Ohio History Journal

The Presbyterians of Ohio.            211

 

 

ABSTRACT     OF   THE    SERMON     ON  "THE     PRESBY-

TERIANS OF OHIO."

 

BY REV. SYLVESTER F. SCOVEL, PRESIDENT OF WOOSTER UNIVERSITY,

WOOSTER, OHIO, PREACHED IN THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

The Christian is a cosmopolitan. Every land is his father-

land since God is his father. So every Christian is brother to all

other Christians. Yet we may have a just concern which shall

be special for our country and our church.

We have a century of Presbyterian experience behind us,

and each one of the Centennial occasions which have been oc-

curring since 1776 (and all have been useful in many ways), in-

vites us to consider the facts and lessons of that experience.

The Centennial record of any religious body cannot be repre-

sented by processions and pageantry however elaborate. Not to

the eye but to the heart must we appeal. We go deeper even

than the references to ancient places of worship or their for-

gotten customs. We must find the teacher and the truth, the

communicant and his conduct, the home life and the school of

the Sabbath and of the week day. We must linger beside the

couch of the sick and beside the open tomb and the shadowed

homes. We must go out from these centers to the sure but often

silent influences which have told upon manners, and standard of

conduct and social life, and upon law and order, and even upon

legislation and administration. We must trace footfalls that are

not heard primarily on the hurried streets, and search out the

hidden causes in thought and feeling of much that we admire

externally.

The motives for Centennial review are potent and dignified.

The present reaps the fruit of the past, and is the product of

the past to be understood fully only in its procuring causes. The

noble men of other days were the friends of many, the kindred

of some.   The heritage of Christian life and character which

any long record brings to view is the Church's true glory, the

proof of the presence and power of Christ, her divine head, and

of the spirit her divine heart. Moreover, the complex elements

of our life of to - day need to look steadily at the simpler life of

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the past, the condition of its heroic virtues. In such records we

honor God by noting what he has wrought.

And while we concentrate for a little our attention upon our

predecessors in this commonwealth, we must remember what

and who preceded them. Away in the dim distance and across

the seas we discover names whose influence lived in our pioneers

and still survives. These may be names not often mentioned,

but they came bringing the principles we revere into the life of

their own age, disturbing the apparently external uniformity

of the Papacy.

Then well known conflicts show us the head of the emerg-

ing column, compacted and partly createdby these conflicts

themselves. At and in and after the Reformation we hear

stronger voices and see more guiding rods in the hands of leaders.

Presently the column crosses to our own shores and buries itself

in the din and battle of our own Revolution, and then is seen

later in the nearer coasts of our neighboring States, and finally

reaches our own streams and forests.

We cannot possibly isolate any band of Presbyterians. Our

church in our locality is surrounded by concentric circles and

becomes our church in our commonwealth, in our country, in

the world, and in the church universal and militant, which is it-

self encircled again by the white-robed throngs of the church

invisible and triumphant. It is a blessed thing that we cannot

localize too much. The vista and outlook must be kept clear.

This is what intensifies and expands at the same time. It en-

larges both intent and content, contrary to the rules of formal

logic. The genesis of each Christian goes back to the forces

which build and sustain the universal church. All the way

down the chain is vital in its continuity. If we put a finger

upon any one link of the chain for some special purpose, we are

never to detach it. Looking upon our church in our common-

wealth we stand half way between our universal and our local

attachments. Such distinction for thought or study will not put

us out of touch with any others who love our common Master,

but the contrary. Other churches and other countries shall be-

come dearer to us by the privileges of our own.

If we ask for the influences which prepared the Presby-

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The Presbyterians of Ohio.            213

 

terians who came to Ohio, we must turn our faces to the past.

We must hover over the advancing column and mark its consti-

tution and character. It is a long column and a noble one. Its

ranks are starred with heroes. Truth floats from all its banners.

Its inscriptions are condensed principles of almost Omnipotent

force. Its uniform is often dyed like His from Bozrah, for with

Him and for Him they suffered. It is grand review even for a

glance of the eye.  Mark the Bible, held up aloft as Beza's

statue bears it up over the borders of the lovely Lake Neuchatel.

