USA > Alabama > History of the Protestant Episcopal church in Alabama, 1763-1891 > Part 7
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the grave at the early age of forty-four. He died during the rectorship of the Rev. Mr. Knapp, and was buried beneath the chancel of Christ Church, where a handsome tablet marks his resting-place. The text of the funeral discourse delivered by Mr. Knapp was strikingly appropriate: "Hold such in reputation; because for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life."
The Rev. Nathaniel P. Knapp was the second giant of this earlier period. He came from New York, from a tutorship in the General Theological Semi- nary, in 1837, and, settling in Lowndes county, founded St. Peter's Church, at Benton, in January, 1838 .* That this congregation was not a great tax upon his energies may be inferred from a brief note in his report to the Convention: "Number of com- municants, so far as ascertained, two." From this circumscribed field he was called, after four or five months, to Tuskaloosa. Here he succeeded the Rev. Andrew Matthews, whose private character and public reputation had not materially improved the possibili- ties of parochial growth or of ministerial ease. But though the parish was small, the communicants rang- ing in number between fourteen and twenty-one, year by year, the growth during Mr. Knapp's rectorship was constant. In 1843 Mr. Knapp resigned charge of the parish at Tuskaloosa and went North. Here he fell in with Mr. Lewis, whose parishioners had sent him thither for recreation. It was a summer of dread-
* This church was the foundation of that which now exists at Tyler's Station, nine miles west.
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ful suffering in Mobile, yellow fever being epidemic. Knowing the condition of Mr. Lewis' health, Mr. . Knapp promptly offered and successfully urged him- self as Mr. Lewis' substitute in Mobile for the re- mainder of the summer. In Mobile he worked inde- fatigably and shunned no exposure, until he himself was stricken down. After a serious illness, Mr. Lewis having returned and the plague abated, he went to Cuba for the winter, and on his return became rector of St. John's, Montgomery. Here his rectorship of four years was most successful. His indomitable will and comprehensive grasp of events is well illustrated by an incident that occurred in the religious life of the town: Late in the summer of 1845 a wave of mental and spiritual excitement swept through Mont- gomery, attending and following a great "revival." Every congregation was affected, and in St. John's parish wide-spread sympathy with the revival was en- gendered. Had a less able man been rector of the parish, it is conceivable that, in view of his congre- gation's condition, he would have pursued one of two courses, according to his theological bias: Either he would have joined in the union revival meetings, or he would have inveighed against the whole idea of revivals. Alabama clergy have been known to do both. Mr. Knapp did neither. His unqualified un- belief in a man-made ministry, and his abhorrence of schism, even when but hereditary, forbade him to go with the revivalists. And his conviction, that beneath the waves of commotion that agitated the community there was an undercurrent which, by its deep and
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steady flow, marked the brooding of the Holy Spirit, rendered it impossible for him to set himself in oppo- sition. But set as a watchman in Israel, and purpos- ing to keep his own congregation from being driven about by every wind of doctrine, he foregrasped the coming Advent-tide, multiplied the services of the Church, visited from house to house and held cottage prayer-meetings, and, continuing thus six hours a day for three months, not only prevented the loss to the parish of its more emotional members, but actually turned the tide and greatly increased both the numeri- cal and the spiritual strength of his congregation. In two years the number of communicants had quadru- pled; for, with an uncompromising loyalty to the Church, Mr. Knapp had the rare faculty of bending all circumstances, whether favorable or hostile, to the furtherance of the Kingdom. In 1848 he entered upon the rectorship of Christ Church, Mobile, following Mr. Lewis' successor, the Rev. Francis Priolean Lee, who had died, a victim to yellow fever, after a brief but brilliant rectorship of only ten months. Though lacking the fine physique and personal magnetism of these two predecessors, Mr. Knapp fell not one whit behind them in both the excellence and the accepta- bility of his labors. He died here in the harness in 1851 .*
* Fifty-nine of his sermons, edited by the Rev. William Johnson, were published in a very large royal octavo vol- ume of five hundred pages in 1855. They are of widely varying degrees of excellence. Mr. Knapp's reputation would have been the better upheld had the volume been one- third as large.
