History of the Christian church (Volume 5) online

" Revelation of Our Risen Lord" appeal to all thought-
ful readers. He is also the author of the most appre-
ciative sketch of Origen and his work, in English, in
his " Religious Thought in the West." Bishop West-
cott was deeply interested in all social topics, and
published much that bore upon their solution. A
thorough scholar, a voluminous writer, he made the
Bible clearer and the world better by his work.

With Bishop Westcott was closely associated John
Fenton Hort (i 828-1 892). He was born in Dublin,
but came to England at the age of nine.
He prepared for the university at Rugby,
and entered Cambridge in 1846. In 1852 he became
Fellow. Hort was a many-sided man. For some
years he made a specialty of botany; then he took a
prize in moral philosophy. He seemed equally at
home in classics, mathematics, philosophy, and the-
ology. In 1854, with Mayor and Lightfoot, he



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 551

founded the Journal of Classical and Sacred Philol-
ogy y and the same year he was ordained. In 1857
he married, and was given a living near Cambridge.
In 1853, with Westcott, he began his labors on the
new edition of the Greek New Testament, only ended
with its appearance in two volumes in 1881. With
Lightfoot and Westcott, he labored on the revision of
the English New Testament, which appeared the same
year. He gave his labor also to that most valuable
work, Smith's " Dictionary of Christian Antiquities,"
1 868-1 877. From 1880 to 1892 he worked on a new
edition of the Apocrypha. In 187 1 he was appointed
Hulsean Lecturer. The next year came a Fellowship
and Lectureship on Theology at Cambridge, and a
professorship in 1878. In 1887 he succeeded Light-
foot as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cam-
bridge, which he held at his death. There were pub-
lished after his death, "The Way, the Truth, the
Life," 1893; "Lectures on Judaistic Christianity,"
1894; "Six Popular Lectures on the Ante-Nicene
Fathers," 1895; " The Christian Ecclesia," 1897.

Hort was a most lovable man, and ready to render
any possible assistance to scholars. He undertook
too much, and died early from overwork. His friend,
Professor Gregory, says: "He was a great man, a
whole man. He sought the things and persons God
had made, and forgot only himself."

A man quite as original as these scholars, and who
has done more than any Englishman to revise our
conceptions of the life of the early Church, _ ^

^ natch .

was Edwin Hatch (i 835-1 889), whose days
of toil and appreciation were all too brief Like Ben-
son, Lightfoot, and Westcott, he graduated from King



552 History of the Christian Church.

Edward's School, Birmingham ; but instead of going
to Cambridge, he chose Oxford, studying at Pembroke
College, 1 853-1 857. For scholarship like his, Oxford
had little use; so Hatch came to Canada, teaching at
Toronto and Montreal, 1 859-1 866. In 1 867-1 885 he
was called to Oxford as vice-principal of St. Mary's
Hall. In 1883 he was given the rectorship of Pur-
leigh in addition, a place Hawkins, of Oriel, had held
for fifty-four years. The same year he was made
Lecturer on Church History. In 1880 he delivered
the Bampton Lectures on " The Organization of the
Early Christian Churches." The thorough scholar-
ship shown in the use of inscriptions, the original con-
ceptions in regard to the early Church, gave this book
more influence with foreign scholars than any other
contribution to Church history from England in this
period. Before this he had made his mark in articles
in Smith's '' Dictionary of Christian Antiquities,"
1873-1876, in which the way is cleared for the positions
taken in the Bampton Lectures. In 1887 appeared
his ** Growth of Christian Institutions," a most illumi-
nating book for the study of Christianity in Western
Europe. In 1888 he gave the Hibbert Lectures on
**The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the
Christian Church," a book which was hailed with de-
light by the followers of Ritschl in Germany. He
published sermons, essays, and poems, and worked to
the last on a concordance to the Septuagint.

Hatch was a Broad Churchman, but he had a deep
personal conception of Christianity. No more sug-
gestive works have come from an English historical
student.

Oxford in these years possessed another scholar of



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 553

European reputation, though late in coming to his
honors at home. William Stubbs (1825-1901) was
educated at Oxford and was Fellow of
Trinity, 1 848-1 850, That year he was ap-
pointed Vicar of Navestock, Essex, where he remained
for the next sixteen years. He was made Librarian
of Lambeth Palace, 1 862-1 868, and in 1866 was called
from Navestock to become Professor of Modern His-
tory at Oxford, 1 866-1 884. In 1879 he was made
Canon of St. Paul's. From 1884 to 1889 he was Bishop
of Chester, and 1889 to 1901 Bishop of Oxford. His
''Constitutional History of England," 1874-1878, is
based upon such a thorough use of the sources that it
can never be superseded. His "Lectures on the
Study of Mediaeval and Modern History " are more
popular, but show his method. He was recognized as
the greatest scholar of the mediaeval history in Eng-
land, if not in Europe.

