The disturbance of Christian peace which has for some months affected the Madison Avenue Congregational Church, New York, has impressed us as disclosing a new phase of inter-church life. To an onlooker the case—the very heart of the case—is a struggle of a pastor to maintain himself in full membership with two denominations, against a struggle of men in both denominations to shut him out of one or the other denomination. This is the novelty in this New York “church quarrel.” For our part we are disposed to ask what general principle of morals, equity or discipline is violated by the Rev. Dr. John P. Newman’s position? He claims to be the permanent pastor of a Congregational church while retaining his membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Why not? It surely is not an axiom that a man can not belong to two denominations. Dialectic theologians may invent a score of arguments, but they will find their best one in the fact that the practice has been to confine a Christian’s membership to one branch of the church. But in the advance to Christian unity we have rapidly changed the practice at several points; and it is quite possible that Dr. Newman’s “new departure” may be another march on the general line of our progress.
A few words respecting the Madison Avenue Church and its pastor will help our readers to understand the case. The church was founded a dozen or more years ago by Dr. Hepworth, who up to about that time had been a Unitarian clergyman. It was a very expensive enterprise, and Dr. Hepworth became satisfied, after a few years, that he could neither fill the church with an audience nor pay its debt. Dr. W. R. Davis, who had been a Methodist clergyman, and is now a Dutch Reformed pastor in Albany, N. Y., succeeded Dr. Hepworth, and, after a few years of experience like that of his predecessor, hunted up a successor in the person of Dr. Newman, and resigned. There were two distinct difficulties in both these pastorates. One was the large debt; the other was the failure to secure adequate audiences. The last difficulty suggests no fault in either of the pastors. Both were gifted and popular. But the church is surrounded by other churches, and only an extraordinary man can secure a large body of hearers in it. The church was not at fault for not paying its debt; the burden was beyond its strength. When it asked Dr. Newman to become its pastor, it asked him for two reasons: He had friends who could pay the debt, and he would bring these friends into the church and congregation; and it was well understood that he could fill the large house with hearers.
Rev. Dr. John P. Newman has a national reputation as a pulpit orator. He always has full houses where he statedly preaches. Among his friends he numbers General Grant, whose pastor he was in Washington in the days of Grant’s presidency. The ex-president is one of the men whom Dr. Newman took into the Madison Avenue congregation and made a trustee of the church property. Dr. Newman is one of the last of the classical pulpit orators. His style is stately, his presence majestic. Pure taste and high ideals characterize his thought. His noble person, his rich, smooth voice, and the elevation of his thought conspire to make him admired and reverenced in the pulpit. His ardent friends have called him “the Chrysostom of his age.” Not unnaturally, he has expected the highest places in Methodism. Neither Webster nor Clay became President of the United States—and John P. Newman did not become a bishop. Some difficulties arose respecting a place for him in New York three years ago, he having then finished his term as pastor of the Central Methodist Church. After a year of decorous waiting, he accepted the call to the Madison Avenue Church. There are controversies about sundry minor matters; but after painfully laboring through the documents, we find two clear facts: 1st. From the start Dr. Newman has clung to the idea of remaining a Methodist while becoming a Congregationalist; 2d, there is an abundant lack of proof that in this policy he has deceived any one or done any other act which is inconsistent with the character which he displays in the pulpit. A single sentence in his address before the council was out of place; but, even it, from his point of view, had great provocation. To the onlooking public, perhaps to Dr. Newman also, it was a surprise to see the editor of the Christian Advocate furnishing material for use against Dr. Newman. This new party to the controversy presents the Methodists as semi-officially engaged in the effort to crowd Dr. Newman from his attitude as holding positions in two denominations. The justification of the editor of the Christian Advocate can not rest on any special pleading; it must rest on the ground that Dr. Newman’s claim is a bad one in church moralities. If this be true, then his Methodist antagonist has discharged a disagreeable duty and “meddled” for a dignified purpose.
The church quarrel did not originate in the new position of Dr. Newman, but the conflict having begun, this new position was made the point of attack by what is called the “Anti-Newman party.” It was the weak place because Dr. Newman had taken a new departure. The quarrel came out of the incompatibility of temper and interest developed between the old and the new elements in the church and congregation. Some of the old men left; the new were then more numerous and powerful than the old. The latter saw themselves gradually retiring to back seats, while the new men filled the front seats. They precipitated a conflict to secure themselves against the consequences of Dr. Newman’s abundant success. In the wisdom of this world, the new element put off paying the large debt; but they preferred to be certain that they would be left in peaceable possession after paying the debt.
The council has “advised” that Dr. Newman is in an untenable position—is not the permanent pastor. The advice is probably according to precedent. But it was not according to precedent that Dr. Hepworth left the Unitarians, and Dr. Davis the Methodists, to become pastor of that church. And for forty years there has been an increasing interflow between denominations. Half a score of ex-Methodists, including some of the ablest pastors in the city, are preaching in churches of other denominations. Ministers and members pass and repass between denominations. All this would have looked strange forty years ago. Perhaps Dr. Newman’s new idea may not look strange forty years hence. The advice of the council has probably only changed the form of the conflict which does not depend on Dr. Newman, but on the antagonism of the old and new elements in the congregation. We should like to see Dr. Newman’s theory thoroughly tested, and Congregationalism is liberal enough to afford the desired test. Methodism, as a whole, has no reason for jealousy of Dr. Newman’s success in the Madison Avenue Church. His success and good fame reflect honor on all Methodist preachers. We may come to realize that if a man is “worthy of confidence and fellowship by virtue of his responsible connection with some other body of Christian churches”—words quoted by the late council—he may safely “be counted a minister of the Congregational,” or any other “order.”
SUPERFLUOUS KNOWLEDGE.
A writer in Cornhill Magazine, some years ago, facetiously suggested that, while societies for the acquisition of useful knowledge abounded, each, doubtless, in its way, proving of eminent service to mankind, another society, not so much as a direct opponent, but rather as a proper, and even necessary, corrective of its rivals, should be organized, the object of which should be to sift out and to suppress the vast and ever increasing accumulations of knowledge that are not only really worthless but which are an unmitigated nuisance, a useless burden, a confused and baffling heap.
The suggestion above referred to, made perhaps in jest, is one, we venture to suggest, which might well be made in earnest. Useless knowledge! Has it never occurred to the reader what areas, and even continents, not to say oceans of valueless, of absolutely superfluous knowledge there are in the world? Observe we are not now writing of literature, or books, merely; we say knowledge.