USA > Pennsylvania > Dauphin County > Harrisburg > Centennial memorial, English Presbyterian congregation, Harrisburg, Pa. > Part 3
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But the beauty of Harrisburg has a charm for me which that of no other place possesses. And sometimes, when I begin to fear that the charm resides, not in the scene but in my relation to it, I dissipate the fear by reading what another Harrisburger, the late Dr. Benjamin Wallace, has written of it; and I will please myself by reading it to you. " If there be a more beautiful spot on earth," writes Dr Wallace in his paper on the Insurrection of the Paxton Boys, " if there be a more beautiful spot on earth than that where the men of Paxton settled, we have never seen it. From its source in Otsego Lake, along by its lovely windings where the Chemung intersects the North Branch, by the Valley of
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the Wyoming which lives forever in the imagination of Campbell, but which is fairer even than the semi-tropical fancy of which he was enamored; on by the bold scenery of the meeting of its waters at Northumberland, to its broad glory and its magnificent union with the Chesapeake, every mile of the Susquehanna is beautiful. Other rivers have their points of loveliness or of grandeur; the Susquehanna has every form of beauty and sublimity that belongs to rivers. Everywhere its course is deflected. It begins a wooded lake ; it winds a limpid brook by meadows and over silver pebbles; it makes its way through mountains; it loiters restingly by their base; it sweeps in broad courses by the valleys. Its vast width in its mad Spring freshets, when, swollen by the melted snows, it rushes from the hills with irrestible force, leaves with its fall island after island in its mid channel of the richest green and the most surpass- ing beauty ; while those passages through the mountains afford points of scenery, which it is no exaggeration to call sublime. The Susquehanna makes the grandest of these passages just below the mouth of the Juniata. Its course there is several miles long, before it entirely disengages itself from the rapids called Hunter's Falls, which are the remains of the rocky barrier that once resisted its way. Entirely at liberty, it pours its stream, a mile wide, along a channel some fifty feet beneath its eastern bank. About seven miles below the mountains, at a point where they look blue in the distance, flows in a little stream, which the Indians called called Pextang, Paixtang, or Paxton. This mountain range is the northern boundary of the great valley, which, under- laid with blue limestone, covered originally with the richest
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and noblest forest growth, and including within it the garden of the Atlantic slope extends from Newburg on the Hudson, by Easton on the Delaware, by Reading on the Schuylkill, by Harrisburg on the Susquehanna, by Carlisle and Chambersburg, and Hagerstown and Winchester, until it loses itself in the North Carolina hills. The point of great- est beauty in all that valley is the spot where it is eloven by the Susquehanna."* So a son of Harrisburg and of this church wrote more than a third of a century ago, of the beauty of the place of which every foot of ground was pre- cious dust to him. And so doubtless all her scattered sons and daughters feel, as they think of the mountains, and the valley, and the trees, and the gorgeous sunsets, and the shining river, that glorified their childhood.
I dare not trust myself to speak of the tender personal associations and the sacred memories which make a return to Harrisburg almost a holy pilgrimage. For, though I am tempted to be very free and personal to-day, I must panse before I stir up the deepest fountains of feeling in you and in myself. But I cannot forbear to say, that every Harris- burger, who is also a son of this church, must feel himself made better by returning to the place in which that man of God and friend of man, James Wallace Weir, so long did justice and loved mercy and walked humbly with his God.
Among the many traits of Harrisburg that endear it to a native, who has been called to live away from it, is its charming social life. This social life derives no small part of its charm from the fact that Harrisburg, with its sur- rounding country, was settled not by one class of people,
*Presbyterian Quarterly Review, April, 1860.
