ecclesiastical shadow of the older body, and this in respect of theology has been characteristic of the Episcopal Church. It has heretofore been more Anglican than American. It has reflected rather than originated movements. When England was under the spiritual direction of Simeon and Romaine, America was everywhere devoutly evangelical. When the great church revival known as Tractarianism began with the publication of Keble's "Christian Year," in 1827, and the study of the early fathers was revived by his notable sermon on Tradition, in 1833, this country was also flooded with the celebrated "Tracts for the Times," and converts to Rome were only less numerous and distinguished here than in England. That revival has been transmitted in the ritualistic movement which, if something artificial and foreign here, is thoroughly congenial to great numbers in England, and the natural outgrowth of religious convictions. It has been the fortune of the Church of England pass through a series of unusual contro versies touching the deepest mysteries of religion during the last fifty years. It has reconquered the lost ground of the last century, but every debate, every issue, has had its restatement on this side of the Atlantic, and the Episcopal Church has been profoundly affected by it. Schools of thought, which are a natural outgrowth of personal conviction, have crystallized into ecclesiastical parties, and these parties have often attempted to run what was meant for a Catholic Church purely in the line of sectarian interests. All the isms of theology have had their chance, and the Church, which is infinitely larger and better than any of them, has been frequently narrowed down to their petty issues. This accounts for what people feel to be set, formal, stiff, unyielding in the Episcopal Church. It explains why there is so much narrowness of action in regard to public matters; why there has been in other days so little adapta tion of religion to society. It shows why, when the old twins of hatred and prejudice have been broken down, the really important things which the Church is able to do for American Christianity, have not been appreciated. There is a conservatism which

holds an idea until it is strangled; and in other days this religious body has been so conservative that it has done comparatively little to shape the nation's conscious life.

It may seem like plain speaking to say thus much, but who can say that it is not substantially true? What has the Episcopal Church done for three-quarters of a century but disappoint the anticipations of its best men and forge new fetters for the more secure environment and repression of its growing energies? But there comes at length a time when if men do not speak with a living voice, the very stones cry out and condemn them; when Samson breaks his bonds and goes forth in his might. Such a time came to the Episcopal Church twenty-five years ago.

In 1853 the venerable Dr. Muhlenberg, then a mature man of fifty years, saw with prophetic eye and felt in his prophetic soul that his Communion was not dealing with the great moral and social necessities of the day as it ought. "He became more and more painfully impressed with the isolation of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and he thought that some effort should be made to bring the Christians of this land into something like fellowship, on the basis of a common historic faith; and while he was devoting much thought and time to the subject, he suddenly, with that impulsive energy which comes like an inspiration to a man of genius, said to a friend: Let us prepare a memorial upon this subject to the House of Bishops, and if we can get no one to sign it, we will sign it ourselves and send it in.'"* This was the origin of the celebrated Memorial movement of 1856, and since it has had a profound influence in shaping the ecclesiastical future of this Church and in enabling leading men to bring its vital principles into contact with the throbbing life of our own time, it deserves special attention at our hands. It was a wholesome and ardent protest against the cast-iron policy which had prevailed for three-quarters of a century, The Memorial boldly made the inquiry, whether "the Protestant Episcopal Church, with only her present canonical means and

In Memoriam-William A. Muhlenburg, D. D. By Edwin Harwood, D. D.

