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Williams, first colored member of the Ohio Legislature, and late Judge Advocate of the Grand Army of the Republic of Ohio, etc. In two volumes. Vol. I, 1819 to 1880. 481 pp. 4to. THE NEW ENGLANDER. No. CLXXIV. MAY, 1883. ARTICLE I-THREE ERAS OF RELIGIOUS LIFE IN AMERICA. IT sometimes happens that familiar facts get a meaning according as they are grouped in the historic perspective. A new grouping may give a new meaning. It is proposed in this Article to take a glance at our American religious life in the light of a few of its great leading facts, classified (if it may be done), so as better to reveal the mind of God. May there not be found a systematic theology in the facts of history as in the facts of revelation? Though seemingly fortuitous and confused the rush of events may be, without expression and without promise, may we not derive a true moral significance by noticing how the epochs stand related to each other as they are strung out on the grand connecting purpose of God? Let us at once venture the statement that our American religious life thus far divides itself into three distinctive eras, each broadly marked with its characteristic differences, and, to be more particular still, that each of these eras, thus far, has been about a hundred years in duration, the third or last, though incomplete, promising, according to the analogy of history to be as prominent a land-mark in the world's progress as either of the others, and to have as important a mission. I. The first cycle of a hundred years is the period devoted especially to the work of elaborating a church polity. We have been interested in noticing how strikingly this is true. A few remarks will be sufficient to outline this mission of the first New England century. The separation from the mother church was not on doctrinal grounds, but chiefly on grounds of polity. The vestment controversy seems to have brought the discontent to a head, and precipitated the long-threatened outbreak. The Puritans thought it was not scriptural to worship according to the methods of the Church of England. The vast and complicated machinery, the "titles and officials belonging to cathedrals," the wearing "gear" of popery, the ranks and dignitaries in church administration, were a departure from the simplicity of Christ, corruptions to be removed. The great thought of the Puritan was the application of Scripture, especially to the matter of church polity. The Providential call of that age was a call to a thorough reinvestigation and reconstruction of church order and discipline. Hence, the religious literature of the century had this for its never failing subject. And the great lights of the age were writers on church polity; diligent seekers for the original principles of church order and government, such as John Robinson, John Cotton, the Mathers, John Wise, and many others. The Synods of that age were largely engaged on the same thing, e. g., the Synod of 1648 resulting in the Cambridge Platform, and the Synod of 1662 resulting in a great many things not quite so good as that. Besides their own convictions, which held the Fathers so steadily to this department of religious thought, the persistent attempts of other polities, provoked them to a sharper jealousy for their own beloved "way." The Episcopal order followed close upon them, when they came here, and claimed its own divine right. A brisk correspondence was kept up with the old country by Episcopal emissaries in this, and all the influences of Church and State at home were invoked against the Congregational way. The Presbyterians were equally persistent, especially in Newbury, under the lead of Noyes and Parker, and in Hartford, under the lead of Samuel Stone. These variant polities, so busy all around, held the Congregationalist, with all the more activity and vigilance, to his own firm predilections, and spurred him to an intenser study of his own principles. There were other antagonizing influences that gave the Congregationalist still more to do for self-vindication and defense. Troops of fanatics came in and threatened to overrun the liberties of the churches with an unbridled license. As "liberty" was the watchword of the first immigrants, multitudes of discontented and misguided spirits looked to the western wilderness as the very Eldorado of levelism. They seemed to think that the work of simplifying the order of worship should go on till it abolished all order. Hence the Antinomian excitement of Wheelright and Mrs. Hutchinson, the Quaker craze, the irregularities of the Anabaptists, the Familistic notions of the Gortonists. They suffered also from misrepresentations in England as to their church administration here. It had gone abroad there that irregularities of discipline and worship were creeping in more and more in the New England Congregational churches, which troubled the more conservative non-conformist sentiment in the mother country. The non-conformist, to a considerable extent, still dreaded the extreme measure of separation, and there were news-bearers enough to work upon that apprehension and make it very watchful of ecclesiastical matters here, and even to put in the entering wedge of difference. Then came the letter requesting information upon the "nine positions," and another bringing over the "thirty-two ques tions," to the same end.* Every one of the "positions" and 'questions" related to church polity, and they indicate, moreover, an excited state of mind. We notice the care with which they bring out all the minutiae of church discipline, e. g., standing and functions of the minister, the nature and conditions of infant baptism, the terms of communion, the rights of the churches, lay ordination, and all the particulars that enter into the administration of religion. We can easily see what *Felt., vol. i., pp. 277-282. the was uppermost in mind at that day. It was almost exclusively matters relating to church polity. Theological questions had little attention. And we cannot wonder at this special drift of thought. The Fathers of that day were explorers. They were walking in an untrodden path like the wilderness itself. It was a new thing for the brotherhood to bear rule in the church. It raised a multitude of questions that required original thought, bringing, of course, the liability to mistake and differences of view. They had to be learners while they had to be teachers. But they saw they were leaving a past behind them, and constructing a future, and felt the grandeur of the motive. A new age needed most of all things just then a new polity. The truth of God demanded it, the work of missions demanded it, and that was the time for it. One thing at a time, and the right thing at the right time—this seems to have been the motto that turned them at that time to the construction of a polity. It took them, indeed, a long time. Principles are not discovered in a day. Especially the principles of the New Testament church polity that had been so long buried out of sight, must be recovered by patient and diligent search. Comparison of views, long discussion, repeated trials, were necessary. How to find the golden mean, between a firm and wholesome church order on the one hand, and anarchy on the other; how to distribute the governing powers, and yet combine them in unity, and make of it the much-needed working church force, was a thing of no little magnitude in the chaos of the times. It required almost their whole thought; so much so that they suffered spiritually; even as a church does now, it may be, when building the church edifice. The church interest, for the time being, becomes secularised. The piety that gives the most money and work for the new house, that enters most heartily into that paramount concern, seems to best satisfy the demands of religion, and nothing else can be thought of. Yet it makes a loss of spirituality. Our fathers, in building their polity, suffered in like manner, spiritually. Their time was so taken up in building the ark of the covenant that they almost forgot the covenant itself. They even undertook to atone for the loss by putting some extra touches on the ark |