ARTICLE VII.

CHURCH HISTORY AS AN AID TO CHRISTIAN UNITY.

BY PROFESSOR ALLEN DUDLEY SEVERANCE.

THERE is no necessity of insisting upon the evils of denominational rivalry. It has been fitly termed "the sin of schism." 1 We are all too familiar with the sad spectacle. On the fine avenues of our large cities there are elegant church edifices of different denominations every few blocks, sometimes on the same block,-altogether too much money locked up in brick and mortar. In the rapidly growing suburbs it is even worse. The denominations seem to act as though possessed by a haunting fear that their chance to preach the gospel would be forever lost if they did not hasten to plant a chapel, totally regardless of the needs of the little community; and, on what we are accustomed to call "home mission territory," the state of affairs is even worse. In town after town in the West, there are half-a-dozen weak, struggling churches where one or two would suffice; their pastors underpaid, their accommodations pathetic in the extreme, and their expenses defrayed in large part by home missionary boards in the East, themselves already deep in debt. And what are the conditions on foreign missionary ground? Take Japan as an illustration. Dr. Amory H. Bradford says: "I have seen in one place after another in that country Presbyterians, Baptists, Anglicans, American Episcopalians, Methodists North and South,

"The Sin of Schism," by E. Benjamin Andrews, in Lectures on Church Unity.

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Wesleyans from Canada, confusing natives by different names, insisting on insignificant details of their own organizations, when an impression had hardly been made on surrounding heathenism." Do not such things justify the indignant words of Bishop Maret? "If, after eighteen centuries, idolatry prevails over the greater part of the globe; if Mahometism desolates once flourishing Christian countries; if a thinly disguised atheism ravages even the Christian world, doubt not that one of the most powerful causes of so many moral and social miseries, so many shameful humiliations, lies in the many unhappy internal divisions of Christians, which constitute schism and heresy." 2

I. Deprecating, as all must, this sad state of affairs, cannot church historians do something to help put an end to it? Let us face the fact that our divisions arise in large measure from (1) ignorance of one another, (2) prejudice, and (3) mistakes. Cannot the study of church history do something to remove all three?

1. Ignorance. One of the arguments commonly urged in favor of the study of general history is "that the limitations of the man who knows nothing of the past are similar to the limitations of him whose observations have been confined to his own country or his own town." 3 If there is a need of knowing the history of other nations and of other times than our own, does not the same argument apply to the history of other communions? Our denominational consciousness is too much magnified. The political jingo is the man who knows nothing about the achievements of other peoples. Is not the spirit of the ecclesiastical jingo essentially the same? What

1"The Unity of the Spirit," by Amory H. Bradford, in Lectures on Church Unity.

2 Quoted in preface to Döllinger's Reunion of the Churches, p. xiii. 8 Adams, Manual of Historical Literature, p. 3.

would be thought of an army corps which fancied itself to

be the entire army?

We do not have to go back to the Reformation times to find illustrations of the fact that ignorance of one another's ways keeps churches apart.

On April 22 and 23, 1903, the representatives of four denominations-the Congregationalist, the United Brethren, the Methodist Protestant, and the Christian Connection-met in Pittsburg to take steps toward their union into one body. Dr. William Hayes Ward, of New York, who was present on behalf of the Congregationalists, describes the gathering in a recent number number of the Independent. Concerning these denominations he says: "No two of them have ever been in close historical or geographical connection with each other. Where one denomination strongly prevails the others are weak. Accordingly they have lived apart without much mutual knowledge. . . . . To form a plan of union between bodies so alike, yet so diverse, and so ignorant with each other, was no easy task. The first work must be that of acquaintance. The first long general session... was spent in learning each other's ways and views. Many were the questions asked." As a result of the conference, the first step--and that a hopeful one-was taken toward Christian union. Three of these denominations have decided, while retaining their present names and their autonomy in respect to all local affairs, to add to their official title the following: "In affiliation with the General Council of the United Churches." Does not this achievement in recent church history support the truth of the statement, made above, that ignorance of one another is one of the prime reasons for denominational separation?

The argumentum ad ignorantiam has had altogether too

1 1 April 30, 1903.

prominent a place in church histories of the past. Saintine called history" the lie of the ages." 1 One has but to read certain church historians to feel that the reproach is almost justified. "Eusebius openly avows his intention of relating only those incidents in the lives of the martyrs of Palestine which would reflect credit on the Church, and Milner constructs his whole history on the principle that he will omit all mention of ecclesiastical wickedness, and record only the specimens of ecclesiastical virtue." 2

In the interest of polemics, church history has been perverted. "Its sources," says Henry B. Smith, "are buried in the dust of alcoves, and when exhumed, it is seldom with the insignia of a resurrection. They are investigated for aid in present polemies, not to know the past but to conquer in an emergency; as if one should run over American history only in view of incorporating a bank or passing a tariff-bill.” *

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"3

Protestants have been fond of telling the story of Luther's finding the Bible—“ a rare book, unknown at that time”— upon the unknown shelves of a dark room" of the University of Erfurth. One has to do considerable searching to find in a Protestant history the statement that "this was partly his own fault, for several editions of the Latin Vulgate and the German Bible were printed before 1500."

On the other hand, Roman-Catholic historians have not been at all backward in repeating the calumnies of Bolsec and Audin concerning Luther and Calvin and the other Reformers."

IX. B. Saintine, Picciola the Prisoner of Fenestrella, p. 13.

2 A. P. Stanley, “Introduction to the Study of Ecclesiastical History," in his History of the Eastern Church, p. 55.

"The Science of Church History," in Faith and Philosophy, p. 52. D'Aubigné, History of the Reformation, p. 41.

5 Ibid., p. 42.

6 Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. vi. p. 111, note 1. 7Cf. Paul Majunke, Luther's Lebensende (Mainz, 1891).

The history of D'Aubigné doubtless needs correction; but Luther was not the demon incarnate that he is painted by Archbishop Spaulding.1

2. A more fruitful source of our divisions even than ignorance is prejudice. Prejudice may be defined as willful ignorance. We are glad to believe ill of those from whom we differ, and we do not take the trouble to inform ourselves of the good that is in them. We do not try to see things from their point of view.

The illustrations referred to under the head of "ignorance might also be used here; for it is often hard to tell where ignorance leaves off and prejudice begins. The controversies between Romanists and Protestants-and to a lesser extent polemics between Protestant denominations-have been too much conducted along these lines. Church historians, whose motto ought to have been that of Ranke, "Ich werde es nur schreiben wie es eigentlich gewesen war," have too often added fuel to the flames by their misrepresentation of the practices and views of their opponents.

Take, e. g., the average Protestant presentation of the question of Indulgences. In the recent handbook on "the Reformation" by Professor T. M. Lindsay, of Glasgow, we read: "The money was to be got by the sale of pieces of stamped paper or tickets declaring that the purchaser had received pardon for the commission of sins which had been named, valued, and paid for." 2

No wonder that our Roman-Catholic friends object to this presentation of the subject. Not a word in the manual from which the quotation has just been made as to the scholastic distinction between the eternal guilt and the temporal punishment of sin, and that the indulgence was the commutation 1 M. J. Spaulding, History of the Protestant Reformation, pp. 71-101. *T. M. Lindsay, The Reformation (Edinburgh, 1884), p. 3.

Vol. LXI. No. 241. 10