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These two men, Lewis and Knapp, were head and shoulders above their contemporaries. Of Lewis, Bishop Cobbs bore witness "that by his sound Evan- gelical preaching, by his holy walk and conversation, and by his ardent zeal and devotion, he had contrib- uted more than any other one man towards building up the Church in Alabama." Of his "old and be- loved friend," Mr. Knapp, the Bishop said: "He had contributed not a little to the moulding of the diocese's character, being a sound, well-balanced the- ologian, a thoroughly conservative Churchman, and a most faithful, practical and evangelical preacher."
Of the other prominent clergy of this period not much needs, or can, be said. Their lives were devoid of sensational events. Year after year they labored quietly and faithfully, not sounding a trumpet before their good deeds. The recollections of their surviv- ors are vague and unsatisfactory, and the written records are painfully meager. Scanty parochial re- ports, incidental remarks, and allusions by the Bishop, give momentary, phantom-like glimpses of those strong personalities. Hanson, the patient missionary of Greene and Marengo; Lee, the pious, far-seeing builder of St. Paul's, Carlowville; Massey, the inde- fatigable "proselyter" of Mobile, founder of St John's and rector of Trinity; Cushman, the cheerful and scholarly incumbent of Cahaba; Ingraham, the Bib- lical student, whose "Pillar of Fire," "Throne of David," and "Prince of the House of David," will live long in literature, to the shame of those who, though following the path blazed out by him, have -- 9
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followed but to wrest Scripture to their readers' de- struction; Mitchell, the Bishop's right arm in the rapidly growing parish of St. John's, Montgomery; and Stickney, of Marion, the most advanced Church- man and successful educator in Alabama ;- these are men whose deeds live after them, and whose memory is fragrant, though they did the work of the Master without ostentation and left behind them no connected story of their lives.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE THEOLOGICAL TONE.
T' HE character of a diocese is as real as the charac- ter of an individual. There may be inharmoni- ous elements here and there, but a composite photo- graph gives the mental and spiritual characteristics in clear-cut lines. Thus, no one would mistake the Churchmanship of Virginia for that of Fond du Lac, although the theology of scattered individuals in each diocese differs from the theology of the other diocese by less than any appreciable quantity.
So in this diocese, despite the few extreme teach- ers that have arisen on either wing, there is a tone of theology and Churchmanship that has never changed in essence, however much the expression of it has changed to grapple with new conditions. "Ala- bama Churchmanship" is regarded in Virginia as having Romish tendencies, and in Fond du Lac as being little better than Episcopated Sectarianism. But in truth, while Rome is not its goal, neither is Geneva its anti-Christ.
As now, so in the episcopate of the first Bishop, Alabama held that the via media was both the via salutis and the via veritatis. The theology of the Early Fathers of the diocese was in harmony with that of their diocesan. They chose him because he was of their poise. He stamped his own theology upon the diocese, in congregations and in his young clergy,
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and the stamp has been repeated and the impression deepened by his successors and theirs.
It should not be forgotten that this was a time of alarm and contention in the national Church and in inany diocesan households. The inevitable leaning of democratic Americans towards a man-made demo- cratic "church," and their abhorrence of all imperi- alism, but especially of papal imperialism, marked with the mark of the Beast, was intensified by the re- cent developments in the Church of England, precip- itated by Newman's famous "Tract 90," and result- ing in more than three hundred clerical, and an unknown number of lay, defections to the Church of Rome. Everywhere men were looking for tenden- cies, tendencies were all presupposed to be Romeward, and the slightest departure from established ecclesi- astical customs was viewed with alarmed suspicion.
Consequently many of the Bishop's warnings, in sermon and in pastoral, were directed against the in- troduction of any novel practices, however innocent, in the conduct of services. The so-called "Cath- olicity " of Medieval Europe received inany a hard rap from him; but so also did that spurious liberality which condones sectarianism and declares that "one church is as good as another." The Bishop was not an alarmist, and his clearheaded diagnosis of the eccle- siastical situation in 1848 must have given much com- fort to the faint-hearted. His conviction was that inore uniformity in doctrine existed than might be inferred from many of the publications that were so . frequently appearing. "True it is," he acknowledged,
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"that there is diversity of opinion; but it is not so much because fundamental errors are held and taught, but because of the giving of undue prominence to some particular doctrines which some men, from edu- cation, position, or association, consider of peculiar importance-and who thus, whilst they do not deny, yet undervalue or partially present other doctrines of equal obligation."
