I well remember the unpretending little church in which it was my privilege to worship in a country town of Pennsylvania. The Episcopalians had no foothold there, and the Presbyterians consequently, combining together at once the imperiousness and the exclusiveness for which they have ever been distinguished, pretended to monopolize the fashion and the piety, the society and the religion, of the village. They, of course, contemned us, and opened wide their doors for our disorganizers, who were crying out against innovation when we were seeking to make our church a place of worship, instead of a bazaar for the display of fine clothing and false curls. The Methodists, living only the false life of a sickly sentimentality, and the Lutherans degraded even from the doctrines and practices Luther taught in his fiery zeal, were absorbed in their childish schemes of marrying and giving in marriage, engaged in special efforts at reform by revivals and meetings of religious inquiry, and busied in raising subscriptions for objects like Mrs. Jellaby's mission at Borrioboola-Gha or Sunday-school libraries which would not be sectarian, had little time to think of us after they received their quietus in the "anxious bench" controversy of 1843. There were, indeed, many solemn conclaves over our affairs by gossips who neither understood nor wished to understand the work we were doing, and half in fear that we should be lost for too much reverence for mother church, and half in joy at the prospect of a few proselytes, everybody affected to commiserate us. But these, though often working mischief among our "weaker vessels," were not seriously opposed by us. Our purpose was steadily kept in view, notwithstanding.
It was by preaching principally that we hoped to accomplish our task, and, after the stubborn fallow of an unworked field had been broken, to recur gradually to the forms of the church. But the furrows, we felt, would be an empty mockery without the teachings that give them force. To inculcate truth was then our first duty. This was often done by the more earnest and intelligent of our clergy, by following up the seasons of the Christian calendar and deriving lessons from each. Incidentally was urged, with more or less boldness according to the courage and temper of the man whose duty it was to enforce them, doctrines which for many years sounded strangely to Protestant ears. Among these, besides those already noticed in this paper, I may instance, as an example least expected by Catholics to be urged anywhere outside of mother church itself, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Starting with the proposition that that which is holy cannot be born of that which is unclean and sinful, I have time and again heard this theme urged upon his people with force and fervor by an earnest and fervent pastor. Not with equal boldness, perhaps, but with no less sincerity and fervor have I heard him urge the ministrations of the Virgin. Often in declaring these doctrines he would enforce a proposition by putting it in the form of a question, and one of these, I believe, I shall continue to hear ringing in my ears while the words of men remain intelligible to me: Why should we not reverence the mother of our Lord?
These things may be news to Catholics, and may be news even to many in whose ears they have been thundered for a quarter of a century. The latter hear without understanding, but the words will be re-echoed in their hearing until they are not terms without meaning. The Mercersburg philosophy is the antagonism in thought and in its social aspects of New England transcendentalism and Plymouth Rock conventionalisms, and receives no favor, and merits none, from a people among whom Dr. Holmes's Elsie Venner is an exponent of the life and practice of the present, as Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World was of past generations. And Pennsylvania, where this philosophy has its stronghold, being unlike New England, of which Dr. Mather said, "Being a country whose interests are remarkably inwrapped in ecclesiastical circumstances, ministers ought to concern themselves in politics," the body of the people who compose the German Reformed Church, and who look back to the Heidelberg Catechism as their earliest enunciation of faith, and the Mercersberg theology as their latest development of truth, have never felt the need of political preaching. A simple motto includes all their aspirations, their hopes, and their fears, their preaching, their practice, and their eternal reward—CHRIST CRUCIFIED.
Original.
A Family Motto.
A well proportioned ancient shield,
And on the azure-tinted field
The red crusader's cross:
Words scarce could tell at what a loss
The well-read scholar stood—
In what an earnest, startled mood,
Beneath the ancient, comely shield,
And red cross on the azure field,
This motto's thread
He whispering read,
"Fortiter gerit crucem."
A true crusader, staunch and bold,
Was he, my good ancestor old,
Who thus could boast his cross
He bore unmindful of the loss:
"Strong, strong his cross to bear,"
Comes down in characters most fair;
Comes down a glory unto me
Through many a bloody century;
The good seed kept
Though old faith slept,
"Fortiter gerit crucem."
Though old faith slept! a deep blush came
Across his cheek, a blush of shame:
That bold crusader's cross,
Borne in the very teeth of loss,
No longer worn with pride;
His conscience told him, laid aside
Like some base superstitions's sign:
That cross which from high heaven will shine.
When men shall hear,
With joy or fear,
"Fortiter gerit crucem."
Years passed; his quickened eye had scanned
The archives rich of many a land.
Yet still a purpose, named
Not to himself, each spoil had claimed;
And day by day to hail
On truth's horizon some new sail,
Strange sweetness sent through all his veins,
Till to his contrite breast he strains
That cross severe,
While angels hear,
"Fortiter gerit crucem."