USA > Alabama > History of the Protestant Episcopal church in Alabama, 1763-1891 > Part 17
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to our Church. The House of Bishops, in Bishop White's day, described the garments clerical to be 'the gown, the bands, and the surplice,' and expressly forbade candidates for the ministry to wear either. I cannot give you permission to wear either of those; nor can I allow you to wear a garment not known to the Church, in the diocese of Ohio."
* This has been largely due to the fact that there has been no straining of the Episcopal authority. Bishop Wilmer has often said, concerning propositions to confer greater canon- ical power on the Episcopate, that such action would be un- wise; that if a Bishop is the right man he has already more power than he wants; if he is a weak man he cannot have too little.
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powers co-ordinate with those of the clergy and the laity; but Dr. Fulton succeeded in having the matter referred to a committee, which, it was hoped, the Gen- eral Convention would some day appoint to take all such grave constitutional measures into consideration. Twenty years after a more zealous clergyman pursued this proposition to its logical outcome by suggesting that all diocesan legislation be left " where it properly belongs-in the hands of the Bishop;" but the Coun- cil was unable to receive the proposition seriously.
CHAPTER XV.
AARON'S SONS AND HUR'S.
IT is not the acts alone that interest us most in a 1 study of the past. We desire to learn somewhat of the actors. We want to feel the pulse of person- ality, and know that the things of which we read were done by men of flesh and blood, neither superhuman nor marionetic, but of like passions with ourselves.
Some there are who feel this necessity, but can yield to it only in part. To their vision one vast character-a Lincoln, a Napoleon, a Washington, a Cæsar-fills the canvass, and all others are but pyg- mies. Yet, in truth, it were less wise to exalt a leader by speaking lightly of his subordinates than to elevate him by exalting his subordinates; for the gen- eral will always be above his lieutenants.
These remarks have pointed application in the past conditions of the Church in Alabama. We should be led to infer from much that has been written that only two strong mental and spiritual forces have ap- peared in the entire history of the diocese-Bishop Cobbs and Bishop Wilmer. Yet as in the first episco- pate, so in the second there were other strong person- alities-lesser lights, it is true, yet of great mass and independent power. Hanson, Cushman, Massey, Pierce, Beckwith, Stickney, and Nevius, of the clergy, and White, Bunker, Taylor, Ross, S. G. Jones, Pol- lard, and Bryce, of the laity, belonged to both regimes.
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The work of Stickney, Banister, R. H. Cobbs, Beard, Hunt, Stringfellow, Fulton, Drysdale, Everhart, John- ston, and the Tuckers (besides others previously men- tioned), lies within Bishop Wilmer's episcopate; as does also the ecclesiastical activity of Lefebvre, Buell, Bond, and Dawson, of the departed, and a score of prominent Church-workers now living. These men were not lay-figures, but were living, breathing, human beings, some knowledge of whose personality will add to our interest in their times.
Francis R. Hanson was a typical clergyman of the the old school. A conservative Churchman, the title "Father," which affection bestowed on him in his old age, was not indicative of his theological views. Quiet and undemonstrative, he refrained alike from ordinary marks of affection and from emotional mani- festation of religious feeling. Yet these suppressed emotions were overpowering forces in the determina- tion of his actions. Shortly after ordination to the priesthood he felt impelled to offer himself for the foreign mission field. He was accepted, and sent to China. There hard and bitter and humiliating expe- rience taught him that emotion had led him into mis- understanding the voice of God. He had no aptitude for missionary work among the heathen, and he was entirely lacking in ability to learn a foreign language. He had been loving enough to be mastered by emo- tion; he was now sensible enough to understand what God said to him through the voice of his limitations; and he came back home. His life work was done in Alabama. For forty-one years he labored within a
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radius of twenty-five miles, being rector of St. John's- in-the-Prairies, St. Andrews', Macon, and Trinity, Demopolis, from 1839 to 1873. Shortly after the close of civil war he made a tour through some of the Northern dioceses to solicit funds to rebuild the then ruined church at Demopolis. During this tour the rectorship of a beautiful church was offered him. The support was comfortable, the surroundings were at- tractive, and he was growing old and infirm. He in- stantly declined the call, and when pressed for his reason responded: "The people of Alabama shared with me their prosperity, and now I will share with them their adversity."
