PROSPERITY OF GEORGIA BAPTISTS.

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of Section 1376, and after a thorough discussion of its provisions, deliberately violated the same, and ordained two negroes to officiate in Church matters in the office of deacon.' They claim that the obnoxious law 'trespasses not only on the rights of men but on the rights of God. It dictates to the Almighty what color his preachers shall be . . . and says to Omnipotence: "Thus far shalt Thou go and no further." It allows Jehovah to have ministers of a certain complexion, and so exacting and rigid are these regulations imposed on the Almighty that they not only forbid his having preachers such as he may choose, but also prescribe that none shall even exhort, or in any way whatever "officiate in Church matters, unless they be approved by this self-exalted and heaven-defying tribunal." Nor is there any reason to suppose that the spirit which prompted the act now under protest would stop, if unchecked, at its present point of audacity. Having prescribed color as one qualification for the pulpit, it might prescribe another qualification to-morrow.' The ob noxious section was repealed, and the State no longer imposes restrictions on the freedom of the Churches.

The contests which the Georgia Baptists pushed against all that is narrow in ignorance and bigotry, especially from 1827 to 1840, in the shape of Anti-effort, has made the entire denomination their debtors. As in Maryland, the old school, or Primitive Baptists, as they loved to call themselves, arose in great strength, dividing Churches and rending Associations with great bitterness. This Antinomian element assailed their brethren with bitter satire, an element not known in the New Testament. One of the periodicals of the times published a sermon intended to caricature their missionary brethren who were spending their lives in beseeching men to be reconciled to God. Its text was taken from Prov. xxvii, 27: Thou shalt have goats' milk enough for thy food, for the food of thy household, and for the maintenance of thy maidens.' The preacher said that those who raised money for missions were first milking the sheep of Christ's flock; then turning to the non-professing goats, they obtained goat's milk enough for their editors, agents and secretaries, who were the maidens of the household, and so the poor drained goats fattened a few sinecures. Hard pushed with such trash, they brought ridicule upon our Lord's commission to 'go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.' Our brethren had the wisdom and firmness to resist this blight most steadfastly; one result of which is seen in the fact that now the laborious and aggressive Baptists are left nearly alone in the field. Their success has been astonishing, so that to-day they have the largest Baptist population of any State in the Union. They have 102 Associations, 1,601 ministers, 2,623 Churches, and 261,314 members. Nearly half the Baptists of Georgia are colored people, who in latter years have been greatly aided by forming separate Churches and Associations of their own, and the present prospect, both of the white and colored Baptists, is more bright and prosperous than ever before.

CHAPTER XI.

BAPTISTS AND THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR.

S time is the only reliable interpreter of prophecy, so history best traces the hand of God in preparing men for great events. It was impossible for the Baptists of the colonies to understand why they endured so much for their principles and secured so little in return, from the settlement of New England to the time of the Revolution. The Declaration of Independence was made July 4th, 1776, and the nation's struggle for liberty lasted about seven years. As nearly as we can get at the figures, there were but 97 Baptist Churches in all the colonies in 1770, and many of these were so very small, that one pastor, where they had pastors, supplied several of them lying many miles apart and preached to them only at long intervals of time, while others were dependent entirely on occasional visits from itinerant preachers. There was a large increase of Churches during the war, although many Churches were scattered, but in 1784 our total membership in the thirteen colonies was only about 35,000, although one hundred and forty-five years had passed since the Church at Providence was constituted, and one hundred and nineteen years since the Church at Boston was gathered. Where they had houses of worship they were of the commonest character, and the most of their ministers received no salary. So common was it for the Churches to content themselves with one sermon a month, that these came to be known as 'Thirty-day Baptists,' and so ignorant or mean, or both, were many of them, that they thought it the abso lute duty of their pastors to support themselves by a profession, by farming, or some other form of manual labor, and then prove their Apostolic calling by preaching for nothing. This class of Baptists took the greatest possible comfort in the thought that while the 'starched gentry' of the Standing Order peeled them by taxation, their pastors were strangers to 'filthy lucre.'

Under these conditions our ministry could not be eminent for learning. When Manning established his preparatory school at Warren, he and Hezekiah Smith, who had studied with him at Princeton, together with Jeremiah Condy and Edward Upham, graduates of Harvard, were the only liberally educated Baptist pastors in New England. Some who subsequently became known as scholars had studied with Isaac Eaton, at Hopewell. In addition to the above named, Dr. Guild mentions Samuel Jones and a number more who were students at that academy, and also in that opened at Lower Dublin in 1776. Several years later, William Williams, one of the first graduates of Rhode Island College, was added to the list of the educated, and

BAPTISTS DEMAND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

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opened an academy at Wrentham, Mass. Things existed much after the same order in the Middle and Southern Colonies, for down to that time the chief education of our ministry had consisted in that moral strength and fortitude which hardship and severity inspire. God, who foresaw the times which were to try men's souls, was clearly educating one class of his people to meet the high destiny for which only scourging, bonds and imprisonments can discipline men. Brown University had begun its work, and the Denomination was feeling after its future; but for the then present necessity, what our ministry lacked in the work of the schools, when compared with their Congregational brethren, was marked by a like disparity in favor of the Baptists in consecration to the saving of men. Their doctrine, that none but the regenerate should enter the Church of Christ, inspired that effort to bring men to repentance which could not spring from faith in birthright membership. The social and political forces combined against them only contributed to maintain their zeal and devotion. To falter in maintaining the truth was to be crushed out of existence. Besides, nothing but aggressive work could keep them alive to their peculiar views of religious liberty. Others were moved to resist the aggressions of Britain, simply on the ground that they were the victims of political oppression. This the Baptists felt also, but their circumstances impelled them to seek a higher order of liberty than that sought by their fellow-citizens. Whatever oppressions England inflicted upon the colonies she seldom deprived them of their religious liberties, but from the first left them to manage these alone. Excepting in Virginia, the colonies, and not the mother government, laid the heavy yoke of religious oppression upon the Baptist neck. On several occasions they had appealed to the crown and their religious grievances had been redressed, as against their colonial oppressors. Hence, in the Revolution they were to fight a double battle; one with their political enemies on the other side of the sea, and the other with their religious tyrants on this side. The colonies were not about to begin a revolution for religious liberty; that they had; but the Baptists demanded both, and this accounts for the desperation with which they threw themselves into the struggle, so that we have no record of so much as one thorough Baptist tory.

