duelist. And that was not the last of it; for when
Henry Clay was up for the Presidency the Democrats printed an edition of
forty thousand of that sermon and scattered them all over the North"
("Autobiography of Lyman Beecher," vol. i., pp. 153, 154; with foot-note
from Dr. L. Bacon: "That sermon has never ceased to be a power in the
politics of this country. More than anything else, it made the name of
brave old Andrew Jackson distasteful to the moral and religious feeling
of the people. It hung like a millstone on the neck of Henry Clay").

[265:1] "A Century of Dishonor," pp. 270, 271.

[266:1] "A Century of Dishonor," pp. 275, 276.

[268:1] See above, pp. 203-205, 222.

[270:1] Deliverance of General Assembly, 1818.

[271:1] The persistent attempt to represent this period as one of
prevailing apathy and inertia on the subject of slavery is a very
flagrant falsification of history. And yet by dint of sturdy reiteration
it has been forced into such currency as to impose itself even on so
careful a writer as Mr. Schouler, in his "History of the United States."
It is impossible to read this part of American church history
intelligently, unless the mind is disabused of this misrepresentation.

[271:2] "Christian Spectator" (monthly), New Haven, 1828, p. 4.

[272:1] "Christian Spectator," 1823, pp. 493, 494, 341; "The Earlier
Antislavery Days," by L. Bacon, in the "Christian Union," December 9 and
16, 1874, January 6 and 13, 1875. It is one of the "Curiosities of
Literature," though hardly one of its "Amenities," that certain phrases
carefully dissected from this paper (which was written by Mr. Bacon at
the age of twenty-one) should be pertinaciously used, in the face of
repeated exposures, to prove the author of it to be an apologist for
slavery!

[273:1] "Christian Spectator," 1825-1828.

[273:2] Wilson, "Slave Power in America," vol. i., p. 164; "James G.
Birney and his Times," pp. 64, 65. This last-named book is an
interesting and valuable contribution of materials for history,
especially by its refutation of certain industriously propagated
misrepresentations.

[274:1] "Birney and his Times," chap. xii., on "Abolition in the South
before 1828." Much is to be learned on this neglected topic in American
history from the reports of the National Convention for the Abolition of
Slavery, meeting biennially, with some intermissions, at Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and Washington down to 1829. An incomplete file of these
reports is at the library of Brown University.

[274:2] Wilson, "The Slave Power," vol. i., chap. xiv.

[275:1] See above, pp. 204, 205.

[275:2] Newman, "The Baptists," pp. 288, 305. Let me make general
reference to the volumes of the American Church History Series by their
several indexes, s. v. Slavery.

[275:3] One instance for illustration is as good as ten thousand. It is
from the "Life of James G. Birney," a man of the highest integrity of
conscience: "Michael, the husband and father of the family legally owned
by Mr. Birney, and who had been brought up with him from boyhood, had
been unable to conquer his appetite for strong liquors, and needed the
constant watchful care of his master and friend. For some years the
probability was that if free he would become a confirmed drunkard and
beggar his family. The children were nearly grown, but had little mental
capacity. For years Michael had understood that his freedom would be
restored to him as soon as he could control his love of ardent spirits"
(pp. 108, 109).

[277:1] "If human beings could be justly held in bondage for one hour,
they could be for days and weeks and years, and so on indefinitely from
generation to generation" ("Life of W. L. Garrison," vol. i., p. 140).

[278:1] "New Englander," vol. xii., 1854, p. 639, article on "The
Southern Apostasy."

[278:2] _Ibid._, pp. 642-644.

[281:1] "New Englander," vol. xii., 1854, pp. 660, 661.

[281:2] Wilson, "The Slave Power," vol. i., pp. 190-207.

[282:1] "Biblical Repertory," Princeton, July, 1833, pp. 294, 295, 303.