Horace Stringfellow, D. D., rector of St. John's Church, Montgomery, was the most prominent clergy- man of Bishop Wilmer's entire episcopate. He was made deacon by Bishop Whittingham and priest by Bishop Meade. His earliest ministry was spent in Virginia. At first his father, himself a clergyman of note, was distressed at the increasing elevation of his son's Churchmanship, but subsequently became rec- onciled to it when he saw that his son was not bound to the " Harlot of the Seven Hills. " Both before and after the civil war he was rector of Grace Church, Indianapolis, and during his second incumbency built St. Paul's Cathedral at a cost of one hundred thous- and dollars, superintending, as was his wont, the minutest details even of brick-laying and stone-cut- ting. He came to Alabama and St. John's in 1870 at Bishop Wilmer's urgent solicitation. From the first the soundness of his judgment and the strength of his
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will set him apart from the multitude. His strong convictions and unyielding temper were detrimental to his popularity among chance acquaintances, while his absent-mindedness and great stature, combining to make him overlook those whom he met, were instru- mental in wounding much self-esteem. But all yield- ed to him the honor due remarkable energy and ability, and those who knew him best admired and loved him most.
A strong but not extreme Churchman, his energy was not absorbed by ecclesiastical activities, but went out into active works of mercy and morality. At one time he stirred the community so deeply on the sub- ject of a proposed cock-pit to be held at the State Fair that the management were but too glad to strike the brutalizing exhibit from their list of attractions. At another time when all combined action had failed he personally undertook first the building and later on the rehabilitation of the Infirmary, an institution sorely needed in Montgomery, and he succeeded in so interesting a few gentlemen, notably Ignatius Pollak, that money was forthcoming to pay all expenses until brighter days came. At social gatherings he bubbled over with spontaneous cheerfulness. True, he some- times invited a friend to breakfast, but forgot the in- vitation and cheerfully entertained his hungry guest in the library whither he himself had repaired after an early meal ; but after a time men learned to over- look such small matters as these, excused themselves after a brief visit, and hied them to some restaurant for bodily refreshment. In 1874, knowing that well nigh -20
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every delegate to the Convention, which was to meet in Eufaula, must pass through Montgomery and remain several hours, Dr. Stringfellow wrote a separate note to each clerical and lay delegate asking him to lunch- eon on the day before Council. Each supposed that only he was thus remembered, but when the rectory was reached late comers found the parlors filled and almost the entire Convention present. The women of the parish were there in force, and saw to it that the luncheon was comfortably despatched and that the Convention left the house in time to catch the after- noon train for Eufaula.
Under Dr. Stringfellow's rectorship St. John's Church was greatly enlarged and beautified. Under his immediate supervision, the new Christ Church, Tuskaloosa, and the Church of the Holy Comforter, Montgomery, were built; while he was interested in the building and furnishing of other churches in smaller towns. His fields of action were so many, and his energy was so intense and unresting, that all he asked of his congregation was, that they stand aside and let him do the work. He would have no parochial societies; he abhorred Easter Monday con- gregational meetings and discouraged attendance at them; and he gave the vestry to do only what it was physically impossible to do himself. His counsels controlled the diocesan Councils for at least a decade. In later years he was generally chairman of the Com- mittee on Canons; he was a member of the Standing Committee eight years; and he was a deputy to the
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General Convention, first from Indiana and then from Alabama, twenty-seven years. He died in 1893.
Dr. John Fulton remained in Alabama only six years, coming from Georgia in 1869 and going to Indiana in 1874, but in that brief period he made a lasting impress of his personality upon the diocese. Already he was known as a canonist of great learning, and his reputation was enhanced by the publication of his Index Canonum in 1872, while he was rector of Christ Church, Mobile. His views were based on accurate information and were clear and compre- hensive, and his expression of them was marked by strict logical progression. He was always chairman of the Committee on Canons, member of the Standing Committee, and deputy to the General Convention. Abstract propositions did not exhaust his energies, nor did national and diocesan questions prevent him from guarding zealously the interests of his parish. Christ Church was a wealthy parish in those days, and paid its rector a salary of $4,500. Dr. Fulton was just thirty-five years old when he came to Ala- bama; he was endowed to a rare degree with a per- sonal magnetism that worked wonders upon pastoral burdens; his gift for extemporaneous speaking was extraordinary, and out of the full store of his ready mind the thought of a half hour extracted the material for a discourse brilliant and profound. The man was a clear-headed worker, the parish was a fertile field, and the harvest. was plenteous. The Sunday congre- gations crowded the church, the yearly confirmations averaged twenty-five, and the annual income ranged
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from fifteen to twenty-five thousand dollars. In this rectorship the parish debt was paid, and several thousand dollars given to the Church Home for Girls.
