USA > Alabama > History of the Protestant Episcopal church in Alabama, 1763-1891 > Part 9
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* This was increased to $3, oco in 1863.
t He was translated to Easton, Maryland, in 1869, being first Bishop of that Diocese.
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the Episcopate, and had often forgotten that, though of exceptional ability, he was not, therefore, excused from observance of the amenities of ministerial inter- course. At any rate, whether or not his previous manner had been offensive in reality, Mr. Lay was not popular among the clergy, and three times they rejected the name of one whom the laity would have received with acclamation.
After an interval the clergy returned and informed the laity that their choice was the Rev. William Pinkney, D. D., of Maryland .* A recess was taken, and when the Convention re-assembled in the after- noon the laity rejected the clerical nomination. The clergy again retired to make a new nomination, but being unable to agree upon any person suggested that the Convention adjourn till night. When night came the clergy were still in dead-lock, and requested further adjournment till morning. When the morn- ing came the clergy were yet unable to make nomina- tion, some still pressing for Bishop Lay and more desiring to re-nominate Dr. Pinkney, but the majority feeling that such insistence would rouse violent oppo- sition among the laity. When, therefore, the morn- ing session was called to order a committee of confer- ence between the clergy and the laity was suggested, and a resolution was introduced to postpone the elec- tion to a future day. After considerable skirmishing and parliamentary wrangling postponement was car- ried, and the Convention adjourned to meet in St. Paul's Church, Selina, on November 21.
* Dr. Pinkney became Coadjutor Bishop of Maryland in 1870.
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In the intervening months informal conferences were held, views were exchanged, search was made, and friction reduced. When the Convention met at the appointed time and place it was able to finish its labors and adjourn in a single-day. A few still desired Bishop Lay; but it was not long before the unanimous choice of clergy and laity was declared to be the Rev. Richard Hooker Wilmer, D. D., of Virginia. The Committee to notify Dr. Wilmer of his election colt- sisted of the Rev. Messrs. Hanson, Massey, and Tich- enor, and Messrs. J. D. Phelan, H. L. Alison, and H. A. Tayloe. The Standing Committee were in- structed to signify to the Senior Bishop of the Church in the Confederate States the desire of the Convention that the consecration of the Bishop-elect be held in Mobile.
Dr. Wilmer accepted the position offered him. His election was ratified by the Bishops and Standing Committees of the Confederate Dioceses, and order was taken for his consecration. It was attempted to have the consecration in Mobile, as had been re- quested, but the condition of the country was so unsettled that though the time was set and the conse- crators were notified to be present, the day arrived without the necessary consent of a majority of the Bishops. Postponement was unavoidable; and at length, on March 6, 1862, the consecration was held in St. Paul's Church, Richmond, Va., Bishop Meade presiding and joining with Bishops Johns and Elliott in the Laying-on-of-Hands. This was Bishop Meade's last public act. He returned from the church to his death-bed.
CHAPTER II.
BISHOP WILMER'S EARLY LIFE.
T HE second Bishop of Alabama was born at Alex- andria, Va., on March 15, 1816. His father, the Rev. William H. Wilmer, D. D., was one of three brothers, all of whom were clergymen. His brother, Dr. George T. Wilmer, also entered the ministry, and his cousin, Joseph P. B. Wilmer, became Bishop of Louisiana.
Richard Hooker Wilmer graduated at Yale College in 1836, at the age of twenty. Three years later he completed his theological course at the Virginia Theo- logical Seminary, and was, on Easter Day, 1839, made deacon by Bishop Moore. On the next Easter Day the same Bishop advanced him to the priesthood.
His ministerial life exemplified the real itinerancy of a Church whose theory is that under normal condi- tions only death shall dissolve the marriage of min- ister and parish. In 110 one of his charges did Mr. Wilmer remain longer than five years. The first few years of his ministry were spent in Goochiland and Fluvanna counties, Va. His success from the first was apparent to mien, and soon large parishes were asking him to become their rector. Offers were made to him by wealthy and influential parishes in many cities of the diocese, and by congregations in other dioceses. Once, and once only, was he bewitched by the glamour of " a wider field of usefulness." For a
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RICHARD HOOKER WILMER SECOND BISHOP OF ALABAMA (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ABOUT 1895).
