USA > Delaware > Methodism of the peninsula, or, Sketches of notable characters and events in the history of Methodism in the Maryland and Delaware peninsula > Part 18
USA > Maryland > Methodism of the peninsula, or, Sketches of notable characters and events in the history of Methodism in the Maryland and Delaware peninsula > Part 18
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wherein American-born ministers, who were under no suspicion of disloyalty to the American flag, were shamefully persecuted and outrageously maltreated by partisan churchmen for no other reason than that they were Methodists and dared to preach an honest Gospel. The cruel beatings of Garrettson and others, and the unwarranted arrest and imprisonment of the former at Cambridge and of Hartley at Easton, are well attested historical facts vindicating the true and heroic apostleship of the Methodist fathers, and branding with disgrace their bigoted opponents.
This spirit of persecution in the dominant churches, and particularly in the English Church, was intensified by reason of Methodism's antagonism and stern rebuke to the errors in doctrine and the laxity in Christian morals, at that time so extensively prevailing throughout the Peninsula. Baptismal regeneration ; the conversion of confirmation ; eternal election and reprobation ; non- forfeitable adoption and necessary final perseverance ; the vagaries of the old-time, "hard-shell" Baptists, and other peculiarities of the existing faiths, so out of harmony with the Arminian interpretations of Wesleyanism, drew the fire of our aggressive fathers; and, of course, excited the most violent retaliations in kind from their indignant opponents. It might have been prophesied as truly of Methodism as it was of Ishmael : "His hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him ; and he shall dwell in the midst of his brethren." But it was an oddly belligerent brotherhood in the midst of
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which he conquered his right to abide. And then, as has been intimated, these older communions were often- times as erratic in practice as in doctrine; and the preaching of our fathers, as well as their pious example, was a stinging rebuke to the easy worldliness and the sometimes shameful dissipations quite generally pre- vailing among these older Christian professors, both lay and ministerial.
He who, judging from the isolated and exceptional examples of ludicrous ignorance or oddity that here and there appear, infers that the people of the Peninsula were utterly uncultured, or that early Methodism was a community of ignoramuses and cranks, is egregiously deceived. There are now in the possession of Dr. S. A. Harrison, of Talbot County, Md., old files of Easton newspapers, published early in the present century, that fairly teem and bristle with belligerent communications upon the religious controversies excited by the aggressive teachings and pious practices of our Methodistic fathers ; and which plainly reveal, on the Methodist no less than on the other side of the discussion, a force of thought and a facility of diction indicating that "there were giants in those days."
One of these controversies occurred in 1799. The Methodists, being mostly supporters of Mr. Jefferson for the Presidency, were warmly assailed and ridiculed by the Protestant Episcopal clergy, who preferred John Adams or Aaron Burr, his opponents. These Episco- palian divines charged that the Methodist preachers
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were " unlearned, and unable to stand in equal combat with the deism of the age ; " and that " if the infidelity of Jefferson and Paine should sweep over the land, the Episcopal clergymen were the only source to which Christians could look for a refutation of their blas- phemies." But Jefferson was, notwithstanding, finally chosen President ; the Methodist preachers went on with their God-given work, and there was no such tidal wave of infidelity sweeping over the land, as to afford opportunity to these anxious and well meaning guardians of "the faith" to exhibit the efficiency of their ecclesiastical dyke.