Of the laymen who passed to their reward in the first decade ot Bishop Wilmer's episcopate, one of the most earnest was Prof. Hubert P. Lefebvre, who had succeeded the Rev. J. Avery Shepherd, as principal of Hamner Hall, Montgomery. Professor Lefebvre lived only four years after coming to Alabama in 1869, but those were years of good works and rapid develop- ment into a Church helper. Despite the unfavorable circumstances under which he assumed the manage- ment of Hamner Hall, the school enrolled thirty boarding pupils and one hundred day pupils in the first year of his incumbency. Apart from his effi- ciency as a teacher he possessed unusual aptitude for parochial work. Under his superintendency the Sun- day-school of St. John's attained an unusual degree of prosperity, and contributed largely to the support of the Bishop Cobbs Home for Orphans. He was chiefly instrumental in organizing and energizing the "Young Men's Episcopal Association " of Mont- gomery, like the Mobile Brotherhood of the Church, a local forerunner of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. This Association established and supported the paro- chial school, wherein eighty children of the poor received free tuition and, in many cases, free clothing. In addition to these undertakings, Professor Lefebvre was beginning to take a lively interest in matters diocesan and was imparting his fire to others, when his work ceased.
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David Buell was another layman of great intelli- gence, weight of character, zeal of service, and lib- erality of purse. A lawyer of prominence he was for many years the mainstay of St. Thomas' Church, Greenville. The practice in public speaking which he obtained at the bar rendered him exceptionally able in the chancel. Under his lay-readership the congre- gation, instead of decreasing, as is ordinarily the case under lay-ministration in an organized parish, in- creased steadily throughout his many months of con- tinous service, and not without regret consented to re- ceive once more ministrations from a resident priest.
But the list grows of those into whose labors the present generation has entered, and our limits pre- clude further extension of the roll. Yet six men must be named, in passing, to ignore whom were to ignore six of the strongest pillars of the diocese : Joel White, modest, retiring, serving in the diocesan Convention of 1834 and thenceforward to the Council of 1896, first from Tuskaloosa, then from Montgom- ery, and a deputy to the General Conventions of 1835, 1871, 1877, 1880, and 1892, the host of every prom- inent man in the state for the last two generations ; James Bond, the mainspring of St. John's, Mobile, Chancellor of the diocese, or legal adviser of the Bishop, member of the Standing Committee and of the Committee on Canons, and deputy to the General Convention ; Samuel G. Jones, a foundation stone of Hamner Hall and of the original Church of the Holy Comforter, Montgomery ; N. H. R. Dawson, who in the twenty-six years in which he was treasurer of
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the Bishop's Fund brought the wreckage of that fund to thirty-five thousand dollars ; and Alexander R. Bell, and Charles T. Pollard, quiet and unassuming, perfect types of the Christian gentleman.
To such clergymen and laymen does the Church in Alabama owe its present spiritual, theological, and financial ability to ride out the storms and distresses that assail it from time to time.
CHAPTER XVI.
PROSPECTIVE.
T HE author has now completed the undertaking which he proposed to himself of writing a his- tory of the Church in Alabama from the earliest times down to the close of the undivided episcopate of Bishop Wilmer; but he cannot lay down the pen without briefly declaring present conditions and forecasting the lines of future development.
