USA > Washington DC > The centennial of the beginning of Presbyterianism in the city of Washington > Part 4
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Holland probably holds the pre-eminence for schools supported by the government. "A land,"
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says Motley, "where every child went to school, where almost every individual inhabitant could read and write; where even the middle classes were proficient in mathematics and the classics, and could speak two or more modern lan- guages." From this it would follow almost as a matter of course, that among the first free schools supported by the Government in this country were those established by the Dutch settlers of New York.
We have spoken of Presbyterian truths and their growth into institutions, but great institutions have great men back of them ; principles are incar- nated in characters. I said that the institution is the shadow of a man. Let us now follow up the shadows to the great personalities that give them form and significance. Of what service have Pres- byterian men been to the cause of American liberty ? If I were to name the four men, who, in my opinion, incarnated more of reformation life and of the prin- ciples of the Reformed Church than any other, I should name two clergymen and two civilians ; they would be Calvin, Knox, Coligny and William of Orange. They were the representatives of cer- tain types of reformation doctrine. These types we will find reproduced in our land. Thus Calvin stood for the sovereignty of God, and for the equality of men. His doctrine of divine sover- eignty breathed again in the prayers on the May- flower and the religion of the Jamestown colonists, and afterward in public documents and in addresses
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in early colonial history. John Adams expressed it all when he said, while the fate of the Declara- tion was hanging in the balance of debate, "It is the will of Heaven that Great Britain and America should be sundered forever."
It was the mission of Calvin to put the idea of God into the constitutions of the thirteen States, and if ever the time shall come when that idea shall be dim in the popular thought, when the tonic of it shall disappear from our theology and the reason for it fade from our philosophy, we will only need to uncover colonial history to see it shine again in its brightness as it shone in the theology of the Reformer, like Mont Blanc among the snowy Alps.
The correlate of the idea of God is that of an independent and heroic manhood. This was illus- trated by the Hugenots in France, and the man who stands for its loftiest spirit is the Admiral Coligny.
When Louis XIV, that small great man, who was "little in war, little in peace, little in every- thing but the art of simulating greatness," re- voked the Edict of Nantes, a half million of the best sons of France were driven from their native land to sow the seeds of valor along the Rhine, the Maas, the Thames, and the Hudson. Their mark is to-day on all our greatness. Their heroism lived on many battle-fields of the Revolution. Thus, long before the chivalric devotion of La Fayette, we were bound to the land of arts, romance and heroism by the emi-
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grants who from the Penobscot to the Santee avowed the simple faith they had received from Geneva, and translated into martial valor on the fields of St. Denis and Orleans.
It was reserved for Scotland to wage war with princes for the kingship of Christ, and the lordship of the truth. John Knox was the ruling spirit of the storm.
Standing recently in the historic room in the house in Edinburgh where he lived and died, I was reminded of the debt which not only Scotland, but all who strove for liberty in any realm, owed that man, to see on the wall the words, Thomas Ran- dolph sent to Sir William Cecil : "This man Knox is able in one hour to put more life in us, than five hundred trumpets continually blustering in our ears."
And William of Orange, representing simplicity of life, regal dignity of character and unconquer- able aversion to all tyranny, is bound to us by the important relations of the Dutch Reformed Church to our own. These men who thus put the stamp of their rare manhood on the early history of the Reformation have worthy successors among us. The spirit of freedom which the old world brought to the new inspires our early Presbyterian history. Consider for a moment the make-up of the popula- tion of the original colonies.
Governor Horatio Seymour, of New York, first pointed out the fact that nine men prominent in the early history of New York and of the Union, rep-
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resented the same number of nationalities. Hear that remarkable cosmopolitan roll-call of honor : Seymour of Holland, Herkimer of Germany, Jay of France, Livingston of Scotland, Clinton of Ire- land, Morris of Wales, Hoffman of Sweden. Ob- serve the difference between the colonization of the country by the Presbyterians and the other denom- inations. New England was settled by the Puri- tans. Their polity early had the protection of the State. The Dutch were in favor with the reigning powers of New York. Virginia and other South- ern States protected Episcopalians. Maryland fos- tered the Roman Catholics, and Pennsylvania the Quakers. But the Presbyterians were the Lord's wandering sheep. They were scattered every- where ; their only protection their single-hearted devotion to the country and their faith. And they were as leaven that is hidden in the meal.