appliances, her fixed and invariable modes of public worship, and her traditional customs and usages, is competent to the work of preaching and dispensing the Gospel to all sorts and conditions of men, and so adequate to do the work of the Lord in this land and in this age." It believed that the church confined to the exercise of its present system was not sufficient to these purposes, that a wider door ought to be opened for admission to the ministry, and that men in other bodies of Christians who desired the Episcopal ministry should not be obliged in receiving it to renounce all the liberty in public worship to which they had been accustomed, or to have their previous attainments as religious teachers count for nothing. It looked toward a basis of unity for our divided and distracted American Christianity. It aimed at a broader and more comprehensive ecclesiastical system than the one then administered, which should be identical with the Episcopal Church in all its great principles, and yet provide for as much freedom in opinion, discipline and worship as was compatible with the essential faith and order of the Gospel. define and act upon such a system," it was believed, "must sooner or later be the work of an American Catholic Episcopate." The Memorial expressed a widely prevalent feeling and was referred in the General Convention of 1853 by an unusually large majority of bishops (20 to 4) to a committee of their own order, consisting of Bishops Wainwright, Otey, Doane, Alonzo Potter, Burgess, and Williams, with instructions to take the subject into consideration, invite further communications upon it and report to the convention of 1856. Bishop Potter was chiefly instrumental in gathering the opinions of representative men, both within and without his Church, on the subject, and the volume entitled "The Memorial Papers," giving the communications received, the report of the commission of bishops, and his own estimate of the movement, and published by him in 1857, is one of the most important, suggestive, and significant works ever issued by the Episcopal Church in this country. It is the distinct landmark of a new era. It marked the arrival of this

"To

Church to a consciousness of mission. The Diocesan Convention of Rhode Island (1856) happily stated this in a resolution which declared that "we earnestly sympathize with the wish of the Memorialists that the great Catholic idea of the Church of Christ may be more fully developed by more thoroughly adapting it to all the wants of the country and the times."

The Episcopal commission met six times during the recess of the convention. In their report to the Convention of 1856, they expressed the unanimous conviction that

66

some of the most material of the improvements which are loudly called for and which commend themselves to our own judgment might be attained without legislation." They begged their own brethren, while all these questions were pending, to do what they could personally to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace:

"1. By doing justice to the merits of other systems as readily as they expose their demerits.

"2. By repressing a spirit of self-complacency and self-laudation.

"3. By infusing into our worship, preaching and general policy, more of the ancient and historical element on the one side, and of the popular and practical on the other.

"4. By a more cordial manner towards ministers of other religious bodies who are inquiring into the claims of our Communion.

"5. By considering whether we cannot safely lessen canonical impediments in the way of ministers, licentiates and others desirous of our orders, with sufficient guarantees for soundness in doctrine, discipline and worship.

"6. By fruitfulness in all good works. If our ministers were more fervid, self-denying and laborious; our people more charitable, exemplary and devout; if, in a word, we were all that we ought to be and might be from the alleged superiority of our gifts and privileges, the attraction to the church would be universal and irresistible."

The bishops quite unanimously accepted the sentiments of this report, and adopted resolutions to divide the three-fold morning service, to allow discretionary services for

extraordinary occasions, and to provide special agencies to meet the spiritual necessities of unchurched people. They also made provision for the appointment of a permanent Commission on Christian Unity, to consist of five bishops and to be renewed at each convention by ballot in both houses. The Commission on Christian Unity was the only direct legislative action which resulted from the Memorial. In the House of Deputies, High Church, represented by the late Dr. Francis L. Hawks, was pitted against Dr. Alexander H. Vinton as the representative of the Low Church party, and it was not possible to obtain the calm discussion which is necessary for arranging the preliminaries of a great movement. But the deliberate judgment of the bishops was in favor of the Memorial. It was Bishop Alonzo Potter's opinion that the action of the House of Bishops would bear its fruit gradually. He looked upon "Christianity as a life, not as a mere collection of dogmas," and was known as one of the earliest, most efficient, and most liberal friends of the movement. In fact he was the statesman among his brother bishops, and no man in the American Episcopate, not excepting Bishop Hobart, or Bishop De Lancey, or Bishop Burgess, has shown a more intelligent sense of the Church's position, or a larger grasp of all the questions which the Memorial involved.

Dr. Muhlenberg to the outward eye failed to carry his points. But the movement which he initiated with such a consciousness of Catholic mission was one which is best advanced, not by resolutions and canons, but by active discussions, by arousing the convictions of the clergy and the people. Dr. E. A. Washburn recently said, in a beautiful tribute to his beloved master, Dr. Muhlenberg, that "the Memorial movement, whatever its seeming failure, has left its indelible mark on our history.