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single year early in his ministry he was rector of St. James' Church, Wilmington, N. C., the largest parish in the diocese, and the experience of that single year sufficed for a life-time. The climate was insalubrious. The high pressure and the thronging anxieties of a city parish, allowing little room for mental and spirit- ual refreshment, were incompatible with his nature and his methods. He felt himself called to be a preacher of righteousness-if of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, so too (and not less) of the righteousness of those who were called of Christ. To do his ap- pointed work thoroughly he must have time for study and meditation, and opportunity to grasp and eluci- date root principles, without which all preaching, however earnest and attractive, is superficial in nature and ephemeral in effect. So, after this one year in Wilmington he went back to Virginia, and entered upon his work among the country parishes, whence no urban or metropolitan calls afterwards seduced him. Five years he ministered in Clarke county, three years in Loudoun and Fauquier, and from 1853 to 1858 in Bedford.
Everywhere his preaching was marvellous in effect, causing multitudes to turn from sin unto righteous- ness. The reason was patent: The grace of God was supplemented by the labors of man. The preacher placed himself en rapport with his hearers. Not like a certain archer of old did he shoot his arrow at a venture. Never did he rest content with the bald statement of abstract principles. His sermons were preached every one to cover the case of a person
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whom he had in both physical and mental view. His first step in preparing a sermon was to sit down and write a letter of friendly and ministerial rebuke and encour- agement to that person ; from this letter, as from a chrysalis, evolved the sermon that found and pierced the links of sin's protecting armor.
It was a time that needed just such bold, direct, searching sermons. The men of Virginia, with all the great unspiritual virility of Esau, deemed it the unmanliest thing a man could do to profess and call himself a Christian, and rejoiced over the emancipa- tion of a youth who began to relate profane jests. Mr. Wilmer's first charge embraced about fifty miles of country along the James River. It was settled by descendants of Church families, and yet it did not contain one male communicant. Indeed, not a single male communicant was to be found along the river from Lynchburg to Richmond, a distance of one hun- dred and fifty miles. It was one of the churches in this spiritually destitute region that the fox-hunting, hard-drinking planters built, under unthinking im- pulse, for the " amusement " of their wives. And it was in this same church, not long after, that every man save one of that drinking party kneeled at the chancel rail and confirmed the vows of his long- neglected baptism. Of such kind was the material Mr. Wilmer had to work upon, and such was the fruit of his toil.
It was the frequent practice of the Virginia clergy of that day to hold what were called " associations "- forerunners of our present day "missions." The
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ministers would go forth by twos and preach at one point for a week or ten days. It was thus that in the early days of his ministry the second Bishop of Ala'- bama was thrown in contact with the first. A strong attachment grew up between Mr. Cobbs and Mr. Wilmer, and to this fondness of the older for the younger did Bishop Wilmer attribute the fact that he was called to succeed his friend in every charge that Mr. Cobbs left-Bedford, Petersburg, Cincinnati, Alabama; though he accepted the calls only to Bed- ford and Alabama.
In the summer of 1858 Mr. Wilmer was closing the fifth year of his ministry in Bedford county. For eighteen years he had been doing missionary work that necessarily kept him much from home, and he was beginning to feel that the natural duties of hus- band and father required his settlement in charge of a single congregation. At this time, and almost simul- taneously, several parishes invited him to their rector- ship. While these invitations were under considera- tion he received from a friend with whom he had long been intimate-John Stewart, of Brook Hill,-a proposition that appealed to him more strongly than any other, and ultimately proved irresistible. Mr. Stewart was a resident of Henrico County, and lived a few miles out from Richmond. He was surrounded by many extremely poor people, who were living in practical atheism. He did not aspire to the role of Dives. He felt that God, having given him wealth, and therefore expecting an account of his stewardship, it behooved him to expend his money for the benefit
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of the Lord's children. He proposed, then, that Mr. Wilmer come to that neighborhood and attempt to instil Christ's teaching into the hearts of the poor; he himself would take care of the temporal considera- tions. Mr. Wilmer consulted some of his friends. They unanimously condemned the proposition as visionary, and advised him to reject it without more ado; otherwise, they said in effect, he would be throwing away several of the best years of his life. It was right to make sacrifices for the sake of the Gospel; but to cast pearls before swine -! But to the heart and the mind of the minister the call seemed, after four months of indecision, manifestly divine. He accepted it, and at the same time pledged himself to give the project a three years' trial.
