This convention, which met in Boston on the 3d of October and continued in session for twenty days, was the triennial “Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.” The bishops sat in a house by themselves and conducted their proceedings in secret, following in this the precedent of the Anglican Church as well as the custom of the Roman Catholic Church in its provincial and plenary councils. The House of Deputies consisted of one hundred and eighty clergymen and one hundred and eighty laymen, representing forty-five dioceses, and eight clergymen and eight laymen representing eight “missionary jurisdictions.” These sat in public, and a verbatim report of their proceedings is before us. Among the lay delegates were several gentlemen of national fame—the Hons. John W. Maynard, of Pennsylvania; Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana, the Democratic candidate for the Vice-Presidency at the recent election; John W. Stevenson, of Kentucky; John W. Hunter and L. Bradford Prince, of Long Island; Gen. C. C. Augur, U. S. Army; Daniel R. Magruder and Montgomery Blair, of Maryland; Robert C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts; General J. H. Simpson, U. S. Army; Hamilton Fish, Cambridge Livingston, and W. A. Davies, of New York; Morrison R. Waite, of Ohio; and Geo. W. Thompson and Richard Parker, of Virginia. It is not probable that any of the other sects could marshal laymen like these to sit in its councils. We mention their names because the list affords some explanation of the fact that the social and political influence of the Protestant Episcopalians is vastly out of proportion to their numerical strength. At a preliminary session, the bishops and deputies being together, Dr. Williams, the Bishop of Connecticut, preached a sermon in which he introduced a subject that subsequently occupied much of the attention of the convention—“the most threatening social evil of our time, the growing lack of sympathy between different classes and individuals of such classes.” “To-day,” he said, “we see great chasms opening everywhere because of this, which threatens church and state alike with sad disaster.” And he added:
“I think those chasms are more entirely unrelieved and ghastly in this country than in almost any other. I know that we have not been wont so to think or speak, and I know that to say this involves some chance of incurring severe displeasure; but I fully believe it to be true. In most lands there are things—I speak of things outside of Christian sympathies and labors—that somewhat bridge over these threatening severances. There are ancient memories; ancestral offices and ministries that in their long continuance have almost become binding laws; relations, long enduring, of patronage and clientship; and many other things besides. With us—we may as well face the fact—those things have, for the most part, no existence. The one only helping thing we have—still apart from what was just alluded to—is political equality. And how much virtue has that shown itself to have in pressing exigencies and emergencies? When, all at once, in the late summer months, that yawning chasm opened at our feet which appeared to threaten nearly everything in ordinary life, how little there seemed to be to turn to! There stood on either side contending forces in apparently irreconcilable opposition, and everywhere we heard the cry about rights! rights! rights! till nothing else was heard. If some few voices dared to speak of duties they were lost in the angry clamor. And yet those voices must be heard. Those words about duty on the one side and the other must be listened to, if ever we are to have more than an armed truce between these parties—a truce which may at any time burst out into desolating strife.”
Dr. Williams’ remedy was, of course, that the Protestant Episcopalians should teach the people their duties. To do this, however, they must first get the hearing of the people. But this is just what they have failed to get, and will always fail in getting—certainly so long as they provide fine churches with eloquent preachers for the rich, and a very different order of preachers and churches for the poor. The Catholic Church, before whose altars all distinctions of earthly rank and position disappear, can and does teach the people what their duties are, and she does it with effect, since her priests speak with authority and by virtue of an incontestably divine commission—two things quite unknown among the sects. This is what Rev. Hugh Thompson felt and acknowledged when, in the Episcopal Church Congress held in this city, he said:
“What is the worth of a church in this world except as a moral teacher—except this: to get the Ten Commandments kept on earth? The church canons are usually busy with questions affecting garments, gestures, postures, and the orthodoxy of the Prayer-Book, but rarely do we find any moral legislation. There are plenty of instructions to the clergy and bishops, and we are led to think what a wicked lot of people these clergy and bishops must be to need all these laws, and what a good and pious laity we must have when they have no need of such legislation! The church gives no real expression of opinion on the complicated questions of marriage, so that one minister may bless a union while another would not do so under any circumstances. Is it right that the church should evade such responsibilities as these? The church must place itself plainly on record. The church must be to a millionaire and beggar the same, must demand equal justice for all—for the railway president and the railway brakeman, for the worshipper in the gilded temple and in the ordinary meeting-house. Such a church, with the courage and fearlessness and ability to tell and enforce the eternal truth, without fear or favor, is what this country is waiting for, and would have an influence here unequalled since the days of Athanasius.”
