CHAPTER XX.

THE

THE NEW ERA.

HE last half century is a distinct period in the history of Congregationalism. During that time it has awakened to a new self-consciousness, has come into formal unity, has become national and has undertaken world-wide aims. In Christian education and in missionary enterprise it was first in the field in this country. During the last fifty years it has come to recognize the duty of maintaining independently of other denominations its missionary efforts in all lands; and it has justified the title which has been given to it, "the denomination which educates."

The evidence that Congregationalists are doing these things worthily has been given in the two previous chapters. They were the first to enter on the work of educating the freedmen after the Civil War. From that time to the present they have expended in the South more for this purpose than all the other denominations together. Congregationalists were the first to introduce Christian education into Utah, making it the most potent instrument in destroying the power of Mormonism. They have been pioneers in carrying the gospel into heathen nations, where they maintain 14 theological schools, 66 colleges and high schools for boys, 56 similar institutions for girls and nearly 1000 common schools. In missionary In missionary work and in.

education Congregationalists have made a record second to none at home and abroad.

Evidences of the new awakening of the denomination abound, especially in the literature of the years immediately before and following 1850. Many addresses of that period before State meetings and other annual gatherings on the character and working of the Congregational polity were printed and widely distributed. The pastoral letter of the General Association of New York in 1853 says: "Until a recent date our existence beyond the bounds of New England was not always readily acknowledged;" "but it is so no longer;" "for the last eight or ten years this apathy has been gradually disappearing." In 1854 Dr. Truman M. Post of St. Louis delivered the address at the annual meeting of the American Congregational Union in Brooklyn, on the topic "The Mission of Congregationalism in the West." The next year the subject of the address of Dr. Julian M. Sturtevant of Illinois before the same body was "Congregationalism Anti-Sectarian." The denomination was thus being roused to consider with new hope its mission and its opportunities, and this fact furnished the prevailing themes of its representative assemblies.

During the first twenty years of the last half century, from 1845 to 1865, certain subjects of vital and general interest commanded the attention of the churches, the discussion of which had important results in unifying the denomination and enlarging its influence. These subjects concerned the doctrine of the churches, their attitude toward the national government, especially on the question of slavery, and their polity.

In the earlier part of this period doctrinal matters attracted the greatest attention in New England, which still contained nearly four-fifths of the Congregational churches in the United States. Massachusetts Congregationalists had, after more than a generation of wearisome conflict, freed themselves from the incubus of Unitarianism. Naturally many of them looked with apprehension on tendencies in theological teaching which seemed to call in question doctrines they were defending as essential to their faith. Two men of remarkable ability and of very different types of mind were then coming into prominence in the denomination as leaders of religious thought, who awakened decided opposition. Edwards A. Park, then recently appointed, not without strong remonstrance, to the chair of systematic theology at Andover, was reformulating Calvinistic doctrines with an exactness of definition, a power of logic and a freshness of thought and style which drew large classes of students to the seminary, and which fearlessly challenged those who disputed those doctrines or objected to new statements of them. Horace Bushnell, from the pulpit of the First Church, Hartford, Conn., was winning the loyal support of his people, no less by the charm of his personal presence than by his eloquence and poetic genius. The great crisis in his spiritual history, in 1848, brought forth views then novel, which he gave to the public in the book "God in Christ," and which precipitated a long and sharp controversy. Some acquaintance with the author's temperament, character and history was, perhaps, necessary at the time in order fully to comprehend his meaning and purpose. His thought rose above definitions and expressed itself in

sublime conceptions of Christ formed in the soul, a new creating power of God for and in humanity. But he was at once attacked by many of his ministerial brethren, through public addresses and the religious. press, as a dangerous heretic in his views of the Trinity and the atonement. His own ministerial association, the Hartford Central, essayed to bring him before the consociation for trial, but after full discussion decided that his errors were not fundamental. The Connecticut General Association made his alleged heresies the chief subject of debate for four succes

sive years. Nearly

all the ministers of Hartford and vicinity

during this period refused to permit him to enter their pulpits. His own church unanimously stood with him, and withdrew on his account from the consociation. Dr. Bushnell was not a framer of a theological system, but he was a wonderful inspirer of religious thought and experience. His sympathies embraced with enthusiasm every department of life. He was not only the most distinguished preacher but also the foremost. citizen of Hartford. In his later life, as his writings plainly show, he did not hesitate to set aside what he