When he reached his new field, a field of unknown discouragements and possibilities, he had to begin at the very foundation. Services were at first held in a school-room which was used as the common property of all religious denominations. Gradually the hearts of the people were gained. Very soon a church was built, nominally by the congregation at large, the poorest giving his mite, but practically by John Stewart and his brother Daniel. Then a rectory was com- pleted. The congregations and communicants in- creased steadily until, at the end of three years, a crowded church and a full chancel-rail attested the permanence of the work. The voice of sectarianism had always been that the Church was not suited to the unlearned and uncultured. This experiment at Emmanuel Church disproved the charge. Its success
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attracted wide-spread attention, and on all sides it was felt that God was with him who had wrought this work. Alabama's Bishop was dead, and the bereaved diocese called on the Bishop's old friend to take his place.
Dr. Wilmer's pledge of three years' service had been redeemed; the work was secure and could safely be entrusted to another; and he accepted the call to be Bishop of Alabama.
CHAPTER III.
WAR TIMES.
MMEDIATELY after his consecration Bishop Wil- mer came to Alabama and entered upon his Epis- copal duties, working throughout Lent in Mobile, and making a number of inland visitations near Easter. Bishop Green of Mississippi had made the requisite confirmational visits in 1861, but much work had accumulated which neither a visiting Bishop nor a Standing Committee could perform. Within less than six weeks the new Bishop had visited nearly the whole of the southern portion of the diocese, and had con- firmed in Mobile alone ninety persons.
Scarcely had Bishop Wilmer set foot on Alabama soil when he was called upon to decide some questions which tested his calibre and whose solution manifested the deep sagacity for which he has ever since been famous. Day by day it became increasingly probable that some of the cities of Alabama would in the not distant future be occupied by Federal troops. When these troops took possession of towns where there were congregations of the Protestant Episcopal Church they would find a body of Christians praying, in due course of the service, for the President of the Confed- erate States. In such cases it was certain that trouble would ensue. The clergy asked the Bishop what course they should pursue.
The Bishop's reply was clear and decided: The
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Diocese of Alabama, an autonomous Church, had severed her connection with the Church in the United States, which was now a foreign Church; she had recognized the facts of geography as stated by a sover- eign and independent power, and gladly acquiescing had for more than a year used the prayer for those in civil authority not in a foreign country, but in the "Confederate States "; the mere occupation of the soil by an invading force could not absolve Churchmen from their allegiance to the government of their delib- erate choice; while armed soldiery might occasionally exercise power over them only the Confederate gov- ernment exercised authority; and finally, to allow military force to overawe them into praying for a government which they did not acknowledge to be › their rightly constituted government would be to be guilty of untruthfulness and dishonor .*
Would the Bishop, then, advise the clergy to use the prayer for the President of the Confederate States in the very teeth of the Federal soldiery?
Not so. To do this would be to bring on scandal- ous scenes in the sanctuary, and to invite even physic- . al violence in the house of God. The course to be pursued was: First, to inquire of the commanding officer whether he designed to interfere with public worship; and then, in case he replied that he would compel either the prayer for the President of the United States to be used or all reference to civil authority to be omitted, to close the church, throwing the odium and responsibility of suspending the public
* Bishop Wilmer's first Convention Address, 1862.
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worship of God on those who sought to establish a state religion after their own imaginings. This was the course followed by nearly all the clergy. One minister, however, insisted on keeping his church open, and with precisely the result that Bishop Wil- mer had foreseen. Disturbance was raised by a Fed- eral officer, who presented the alternatives of immediate use of the Prayer for the President of the United States or immediate cessation of the service. The poor clergyman chose the former alternative, and, as he afterwards explained apologetically, "used the prayer under protest." The status before God of a prayer made under protest, the Bishop grimly said, he would leave for others to determine.
