HISTORICAL ADDRESS.

BY REV. THEODORE L. CUYLER, D.D.,
Brooklyn, N. Y.

THAT great clock of Time, which measures the march of man and the progress of Christ's kingdom, has struck the completion of another century in the history of Presbyterianism. This was not, by any means, its first century. There had been seventeen centuries before this-stretching back to the time when the Apostle Paul rocked its cradle, bearing this inscription,-"Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery." Paul and his fellow-apostles gave it its two distinctive features-the parity of the ministry and the office of the Eldership. There was the ovum of a General Assembly in that convocation of Apostles and Elders at Jerusalem, which sent out its deliverances to the Gentile brethren of Antioch and Syria. Five centuries later, Presbyterianism spake in the majestic voice of Augustine, who formulated and defended our chief doctrines of Grace. Later on, appear those two massive pillars in the Presbyterian structure, JOHN CALVIN and JOHN KNOX, the "Jachin" and "Boaz" whose joint names signify "He will establish it in strength." In Switzerland and in Scotland Presbyterianism was the symbol and the synonym of Freedom. If it had not been for Scottish Covenanters, the tyrannic Charles the I might never have come to the scaffold; the heroic William III might never have come to the throne. Presbyterianism gave to Christendom the Westminster Confession, that unrivaled symbol of faith which emphasizes the sovereignty of Jehovah in the heavens, and the kingship of Jesus Christ in His Church. Its pulpits have echoed to the eloquence of Chalmers, the prince of ministers, and of Alexander Duff, the prince of missionaries. Of its polity the great President Edwards testified that "the Presbyterian way has ever appeared to me the most agreeable to the Word of God and to the reason and the nature of things." It has shed its instructive and influential side-lights upon all sister denominations; and to-day the greatest of living preachersMr. Spurgeon-is constrained to govern the greatest of Christian congregations by a numerous Board of Elders. And so,

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dear brethren, has hard-headed, long-winded, stout-hearted Presbyterianism marched down through the centuries into these times "with cunning in its ten fingers and strength in its right arm."

Into the details of our ecclesiastical history during the period of our country's colonization, I have no time to enter now. There is a mist of uncertainty still hanging over the infancy of Presbyterianism in the American colonies. The Protestants from Holland, who settled New York, held many of the distinguishing features of our form of Church polity. There was also a Puritan type of Presbyterianism which planted a few churches on Long Island and in East Jersey, between 1641 and 1670. Rev. Matthew Hill (the correspondent of Richard Baxter) and Rev. Richard Denton were pioneers in these missionary churches. The Rev. William Traill, from the Irish Presbytery of Laggan, a friend of Francis Makemie, preached on the eastern shores of the Chesapeake Bay as early as 1683; but we have no definite record of any churches organized by him. Through the mist that overhangs that border-land, we can dimly discern two or three feeble churches sprouting into existence about the year of grace, 1684, on the banks of the Pocomoke river, in Eastern Maryland. One of the two firstborn churches is at Snow Hill and the other at Rehoboth-a prophetic name which signifies "room," and those early pioneers might well say "now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land." Through the fog we also discern the historic figure of the missionary-pastor FRANCIS MAKEMIE. He was born near Rathmelton, County Donegal, on the storm-swept north-western coast of Ireland; he has Scottish blood in his veins; was educated in a Scottish university on the Clyde, and his effectual calling was as a missionary of Jesus Christ to the wilds of America. A heroic figure is this stalwart Scotch-Irish Makemie, not afraid of wild beasts nor of the tyrannical bigots who imprisoned him in New York "as a strolling preacher" twenty years afterwards. goes over to Britain to beat up volunteer missionaries for the colonies, and returns in time to take part in organizing the first Presbytery about the close of the year 1705. It bore the name of "Philadelphia;" and was probably organized in this goodly city. The seven ministers who composed it were Francis Makemie, George Macnish, John Hampton, Samuel Davis, John Wilson, Jedediah Andrews and Nathanael Taylor. Ten years later the first Synod was organized, consisting of three Presbyteries, with twenty-three ministers and about thirty churches.

In 1729 the Synod solemnly declare their agreement with the Westminster Confession and Catechism as "being in all

the essential articles, good forms of sound words and systems of Christian doctrine." That doctrinal basis, thus established, has stood like adamant for one hundred and sixty years; and it will continue to stand until it upholds many a millennial church in the times of the latter-day glory.

That a vigorous controversy should have arisen in the Synod was just what might have been expected. They would not have been strong-willed and warm-blooded Scotch-Irishmen if they had not come into collisions. And, as is frequently the case when Presbyterians quarrel, both sides were right! The "Old Side" were right in their intense loyalty to our symbols of faith, and in their demand for an educated ministry wherever it was possible. The "New Side"-which embraced the majority in number, and the preponderance in aggressive zeal-were right in maintaining that the great revivals under Whitefield and Tennent were from heaven and not from men. The one side were obstinately conservative; the other side were obstinately progressive; but neither side could long do without the other.

Signals of reunion were exchanged; and after a rehearsal of the same negotiations and the same ceremonies which were to be repeated one hundred years afterwards, the separated Synods became one. The reunited Synod contained ninetyfour ministers-three-fourths of whom had worn the "New Side" badge.