What has been the outcome of all this ? The great polemic conflict is over. Only occasionally is heard a random shot from some zealous new recruit at the flitting ghost of some departed dogma. The smoke of the al- most forgotten battle has drifted away, and the kindly soil has covered up the marks of the overpast carnage with the verdure and bloom of Christian fraternity. From all the Protestant pulpits of the Peninsula there now sounds forth, substantially and practically, one the- ory of the Gospel, and that theory is Arminian. The doctrinal leaven of Methodism has assimilated at least the whole visible outside of the entire lump of Peninsula Protestantism. The remark of the good old Methodist sister, on returning, one vacation Sunday, from a service where she had been privileged to listen to a popular minister of another denomination-"Why, you'd 'a' thought, from his preachin', he was made out'n a Meth-
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odist !" would be almost universally appropriate in sim- ilar cases. Indeed, it is a fact that not only some of the leading ministers, but also many thousands of the mem- bers and adherents of other communions on the Penin- sula, were really "made out'n Methodists." Peninsula Methodism, thus, not only by her preaching, but also by the overflow of her abounding membership into the hungry congregations of her sister churches, has infused so much of her brain and blood and heart into them, that they are in fact, in a large degree, her creations. Said that patriarchal and devoted local preacher, Rev. John Ford, of North East, Md. : "I have heard various reasons assigned, by persons who have gone out from us, for leaving the Methodist and joining other churches ; but I have yet to hear of one who left us because he wanted to get more religion." Possibly there may have been cases where reasons other than that named by Mr. Ford may have justified the departure of some who have gone out from us; but whatever the cause, justifi- able or otherwise, many thousands within the Peninsula, who have received their education, training, and what- ever they possessed of Christian experience, in Methodist homes and about Methodist altars, now constitute a large share-if not the majority-in the membership of our sister communions.
The Methodist Episcopal Church of the Peninsula, both from considerations of fraternal courtesy as well as from her interpretation of her Lord's commission to go out "into the world," has honorably sought for her com-
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munion the wanderers outside ecclesiastical pasturage, in "the highways and hedges." Not infrequently, however, has she herself been mistaken for a hedge or a highway by ecclesiastics of defective vision, or who had low con- ceptions of the relations and distinctions between "the meum and the tuum;" and thus, oftentimes, her unsophis- ticated, or sickly, or straying, or romantic and poetic, or her-aspiring sheep, have been "toted" off to some more-"respectable" fold ! In many Peninsular com- munities, if what other churches have obtained from Methodism were deducted, the numerator of the remain- ing fraction should feel no little humiliated at the disparity between itself and its denominator. Thus
Methodism has not only run, without friction, its own vast machinery and appliances, but has supplied, in large measure, the motive power and the spiritual lubrication by which a new impulse and a better activity has been infused into the machinery of all other church organisms of the Peninsula.
Nor am I sure that, however much we may condemn certain unfraternal methods, we should be greatly dis- posed to fret over their results. A very ungenerous and unsavory puff of wind may bear away the light and airy chaff and the immature or insect-eaten grain, leaving the remaining wheat all the cleaner and better. The true glory of a church is the spiritual "power" promised for Pentecost; and of this Methodism has lost little, if indeed anything, by the numerous defections that have marked her history. Especially is this true of the
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mother Methodism. While, sometimes, good men have left her and set up for themselves another organization, with perhaps honest but mistaken intent to better serve a cause they loved and imagined in danger, her chief arraignments and crucifixions, as in the case of her divine Lord, have been on account of her supposed disloyalty to some great worldly and imperial Cæsar. More than once have the great high priests of political pharisaism crowned her with thorns, mocked her with taunts, cruci- fied her, and, with ribald jests, consigned her to the tomb, sealing the stone and setting a watch ; but, as with her Lord and Builder, "it was impossible she should be holden of the bonds of death" and a brief night of forty hours has always been succeeded by a resurrection morning, the prelude to a greater power and a higher glory.
It is a trite saying, but true, that for every result there must have existed somewhere an adequate cause. Methodism is no exception to this rule. The results achieved by Peninsula Methodism have had their foun- dations in a divine philosophy. One principle of this philosophy was,
THE ADAPTATION OF METHODISM TO THE PEOPLE.