Mandell Creighton (i 843-1 901) was much more of
a success socially than these men, but not their equal
in original research. Educated at Oxford,
he was Bishop of Peterborough, 1 891-1896,
and in 1896-1901 Bishop of London. His work on the
"Papacy During the Reformation," 1 882-1 894, is dis-
tinctly inferior to the work of Dr. Ludwig Pastor on
the same period.

But a change came over the intellectual atmos-
phere of Oxford with the appearance in 1890 of " Lux
Mundi." This showed that the heirs of

, ^ . . . __ , - Lux Mundi.

Newman and Pusey reignmg m Keble
College and Pusey House, Oxford, were no longer
content to rest the case against modern criticism on
authority alone. They came out in the open field,



554 History of the Christian Church.

and took into their own hands the hated weapons of
criticism. The book was not remarkable. The essays
of Gore and Illingworth gave it value, but it was said
that its appearance caused the death of Canon Liddon.
The Oxford Movement could not secure the union of
the Church of England with Rome; equally futile
were its efiforts toward securing the second darling
object of its desire — a defense by authority and tradi-
tions alone against all assaults of criticism. Since
then High Churchmen in England have entered into
the progressive intellectual life of Christendom.

These years were marked by an increase of Eng-
lish dioceses, and a liberality in the support of the
Church of England unknown before in her history.
In 1836 the Diocese of Bristol was suppressed, but
that of Ripon was founded, and that of Manchester
followed in 1847. These were the only new bishop-
rics since the Reformation until our period opens.
In 1877 the Diocese of Truro was formed; the year
following, that of St. Albans; in 1880, that of Liver-
pool; in 1882, that of Newcastle from Durham; in
1884, that of Southwell; and in 1888, that of Wake-
field. By voluntary subscription there had been
raised for endowing these Sees to 1890: Truro, $350,-
000; St. Albans, $275,000; Liverpool, $470,000 ; New-
castle, $440,000; Southwell, $320,000; Wakefield,
$465,000; in all, $2,345,000.

The colonial bishoprics now number nearly one
hundred, under the supervision of the Archbishop of
Canterbury. Besides these, there are seventeen suf-
fragan bishops, and, including the bishops of the
Protestant Episcopal Church in America, some two



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 555

hundred and fifty bishops in communion with the
Primate of England.

Since 1861 there has met annually a Church Con-
gress, in which all shades of opinion in the Church of
England find representation and expres-
sion. It is unquestionable that these have ^^^^^^

^ Congresses.

promoted the peace and power of the
Church. Though the High Church party is clearly
in the ascendant, it is largely because it has ceased to
be sectarian, and has absorbed the best of the Broad
Church teaching as proved by " I^ux Mundi" and its
successors, and by the primacy of such a radical as
Archbishop Temple. On the other hand, though the
old Evangelicals died out with Lord Shaftesbury, yet
Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool, Moule, Bishop of Durham,
and the Keswick movement, prove that the leaven is
still there, and does not cease to work. Indeed, as
Professor Webb says, " It must be observed, moreover,
that a later generation of High Church clergy in the
Anglican body have found themselves able to give to
the characteristic ' Evangelical ' experience of conver-
sion a place in their own scheme of spiritual life
which would have been grudged to it by their prede-
cessors."

The Church of England had in England itself 2
archbishops, 23 bishops, and 17 assistant bishops, 31
deans, 91 archdeans, 810 rural deans, 13,872 ^^^he End
benefices, and 8,500 of these are in the pat- of the
ronage of lay proprietors. There are, in ^•"^"•'y-
all, 22,800 clergy.

The population of England and Wales in 1901 was
32,526,075. There are 15,309 churches and chapels of



556 History of the Christian Church.

the Church of England, and 12,578 churches and
chapels belonging to the Nonconforming Churches.
The poorest showing the Church of England makes
is in its number of communicants, being only 1,974,-
629. The Methodist bodies alone report a member-
ship of 1,053,452, and very few of these are non-
communicants. Other Nonconformists report a mem-
bership of 840,000, excluding Unitarians and Friends.
Can it be that the triumph of the High Church party,
by overemphasizing the Sacrament of the Lord's
Supper and by Romanizing practices, has repelled the
majority of those who should join in holy communion
at her altars ?