See the broken fetters lifted ready to strike tyrants! See the

compact organization which proves that an integument is neces-

sary to a vigorous body, from the enclosure of a blood-corpuscle

to the retaining walls of a vast civilization! See the step they

keep in the witness against a false individualism, and even

against an independent and disintegrating ecclesiasticism! See

the rugged faces and the fair ones - Coligny side by side awhile

with Margaret d'Angouleme. Break up the picture, study any

of its divisions, and each will be found to have contributed

something of permanent value to the whole Presbyterian tone

and temper, and something important to our common Christianity

and our advancing civilization. As we pass from Continental to

Scotch Presbyterianism the truth becomes clearer, the tread

firmer, and the struggles terminate more decisively in victory.

As we pass over into the New World little seems to remain but

the legitimate sequences of (1) dissolution of the bond between

Church and State; (2) the office of securing American liberties;

(3) the consolidation and organization of the scattered churches,

and (4) the great revivals. These came in their turn, and the

church of our fathers was fully ready for the newer and yet

larger work on our frontiers and beyond, until the advancing in-

fluence reached the western limit of this great land. And there

it was ready again to make a league with the modern giant,

steam, and pass onward with the Gospel into the far East just in

time to reach its hitherto immobile masses as they began to be

stirred with the breath of a new life.

[After this introduction the speaker traced some of the lines

by which Presbyterians came into Ohio.]

Like other immigrants they came rather drawn than either

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drifting or driven. The Ohio Land Company, formed by King

in 1750-51, proved attractive. The codfish brought many a

Puritan to our shores, and good soil brought many a Presbyterian

to Ohio. The movement into Ohio was part of the greater

Western movement. Some went farther North and some away

to the South. The centre of population began soon to go West,

and certainly it grew up with the country. Great trade-winds

blew over the lands with steadiness, and any vessel could go by

them from a shallop to a frigate. So Presbyterians came into

Ohio. Nor had they far to be blown. The drift into western

Pennsylvania had been equally mercenary, but equally moral in

its outcome. Those who came were just in time to settle the

question as to France and Roman Catholicism, or England and

Protestanism. The drift into Virginia thought about tobacco

lands probably; but its constituents were just in time to help

settle the question of State and Church, and that of freedom to

preach the gospel and build churches unmolested. It was now

time that the Pilgrims should move on into our borders, in order

to help in settling the northwest for liberty, and to carry out the

true spirit of the Declaration, that "morality, religion and

knowledge being necessary to good government, schools and the

means for education shall forever be encouraged." Here, too,

they came just in time.

The immigration had a moral end as well as a material im-

pulse; and it surely had a magnificent opportunity. The ques-

tion whence they came who entered Ohio as Presbyterians a num-

ber of years ago, must bring our glass down to the distant hori-

zon half around the circle of the compass. Waldensian bravery,

Huguenot skill, Holland simplicity and heroic patience, Scotch

valor and stubborness, all mingled with German fervor and con-

viction. Some of these stumbling one over the other in Penn-

sylvania, reached Ohio; but most of all there and here the mark

of the Scotch- Irish immigrant is most plainly discerned. Some

of their best and noblest leaders set sail in 1636 to form a colony

in New England. Driven back by the sea, they returned and

fought in Scotland. Two-thirds of a century later, after 1720,

the emigrants left in swarms, penetrating New England, New

York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas. Lord Montjoy

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The Presbyterians of Ohio.           215

 

said: " America was lost by Irish emigration," What mark they

left on the Revolutionary time, I need not indicate; nor that

they came from John Calvin, so cordially hated by the Romanists,

or from John Knox, the rush of whose impetuous speech for the

crown-rights of Jesus brought tears and trembling to the schem-

ing Queen. Rugged was he as his own mountain, but fair as

the shining of an eternal, because supernal, light upon the sum-

mit of his fame. There were great men all along the line:

Makemie in Maryland, Davies in Virginia, McMillen and his

coadjutors in Western Pennsylvania, Rice in Kentucky, and

hundreds of others.

Presbyterians came from New England, and our heritage in

Puritan blood must not be forgotten. They came from Eastern

Pennsylvania, they came from Kentucky. Kentucky's churches

are daughters of Virginia; but Virginia had been largely peopled

by Scotch-Irish. "In obscurity and neglect Presbyterianism, in

spite of Virginia laws, planted itself unmolested west of the

Blue Ridge. Frederick county was leavened, Augusta county

was nearly filled; McDowells, Alexanders, Lyles, Stuarts, and

even the Campbells kept coming, and Moore came and Brown,

and the list closes with the Makemie as it began." (Gillett, Vol.