It was his [Dr. Muhlenberg's] conviction that our Church needed to act with all its capabilities in the vast growing field of missions and of ministries for all conditions of men. * But the party fears on either hand, the jealousy of the Episcopal authority in the lower House, and the great

power of inertia in the body, strangled a plan as wise as it was generous. We have learned the worth of our conservatism since. I dare hazard the judgment that had the Memorial prevailed, we should have been spared the two worst misfortunes since befallen us." Dr. Muhlenberg himself at first felt keenly the outward defeat of what he had most at heart, but he was permitted to live almost to the time when it might be said that the Memorial had inspired the whole Church with its spirit. The Convention of 1877 was most clearly marked by the consciousness of Catholic mission which twenty-five years ago thrilled Dr. Muhlenberg's soul. He became, for his personal qualities not less than for the inspiration of heart in which he was unrivaled, the beloved and untitled patriarch of his Communion. It was my privilege once to witness the voluntary homage to him as such. In the Convention of 1874 in New York, the debate was in its full tide in the lower House when a venerable man slowly crossed the vestibule of the church. Instantly that he entered the auditorium, young men and old began to gather around him, some to be introduced, some to greet the apostolic father once more; and as he moved by degrees (as fast as the throng of friends would permit) to the chancel end of the church, up the side aisle, the debate lost its interest, and the man who twenty years before had in vain tried to lead his Church to the larger victories of Christian comprehensiveness, became when he approached the open space before the chancel, the center of an ovation so spontaneous and hearty and general that the Convention unconsciously resolved itself into a committee of the whole to pay Dr. Muhlenberg their voluntary respect and reverence as to "an apostle by the will of God."

As to the fruits which the Memorial has gradually brought forth, it may be truly said that they were more largely developed in the diocese of Pennsylvania than elsewhere, but most of the enlarged parochial activities which now distinguish the Episcopal Church, and which have been already copied to some extent by other Protestant bodies, have come into life since 1853, and may be traced, in

their origin, to this movement. The Cottage meetings conducted by deacons or laymen with a free use of the prayer-book, the Bible-classes for men and women, the mothers' meetings, the sewing-schools taught by Christian women, the evangelists' service, and parochial missions, the attempts to deal with special classes by out-door preaching, the missions to deaf mutes, and numerous other agencies, in which the energies of all classes of churchmen have been enlisted, show the suggestions derived from this source. In fact, the Memorial movement has at length become the aggressive and working policy of the Episcopal Church.

The General Conventions in this communion have frequently been looked forward to with misgiving. Party feeling has run high, and certain doctrinal issues have had to be met. The Church began with very low views of what the Anglican communion teaches in its prayer-book and other standards, and had it remained where it was a hundred years ago, its organization would have continued defective, and in religious love it would not have been sharply marked off from Protestantism by the development of its proper Catholic life. The Episcopal Church is not the via media between Rome and Geneva, as John Henry Newman attempted to make it in the theory which he constructed for his own personal assurance, but has a positive and definite organic life of its own. This is never to be forgotten or ignored. This had to be brought out and maintained, in respect to ecclesiastical polity, in respect to theological doctrines, and in respect to ritual. The English Church has been engaged for the last fifty years in restoring to its current life what was allowed to fall into disuse during the dreary Hanoverian era, and the same work has been going on here. The General Conventions have been the arenas in which the party battles have been fought over these questions. The Convention of 1874 was perhaps the saddest and wickedest of them all; party issues were presented in their worst form, and the attempt to stamp out ritualism was carried to extreme lengths.