This enforced closing of the churches was not, how- ever, immediate, and was never universal. For more than a year subsequently only the Tennessee Valley was even temporarily in Union hands, and parish work went on without undue incident. But as the war progressed and the situation became graver, women, children, and disabled men formed the entire congregation. With the payment of salaries at a standstill and a currency depreciated almost beyond belief, the clerical life became a life of extreme hard- ship and simple endurance. To have the entire income reduced to one-fourth its former sum in a twelve-month, and yet to remain steadfast and un- movable at the post of duty, was a severe trial, but the clergy to a man comprehended the situation and quit them like men. Their hardships were some- what mitigated by the liberality with which some of
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their parishioners furnished them food from their own larders. The only parishes that were left without a minister were those whose ministers went to the front to become army chaplains, and to endure greater hardness that they might the better care for the souls of the men of the South. A result of their work was soon visible in the increased number of young men confirmed when at home on furlough.
Throughout the war the number of confirmed per- sons was large, and in the Conventional year 1863-64 reached a total of three hundred and thirty-seven. It was felt that God does not absent Himself from battle- fields, and that His Church is not intended to do her work only in time of peace and quietude. Men's hearts were stirred, and Christ came in the press of the multitude. In the larger towns of Montgomery and Mobile city missionaries began their work-in the former among its English-speaking poor, in the latter among the French and Germans. In the Black Belt numerous chapels were erected by planters for their slaves. Stickney, Cushman, Jarratt, Christian and others ministered almost exclusively to the Negroes. Stickney alone ministered to the slaves on eight large plantations in Marengo and the canebrake, preacli- ing, baptizing, communicating, organizing into classes and watchmen, imposing penance on evil-livers, and in many ways reverting to early ecclesiastical disci- pline in his vain attempt to impose upon these volatile people the indissolubility of morality and religion. Menaeos ministered to five congregations just north of Stickney's field, and on a single occasion baptized
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twenty-seven Negro children. In 1864 the Bishop himself confirmed twenty-one Negro adults in Tuska- loosa, where the Rev. R. D. Nevius was interesting himself deeply in the Christianization of the slaves. That such work as this should have been conducted amidst the horrors of a war of which the Negro was the immediate occasion is remarkable. That it should have been persevered in despite the disastrous crisis evidently now near at hand is confirmation strong as Holy Writ of the sincerity and unselfishness of those who labored, and of those who permitted and encouraged the work.
As the war progressed a new sphere of beneficence opened to the Church. An unusual number of orphans were the fruit of the battle-field, and many of these orphans were left entirely destitute. To many the Church became a veritable nursing-mother. St. John's, Montgomery, was the first parish to under- take the systematic care of orphans. Its "Bishop Cobbs' Orphans' Home" was in active operation throughout the entire conflict, and when the Federal troops occupied the city the commanding officer, ascertaining that the Home was named after his old minister in Cincinnati, detailed a special guard and furnished the Home with a month's supply of pro- visions.
The Bishop having commended this parish's benev- olence to the diocese as worthy of imitation, the Council of 1864 passed a series of resolutions calling on every parish to establish within its boundaries a similar institution. This was a rather more sweeping
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expression of opinion than the Bishop either expected or desired; for while he believed that a single large institution was less desirable than several small ones he perceived, plainly enough, that it was not practi- cable, and not desirable, to establish a Church Home for Orphans in every parish. Therefore as the evolu- tion of the scheme had been left to him, he settled upon Mobile and Tuskaloosa as the places where the orphans might most easily be collected. These places, in addition to Montgomery's existing Home, would suffice for the present.