The man whose portly commanding figure filled the Moderator's chair on that 29th of May, 1758, was the man whose tongue of flame had done most to cleave the denomination asunder; but his heart of flame had helped to melt and mould it again together. Gilbert Tennent was the most powerful member of the most powerful family in the Presbyterian Church of that era. His terrific and soul-searching style of preaching shook Boston as with a cyclone; it gave him the leadership of the revivals which then swept over the land. His Irish father, the celebrated William Tennent, brought him over from Ireland in his childhood, and took him to that rustic spot on the banks of the Neshaminy creek which has become classic in the history of our Church. There our Elisha planted our first school of the prophets. There William Tennent and his four sons-all to be faithful ministers of Christ-piled those rude logs which were to be as historic as the rails split by the rustic Abraham Lincoln in Illinois. Verily Tennent "builded better than he knew." That logcollege, twenty feet square and chinked with mud, contained in its rude husk the seeds of Princeton College, and Theological Seminary, and all the great training-schools of our Faith on the continent. To-day let us uncover our heads reverently

in honor of the Tennents; there is no nobler name in the early annals of American Presbyterianism.

Another man was in that Reunion Synod whose eloquence reached the high-water mark of pulpit oratory in that century. Samuel Davies, with Welsh iron in his blood, and the sweetness of Christ Jesus in his soul, stirred the heart of Virginia for the gospel of salvation as Patrick Henry stirred it afterwards for civil independence. Let us take honest pride in the fact that the first American preacher who conquered the admiration of the mother country was the Presbyterian Davies-a farmer's son and a pupil of the Fagg's Manor training-school. What he might have become if his life had reached its full ripeness we can only conjecture; but at the early age of thirty-seven he was laid beside his great predecessor Edwards in the hallowed mould of Princeton Cemetery. One other figure in that first century of our Church looms so large that we cannot overlook him if we would. When Davies visited Scotland in 1754 he encountered a keen, satirical pamphlet aimed at the "Moderates," and ascribed to a certain young "Mr. Weatherspoon." The "canny " young man was a lineal descendant of John Knox, with his great ancestor's holy abhorrence of both priestcraft and tyranny. It was a sagacious act in Princeton College to choose him for its President; it "blazed the road" for another illustrious Scotch President in our day, whose white head is honored with loving reverence throughout the Republic. Witherspoon's two visits to Philadelphia made him immortal. The first one was to the Synod in 1775, when he aroused them to issue that pastoral letter for independence, which had in it the ring of a trumpet. His second visit was to a seat in the Continental Congress in July, 1776. He got there just in time to tell Congress that "the country was not only ripe for freedom, but would soon be rotten for the want of it." He got there in time to write the only name of a Presbyterian parson under the name of Hancock on the Declaration of Independence. Before he inscribed it, he uttered the manly words, "Although these gray hairs must descend soon into the sepulchre, I would infinitely rather that they should descend thither by the hand of the public executioner than desert, at this crisis, the sacred cause of my country." The name of John Witherspoon is one of the brightest jewels in our coronal; it is the only name of a minister of Jesus Christ that is graven on the pedestal of a civic statue on the American soil.

During the protracted Revolutionary struggle our Church made little progress. The hand that wielded the sword was busier than the hand that wielded the trowel. Presbyterians, almost to a man, were rebels. Many of our ministers went

into the patriot-army as chaplains; some of them run their convictions into bullet-moulds and fired at the foe with Calvinistic precision. Some, like the heroic Caldwell, sealed their devotion with their blood. The end of the war saw church edifices desecrated or desolated, congregations scattered, the ministry impoverished, the National Synod so shattered that only fifteen ministers and four elders answered to the roll-call! The machinery of the Church of Christ was in a condition well nigh as chaotic as the civil machinery of the State. But out of this chaos there slowly emerged a twofold organic construction. Two sets of builders were busied at the same time, and completed their work at about the same time. It is a striking fact that the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in America had a simultaneous birth. On the 17th of September, 1787, the framers of our Federal Constitution completed that instrument which the greatest of living men-Mr. Gladstone-has pronounced to be "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." Its adoption was consummated in 1788.

The first steps toward the formation of the Constitution of the American Presbyterian Church were taken by the Synod of New York and Philadelphia in May, 1785. The committee then appointed made a report the next year. Another committee was appointed, which met in the autumn of 1786 and digested a draft which was sent down to the Presbyteries for examination. The Presbyteries returned their opinions and suggestions during the year following; and on the 16th of May, 1788, the Synod adopted and ratified the "Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America." Let us render our hearty thanks to Almighty God for the wisdom vouchsafed to our fathers in constructing these twain Constitutions which were born together in this beautiful city, and which have dwelt together as the "tutamen et decus" of our civil and ecclesiastical organisms.

With the adoption of the Presbyterian Constitution came the organization of the first General Assembly-in May, 1788. It embraced four Synods, seventeen Presbyteries, 180 ministers and 419 congregations. During the next year the Assembly held its first annual meeting in this city-which has always been the peculiar home of Presbyterianism. There are grayheaded Philadelphians who still remember the plain brick edifice which stood at the corner of Arch and Third streets; its pulpit was on one side of the audience-room, after the old Scotch fashion. The church which worshiped there had been founded by Whitfield; its earliest minister was Gilbert Tennent; and you will pardon a bit of personal pride when I say

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