"There may be those," he goes on, " who enter- tain low and defective views of the Church, her Ministry, and her Sacraments; but this class is con- stantly becoming more and more decided and con- servative in their principles and their practices. There may be those who are ultra in their views; who attach a superstitious and semi-papistical value to ordinances: who indulge in much affectation and cant about primi- tive Catholicity; who, though oftentimes but novices in the Church, take upon themselves to be wiser expounders of the Articles and Offices than the aged, learned, and godly men who framed the Prayer Book: yet this class of men, holding views so grossly incon- sistent with the standards of the Church, and being so extremely ridiculous by their pharisaical and sanc- timonious observances of various little peculiarities. will either gradually be rebuked by the good common- sense and the sound evangelical piety of the Church, or in extreme cases will ultimately pass over to a more corrupt and congenial communion. I would again repeat it as my firm belief, that the great body of the Church is sound not only in regard to the doctrines taught in the Offices of the Prayer Book, but to those
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great fundamental truths embodied in the Articles and Homilies."
The defection of Bishop Ives of North Carolina called forth a new deliverance from Bishop Cobbs, who viewed the perversion with mortification and shame for the Church, but used the occasion to incul- cate a lesson. "There may have been too much boasting and self-glorification on our part," he wrote, "too much overvaluing of Sacraments and Ordi- nances, and not enough of the faithful preaching of Christ crucified, too much departing from the Prot- estant principle of the Church as established at the Reformnation, too much relaxing of Christian morals in the way of apology for worldly conformity, and too much of sympathy and of tampering with Romish books, with Romish doctrines, and with Romish usages. * Let us, therefore, take in good part this chastisement, and learn to be more prayer- ful, more humble, more faithful, more devoted, and more holy. And let us not be driven from distinctive principles by the occasional defection of those who have gone out from us because they were not of us."
Again and again did the Bishop seek to impress upon the clergy that the charity for whose sake truth must be suppressed was in character spurious and in benefit ephemeral. In 1849 he wrote: "The doc- trine that it is a matter of indifference whether people belong to the One, True, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, or to any Christian organization of human origin, is one pregnant with fearful evil, and one that should be boldly met and frankly and fully exposed.
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However this doctrine may be praised and admired under the specious name of liberality, yet it is one which naturally terminates in an indifference to all religion, and not infrequently leads to open infidelity. If, then, we really regard the Church as a divine in- stitution, let it be fully and openly avowed; let men be urged to be united with it as a duty which they owe to God; let there be no compromising of her claims for the sake of expediency, and no merging of her means and her influence with other associations. . In this way, our children and the members of our con- gregation will grow up intelligent, devoted, and con- firmed members of the Church. They will be inter- ested in her welfare, they will be grounded and settled in the faith once delivered to the saints, and will be less in danger of falling into schism, either in the di- rection of Rome or of sectarianism."
If the Bishop seemed to dwell unduly upon the dis- tinctive rites, customs, and doctrines of the Church, he was fully warranted in doing so by the real sym- pathy of many of the laity for the unformulated and effusive liturgy of sectarianism, towards which they felt the more closely drawn the nearer the clergy seemed to approach the opus operatum of Roman sacramentarianism. He had to steer clear of both Scylla and Charybdis, to nourish evangelical piety without arousing schismatic tendencies, and to en- courage the seeking of sacramental grace without infusing a trust in the mere mechanism of a bodily deed. To impress upon the diocese the due propor- tion of the faith required constant iteration and re-
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iteration. But while he encouraged conservatism and rebuked extremism he put alarmists out of court very gently but very firmly. A certain clergyman, in whose soundness, sincerity, and ability he had full confi- dence, was accused to him of monkish and Romish practices. Among other counts it was charged with especial gravity that he frequently castigated himself. "Does he?" answered the Bishop; "Is that thie worst ? Tlien we must forgive him. If he does his own whipping depend upon it he will never get near so much as he deserves."