The Nonconforming Churches of Engi^and.

At the beginning of this period the Wesleyan
Communion, the largest of the Methodist bodies, was

rent by bitter internal divisions. It did
Methodists. -^^^ regain its former numbers until some

years had elapsed. The autocratic power
of Dr. Bunting was broken, but the body, as a whole,
continued strongly conservative for the first half of
this period. In politics, its leading ministers were
Tories, and ecclesiastically leaned toward the Estab-
lished Church much more than toward their fellow
Nonconformists. Many of their sons entered the
ranks of the clergy of the Church of England. The
close of the period saw all this changed. A large
number of the Methodists followed the lyiberal party,
and they took their natural place in the Confederation
of Free Churches of Great Britain. Doubtless the
increasing ritualism of the Church of England con-
tributed to this result, but even more a clear-eyed con-



Evangelical Church in Great Britalw 557

sciousness of the mission of the Methodist Churches
to the modern man and modern society. This led to
new methods and much more extensive influence in
reaching and saving men.

In 1862, Sir Francis Lycett gave $250,000 for a
Metropolitan Building Fund to secure sites and erect
Methodist Chapels in I^ondon. He raised $250,000
and left at his death $ 450,000 for like purposes, which
became available in 1896. Methodism was strong
in the country, but comparatively weak in the cities
At the close of this period, nowhere as in the cities
was it doing such aggressive work. This was largely
owing to two Methodist ministers, Hugh Price
Hughes and William Booth, the founder of the Salva-
tion Army. The London West Central Mission was
established in 1887.

Hugh Price Hughes came to its control in 1886,
and has been powerfully aided by Mark Guy Pearse
since 1887.

The "Salvation Army is the extreme left wing of
the Methodist Movement, and finds its chief mission
in rescue work among the morally-neg- .^^^
lected or degraded. It does Christlike salvation
work in the prisons, the slums, and for the ^'''"y-
outcast women of the street. Many it has reached,
and many it has saved. It has proved, in a generation
priding itself upon its intellectual culture and reck-
less of religious creeds and careless of religious emo-
tions, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ saves to the
uttermost them that believe. With sensational fea-
tures and some extravagances, it has a strict disci-
pline, a firm organization, and has been ruled with a
devotion, wisdom, and financial prudence that make



558 History of the Christian Church.

it a marvel among the religious organizations of its
time. It has sought to save the soul ; but it has also
ministered to the body, and endeavored to make men
and women self-sustaining and self-respecting mem-
bers of society, and also to make the social surround-
ings help, and not hinder, the Christian life.

William Booth, originator and commanding gen-
eral of the Army, was born in 1829. He was brought

up in the Church of England, but at thirteen
Booth" joined the Wesleyans, and four years later

began his work as a local preacher. In 1853
he joined the Conference of the Methodist New Con-
nexion. His intention was to serve as an evangelist,
and he was greatly influenced by the work of James
Caughey. Soon he went into the pastorate ; but in 1 86 1
he began again his evangelistic career in Cornwall, and
in 1865 came to London. His wife, Catherine Tucker
Booth, is one of the saints of the nineteenth century.
Having charge of the East London Christian Mission,
he began his Mission Stations in 1876. About this time
he wrote the famous sentence which gave the aistinc-
tive name to the work he was founding and had led :
"The Christian Mission is a Salvation Army of Con-
verted people." There was much that seemed irrev-
erent and revolted the religious feelings and taste of
men like Lord Shaftesbury at the beginning of tne
movement, but it secured the attention of the non-
church-going and the neglected classes. If Arch-
bishop Tait would not condemn the work of the
extreme ritualists in East London because of their
extravagance, who shall condemn the Salvation Army
if they reach and save the unreached and unsaved,
however much we may dislike some of their methods?