[282:2] The true story of Mr. William Lloyd Garrison and his little
party has yet to be written faithfully and fully. As told by his family
and friends and by himself, it is a monstrous falsification of history.
One of the best sources of authentic material for this chapter of
history is "James G. Birney and his Times," by General William Birney,
pp. 269-331. I may also refer to my volume, "Irenics and Polemics" (New
York, the Christian Literature Co.), pp. 145-202. The sum of the story
is given thus, in the words of Charles Sumner: "An omnibus-load of
Boston abolitionists has done more harm to the antislavery cause than
all its enemies" ("Birney," p. 331).

[285:1] Birney, p. 321.

[287:1] Sermon of L. Bacon (MS.), New Haven, July 4, 1830.

[288:1] "Eastern and Western States of America," by J. S. Buckingham, M.
P., vol. i., pp. 408-413.

[290:1] By a curious anomaly in church polity, adhesion to this
particular device of legislation is made constitutionally a part of the
discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In most other communions
liberty of judgment is permitted as to the form of legislation best
fitted to the end sought.

CHAPTER XVII.

A DECADE OF CONTROVERSIES AND SCHISMS.

During the period from 1835 to 1845 the spirit of schism seemed to be in
the air. In this period no one of the larger organizations of churches
was free from agitating controversies, and some of the most important of
them were rent asunder by explosion.

At the time when the Presbyterian Church suffered its great schism, in
1837, it was the most influential religious body in the United States.
In 120 years its solitary presbytery had grown to 135 presbyteries,
including 2140 ministers serving 2865 churches and 220,557 communicants.
But these large figures are an inadequate measure of its influence. It
represented in its ministry and membership the two most masterful races
on the continent, the New England colonists and the Scotch-Irish
immigrants; and the tenacity with which it had adhered to the tradition
derived through both these lines, of admitting none but liberally
educated men to its ministry, had given it exceptional social standing
and control over men of intellectual strength and leadership. In the
four years beginning with 1831 the additions to its roll of communicants
"on examination" had numbered nearly one hundred thousand. But this
spiritual growth was chilled and stunted by the dissensions that arose.
The revivals ceased and the membership actually dwindled.

The contention had grown (a fact not without parallel in church
history) out of measures devised in the interest of cooeperation and
union. In 1801, in the days of its comparative feebleness, the General
Assembly had proposed to the General Association of Connecticut a "Plan
of Union" according to which the communities of New England Christians
then beginning to move westward between the parallels that bound "the
New England zone," and bringing with them their accustomed
Congregational polity, might cooeperate on terms of mutual concession
with Presbyterian churches in their neighborhood. The proposals had been
fraternally received and accepted, and under the terms of this compact
great accessions had been made to the strength of the Presbyterian
Church, of pastors and congregations marked with the intellectual
activity and religious enterprise of the New England churches, who,
while cordially conforming to the new methods of organization and
discipline, were not in the least penetrated with the traditionary
Scotch veneration for the Westminster standards. For nearly thirty years
the great reinforcements from New England and from men of the New
England way of thinking had been ungrudgingly bestowed and heartily
welcomed. But the great accessions which in the first four years of the
fourth decade of this century had increased the roll of the communicants
of the Presbyterian Church by more than fifty per cent. had come in
undue proportion from the New Englandized regions of western New York
and Ohio. It was inevitable that the jealousy of hereditary
Presbyterians, "whose were the fathers," should be aroused by the
perfectly reasonable fear lest the traditional ways of the church which
they felt to be in a peculiar sense _their_ church might be affected by
so large an element from without.

The grounds of explicit complaint against the party called "New School"
were principally twofold--doctrine and organization.