To New Jersey the Scotch gave her war governor, William Livingstone, and to Virginia Patrick Henry, who carried his State for independence, and who, as Mr. Jefferson once said to Daniel Webster, " was far before us all in maintaining the spirit of the Revolution."
In the Revolution they gave to the army such men as Knox, Sullivan and Stark from New Eng- land, Clinton from New York, General Robert Montgomery, who fell at Quebec, brave Anthony Wayne, the hero of Stony Point, Colonel John Eager Howard of Maryland, who saved the day at the battle of Cowpens, and Colonel William Camp-
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bell, who saved the day at King's Mountain, the most critical event of the contest in the South.
Of twenty-three presidents of the United States, the Scotch-Irish have contributed six : Jackson, Polk, Taylor, Buchanan, Johnson, and Arthur. The Scotch, three or four: Monroe, Grant, and Hayes, and, I believe, Harrison.
Even New England owes an unacknowledged debt to Scotland and Ireland. These lands gave a small but important contribution to her early his- tory. The Puritan, with his intense love of right- eousness and reverence for the authority of God and the dignity of man, stamped his character, not only upon New England, but broadly, through the country. But the Puritans were all Calvinists and many of them were Presbyterians ; so were the Dutch ; so were the French Hugenots. The great ideas growing into great institutions on these shores were borne upon the shoulders of great men, and these men, in very large proportion, were men who were inspired by the faith of the Reformers, and who gave their lives to Reformation principles. And they suffered for their faith in many cases, much as their fathers had suffered on the other side of the sea. Intolerant legislation, bigotry, and power of the established church in the Carolinas gave our fathers a chance to taste the cup of per- secution. The treatment which Francis Makemie and many of his compeers experienced at the hands of governors and judges, all fitly links the history of American Presbyterianism with the memories
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of the English, Irish and Scotch dissenters under the reign of the Stuarts.
There is no time to call the roll of honored names whose lives have gone into the building of our nat- ional temple. From Francis Makemie to the pres- ent time, it is a roll of which the church may well be proud. William Tennant the Irish Presbyterian, on the banks of the Neshaminy laid up the logs of the rude building that was the precursor of Princeton University. It was a graduate of Prince- ton, Ephraim Brevard who wrote the Mecklinberg Declaration ; the pen stroke that in 1775 separated one county in North Carolina from the British crown, which first asserted the doctrine, that Americans were and of right, ought to be a free and independ- ent people. I am aware that Prof. John Fiske has sought to discredit this Mecklinberg Declaration. But it probably is too well imbedded in the history of the times to be now dislodged. Indeed the col- onization of North and South Carolina by Scotch and Irish people, forms a most interesting and fruit- ful theme for historic study. From Eastern Mary- land the stream flowed westward and southward and gave a stamp to all that reigon, which has made it pre-eminently and unconquerably the Protestant region of America. Recent investigations disclose the fact that the Protestant element of North Caro. lina is seventy-one per cent. of the population and South Carolina nearly as high. It was Samuel Davis, who with almost matchless oratory, evangelized Vir- ginia. It was John Witherspoon who, when Con-
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gress for amoment wavered between the slavery and the liberty of his country, lifted his voice till the old hall rang again. " For my part, of property I have some, of reputation more. That property is staked, that reputation is pledged on the issue of this contest. Although these gray hairs must soon descend into the sepulchre, I would infinitely rather they would descend thither by the hand of the public executioner than desert at this crisis the sacred cause of my country."
The Declaration of Independence, as now preser- ved at the State Department, is in the hand writing of a Scotch-Irishman, Charles Thomson, the Sec- retary of Congress. It is said to have been first printed by Thomas Dunlap, another Scotch-Irish- man, and a third Scotch-Irishman, Captain John Nixon of Philadelphia, was the first to read it to the people. Indeed the Presbyterians were rebels al- most to a man. The synod of New York and Phila- delphia was the first ecclesiastical body that coun- seled open resistance to England. The ministers committed themselves in their pulpits to the cause of American freedom, and of many of them it might be said, as it was said of John Craighead of Penn- sylvania, that he fought and preached alternately.