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but by two classes. We are beginning to-day the celebration of the establishment a century ago of a church called the English Presbyterian Congregation. But we must not forget that, during the most of its life there has existed by its side in Christian amity a German Presbyterian Congrega- tion. While here the spiritual descendants of John Knox have been fed on the catechism of Westminster, there the spiritual descendants of Ulrich Zwingli have been fed on the catechism of Heidelberg. The union of these two peoples has made a broader and kindlier, a far more genial social life than either would have made. Since the Scotch or Scotch-Irish has always been the dominant ele- ment in this congregation, and since in the course of this address I shall have a good deal to say about it, it will not be out of place now to remind ourselves how much we all owe to the other, the distinctively Teutonic element, with its less polemic and more genial, though perhaps more lax modes of religious thinking; with its home-loving, earth- hungering sentiment; with its gemuthlichkeit, which, though the word is perhaps untranslatable into English, our German brethren have imparted to the social life of this whole district. This union is seen in the union of family names. It is not long since you were accustomed to meet on the streets of your city one of the eldest members of the Harrisburg bar, whose geniality and courtesy were always a benediction; who, in his Christian name, pre- served the memory of his Scotch, and in his surname pre- served the memory of his Netherland ancestors; I refer to the late Mr. Hamilton Alricks. But the union of the Scotch Hamilton and the Teutonic Alricks, is only an instance of
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what is typical and common in Harrisburg families and Harrisburg names. So are united the German Wiestling and the Scotch Weir; so Egle and Beatty; so Kerr-and Orth ; so Orth and Reily; so Kunkel and Rutherford; so Buehler and McCormick; so Ross and Haldeman; so Haldeman and Cameron; so Gross and Criswell; so Spangler and Hamilton; so Bucher and Ayres; so Fahnestock and Mckinley; and so, to refer to the pulpit of this church, the Scotch Robinson and the German Buehler. When I think of the great social and religious value, to Harrisburg of this union of the Scotch and Teutonic elements of its early population, I encourage the hope that it will be con- tinued in the future. And the social news of the city that comes to me from time to time leads me to the conclusion that the hope is quite certain of fulfillment.
I have thus told you many reasons-and I could tell you as many more -- why my affection for Harrisburg has not abated with absence and the lapse of time, and why it is a pleasure to return to the city, especially to take some part in such a celebration as you begin to-day: the celebration of the establishment a hundred years ago of this venerated church; the church of my family, the church my father and of my forefathers, the church that sprang from Paxtang, the church of my elder ancestry. And since we are looking backward to-day, it has occurred to me that it would be well if we were to begin at a point even earlier than a century ago, and call up before our minds a picture of the begin- nings of Presbyterianism in this part of the United States. Of course, I must be very brief and fragmentary in my treatment of a large historical subject; but brief and
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incomplete as I shall be, what I shall say may prove a not inappropriate introduction to the celebration of the week which this day begins.
The name of the church gives us a convenient order for the treatment of the subject I have to present : the English Presbyterian Congregation of Harrisburg. It is a Presby- terian congregation ; a congregation of that peculiar type of Presbyterianism known as English speaking, and the place in which it has stood for a hundred years brings before us the fact that it belongs to the second generation of those English speaking Presbyterian churches that were planted in the Middle Colonies.
When, on All Saints' day, in fifteen hundred and seven- teen, Martin Luther nailed on the door of his church in Wittenberg the theses on grace and indulgences which he was prepared to defend against the world, a step was taken which divided Western Christianity against itself. In the enthusiasm of the new movement, it seemed as if the churches of the Reformation must be as closely united, externally, as the Latin church of the Middle Ages had been. But events soon showed that the organizing, or Roman spirit, which had determined the external life of European Christianity since the pontificate of Gregory the Great, had given place to the Protestant, the critical and divisive spirit, which has marked the career of the modern church. This is not the time to discuss the question whether Christianity has gained most or lost most by the domination, during the last three centuries and a half, of the spirit of protest, of criticism and of dissent; whether or not the attainment of clearer views of truth, and of the internal
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unity, of which we Protestants make so much, is an ade- quate compensation for the loss of that one fold with one shepherd, to which the Protestant world is so often invited to return. I believe that the compensation is more than adequate. But, to-day, I note simply the great historical fact that, with the first blow of Luther's hammer began the history of national churches and of modern denominational
Christianity. This tendency to divide, supported by the relations of the Protestant churches to the civil govern- ments, revealed itself first in the memorable controversy between Luther and Zwingli, touching the presence of the body of Christ in the Sacrament of the Supper. That controversy resulted in setting over against each other the Lutheran and the Reformed, as the two great families of National Protestant Churches. The resources of diplomacy and of theological analysis were exhausted in the fruitless endeavor to unite them. Since the Conference of Marburg, each of the two great types of Protestantism has developed along lines distinct from those of the other's history.