Some churches have seemed to say : "If you believe in my catechism, and accept its distinctive peculiarities, come into my communion." Others : "If you are impressed with the fitness and propriety of my form of initiation, follow me into my Jordan." Others again :
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"If you wish to be considered cultured, refined and æsthetic, and to move in the privileged circles of an ecclesiastical and social aristocracy, come up to our fashionable Zion." But Methodism, standing in the highways and market-places of the Peninsula for one hundred and eighteen years, has ceaselessly proclaimed to believer and skeptic, to ritualist and Quaker, to learned and illiterate, white and black, aristocrat and plebeian : "If you desire to flee the wrath to come and be saved from your sins, come into a brotherhood 'where there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.'" And thus, through all her history, from the out-door exhortations of Garrettson and Asbury on Dover green to the appeals now echoed through all our bounds by classic and frescoed walls, making her Christly plea to all the world, some of all conditions and of every social stratum have gladly accepted her loving overtures. If those heeding her call have been doctrinally erratic, Methodism has been mistress of sufficient brains and logic to correct their eccentricities. If superstitious, she has led them to the solid verities of faith. If they have been formalists, thinking of themselves and their methods "more highly than they ought to think," Methodism has toned them down to "think soberly" and "walk humbly." If lowly or slovenly, she has led them to respectable decency and order, and made them " fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God." She has made the ignorant wise, and the
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depraved virtuous. She has clothed white demoniacs with saintly robes of purity, and out of black slaves she has developed white souled freemen.
Another secret of the success of Methodism has been that peculiar force engendered of intelligent brains and loving hearts-
THE ENTHUSIASM OF METHODISM. If, on the field of worldly competition and conflict, " Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just,"
in the nobler endeavor of lifting up human lives and winning them to a better allegiance and a higher destiny, intelligent earnestness counts for more than venerable creeds and rituals, and love of souls for more than all the imposing paraphernalia in Christendom.
Let no one suppose, however, that Methodism is indifferent to doctrine. She has not only formulated her opinions as to the teaching of divine revelation in her " Articles of Religion;" but by her homiletical "logic on fire" she has so burned her thoughts into the popular brain and heart, that there is, upon the Penin- sula, scarcely any dissent to her teachings. She has likewise, by her poesy, so loudly sung the Gospel of free grace and full salvation through all our boundaries, that the popular ear will not listen nor the popular heart respond to any antagonistic or inharmonious religious minstrelsy.
But all these powers and influences have been focalized and intensified in the enthusiasm born of the "love of
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Christ which constraineth us ;" and the apostolic procla- mation-"Now, then, we are ambassadors for Christ *** we pray you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God," has ever been urged with such effect as to make great multitudes feel that, where such interest was manifested for their welfare, their own further indifference would not only be criminal but fatal. Methodism has conquered by her loving enthusiasm. May she never grow so wise and polished that she can no longer wield this weapon effectively.
Another secret of the success of Methodism upon the Peninsula, as elsewhere, has been
HER INHERENT AND LOVING AGGRESSIVENESS.
Said the enraged populace of Thessalonica, in their arraignment of Christ's followers, "These that have turned the world upside down have come hither also." In doctrine, in spirit and in its working enginery, the apostolic religion was so aggressive that it revolutionized the world. It came hither ; it went thither ; it stopped nowhere; it was spiritual lightning, with the various wires of human sympathy and exertion for its conduc- tors, and the intelligent universe for its circuit. Its enginery was not like that of a clock, which is wound up, runs down and stops. But in running down it wound itself up anew. The force it expended to gal- vanize dead souls into life, reacted to its own rejuvena- tion and perpetuity. Christianity lives to-day only because it imparts its life to the dying world. It
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survives by virtue of its spirit of aggression-because it is aggressive in the working discipline which is a part of the life of every member.
And just here I venture to assert, that that form of Christianity is most apostolic that is most lovingly aggres- sive. Such a " succession" is indispensable to a true church of Jesus Christ. All the evangelical denominations have more or less of it. But some have more than others; and that particular church which has most of moral force in its life discipline ; or which, on the whole, is most aggressive in its spirit and work, has most of the genuine apostolical succession. In saying this I but reit- erate the sentiments recently so forcefully expressed by Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks, the greatest man and preacher in the Protestant Episcopal Church. If the religious organizations be tested by these rules, how can any honest man escape the conviction that Methodism is the most apostolic church in Christendom ? Consider her truly evangelical and catholic doctrines ; her living spirit ; her working enginery ; her gigantic and heroic achievements, and we must concede that since the days of miracles, she is unparalleled. She is "Christianity in earnest," because she is in earnest in aggression. And nowhere has Methodism exhibited her distinguishing, apostolic characteristics to better advantage than upon the arena of the Peninsula.