And they suffered persecution in the cause of liberty. The British hated them with a cordial hatred. Dr. Rodgers of New York was obliged to leave his church to save his life. Others were car- ried off captives. Duffield, honorable name in our history, was at one time while the enemy were on
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Staten Island, preaching to the soldiers in an orchard across the bay. The forks of a tree served him for a pulpit. The noise of the singing at- tracted the attention of the enemy. Presently the balls began to whistle about the preacher's head ; undismayed, he moved his audience to a position of safety behind a hillock, and there finished his sermon.
Many of the Presbyterian ministers were engaged in civil service for their country. Witherspoon was a prominent member of the Continental Con- gress. Jacob Green, father of Ashbel Green, was a member of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey, and chairman of the committee that drafted the State Constitution.
William Tennant of Charleston was a member of the Provincial Congress of South Carolina, and frequently on the same day he would address audi- ences in his church on the salvation of their souls, and in the State House on the salvation of the country.
"Show me the blood and I will show you the man." The blood of the Covenanters fought on the battlefields of the Revolution.
A few months ago I traversed the moors of Scot- land. I stood by the monument of Cameron and his comrades on the spot where they fell ; by the monument of John Brown who was shot in front of his house by the Claverhouse Dragoons. I traced the marks of martyrdom from the Irish Sea to the Highlands, and had recalled to me again the hero-
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ism of the fathers, who at Bothwell Bridge and along the Nith and the Ayr, fought battles for freedom which have echoed around the world.
It was a matter of course that their decendants would be rebels against tyranny, and would resist stamp acts and taxation without representation, even to the death.
The recent investigations of the Scotch-Irish Society have disclosed an interesting history con- nected with the poor whites of the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee and West Virginia. They are largely composed of Scotch and Scotch-Irish people who refused to join the ranks of the Southern army, and in silence and poverty and deepening ignorance kept their faith sternly with their coun- try and their God, amid the rock fortresses of the mountains. They are an obscure people-but it is from some one of those families came that great soul-whose is the only name that Americans write level with the name of Washington-Abraham Lincoln of Kentucky.
Thus have I endeavored in merest outline to sketch the obligations of our country to the prin- ciples, institutions, and persons of our church.
From the vantage ground of this review we may take a bold and hopeful look to the future. What in a historic spirit may be expected from Presbyterianism in the America of the future ? We accord peculiar honor to the fatherlands and their heroes when we claim a progressive church and de- clare that our inheritance had such vitality that
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we have improved on the original type. Our doc- trines are broader, our spirit more catholic, our missionary conception more daring, more Christ- like. We bear the lineaments of our origin and are proud of them ; but the type is American and good for a march around the world. Our spectrum holds the best metal of the old saints and the liv- ing light of to-day.
What now is the possible contribution which our church may make to the future of the country ?
The great theological truths that stand related to national progress have been uttered. The soy- ereignty of God and the dignity of man are the great correlate ideas which have been bequeathed to us by the Reformation. They furnish the soil out of which strong nationality may grow. These ideas, viewed in the harmonizing light of the Cross in which divine sonship and human brotherhood appear, constitute a sufficient ethical basis for a great and progressive state. These ideas, so re- garded in Calvary's light, the Presbyterian church carries on all her banners.
We need not greatly reconstruct our theology. Its essential elements are sufficient for the power of a church and the well-being of the state. The pe- culiar mission of the next century will be to apply them. We will never have another theologizing period like the 17th century, nor a time of the de- velopment of stately church polity like the 18th century, but the problem of the present is to de- velop the kingdom of God working in and through
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the kingdoms of men. In a word, the living ques- tions of religion are those which work in with so- cial, civic, and national life. The church never had so good a chance to be a blessing to the nation as now. It must come, of course, through the ab- solute independence of each. We, first among the children of men, are in condition to prove the ethi- cal possibilities of Christianity. Calvin, Luther, Melancthon could not, because a church is never at its best, spiritually, till it is wholly free from state control. But we can, and, therefore, we must.