In dividing Protestant Europe between them, Lutheran- ism, broadly speaking, took Northern Germany and the Seandanavian countries. Its territories were contiguous, and it possessed, during the fight of Protestantism for life and for recognition on the map and in the politics of Europe, all the advantage that belongs to a compacted empire and to racial unity. The Reformed type of Protest- antism, the more radical and thorough-going type, pushed itself into those countries which lay nearest to Rome, or which had felt most keenly the evils of the Papacy. Reformed Protestantism was the more widely spread, and
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the less racially united. It appeared in South Germany, in German Switzerland and French Switzerland, in France, in Spain, in Italy and in Scotland. But for the fact that, for reasons personal to himself, the monarch of England took the lead in, and so largely limited the progress of the Reformation in England, it would have taken possession of South as it did of North Britain, and the modern religious history of the island would have been the history of a single national church.
The Reformed Churches were not so closely related to the State as were the Lutheran; and for this reason, as for others which I need not stop to mention, they required for their healthful development a form of government, both strong enough for the church's struggle with an adverse environ- ment and representative enough of the faithful who com- posed it. For such a government, our spiritual fathers repaired to the Scriptures which they had accepted as their rule of faith ; and they were convinced that they found its elements in the organization of the churches founded by the Apostles. But there was needed a genius, who could seize these elements and, employing them to form an actual church, could show to the Reformed Churches of Europe a living example of the revived Apostolie church organi- zation. Such a genius appeared in John Calvin, first among the exegetes, first among the theologians and one of the first statesmen of his age. It is among the wonders of the world that he organized, seemingly without difficulty or hesitation, both the theology and the polity which have distinguished the great family of Reformed Churches. The church of Christ in Geneva became the model of the Pres-
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byterian Churches of the world. The characteristic traits of this church order are familiar to us all; its exaltation of the truth and of the preacher, its provision for the representa- tion of the people, its insistence on the church's autonomy, on the efficiency of its discipline, and on the subjection of a part to the whole. But we are not all so familiar with the fact that those who have given to the subject severe study, as historians and publicists, find it hard to resist the conclusion, to which our own historian Mr. Bancroft gives expression, when he assigns to Calvin's theology and polity a high if not the highest place among the causes of our system of general education and of our enjoyment of civil liberty and self-government.
The Reformed theology and the Presbyterian order were eagerly accepted by the people of Scotland. They were made the national religion and church order against the emnity of the crown, and they were maintained against a succession of hostile monarchs. Of these no one was more persistently hostile than James the Sixth. afterward James the First of England. He tried the strength and temper of the Scottish character, and found that he could not bend it to his will. When, therefore, the Ulster plantations needed settlers, he invited the Scotch to furnish them; and the Scotch, accepting his invitation and becoming the Scotch-Irish, began at once to justify the boast of their King, that here at least was a people, unlike the English of the Pale, too vigorous to be absorbed or modified by the Irish Celts. There in Ireland our Scotch forefathers lived for a hundred years before the great emigrations to America began. The training of their Irish life was severe
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indeed. It robbed the Scotchmen of some of their most engaging traits; notably that gift for poetry which makes the Scotch ballad the most pathetic of popular songs. . This gift seems to have died out during their stay in Ireland. But if the exile robbed the Scotch of this great gift, "their training in Ireland," as Mr. Bancroft has said, "kept the spirit of liberty and the readiness to resist unjust govern- ment as fresh in their hearts as though they had just been listening to the preachings of Knox or musing over the political creed of the Westminster Assembly"*
It is a sad story, that of the persecutions and oppressions which at last drove them from their new home in Ulster, and across the sea. We can understand the persecutions in the days of the Stuarts, of Charles the First and Charles the Second and James the Second. But the oppressions of the reigns of Anne and the earlier Georges, after all that Ulster had done to make their reigns a possibility; after Derry and Enniskillen and the Battle of the Boyne; these are hard to understand. Certainly, if ever a people pur- chased by patriotic self-sacrifice. the right, I will not say to religious toleration, but to absolute religious liberty, our Presbyterian fathers of Ulster purchased it during the cam- paign of William of Orange against the followers and allies of the rejected James. Yet it was precisely in these latter reigns that the oppressions became intolerable and the great migrations to America took place. I shall not tell at length the outrageous story, but my subject requires me at least to say something. How can I speak adequately of the begin-
* Hist. of the U. S., Vol. iii., p. 29.
