The History of the Disciples of Christ H ISTORY is one of God's books through which He speaks to living multitudes. Fichte called it "a constant inflowing of God into human affairs," and Farrar said: "History is like a battle. It sways to and fro, and it is full of shocks and flank movements, retreats and advances, rout and resistance, utterly confusing to those who take part in it; nevertheless we know in the evening which side has lost or won." The whole history of Christianity presents one series of baffling problems. There are at times in its history such grave departures from the standard of Christ and, in His name, such unspeakable things are done, that if one lingers on the details of those transactions of the night of our common faith, he might turn away in disgust from the only light in the world, and say with the Frenchman, who cried in despair: "Christ has come, but whence cometh salvation?" But, if he looks with wide-visioned eye, until above all retreats and advances he sees God, he will understand that beyond to-day lies an untrodden domain of human life, whose westward horizon waits for the peace of toil and the triumph of truth. The history of movements in Christianity is similar to the history of Christianity at large, only their channels are not so deep, nor their horizons so wide. It is only when movements lose themselves in the bosom of Christianity that their influences strike the deeps and leave their pulse beats on all shores. The history of the people known as the Disciples of Christ craves to touch the Christianity of the whole world and to be lost in the deathless love of God. It seeks no preferment for itself, but its desire is only to serve for the victory of Jesus Christ our common Lord. I Beginning in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, along about 1830 to 1832, the Disciples became a separate communion. They had back of them an earnest desire for the union of Christendom by a return to the New Testament in doctrine and practice. Before them they had a deeply entrenched sectarianism, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, whose hostility was uncompromising, chiefly because of the prevailing belief that denominationalism was the normal and permanent condition of the Church; but, with no creed other than Jesus Christ and no book of authority other than the New Testament, the Disciples have pushed their way into nearly all parts of the earth, preaching Jesus and Him crucified. They have not sought to make men accept any human philosophy or systems of theology, for they have had none to present, but their passion has been to make men accept the living Christ as their personal Saviour-to wear His name, keep His ordinances and live His life. They have made their failures-sometimes gross failures, for after all the best of them have been only men, men of like passions as Elijah and Peter and James and Origen and Augustine and Francis and Luther, but nevertheless fidelity to their ideals has borne them forward with phenomenal victories. Into the background of this history, their immediate antecedents reach into the most disheartening period of the life of the American republic. England forbade the publication of the Bible in the colonies so long as they were dependencies of her crown, and there was a famine of the word of God. The French soldiers, who had so bravely aided the colonies in their struggle for independence, had scattered infidel ideas broadcast over the republic. Slavery, duelling, intemperance, profanity, lewdness and every kind of immorality was looked upon with complaisance. Colleges were hot-beds of skepticism and three-fourths of their students were avowed unbelievers. Daniel Dorchester, in his |