Down to the Revolution, all the colonies, with the exception of Rhode Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, had a Church established either by law or custom as the rightful controller of the spiritual interests of the people, and those of Massachusetts and Virginia were peculiarly intolerant. In these the influence of the Baptists, as the champions of religious equality, was especially felt, as they resisted the legislative, judicial and executive departments combined. They were emboldened in this resistance from the fact that they took and held a footing despite this combination against them, and by piece-meal wrenched from their foes the recognition of their rights. In 1753 a law was passed in Massachusetts exempting Baptists from taxation to support the Standing Order, on condition that they confessed and proved themselves' Anabaptists, by certificates from three such Churches.

778

MASSACHUSETTS RELAXES HER SEVERITY.

Meetings were called in Boston, Medfield and Bellingham, to devise methods of relief from this offensive act. John Proctor, a public-school teacher of Boston, and one of the original members of the Second Baptist Church there, was appointed to carry the case to England. He also drew up a remonstrance to the Legislature claiming that, under the charter of William and Mary, the Baptists had as good, ample and extensive a right to think and act for themselves in matters of a relig ious nature as any other Christians. This action somewhat lightened the execution without lessening the severity of the laws, for the last statute, passed in 1771, simply relieved the Baptist tax-payer from the necessity of presenting a certificate from three other Churches to prove him an Anabaptist.' The moral effect of many of the able documents drawn up by the Warren Association, Isaac Backus, and others, against these unrighteous laws, was very great on the thinking portion of the community, which compelled moderation when banishment and whipping became impossible. Virginia Baptists wrung some similar ameliorations from their Legis lature which led them to throw themselves with all their hearts into the Revolutionary struggle, for they knew that if they secured full political independence religious freedom must necessarily follow.

It would furnish a splendid chapter in American Baptist History to sketch the honor-roll of the great fathers whom God was raising up from the first quarter of the eighteenth century to serve in the last, and who were to become the leaders in their contest for perfect religious emancipation. In addition to many others who had fought the first battles, he raised up a special host who were to push this conflict to its close, from Isaac Backus to John Leland; the man who saw the last vestige of religious oppression wiped off the statute-book of Massachusetts, in 1834. She was the first of all the colonies to begin, and the last of all the States to end relig ious intolerance.

We have seen that ISAAC BACKUS, the Baptist historian, was born in Connecticut, January 9th, 1724, so that dying as late as November 20th, 1806, he lived through all the stages of the Revolution and saw his brethren as well as his country free. When the Warren Association appointed a committee to seek redress of grievances for the Baptists, and appointed first Hezekiah Smith, and then Rev. John Davis, their agent to the Court of Great Britain, Dr. Backus was exerting himself to the utmost in this direction. In the admirable biography of Backus by Dr. Hovey we have a graphic picture of the enthusiasm with which he threw himself into the work of changing the legislation from which his own Church at Middleborough had suffered so much, as well as his brethren elsewhere. He had been schooled in suffering for conscience' sake. His mother, Elizabeth Tracy Backus, was a descendant from the Winslow family, and became a devout Christian three years before Isaac was born; she was of a very strong character, and brought up her son in the love and fear of God. With many others she became a Separatist at Norwich, and when left a widow refused to pay the State-Church tax, for conscience'

sake.

On the night of October 15th, 1752, when she was ill, and seated before the fire wrapped in thick clothing to induce perspiration, the officers came, and as she says in a letter to her son, dated November 4th, 1752, Took me away to prison, about nine o'clock, in a dark, rainy night. Brothers Hill and Sabins were brought there the next night. We

ISAAC BACKUS.

Oh! the condescension of heaven! Though I was bound when cast into this furnace, yet I was loosed and found Jesus in the midst of a furnace with me. Oh, then I could give up my name, estate, family, life and health freely to God. Now the prison looked like a palace to me. I could bless God for all the laughs and scoffs made at me. Oh, the love that flowed out to all mankind; then I could forgive as I would desire to be forgiven, and love my neighbor as myself. Deacon Griswold was put in prison the 8th of October, and yesterday old Brother Grover, and [they] are in pursuit of others, all which calls for humiliation. This Church has appointed the 13th of November to be spent in prayer and fasting on that account. I do remember my love to you and your wife and the dear children of God with you, begging your prayers for us in such a day of trial. We are all in tolerable health, expecting to see you. These are from your loving mother,

ELIZABETH BACKUS.'

The spirit of the mother was cherished by her son to the close of his life. The high esteem in which he is held is evinced in a private letter to Dr. Guild from Hon. George Bancroft, the historian, dated at Newport, R. I., September 25th, 1885, in which he writes: I look always to a Baptist historian for the ingenuousness, clear discernment, and determined accuracy which form the glory of their great historian Backus.'

SAMUEL STILLMAN, D.D., who was born in Philadelphia February 27th, 1737, and died March 12th, 1807, was another great Baptist leader during the Revolutionary period. At the age of eleven he removed with his parents to South Carolina, where he enjoyed the tuition of Mr. Rind, a classical tutor of renown. When still a youth, he was converted under the labors of Mr. Hart, by whom he was bap