The present condition, then, is this: The Orphan's Home at Mobile has completed its endowment of
- $36,000,* and no longer appeals to the Church for assistance. The Bishop's Fund has increased to $38,000, and by the sale of lands in the near future will reach the limit of $50,000, when the necessity for assessments on parishes will be obviated and the Church will be free to give more generously to mis- sionary development. f
The endowment of the Society for the Relief of Dis- abled Clergy and the Widows and Orphans of Deceased Clergy, after being laboriously brought by Christmas offerings and annual dues to well-nigh $20,000, was
* The Bishop was compelled early in the present year (1898) to expend $4,000 of the $40,000 endowment in purchasing property, known as the "Widows' Row," adjoining the Church Home -for Girls.
t Councils and Finance Committees have for many years wrestled with the question: What portion of the income from 303
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largely sacrificed to political apprehension, in 1896, by the forced sale of Alabama bonds and the re-invest- ment of the proceeds in lower grade of securities, whose value is as yet indeterminate; and the work of the past ten years must again be undertaken. The Diocesan Missionary Society, without any endow- ment, dependent entirely on free-will-offerings from month to month, is supporting in part sixteen mis- sionaries, who are ministering to eighty congregations.
the Bishop's Fund can properly be appropriated in any year to supplement the assessments laid upon parishes? It has been asserted that one-third of the income can thus be used, and this proposition is determined upon on the supposition that one-third of the whole amount saved after the War of Secession belonged to the "Special Fund " [for which see p. 89]. That this assertion has no foundation is evident from these two forgotten facts:
I. During the War the two funds were confused, and no separation of them was subsequently made. [Compare Jour- nals: 1862, p. 24; 1863, P. 75; 1864, p. 27.]
2. The division now accepted was made in 1869 by new Trustees-N. H. R. Dawson, George O. Baker, and A. G. Mabry-on a purely arbitrary basis; and these Trustees say "they have no means of distinguishing the notes belonging to these two funds." [See Journals: 1868, pp. 31 and 34; 1869, pp. 36 and 37.]
Hence all subsequent citation of this report is simply to use a guess as basis for an argument. How wide of the mark the guess probab y is may be estimated from the fact that while in 1863 the Permanent Fund was $4,459 and the Special Fund $23,561, the 1869 Trustees assigned a nominal value of only $8,225 to the Special Fund and a value of $16,499 to the Per- manent Fund.
Only one principle can be appealed to hereafter in the use
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Forty-two lay-readers are attempting to supply the serious breach in the Apostolic ministry caused by the practical obsoleteness of the diaconate.
The lines of future development may be accurately forecasted by observation of the last two episcopates : The episcopate of Bishop Cobbs was the period of Ex- periment ; when it was tried what places would re- ceive the Church and what would not. The undivided episcopate of Bishop Wilmer was the period of Ad- justment ; when the necessity was, laid upon the Church to meet the constantly changing conditions brought about by the civil war, the panic of 1873, and the boom of 1885, and to transplant her parishes as her congregations were swept from country to village, and from village to city. Today with no panics, no booms in near prospect, but with sur- rounding forces that apparently ensure the per- manence of present industrial conditions and their development along normal lines, it would seem that the period upon which we are now entering is to be the period of Aggression ; wherein the Church is to go out into the byways and waste-places of Alabama where her voice has never been heard, and to preach the Gospel where it has never been heard in its com-
of the Bishop's Fund: It was intended to form an endow- ment of $50,000 in order to free the parishes from taxation forever, not to help them tide over a crisis.
Careful examination of the statements of this note has been made by Mr. J. H. Fitts, Treasurer of the Diocese and of the Bishop's Fund, and he gives them his unqualified endorse- ment.
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pleteness, and where zeal has so long been left un- tempered by knowledge.