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 559

In 1 878. appeared the "Orders and Regulations of the
Salvation Army," and the movement took permanent
form. Its organ, The War Cry, began its work in
1880. Between 1880 and 1885 it spread to the Eng-
lish Colonies, British India, the United States, and
gained a footing in France, Switzerland, Sweden, and
Germany. Mrs. Booth died October 4, 1890, leaving
four sons and five daughters, most, or all, of whom
are in one way or another connected with this move-
ment. Before this the Prison Gate Brigade had be-
gun its work, and Rescue Homes had been founded.
In 1890 appeared General Booth's "Darkest England
and the Way Out," of which two hundred thousand
copies were sold, and which brought funds which
enabled the "Army" greatly to enlarge its work. It
founded, and has successfully carried on, labor colo-
nies both in manufacturing and agricultural com-
munities. In 1896, Ballington Booth, son of General
Booth, founded the "Volunteers of America," whose
field is in the United States. In this country, how-
ever, the older organization has a large following in
the great cities. At the close of the century the Sal-
vation Army reported 142 institutions for the care
and help of the neglected or outcasts, and 4,200 offi-
cers, in England. In the United States, both branches
reported 3,189 officers, 953 stations, and 42,000 mem-
bers.

A man, the opposite in temperament and work of
General Booth, but who wrought no less effectively in
the Wesleyan communion than General
Booth outside of it, was William Arthur "^^^^^
(18 19-190 1 ). William Arthur was a relig-
ious genius. This genius was enshrined in a feeble



56o History of the Christian Church.

body, but, perhaps through this, became even more
efifective. He knew no blare of trumpets; but his
influence, hke the light, came, and darkness disap-
peared. He is the author of the religious classic in
the English tongue of this period. If the " Christian
Year" is the religious classic of the first half, the
"Tongue of Fire" is the religious classic for the sec-
ond half of the nineteenth century. In the same
class, but at a distance, stands Hannah Pearsall
Smith's " Christian's Secret of a Happy Life."

William Arthur was a master of pure English, and
an eloquent preacher. He was born at Kels, Ireland,
in 1819. In 1839 he graduated from Hoxton College,
London. From 1840 to 1843 he was a missionary in
India, and on his return he published an admirable
work on Indian mission work, entitled, "A Mission to
the Mysore." In 1846, and for some years, he served
as a missionary in France. He became greatly inter-
ested in the progress of Italian unity and in the relig-
ious regeneration of that country. He learned to use
Italian with the freedom of his native tongue. He
was an easy master of French, and knew German.
With Dr. James H. Rigg he won the battle for free
speech in the Wesleyan Conference, though there was
never aught of the bitterness of the controversialist
in his disposition. He was earnest in his work for
the Evangelical Alliance, and exercised great influence
in its councils. He was one of the successful found-
ers of the Ecumenical Conference of the Methodist
Churches. As a man, his sweetness of spirit and his
warm, fraternal feeling, ever making for peace, made
him loved as have been few Christian ministers in



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 561

high station and wide influence in the century in
which he lived.

His "Tongue of Fire" appeared in 1856; "Italy
in Transition," going to six editions, in i860; and,
later, "The Pope, the Kings, and the People," in
two volumes. In 1883 he published a timely book on
"The Difference between Physical and Moral Law."
His last work was "Religion without God," 1884,
against Frederic Harrison and Herbert Spencer, and
"God without Religion," 1887, against Sir James
Stephen.

The maa who did more than any one man toward
the transformation of the Wesleyan Communion into
an efiective, aggressive Church in England
in the last half of the century, was Hugh "U^^h^'j""
Price Hughes (1847-1902). Dr. Hughes
was born in Caermarthen, Wales, where his father, a
member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and who
had been educated at Kingswood School, held almost
every public office ot honor and trust in the com-
munity.

Hugh Price Hughes's grandfather was a Wesleyan
preacher, who brought Dr. Bunting to terms. The
grandson was converted while at school, at thirteen,
and the next year preached as a local preacher. The
son wrote to his father that he would like to be a
Methodist preacher. The father replied, " I would
rather see you a Methodist preacher than Lord Chan-
cellor of England." Dr. Hughes graduated at London
University. He entered the Wesleyan Conference,
and served in the usual pastorate until coming to
West London Mission in 1887. In 1885 he founded
36



562 History of the Christian Church.

the Methodist Times, which made him a leader of the
3^oung men and the progressive element in the Wes-
leyan Communion. He published, besides his work as
editor of the Methodist Times, two volumes of sermons
of wide influence, "Social Christianity," 1889, and
"The Philanthropy of God," 1890. No Methodist
since John Wesley has been so widely known outside
of his own Church. He was president of the Wes-
leyan Conference at his death. As preacher, evan-
gelist, editor, organizer, and party leader, while fore-
most in every good work, he left no successor.