A final reason for the success of Methodism in this field is that
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THE FIELD WAS WELL ADAPTED TO THE AGENCY.
I have said Methodism was for the people. It was equally true, especially of the denizens of this favored locality, that the people were for Methodism. While the general characteristics of our common humanity are the same the world over; and while no human nature has ever yet been found to which the Gospel of Christ, as represented in Methodism, is not appropriate, there are certain human soils particularly adapted and inviting ; and perhaps none has ever proven more so than that of the Peninsula. For this there existed several reasons.
The first was the native intelligence of its population. Original settlers were mostly English; but the great bulk of the population, as Bishop Hurst has well said in his introduction to this volume, was composed of drifts from Virginia settlements west of the Chesapeake, who themselves were descendants of an English ancestry. There was a light admixture of other European ele- ments-a few Swedes, Finns, Irish, Scotch, German and French-just enough, in process of time, to tone down and modify the faulty characteristics of the typi- cal English nature. The product was a mental and moral symmetry which was, in some respects, exceptional. While there was little provision for general education; and while, except as to the towns, the schools were scattered, poor and precarious, there was a sturdy and well-balanced common-sense peculiar to this population, that enabled the people, in a remarkable degree, to form just conceptions and estimates of the social, political and
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religious questions submitted for their judgment and action. The appeal of Methodism to this inherent intelligence of the medieval Peninsular population, awakened a natural and quite favorable response.
A second reason for this local congeniality, was doubt- less the general reverence of the people for things divine. Their ancestors having brought with them from Europe the best moral ideas of the Reformation, left them as a heritage to their children. These, by reason of their isolation from the rest of the world, having remained undisturbed by the new revelations of "philosophy falsely so called," had continued firm in their orthodoxy as to the general principles of Christianity, and were at least outwardly reverent toward the divine authority. In no part of the world, perhaps, were honesty, truth and chastity so universal, and nowhere was the Sab- bath more fully respected as a day of rest from secular employments. In these respects, the Peninsular popu- lation will still compare favorably with that of any equal extent of country on the face of the earth; and this, too, despite the former laxity of the older and dominant churches as to moral discipline.
When, therefore, the Methodist fathers came, with their glowing Gospel of salvation, into the Peninsula, while they made their plea to audiences strongly preju- diced in favor of existing creeds and forms, at the same time they encountered very little of the skepticism and irreverence prevailing so largely in other portions of the country. Their manifest earnestness and piety, their
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enthusiastic love of humanity, and their devotion to their work soon overcame the popular prejudice; the preaching that proclaimed conscious pardon and adop- tion was adapted to the anxious yearnings of every earnest spirit; and Methodism soon spread, like an irrepressible fire, all over the Peninsula. Thus, while there was that in the peculiar constitution of Peninsular society, which "resisted unto blood striving against" the pioneers of Methodism, this very capacity of resistance, when once subdued and directed, became a helpful influence of in- calculable power and value.
Another thing which ministered to the phenomenal success of Methodism in this field, was the homogeneity and ardor of the people. These peculiarities are men- tioned and accounted for in the opening chapter. The customs and habits of the people were the same every- where. Their interests were identical. Their mutual acquaintanceship and relationship were exceptional. By reason of long-continued intermarriages, the ties of blood reached out everywhere, constituting a web of kinship that bound entire large communities together. Smite one man and you insulted half a county. Make one happy, and songs of gladness leaped from a thousand lips. No great emotion could stir one heart, to which multitudes of kindred hearts did not respond in sympa- thetic throbbings. And so it was, when the stirring warnings of the itinerant fathers begot, in one heart, an awakening that issued in a cry of anxious alarm, whole families and communities were moved with apprehen-
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sion ; and the shout of victory from some new-born spirit, awakened a longing in many kindred spirits, among relatives and neighbors, for a like precious faith and experience. And as, in the Peninsula, this cordon of ties was exceptionally far-reaching and tender, the spiritual contagion thereby promoted was, by so much, the greater.