In the Presbyterian Church at this time were three pretty distinct types
of theological thought. First, there was the unmitigated Scotch
Calvinism; secondly, there was the modification of this system, which
became naturalized in the church after the Great Awakening, when
Jonathan Dickinson and Jonathan Edwards, from neighbor towns in
Massachusetts, came to be looked upon as the great Presbyterian
theologians; thirdly, there was the "consistent Calvinism," that had
been still further evolved by the patient labor of students in direct
succession from Edwards, and that was known under the name of
"Hopkinsianism." Just now the latest and not the least eminent in this
school, Dr. Nathaniel W. Taylor, of New Haven, was enunciating to large
and enthusiastic classes in Yale Divinity School new definitions and
forms of statement giving rise to much earnest debate. The alarm of
those to whom the very phrase "improvement in theology" was an
abomination expressed itself in futile indictments for heresy brought
against some of the most eminently godly and useful ministers in all the
church. Lyman Beecher, of Lane Seminary, Edward Beecher, J. M.
Sturtevant, and William Kirby, of Illinois College, and George Duffield,
of the presbytery of Carlisle, Pa., were annoyed by impeachments for
heresy, which all failed before reaching the court of last resort. But
repeated and persistent prosecutions of Albert Barnes, of Philadelphia,
were destined to more conspicuous failure, by reason of their coming up
year after year before the General Assembly, and also by reason of the
position of the accused as pastor of the mother church of the
denomination, the First Church of Philadelphia, which was the customary
meeting-place of the Assembly; withal by reason of the character of the
accused, the honor and love in which he was held for his faithful and
useful work as pastor, his world-wide fame as a devoted and believing
student of the Scriptures, and the Christlike gentleness and meekness
with which he endured the harassing of church trials continuing through
a period of seven years, and compelling him, under an irregular and
illegal sentence of the synod, to sit silent in his church for the space
of a year, as one suspended from the ministry.

The earliest leaders in national organization for the propagation of
Christianity at home and abroad were the Congregationalists of New
England and men like-minded with them. But the societies thus originated
were organized on broad and catholic principles, and invited the
cooeperation of all Christians. They naturally became the organs of much
of the active beneficence of Presbyterian congregations, and the
Presbyterian clergy and laity were largely represented in the direction
of them. They were recognized and commended by the representative bodies
of the Presbyterian Church. As a point of high-church theory it was held
by the rigidly Presbyterian party that the work of the gospel in all its
departments and in all lands is the proper function of "the church as
such"--meaning practically that each sect ought to have its separate
propaganda. There was logical strength in this position as reached from
their premisses, and there were arguments of practical convenience to be
urged in favor of it. But the demand to sunder at once the bonds of
fellowship which united Christians of different names in the beneficent
work of the great national societies was not acceptable even to the
whole of the Old-School party. To the New Englanders it was intolerable.

There were other and less important grounds of difference that were
discussed between the parties. And in the background, behind them all,
was the slavery question. It seems to have been willingly _kept_ in the
background by the leaders of debate on both sides; but it was there. The
New-School synods and presbyteries of the North were firm in their
adherence to the antislavery principles of the church. On the other
hand, the Old-School party relied, in the _coup d'eglise_ that was in
preparation, on the support of "an almost solid South."[296:1]

It was an unpardonable offense of the New-School party that it had grown
to such formidable strength, intellectually, spiritually, and
numerically. The probability that the church might, with the continued
growth and influence of this party, become Americanized and so lose the
purity of its thoroughgoing Scotch traditions was very real, and to some
minds very dreadful. To these the very ark of God seemed in danger.
Arraignments for heresy in presbytery and synod resulted in failure; and
when these and other cases involving questions of orthodoxy or of the
policy of the church were brought into the supreme judicature of the
church, the solemn but unmistakable fact disclosed itself that even the
General Assembly could not be relied on for the support of measures
introduced by the Old-School leaders. In fact, every Assembly from 1831
to 1836, with a single exception, had shown a clear New-School majority.
The foundations were destroyed, and what should the righteous do?

History was about to repeat itself with unwonted preciseness of detail.
On the gathering of the Assembly of 1837 a careful count of noses
revealed what had been known only once before in seven years, and what
might never be again--a clear Old-School majority in the house. To the
pious mind the neglecting of such an opportunity would have been to
tempt Providence. Without notice, without complaint or charges or
specifications, without opportunity of defense, 4 synods, including 533
churches and more than 100,000 communicants, were excommunicated by a
majority vote. The victory of pure doctrine and strict church order,
though perhaps not exactly glorious, was triumphant and irreversible.
There was no more danger to the church from a possible New-School
majority.

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