Methodist scholarship in England was well repre-
sented by Dr. Wm. F. Moulton, who translated and
edited Winer's " Grammar of the New Testament,"
and who served on the Committee of Revision of the
English New Testament of 188 1. By his side stood
Dr. William B. Pope, author of a " Systematic The-
ology," and Dr. J. Agar Beet, whose " Commentaries "
are of enduring value.

The century closed with the raising of $5,000,000,
as a thank-ofiering for what God had wrought for and
^^g through the Wesleyan Methodists in Eng-

Twentieth- land. A sitc opposite the house of Parlia-
century und. ^^^^ j^^g h^QXi purchased, and a great
Central Church house, as a head center of aggressive
Methodism in the largest city in Christendom and the
world, will be raised upon it. This fund will also
greatly strengthen all other work of that Church in
England. No other man contributed more to its suc-
cess than Hugh Price Hughes, who is said to have
personally raised $1,250,000, besides all contributions
to the Twentieth-century Fund. Not the least service
to Evangelical Christendom of this Twentieth-century



Evangelical Church in Great Britian. 563

Fund, in idea and realization, was that it was the
fruitful parent of other Twentieth-century Funds
among the Evangelical Churches, which, in the aggre-
gate, make the Papal Jubilee look small indeed. At
the close of the century, by the official census of
Great Britain and Ireland, the Wesleyans reported in
England and Wales, 552,933 members; the Primitive
Methodists, 185,075; the Calvinistic Methodists, 156,-
058, mainly in Wales ; and other Methodist commun-
ions, 159,406, making a total of 1,053,372. From this
total should be deducted the Calvinistic Methodists,
who, in doctrine, though not in origin or polity, be-
long with the Presbyterians. But to this should be
added the forces of the Salvation Army, which would
more than counterbalance.

The next most numerous of the Nonconforming
Churches in England and Wales is the Congrega-
tional. Its history was illustrated in this
period by such preachers as R. W. Dale, g^tio^auYte"
of Birmingham; Robert F. Horton, of lyon-
don; and John Brown, of Bedford, who have each
crossed the Atlantic and lectured on preaching on
the Beecher foundation at Yale.

Newman Hall (1816-^1902), for years preached to
large congregations at Surrey Chapel, London, 1854-
1893, and of which he was pastor emeritus at his
death. He was a warm friend of the North during
the Civil War, and visited the United States several
times. His tract " Come to Jesus," written in 1846,
had a wider circulation than any other tract of the cen-
tury. It was translated into forty languages and four
million copies were sold.

A preacher of unusual vigor of thought and often



564 History of the Christian Church.

rare beauty of diction, both in praj^er and public
address, was Joseph Parker (i 830-1 902). Dramatic

in his delivery, he denounced sin in high
Joseph places and oppression everywhere. Of

humble origin, he was converted in a
Methodist chapel, and early began to preach. With
scant opportunities for an education, in large measure
he was a self-trained man. He was ordained in the
Congregational ministry in 1853. Banbury was his
first pastorate, 1853-1858. Then followed Man-
chester, 1 858-1 869. In the latter year he became
pastor of the oldest Congregational society in L,on-
don. In 1874 its new church edifice. City Temple,
was dedicated. He remained its pastor until his
death. His leading works were "Ecce Deus," 1868;
•'Ad Clerum," 1870; "The Paraclete," 1874, and
twenty-five volumes of sermons. They had a large
sale, yet not equal to Spurgeon's, though they were
of much higher intellectual value. From boyhood
Dr. Parker was a total abstainer. Twice he visited
the United States. He was an earnest and devoted
man, and his pulpit was a power for righteousness.

At the close of the century the English Congre-
gationalists numbered 398,741 members.

The Baptists increased in numbers and influence

during this period. They had in Dr. Alex-
B Dtists 3-^^^^ Maclaren, of Manchester, a great

preacher, and in Dr. John Clifford a great
Church leader.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892), however,

was the most celebrated Baptist in the

world during this period. His father and
grandfather were Congregational preachers. He was



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 565

born at Kelvedon, Essex, and got a fair academic edu-
cation at Colchester and Newmarket. In January,
1850, in a Primitive Methodist chapel in Colchester,
Spurgeon heard a sermon from " Look unto me and
be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth ; for I am God,
and there is none else," and Spurgeon found the salva-
tion which he was so wondrously and successfully to
preach. He was baptized in the Baptist Church, May
3, 1 85 1, and the same year began preaching. In
April, 1854, he entered upon his ministry at New