How shall this be done ? I will name three di- rections : First. By education. This is a safeguard of the republic. This is the historic glory of Pres- byterianism. I have given you the origin of free schools in Geneva, Holland, Scotland. The history of our church in this country has been one of de- votion to education. The church and the school and the college have flourished side by side all the way from Neshaminy Creek to the Colum- bia River. We have been true to the public free schools. Why should we not be? We made free schools. We have carried the curriculum upward to the university level. See the signal lights, as you may sight them across the continent, of Wash- ington and Jefferson, Oxford, Wooster, Wabash, Lake Forest, Park, and others, binary stars of the mingled radiance of letters and the Gospel.
Again, the brightest, fairest dream our country is dreaming to-day is that of social and civic re- forms. It is more than a dream. The morning
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seems about to dawn, and strong men are shaking slumber from them and arising to attack the wild beasts of evil passions that so long have had their hands on the nation's throat ; beasts of intemper- ance, licentiousness, greed of money, prostitution of official position, tyranny of the strong over the weak. These beasts have made our fair cities bloody with their rage and assaulted the fair fame of our country as the home of liberty and the friend of man. And, mark it, these reforms are being pushed forward in the name of the Lord of hosts.
And who is leading the hosts of civic reform in our metropolis ? Is it not a Presbyterian minister ? And who in our National Capital put a throb of conscience into political strife when he said, " Pub- lic office is a public trust " ? Who but a Presby- terian President and the son of a Presbyterian manse ? And who, a few years earlier in the same high office, stood for official purity and integrity, illustrating meanwhile the Gospel of the grace of God in an open Christian life but a Presbyterian Elder ?
The Presbyterian church is the steadfast friend of all reforms. She believes nations reach their ultimate destiny as organic parts of the kingdom of God. To that end she is striving to apply the highest power of her doctrines to the deepest moral needs of man. And here she has such a theatre for this endeavor as the world never presented before. All the nations of the earth are here. Rome never humbled before her sword so many peoples as have
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been drawn by our light of liberty. It remains to see what the Gospel can do to meet and master for God these world-wide conditions. To our church and to the others with us (for this enterprise trans- cends denominations) there is an unparalleled chance to prove the practical efficiency of our com- mon faith. And in the proving of it society will be purified and the nation achieve her third charter of freedom. Her first she won on the battlefields of the Revolution-her second amid the struggles of the Rebellion-her third will come on the blood- less field of a contest for the working power of Christian truth and the realization of a Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
But once more-this nation is throned amid nations. It is no idle boast-but a geographical truth to say, America is the natural, commercial and political center of the world. The Anglo- Saxon race is, to-day, and destined to be, increas- ingly in coming time, the dominant race of the world. It unites in one the individualism of Greece-the organizing faculty of Rome-the relig- ious power of the old Hebrews. But the Hebrews were shut in a narrow hill country-the Greeks on a little Peninsula-the Romans even, had a small realm as a permanent possession. The Anglo-Saxon race at home has only a few small islands. The Anglo-Saxon race in America has come to its great inheritance. It has here attained the highest civil- ization-it has amassed the greatest wealth-it has the most magnificent continental theatre for its un-
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folding. In the unfolding it will have a great duty to other nations. Thus it must become a teacher of certain great truths.