But the theology of the Bishop had to do with the pastoral relation as well as with the ecclesiastical. He insisted that it was the duty of the clergy person- ally to care for the children and the slaves and to train them in the doctrines of Christ and the Church. For ceremonialism, for merely formal relationship to the Church, for faith without faith-evincing works, he had a Christ-like contempt. Any teaching of the "wider hope " that encouraged men in the belief that, after serving the god of this world all the days of their life, they are to be made fit for heaven by a little peni- tential sorrow in their last moments, lie characterized as "an awful thing." Support of the work of the Church, in parish and in diocese, he held to be a duty, whose performance was not to be complimented as liberality, but whose neglect was to be reprehended as sin. This support was to be not merely in money but also in personal service, and service must be to God's glory, not to the glory of self. In neglect of this principle he found the cause of parochial schisms.
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"Did you ever notice how fond the Devil is of the Church?" he asked Mr. Lay one day in a stage- coach, after striving ineffectually all of the preceding day to adjust a parochial controversy. "I have been at a great many gatherings, from General Conventions down to vestry meetings, and I always find the Devil present, and wonderfully zealous for the Church. He whispers in the ear of this one and that, 'So far as you are personally concerned it would be well to be meek and gentle, but, my dear friend, consider the Church, consider the interests of evangelical truth;' and so he persuades them into complacent phiarisaism. As I was saying," he resumed after a short nap, "the Devil is a great apothecary. He knows we won't take his poison with the true name upon it, so he bottles it up and labels it in big letters ' Principle;' and, oh! how poor sinners will indulge in pride, will- fulness, party spirit, and selfishness, boasting all the while of their zeal for principle."* Very persistently and aggressively did he contend against theatre-going and ball-room dancing, and, while he did not censo- riously judge those whose profession was to teach dancing, he distinctly affirmed that he would not confirm a dancing-master.
With the constant pressure of such teaching upon clergy and people for sixteen years, the Churchman- ship of the diocese in those days is not a matter for discussion. Though many of the clergy are now spoken of as " old-fashioned High-Churchmen," they
This anecdote is given in Bishop Lay's Church Review memories of Bishop Cobbs.
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differed from new-fashioned High-Churchmen only in frowning upon a ritualism that seemed both ill- advised and corrupting. The services were, no doubt, painfully bare, and the music was execrable, but the trumpet gave no uncertain sound. Six years before Bishop Cobbs came to Alabama the Committee on the state of the Church could say: "When the Church has been exhibited, it has been as The Church; and as such is it still called for."* Lewis and Knapp have indeed been denominated "Low-Churchmen,"t but no one that has carefully read their published writ- ings can so place them. Lewis affirmed that (1) Christ established a Church, (2) organized its minis- try, (3) ordained its Sacraments and Ordinances, (4) and that these all were to be perpetuated to the end of the world; he only protested (and who does not agree with him? ) that Church, ministry, and sacra- ments were not the end but the means to the end, which was "Salvation to all who place their trust in Christ." Knapp's Churchmanship is forever placed beyond question by these words from his published sermon on the text "The Lord added daily to the Church such as should be saved ": "The Gospel never was designed to be preached independently of the Church-nor can it be, for the Church is part of the Gospel. We maintain that in order to be entitled to call ourselves and the communion to which we belong 'members of the Church ' we must have the same doctrines and ordinances that the first
* Journal of 1838, page 17.
t Christ Church, Mobile, Year Book for 1883, page 43.
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Christians had, and be in fellowship with the Apos- tles through the pervading bond of a ministry derived from them; that is, through the Apostolical Succes- sion. That we have this succession, this connecting bond, we can distinctly prove, as clearly as we prove the divine origin of our religion."