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nings of Presbyterianism in the Middle Colonies, unless I tell in brief what were the facts that compelled the Briggses and Brysons of Silver's Spring, that compelled the Flemings and Simontons and McCormicks and Wallaces of Hanover, the Rutherfords and Elders and Gilmors and Cowdens of Paxtang, the Kerrs and Wilsons and Boyds and MeNairs of Derry, to leave their Irish homes and clear the forests at distant out-posts of civilization in the province of Pennsyl- vania ?
William the Third highly valued his Scotch-Irish sub- jects, and during his reign they enjoyed a liberty of religion to which they had not been accustomed. The act of toleration was faithfully executed and the policy of toler- ation was not changed. But after the accession of Anne, the execution of the act became tardy and unequal, and meas- ures were taken by the High Church party for its amend- ment. Such an amendment was secured in the sacramental " Test act," by which conscientious Presbyterians were effec- tively driven or excluded from all public positions of honor or trust. And there were other methods of persecution. "No sooner," writes Dr. Black wood, " had Anne ascended the throne than the same intolerant High Church party that had formerly oppressed them began to renew their assaults. At one time the annoyances of the Presbyterians of Ulster arose from embarrassments about marriages. At another time they were assailed because their ministers obeyed their Presbyteries by preaching in vacant churches ; while the most absurd charges of disloyalty were urged against them in pamphlets and often made the subject of legal investiga-
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tion by magistrates." * At last in 1714, an act was passed to prevent the growth of schism, in which under penalty of three months imprisonment and disqualification as a teacher, every teacher of children was forbidden " to be willingly present at any conventicle of dissenters for religious wor- ship." The fifth year of the reign of the First George is marked by the passage of an act which gave back legal toleration to the Presbyterians in Ireland. But the relief came too late; and the effect was only to substitute the oppression of the wealthy land owner for the oppression of the Church, the Parliament and the Crown.
To escape this prosecution the Ulster Presbyterians sailed in large numbers for America. "In Ireland," says Mr. Ban- croft, " the disfranchised Scotch Presbyterians who still drew their ideas of Christian government from the Westminister Confession began to believe that they were under no obli- gation to render obedience to Britain, and had all Ireland resembled them, it could not have been held in subjection. But what could be done by unorganized men constituting only about a tenth of the population, in the land in which they were but sojourners? They were willing to quit a soil which was endeared to them by no traditions; and the American colonies opened their arms to receive them. They began to change their abode as soon as they felt oppression, and every successive period of discontent swelled the tide of emigrants." } We are told by another authority, that "year after year, from the second quarter of the eighteenth cen-
*Introduction to Webster's History of the Presbyterian Church of United States.
+History of the United States, Vol. III, pp. 28, 29.