One of these is the brotherhood of man. Our open ports have taught it east and west. Some people think perilously : not if Christian truth leavens the doctrine of human rights; not if the principles of fraternity and moral accountability too founded in the Gospel and illustrated by churches are carried on the front of our civilization. The nation depends upon the church to keep these great truths to the front-nay, to push them through missionary enterprise in the nations of the world. Missions imply at once loyalty to Church and the nation. "In the good of every nation all the rest have equal share." The missionary work of our church stands closely in with the permanence of republican principles. America will reach her high destiny only when she says to tyrannies and idol- atries east and west, "All ye are brethren and children of one God," and it is the missionary must say these things. We had a grand illustration in New York of the relations between patriotism and aggressive Christianity, when at a great missionary meeting an ex-President of the United States pre- sided and an ex-Secretary of State, from a per- sonal inspection of mission fields, pleaded for the moral regeneration of the nations around us. Re- cent and accumulating horrors excite me to say there is one mission duty which America owes to the world and to the God of justice, which I fear
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the church is not properly accoutred to perform, a gospel of justice which I fear can only be preached with an unsheathed sword for a gesture and deep-throated cannon for argument, to the end that the unspeakable Turk and his unspeakable government may be blotted from the earth.
It has been the historic glory of Presbyterians to stand up against oppression. May her genius inspire our Government to exalt and maintain a lofty ideal of righteousness among men.
If ever the time comes in the future when our country must defend against internal weakening or the rush of external storms-the principles and the institutions which have made her great and made her noble, may Presbyterians-once again- be worthy of the blood that is in them. May the fields and the men of the old conflicts rise upon their vision for an inspiration.
I have read somewhere a story of a battle above, which, as in mirage, a heavenly prototype was hang- ing in transfigured light, and those who fought be- low were cheered on by seeing the glorified battle scene, where all the seeming defeats below were pictured in the colors of a glorious victory.
Such an inspiration will be for all who fight for liberty in the future. There above the clouds and above the alternations of earthly chance-we may see the transfigured fields all glorious in the light of triumph. There is Orleans and Leyden-there is Marston Moor and Bothwell Bridge ; there too are the bloodless fields of intellectual and moral agony.
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There are Wittenberg and Geneva; Dort and St. Andrews; and as I see earthly defeat, uplifted into victory there, in the fair prospective of his- tory, there in the bending sky of the gracious cen- turies-faces come out and look down upon us-no longer scarred and anxious and bleeding, but serene in an imperial majesty and benignant with divine encouragement. The thin visage of Calvin softened till it looks like a benediction ; the piercing coun- tenance of Knox, gracious and at rest ; the stately figure of William of Orange ; the noble bearing of Coligny, calm as that marble image of him, that looks out upon the Rue de Rivoli at Paris. And they are our fathers, and we are their children. And if Heaven calls us or our descendants into stress or storm, our knowledge of their victories and our sense of our lineage will keep us true to our place, our country, and our God.
Tuesday Evening, November 19th, 1895.
PRESBYTERIANS AND EDUCATION. HENRY M. MacCRACKEN, D. D., LL. D., Chancellor of the University of the City of New York.
I am not here to-night to recount the educational achievements of American Presbyterianism. So much remains to be done in our land in the cause of education, that I shall ask you as Presbyterians to look this hour not to the past, so much as to the present. I trust thus, to reach a practical end, namely, the turning of your minds to the question, what work have we to do for education in America ? Three characteristics should belong to any work thus proposed. First, it must be one which greatly needs to be done. Second, it must be one in which Pres- byterians may undertake to lead without presump- tion. Third, the enterprise should be such as this Centennial of Presbyterianism in the capital city of the United States of America might fittingly in- augurate.
Possibly there may occur to your minds various tasks which fulfill all of these conditions. The view, however, of the educational field, which my office has given me throughout many years past, im presses this one subject more highly than any other namely, the systematizing, strengthening and
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honoring of higher education in the United States of America.
First, I shall argue that this work needs to be done, and that Presbyterians may fittingly lead in attempting it. You will allow me to present this argument not in abstract propositions, but by con- crete facts, in the way of illustration.
There happens to be in the world one Presbyter- ian country. This country has attempted much in the way of higher education. I will place this land and our own side by side for the sake of com- parison and suggestion. I mean the land of Scot- land ; the little nation of four millions. I shall dwell on Scotland as an object-lesson in both Pres- byterianism and education. Scotland is more than four-fifths a thoroughly Presbyterian people. Of the other fifth the majority are Protestants of the Independent or Episcopalian pattern. Not one- tenth of the nation is Catholic or far removed in religious sympathy from its Presbyterian popula- tion.
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