Such is the clear-cut, decisive teaching that Bishop and Priests alike gave the Churchmen of Alabama in the fourth and fifth decades of the present century. Much vaguer teaching was occasionally heard; but it was this definiteness and dogmatism, this doctrine tangible enough for the people to grasp, that com- mended itself to the hearers; and it was these cour- ageous ministers, who did not hesitate to preach the truth in love, that reaped the most bounteous harvests in their own day and left the most fruitful fields of the present generation.
CHAPTER XV.
PARISH LIFE.
D OMESTIC details reveal character more truth- fully than do widely-heralded deeds wrought before the public gaze. The gossip and small-talk of parish life tell us much that never comes to light in the study of diocesan institutions and of ecclesiastical development. To these it is purposed to turn for a while.
Only once in this episcopate did the diocese attempt to intermeddle in affairs strictly pastoral, parochial, or personal. In 1849 the Convention received, as part of a new system of canons, a series of provisions en- titled "Of Lay Discipline." The four canons of the series provided: (1) That every communicant should have daily family prayers; (2) That heads of families should instruct those under them, and send their chil- dren to the minister's catechetical instructions; (3) That notorious transgressors should be excluded, as from Holy Communion, so from Sponsorship; and (4) That the names of confirmed persons neglecting the Lord's Supper for the space of twelve months should be stricken from the roll of communicants. This attempt to enforce natural duty and to supersede pastoral responsibility by legislative enactment re- ceived short shrift from the Convention of 1850, when the canons were finally acted upon. Only the fourth provision met with favor; it was in force just one year,
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and no similar experiment in legislation has since been attempted.
The question, What constitutes a communicant? inet with more uncertain response then than meets it now. The present substitution of the words "Con- firmed Persons " for the word " Communicant " was not often made in those days. A communicant was, in general, not merely a potential communicant; he was an actual participant in the Supper of the Lord. Consequently the number of confirmed persons re- siding in a parish cannot be determined from records extant. Neither are we assisted in arriving at the approximate number of the confirmed by the fact that actual communicants are about seventy-five per cent. of the confirmed, for not only was the distinction between confirmed persons and de facto communi- cants not universal, but we cannot say positively what clergymen made the distinction and what did not. The only inference that can be made reasonably is, that a parish reporting twenty communicants was larger than is a parish reporting the same number to- day; but how much larger, it is impossible to estimate.
Of course the universal American custom of " call- ing" ministers held sway from the beginning. In inany parishes it was the custom to call a minister for a single year. * If he was liked he was re-elected from year to year. If he was not liked he was quietly dropped when the term of partnership expired, and another minister was chosen. In this way the awkward-
* This is still the nominal custom in St. Thomas' Church, Greenville.
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ness of asking a clergyman to resign and the cruelty of starving him into resigning were alike avoided. The hottest-headed partisan was, as a rule, able to wait a few months. Dr. Lewis was thus elected rector of Christ Church, Mobile, eleven times.
The ministerial salary, not over-large in prospect, was oftentimes even smaller in realization. Not a few of the clergy were compelled to eke out their salary by adding school-teaching to their clerical duties, Some of the clergy must have welcomed a bright Sun- day morning and a large congregation with somewhat more than spiritual joy, for their whole support came from the unpledged Sunday offerings of the congre- gation. Others whose stipends were fixed did not for a considerable period state the amount in their annual reports, excusing themselves on the ground that this was a private parochial arrangement to which it would be indelicate to refer publicly.
However hard this training, this combination of secular duties with ministerial, it was beneficial in that the Body Ecclesiastical in Alabama was, in the fullest measure, a "teaching Church." Parochial schools were multiplied, and in them were laid the foundations of Christian life and belief. The times were especially propitious for such schools, as no scheme of common-school education at public expense had yet been broached, and the schools were long in a flourishing condition in many places, notably in Mobile, Montgomery, Tuskaloosa, and Marion. In the last-named place the Rev. W. A. Stickney's school was especially successful, numbering more than eighty
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pupils and having a standing list of applicants for vacancies year after year .* Trinity Church, Mobile, conducted a free school which numbered more than a hundred pupils. Christ Church, Tuskaloosa, was never without its parish school. Much religious in- struction was given in the Rev. Mr. Cook's school at Talladega.
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