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tury, it is estimated that 12,000 people annually sailed for America from the north of Ireland. Such was the drain indeed that it was computed that in 1773, and the five preceding years, the north of Ireland lost by emigration to America, one-fourth of the trading cash and a like propor- tion of the manufacturing people." *
Thus in the eighteenth century there flowed wave after wave of Presbyterian immigrants into America. They poured themselves over the whole Atlantic country south of New England and New York. There were two or three small colonies in New England; but New Jersey, and Penn- sylvania, and Maryland, and Virginia, and the Carolinas received by far the largest share. They brought with them vivid and bitter recollections of the injustice of their treat- ment at the hands of Great Britain; and therefore when the War of Independence was begun, they were unani- mously for the cause of the Colonies and against the mother country. We should never forget, or forget to acknowledge the great debt we all owe to the New England Colonies for the part they bore in the Revolutionary war. But New England would have been powerless without the Scotch Irish people, scattered, as the latter were, throughout the middle and the southern colonies, and as ready as the New Englanders to take up arms for independence; as ready indeed for war as their fathers had been to fight in order to ensure the safety of the Protestant William's throne.
When the Seoteh-Irish began their settlements in the mid- dle colonies, and particularly in the Commonwealth of Penn-
*History of the Irish Presbyterian Church, by Rev. Thomas Hamil- ton, p. 133.
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sylvania, they stood in a relation to the civil government entirely different from that of the Episcopalians in Virginia, the Dutch-Reformed and afterwards the Episcopalians in New York, or the Congregationalists in New England. The latter were legally related to the State, their church order was in some sense the established religion; " the standing order," as it was called in New England, " the religion of His Majesty's faithful subjects," as it was called in Virginia. Our fore-fathers' Presbyterian churches were voluntary societies in the eye of the law; and whenever a Royal Governor chose to do so, he was able to make the lives of the members of the Presbyterian churches, and of their ministers in partic- ular, exceedingly uncomfortable. In New York, the Royal Governor did all in his power to extirpate Presbyterianism. Francis Makemie and John Hampton, two of our earliest ministers, were imprisoned by Lord Cornbury; and this for the avowed purpose of putting down the pestilent heresy of Presbyterian dissent; and Makemie had already been made to suffer for the same reason in both Maryland and Virginia.
Happily our ancestors in Pennsylvania, whatever else were their trials, escaped this particular mode of suffering. This church has among its most valued members those in whose veins runs the blood of ancestors who belonged to the Society of Friends. The rest of us may well remind ourselves at this time of the indebtedness of our Presby- terian fathers to that great souled and high minded follower of the Inward Light, William Penn; who, in 1682, came to his province of Pennsylvania to begin what he called " his Holy Experiment"; which " Holy Experiment" was a frame of government, a constitution, of which these were the two
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distinguishing traits: first, that the people should govern, and second, that there should be liberty of conscience. Honor, everlasting honor, is due by the people of this church to the Commonwealth's great proprietor. This freedom of conscience, indeed, was one of the chief causes of the popu- larity of the province of Pennsylvania as a new home for the Scotch-Irish immigrants. They settled in the colony in great numbers. James Logan, William Penn's Secretary of his Province, said in reference to the movement as early as 1725: "It looks as if Ireland were to send all her inhabi- tants hither; if they will continue to come they will make themselves proprietors of the province." Professor Maclos- kie of Princeton points out that largely as the result of this movement the population of the province rose from 20,000 in 1701, to 250,000 in 1749.
At once upon their settlement the immigrants began to organize congregations for the worship of God. The evi- denee is clear that the initiative was taken by the people themselves. They had fonght too long and too hard to maintain in the land of their sojourn the ordinances of religion, not to make immediate provision for them in the new land of liberty. And so while they were felling the trees and turning the soil, they made every sacrifice that they and their children might enjoy the stated services of the house of God. What I wish to emphasize is the fact that they were never an irreligious people requiring evan- gelization. They were from the first a religious people, knowing the value of the Church of God. The organization of these early churches was not due to the ministers who ministered in them, so much as to the laymen to whom they
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ministered. This was true of almost every congregation from Philadelphia northward to the Irish Settlement at Easton, and from Philadelphia westward through the settle- ments of Chester and Lancaster (then including Dauphin), and Cumberland counties.
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