The attempt at Mobile was ill-timed and unsuc- cessful. The expense in Confederate money would have been enormous. The city was momentarily threatened by the enemy. Men were in no mood to hear of the planting of another institution, so strait- ened were they to obtain the necessities of existence, so doubtful of the morrow. The Churchmen of the place, with whom the Bishop held preliminary con- sultation, emphatically discountenanced even a tenta- tive canvass for subscriptions, and the Bishop reluc- tantly retired from the field .*
More successful was the attempt at Tuskaloosa. Here the rector and the vestry were deeply interested, heartily seconded the Bishop's efforts, and gave more than eight thousand dollars. All the parishes in that section of the state were appealed to for help, and all responded most liberally-Marion giving over six thousand dollars, Faunsdale, Demopolis, and Selma, each five thousand dollars, and Greensboro thirteen
* Convention Address for 1865, p. II.
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thousand. In a short time fifty thousand dollars had been secured. With thirty thousand of this a build- ing lot and garden were bought and a dwelling and school-house built. Ten thousand dollars was set aside for investment in real estate with a view to endowment, and the remainder was reserved for cur- rent expenses.
During the first few months of its existence only eight orphans were received into the Home, but in conjunction with the Home a parochial school of fifty pupils was conducted. The immediate charge of this work was committed to three deaconesses whom the Bishop set apart by prayer, but without imposition of hands, in Christ Church, Tuskaloosa, on December 20, 1864. The institution of the order of deaconesses proved that Bishop Wilmer's conception of the inher- ent powers of the Episcopate was not fettered by the shackles of canonical provision. This primitive order, with Phoebe of Cenchrea as its best known represent- ative, had no place in the polity of the American Church. But men of a catholic grasp of mind could not wait for a slow-moving General Convention to give its imprimatur to an inalienable right and the supplying of an immediate necessity. In 1845 Dr. Muhlenberg had set apart one woman for the work of the diaconate in the parish of the Holy Communion, New York City. In 1855 Bishop Whittingham had instituted a similar order in St. Andrew's parish, Baltimore. Bishop Wilmer had only these staunch Churchmen as his predecessors; what they agreed upon was sufficient warrant for any ecclesiastical departure.
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CHAPTER IV.
THE BISHOP AND GENERAL ORDERS.
T' HE War of the Secession closed with the over- turning of the Confederate Government, and the subversion of the government of the seceded States, the abrogation of their Constitutions, and the annihilation of their entire civil polity. Alabama was a military province, her Governor was held under duress, and Federal soldiery administered justice.
Under these conditions a very serious ecclesiastical difficulty presented itself. The use of the Prayer Book prayer for those in civil authority in the Con- federate States had of course been discontinued when the Confederacy fell. But no other civil authority had been substituted for that which had been destroyed. Not only so, but it was a widely favored suggestion that the temporary occupation of the State by soldiers should be permanent, and the State be reduced to the slavish condition of a military province. For such a condition, nay, for such a prospect, Bishop Wilmer felt that neither he nor his clergy nor his people could ask long continuance. They could most heartily pray God to give the military power "grace to execute justice and maintain truth," but they could not ask God to grant their commander-in-chief "health, prosperity, and long life." For the exist- ing state of government, impersonated in the Presi- dent, the Bishop frankly stated that he desired the
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least length of days and the least measure of pros- perity consistent with the permissive will of God .*
Feeling thus, the Bishop, on June 20, 1865, issued the following Pastoral Letter to the clergy and laity of the diocese:
"The lapse of the Confederate Government does not necessarily involve the disorganization of the General Council of the Church within the limits of that Government. The nationality of a church is a matter purely conventional, and of human arrange- ment. It is assuredly possible for two church organi- zations to exist under one common civil government without violating the unity of the Church. There is an essential difference between the unity of branches of the Church and their union in one legislative body. For example, the Church in England is in perfect unity with the Church in the United States; but there is no legislative union between these Churches. Again, and this is a case more nearly in point, the Church in Scotland is in unity with the Church in England, and yet they exist as distinct organizations under a common civil government. Consequently, no charge of schism can justly lie against the Church in the Southern States in case she should see fit to perpetuate herself through a separate organization. She does not thereby necessarily depart from the unity of the Church in doctrine, discipline, or order. Therefore, it may or may not, as circumstances indi- cate, be advisable and expedient to dissolve the Gen-
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