I.) As late as 1794 the Synod of Virginia included the Presby-

teries of Red Stone and Ohio; and as early as 1791, the General

Assembly approved and commended the plans of the Synod of

Virginia "for the multitudes who are ready to perish on the

frontiers."

Currents drew into Ohio from all around the horizon. Mary-

land had been singularly prepared to feed Ohio. But most

came, of course, from Western Pennsylvania. In 1831 the

Synod of Pittsburgh calls for appreciation of the task " now

opening in the great Western Valley." Pittsburg is pronounced

" the commercial center of more than eight thousand miles of

steamboat navigation." God in His providence, says the Synod,

"seems almost to have annihilated distance. The member of

this Synod is still living who first sounded the silver trumpet of

the gospel and broke the first loaf of the Bread of Life (with a

handful convened in a log barn) west of the Ohio. Population

has more than doubled every ten years; at this rate there will be

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a population west of the Alleghany Mountains in twenty-five

years of twenty millions. Can we close our eyes? Brethren,

keep the sacred fire ever burning upon our altars, and send

down this immense valley one thousand torch-bearers."

But I cannot stay for further particulars. Though many of

the world's people misunderstood, or doubted, or denied, the

work went steadily forward. The most intimate sympathy has

always existed between the Presbyterianism of Ohio and that of

Western Pennsylvania. The larger religious movements made

visible in the Pittsburgh conventions of 1842 and 1857, were

shared alike. And many of the baptisms and gracious revivals

were alike pervasive. The movement was of the kind to pro-

duce this. It was not en masse nor by colonies; it was by fami-

lies and by ministers. It was by transfusion rather than deport-

ation and immigration.

Enough has been said to show what mingling of currents

from the far Northeast, the East and South, came in upon Ohio.

Conflicts of jurisdiction were brought to a close. Those who

were entering saw eye to eye, and flowed together. Everything

seemed favorable to the inclusion of the best possible elements

in the stimulative immigration.

Moreover, it was a singularly important time-a blossoming

for which there were long preparations. Yet we must remember

the discouragements and difficulties through which they must

yet pass; the stubborn character of the many foes they met and

the exacting conditions under which they labored. The work

was only begun, though well begun. We may turn from any

study of its details to ask for the main influences by which these

who came from so many of the four winds of heaven had been

trained for all they were to do and suffer.

I. The first influence was, definiteness of conviction. This

appeared in their estimate of the Bible as the only rule of faith

and practice, in accurate expressions of their faith by formulae,

and in their developed and systematic schemes of church order.

In all these things, they were staunch and firm. They, like

Francis Makemie, when arraigned by the High Church govern-

ment in New York in 1707, were able to say: "As to our doc-

trines, we have our Confession of Faith, which is known to the

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The Presbyterians of Ohio.            217

 

Christian world." No one can over-estimate the values of the

positiveness of Presbyterianism in shaping the religious life of

our State. " Presbyterianism did not come into the New World

passive and plastic, to be determined in its character and history

by force of circumstances or by the accident of its environment,

but came with positive opinion, deep and strong convictions of

truth and duty, with clear conceptions of its mission to mold

and determine the character of the New World. An acorn

planted at the foot of the Alleghanies, is not in doubt as to the

form it is to assume. In Druidical groves and in American for-

ests, oaks grow according to inner life. The seed of Presbyter-

ianism here was the same as in Geneva and Edinburg. Indefi-

niteness is reduced to a minimun in Presbyterianism. The in-

definite man is evasive and deliquescing and evaporative. The

definite man will be a rallying point in the community. Such

was the first influence, and this became characteristic. Presby-

terians came to be known in Ohio as being able to say not only,

" I know whom I have believed," but also to add, " I know what

I believe, and can give a Scriptural reason why."

II. The second characteristic discloses independence of

man and love of liberty. This especially fitted Ohio Presby-

terians to live under and carry out the spirit of the great Ordi-

nance of 1787. Nothing could be finer than the exact adjust-

ment of that ordinance, which recognized nothing but free men,

and the inner spirit of Presbyterianism as it had come to be de-

veloped by the Assembly, 1788-9.