When the Convention met in Boston in 1877, there was no preliminary scare, no

exciting question to be debated, nothing but the unfinished business of the previous Convention to be attended to. The deputies in the lower House came with few instructions from their dioceses. There was nothing to fight about, and everybody was in the humor to attend to new phases of Church life. Bishop Williams gave the key-note to the Convention in the opening sermon at Trinity church. He is the only survivor of the original committee of the House of Bishops appointed to take Dr. Muhlenberg's Memorial in hand. That sainted man had been called to his rest early in the spring, and it was eminently fitting that Dr. Williams should invite attention to the practical work which Dr. Muhlenberg attempted to arouse his church to do a quarter of a century before. The late William Welsh, always foremost as a lay-apostle in practical religious enterprises, persevered till the gist of this sermon had been embodied in a series of resolutions which the Committee adopted and referred to a working committee. Then the unfinished business happened to involve the very question which Dr. Muhlenberg had always insisted upon, liturgical revision or adaptation of our services to a wider range of usefulness. Dr. De Koven had also come to the Convention with the prescient feeling that old issues were to be allowed to rest, and as one of the recognized leaders of the Convention, with the conviction that if the Church was to enter properly upon a new era, its constitution must be revised and adapted to meet the larger and prospective wants of a national organization, was prepared to push matters in this direction. As the budget of new and pressing questions was unfolded by the two Houses in their separate capacity, it became evident to every one that immediate legislation was not to be expected, and that the Convention would largely take the character of a free debating society in which every member could express himself upon the state of the Church. This was precisely what was needed and what was done, the very questions which Dr. Muhlenberg had raised twenty-five years ago were the special points of discussion.

Dr. De Koven would hardly like to be

called Dr. Muhlenberg's successor, but in prophetic vision, in the long look ahead, in the steady drive at things which are necessary to enable the Episcopal Church to bring its full energies to bear upon the living is sues of the day, he closely resembles him. He has, besides, that magnetic power over men which naturally qualifies him to be a leader. In the late Convention no man spoke more wisely and none showed a greater range of statesman-like thought or a clearer conviction of what should be done. This was especially seen in a speech in which he urged constitutional revision. But Dr. De Koven was not the only man who instinctively reached out to shape the coming time. The leading men in the Convention were all on one side. They favored the bringing of the Church to the people, the provision for shortened services, the measures looking toward unity among the Protestant bodies.

This Church has now reached a point where its future will be watched with great interest by all Christian people. It has bated nothing of its Catholic position, and not changing its organization but increasing the efficiency of its methods of working, and rising gradually to the consciousness of its providential position as an instrument for strengthening our common Christianity, it has distinctly marched to the front as a live, progressive, and active organization for the development of the Christian life. The bishops and clergy have studiously avoided committing themselves to special views upon the minor questions of morals. They have struck with practical vigor for the central things in religion and sought earnestly to effect guidance for men and women in the issues of daily life. It is a mark of sanity when a religious organization is ready to confess that it bears in its body the fruits of Adam's sin, and the Episcopal Church has not been backward of late in acknowledging its short-comings. One point needs always to be remembered. The Anglican Church seeks everywhere not to give ready-made answers in religion and morals but to justify "the sweet reason of Jesus" in practical life. It is the Church which attempts to reconcile religion with modern thought and society, and constantly to adapt old truths to

new needs. Hence it can never be at rest, never be out of a crisis; and what Matthew Arnold with his singular truthfulness in phrases says of the English Church, is equally true of its American daughter: "Distracted as is the state of religious opinion amongst us at this moment, in no other great Church is there, I believe, so much sincere desire as there is in the Church of England-in clergy as well as laity—to get at the truth. In no other great Church is there so little false pretense of assured knowledge and certainty on points where there can be none.”* This testimony is supplemented by the testimony of the Rev. J. M. Capes, who some years ago went to Rome and has lately returned to the Church of England. He says: "It seems to me that in the English Church as it now stands, freedom of thought can be united with practical organization, and that this same organization supplies just that living aid which translates thought into spiritual activity and enables an honest man to do his duty in his generation as God designs him to do it." † The same can truly be said of the American branch of this Church. It has moved out of its sectarianism and addressed itself to the live issues of the day. The Church Congress was the distinct effort of churchmen to take their part in the contests of modern thought, and has shown that this body was in a special position of advantage for such discussions. Its very conservatism has come in to give breadth of view. While others have only seen things from the point of individuality, there is something in the Catholic training of strong men which enables them to see a subject on both sides, and this largeness of view has already commended the Congress as a platform for the discussion of questions in religion, morals, society, and the higher politics. The two lines of strength in the Episcopal Church, as already indicated, are its Catholic position as an historical body, with a ministry whose authority Protestants never question and a prestige which is generally acknowledged, and its close affinity with all the dearest interests and best phases

*Last Essays in Church and Religion, p. 176.

+ Reasons for Returning to the Church of England,

p. 197.