The possibilities of such missionary aggression have been illustrated in the last few years by two note- worthy achievements-one in the agricultural regions and one in the mineral :
Along the Alabama river missionaries had been active, as we have seen, as early as 1855, and the result of a few years' work was the establishment of congregations at Claiborne, St. Stephen's, Camden, Bladon, Butler, and Pushinataha. For some years services had been conducted with greater or less fre- quency and regularity ; but there were long periods when no ministers could be secured, and many of the Church-folk removed elsewhere, while nearly all of those who remained left their first love and lost all in- terest in the Church. The land lay fallow an entire generation. At one place, indeed,-Camden-efforts were long made to keep the spark alive, and the Rev. F. B. Lee made it many visits. But month by month interest waned and congregations dwindled. At last one beautiful day Mr. Lee came and found that no provision had been made for services. He opened the church, swept and dusted it, built a fire in the stove, rang the bell, donned his surplice, and prepared to enter the chancel. But no one was at the church ; he waited some time, and no one came. In fact the congregation had unanimously remained at home ; and Mr. Lee thereafter followed their example. But in 1893 a new generation had grown up, many derelict Churchmen had become tired of the bitter-sweet of
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sectarianism, and a new attempt was made. Mr. John G. Murray, whose active interest in the work of the Selma chapter of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew had energized his long suppressed intention to become a candidate for Holy Orders, undertook, while but a lay-reader, tbe work of breaking up the ground. In a short while he was ministering to seven newly es- tablished congregations, of which three-Mount Pleasant and Perdue Hill, in Monroe County, and Camden, in Wilcox County,-were on or near the Alabama River, and four-Martin's Station, Orrville, and Tyler's, in Dallas County, and Stanton in Chilton County,-were grouped about Selma. They were known as the " Alabama River Missions, " but the Board of Missions was not called upon to help them until the re-formation of the field in 1896, caused by the removal of the Rev. Mr. Murray to Birmingham and the death of the Rev. F. B. Lee. Camden's old church, long the abode of bats and goats, was rebuilt. The old St. Luke's, Cahaba, was removed to Martin's Station. The dismantled building at Benton was sold, and the proceeds were used in the erection of a church at Tyler's.
The other noteworthy missionary achievement of the recent past is that of the Rev. T. J. Beard, D. D., in the mineral regions about Birmingham. After his most successful work in North Alabama in the 'Sixties, and a brief sojourn in Arkansas, Mr. Beard had been rector of St. John's, Mobile, eleven years, and of the Church of the Advent, Birmingham, fourteen years. In 1896 he resigned the latter charge and returned to
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the evangelistic work for which he was so admirably fitted. In a few months he had about solved the long- continuing problem: How to secure an Evangelist. With Bessemer, Woodlawn, and Avondale as a nucleus he proceeded to create a mission field. The many railways radiating from Birmingham gave him easy access to the mining camps and villages that had sprung up on hill-sides and in valleys like so many mushrooms. These villages grew like mushrooms, but with their iron roots it was plainly not theirs to die like mushrooms. Soon Dr. Beard was ministering at intervals of from a week to a month to eighteen congregations, generally visiting at least seven congre- gations every week. Adamsville, Brookside, Carbon Hill, Patton Mines, and Warrior, had never seen a clergyman of the Church, but already they have had baptisms and confirmations. Ashville, Blocton, Coal- burg, Cullman, and Jasper, had long before fainted by the wayside, but these are all now receiving both spiritual and numerical edification.
In other portions of the diocese, too, successful attempts to establish missions are on foot. Notable among these is the Gulf Coast field. In the village of Bon Secour, all whose inhabitants are supported by fishing and oystering, only five or six families are not parishioners of St. Peter's. At Oak Grove, a mission established by the Mobile Brotherhood of St. Andrew, at Citronelle, at Navy Cove, at Magnolia, at Point Clear, and other places, has grown up a work not dreamed of ten years ago, not undertaken five years ago.
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It may be truthfully affirmed that the development of the Church in Alabama is limited only by the faith, the energy, the persistence of its head, and its body- the Bishops, and the clergy and laity. Many congre- gations now forming will disappear and some of the old congregations will die out, as congregations have disappeared in the past, but many of the new and most of the old will live, while in none will the disso- lution of the congregation mean, of necessity, the loss of the communicants.
Two fields call for early endeavor and promise a goodly harvest. Southeast Alabama is a virgin field, wherein Bishop never yet worked; it is rapidly increas- ing in population, as railroads push in from every side, and water power is developed. Northwest Alabama, south of the Tennessee River, is just opening her arms to the outside world. These two sections of the state are today the most inviting fields, and if their invita- tion shall soon be accepted the number of congrega- tions in Alabama, which has increased fifty per cent. in five years, will at the end of the next five years have increased fifty per cent. on the present number.
In Alabama, as elsewhere, men are becoming tired of a theology that anathematizes because of a variant philosophy about revelation. They are beginning to rebel against a discipline that makes the voice of prejudice the voice of God, and that in rural districts punishes with excommunication that which, under the same pair of eyes, is condoned in the town or the city. They will welcome, if she come in her own glorious apparel, the religious Body that brings them the una-
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