Presbyterian love of liberty is founded on an appreciation

of man as man. Upon that recognition of the soul in man

which makes a "Common," a great middle class, self-respecting

and attracting the respect of others. Presbyterian love of

liberty grows out of the Kingship, the Priesthood, and the

Prophetic commission of all believers.

III. But an equally strong influence was exerted upon the

Presbyterians who settled Ohio, and through them, in the con-

servative direction. They always believed in good and strong

government, and were ready to say with Washington, "In-

fluence, sir, is not government." They strongly held govern-

ment to be from God, and therefore held the Government to

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God. Conscience was for them the source of power in securing

obedience to law. Law and order and the limitations of liberty

were their household words. They were inclined to this direc-

tion both by doctrine and order. Publicists, like Gladstone, dis-

cerned this trait. Our faith has some very persevering saints.

It can stand by the difficult and the old, and even the in-

explicable (when that is divine), with only a patient smile for all

gain-sayers; and after awhile the gain-saying ceases, and the

admiration of what the world calls "Staying qualities" begins.

This conservatism it was which fitted them for the following

change of correspondence with the father of his country. "We

shall consider ourselves doing an acceptable service to God in

our profession, when we contribute to render men sober, honest,

and industrious citizens and the obedient subjects of a lawful

government." To which, George Washington replied that,

"The general prevalence of philanthrophy, honesty, industry

and economy, seems in the ordinary course of human affairs

particularly necessary for advancing and confirming the happi-

ness of our country." Calvinism's sense of accountability is a

friend to st.ong government. Presbyterianism gives a rational

conservatism. It is not fatalistic. Presbyterians went about

arranging for government as naturally as they began felling trees

and planting crops. They had no hesitation and no squeamish-

ness, either in theory or practice. They had little use either for

vigilance committees or white caps.

The speaker then simply enumerated other characteristics

of which time forbade the discussion:

IV. The Intellectual.

V. The Ethical.

VI. The Evangelical.

VII. The Catholic.

VIII. The Disciplinary.

Some of the closing words were as follows:

Here, then, we rest the case. The decision and convincing

and definite element fulfilled the first condition and adaption to

the work before them.

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The Presbyterians of Ohio.           219

 

The liberating element brought freedom for movement,

with all the sacred passion of patriotism and all its honorable

record, growing more distinguished as the years go on.

The conservative element established as other work pro-

gressed.

The intellectual element quickened all the faculties of all

with whom they came in contact, and by press and school and

fireside and pulpit they kindled such general ardor for mental

power and furniture as has made Ohio a new mother of Presi-

dents.

The ethical element aided to break the dominion of border

savagism, and cleft the way for sound morals in law and prac-

ticc, in society and business.

The evangelical and spiritual element kept descending the

dews of the Holy Spirit's presence, and kept ever visible the

radiant face of the Savior of men, and kept ever open the shin-

ing way to the celestial city - how many thousands have already

trod it?

The Catholic element came on, in its own time, like the

color on perfect and mellow fruit.

And ever and always to awaken and help us stands the dis-

ciplinary element in this great preparation.

What a series of marvelous combinations might be here en-

larged upon. Stability and freedom; adaptation to common

people, yet demanding the highest intelligence; doctrinal strict-

ness, and yet liberality in the matter of non-official membership

and in co-operation with other churches; devotional fervor, yet

joined with marked ethical force; independence of the state,

yet demand for state allegiance to God, intense conservatism and

rapid progress.

But I forbear. I will not even attempt to voice the appeal

which so noble an ancestry awakens; nor will I ask whether we

who have known and enjoyed will prove as heroic in transmit-

ting the sacred content of our blessings to those who come after

us. It is certainly our duty to maintain, to restrain, to educate,

to evangelize. When the churches had "rest" at the beginning,

then they were "edified." Then also they walked "in the fear

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220       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.  [VOL. 3   of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, and were multiplied." What better can we do with our exemptions and advantages than to imitate them by growth in grace, and unsparing efforts to multiply the number of the saved? What deep gratitude should characterize the tone and temper of the Presbyterian hosts at every review of the century. In His name who gave us such a cloud of witnesses, we set up our banners. Let confi- dence, born of our past, and willingness, born of our gratitude, and hope, born of the promises, and energy, born of love and loyalty, be enough to compact us and drive us forward, as the sandblast drives its granite atoms into the hard, crystal surface.

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