In addition to this, the inherent warm-hearted, over- flowing generosity and hospitality. of the typical Eastern- Shore-man that much more induced him, when he had found his way to the Gospel feast, to go out into all the highways and hedges round about him, and, with warm and loving persuasions, "compel" his starving friends and neighbors to come in to the heavenly banquet. By all these conditions and influences, as well as "by that strange philosophy, in accord with which God is able to 'subdue all things unto himself and make the wrath of men to praise him,' " Methodism has achieved, in the Peninsula, one of the greatest of those remarkable suc- cesses that have signalled her triumphal march over the earth.
Our Protestant Episcopal brethren, no doubt very sincerely and with most excellent motives, have some- times suggested that we, and even the entire body of Protestant Christendom, should move in and go to housekeeping with them in their nice little gothic cottage. Now what would happen if only the Methodists should accept the kindly invitation? Why, we should just take charge of the whole housekeeping business, and,
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before our precise and ceremonious brethren could get on their working regalia and bring together their well- worn brooms and dust-pans, we should have the house all set to rights, a roaring fire kindled upon the hearth, and the great plantation pot swung on for an old-fash- ioned Methodist Episcopal house warming and love feast ; and what could our handful of fastidious brethren "do about it?" It might be better the other way; for our Peninsular Methodist house is sufficient to accommodate the Diocese of Easton and that of Delaware with no more crowding than is occasioned by our regular annual influx of new recruits. By adding a "wing" to our family mansion, we can easily accommodate the entire Protestantism of the Peninsula, and make them richer and happier and a greater blessing to the world than they have ever been. But if they will insist on retaining their distinctive peculiarities, may they all imbibe more and more of the spirit of the true and only "succession" of any worth, as illustrated in the history and achieve- ments of their Methodist sister; and, with her, hand in hand, go on to the complete redemption of our beautiful Peninsula "from the snare of the fowler" of the still and brewery, and from all "the noisome pestilence" of moral pollution and political crookedness and fraud.
From the very beginning, Methodism has numbered among her supporters many of the most intellectual and polished people of the Peninsula ; and, reaching down through all gradations, has gladly invited to her com- munion the humble pensioners on the public bounty who
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have come halting on crutches from our county alms- houses. Thus ou church tree, ever green and flourish- ing, grows tall enough to satisfy the ambition of a king, broad enough to shelter the world, and some of her fruitful branches bend so low down that the crawling beggar may reach up and pluck and eat.
When, in 1780, the walls of old Barratt's chapel were going up, an unfriendly observer was heard to express his conviction that the enterprise was a mere waste of materials -- that "after a little while a corn-crib would be sufficient to accommodate all the Methodists." But how different from his anticipations have been the results ! When, four years thereafter, the Methodist Episcopal Church was organized, the total membership was 14,986, about one half of which was on the Penin- sula. Through the century since past, Methodism has marched steadily on to greater victories ; and an exam- ination of the religious statistics down to the present will show no decline in her zeal or failure in her methods.
The Methodist Episcopal Church has endured the ordeal of four secessions. In 1816, Rev. Richard Allen, a talented and influential colored local Deacon, commanded an exodus of colored members forming the nucleus of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, of which he became the first Bishop. There are no data accessible by which we can estimate the numerical loss to the mother Church occasioned by this movement. It was, however, very considerable in the beginning, and is to be approximately measured to-day by the
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aggregate membership of that oldest offshoot within the Peninsula.
In 1828 culminated the great controversy on church polity, resulting in the separation of several thousands of members and many ministers from the Methodist Episcopal, and their organization into the Methodist Protestant Church. It is probable that the defections from this cause within the Peninsula, and the consequent loss to the Methodist Episcopal Church, were more numerous than in any other territory of equal extent. It was confined mainly, however, to the Maryland part of the Peninsula, where a secession of about two thousand members very soon succeeded in establishing some forty churches and congregations. The "reformations" which were to popularize Methodism have not, however, been attended with phenomenal success; and if our Methodist Protestant brethren could consent, in re-union, to abandon unimportant theories of government in exchange for a broader field and a larger measure of spiritual success, it would be a blessing both to Methodism and to humanity.
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