The first two days of the convention were spent chiefly in rather unseemly discussions upon a proposition to print fifteen hundred copies of Dr. Williams’ sermon, to appoint a committee “to consider the importance of the practical principles enunciated in it,” and in attempts to begin a debate upon three amendments to the constitution proposed three years ago by the last convention. Much interest was excited by some remarks by the Rev. Dr. Harwood, of Connecticut, who thought that one of the most pressing duties of the convention would be the invention of a method whereby clergymen who had grown tired of their work might be retired without incurring disgrace. It is curious to observe how the Catholic doctrine, “once a priest always a priest,” still lingers among the laity of this Protestant body, while its clergymen, or some of them, seem anxious to destroy it. Dr. Harwood complained that although at present the regulations of his church permitted any clergyman to “withdraw from the ministry for causes not affecting his moral character,” nevertheless “somewhat of a stigma rests upon the man, and people may even point to his children and say, ‘There go the children of a disgraced clergyman.’” This state of things was found to be “a grievous burden”; for there were numbers of good fellows who feel that “they are out of place in the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church,” and who still continue in that service because they fear to incur disgrace by leaving it. Dr. Harwood drew a pitiful picture of the condition of these unhappy persons: “They may have changed their minds about some doctrine; they may believe too much or too little; they may be drifting towards a blank unbelief or towards a wretched superstition; they may feel that they have mistaken their calling and cannot do their work, for neither their hearts nor their minds are in it.” We agree with Dr. Harwood that his church would be better off without such parsons; and it is sad to record that his proposition, looking towards the adoption of a cheap and easy, although “honorable,” method of getting rid of them, was not finally successful.
On the third day of the convention the Rev. Dr. De Koven, of Wisconsin, brought forward the question of changing the name of the Protestant Episcopal Church. This proposition was made in the interest of that section of it which follows the Anglican ritualists. This section has a real or affected horror of the word “Protestant”; its members wish to persuade themselves that they are Catholics—and the wish is very natural and most praiseworthy—but they are resolved never to seek the reality and yield to the living authority of the Catholic Church. In order to avoid this submission, they set up the claim that they are themselves the Catholic Church, or rather “a branch” of it. To make this claim a little less absurd the elimination of the word “Protestant” would be advisable; and for some time past, it appears, an industrious propaganda for this purpose has been carried on. Certain of the bishops, many of the clergymen, and a number of the journals of the Protestant Episcopalians have been enlisted in the proposed “reform,” and its advocates mustered all their forces in the convention. Dr. De Koven introduced the matter by reading a paper adopted in the diocese of Wisconsin last June, and moving a resolution. The paper was as follows:
“Whereas, The American branch of the Catholic Church universal [sic] includes in its membership all baptized persons in this land; and
“Whereas, The various bodies of professing Christians, owing to her first legal title, do not realize that the church known in law as the ‘Protestant Episcopal Church’ is, in very deed and truth, the American branch of the one Catholic Church of God; therefore, be it
“Resolved, That the deputies to the General Convention from this diocese be requested to ask of the General Convention the appointment of a constitutional commission, to which the question of a change of the legal title of the church, as well as similar questions, may be referred.”
Dr. De Koven accordingly presented a motion for the appointment of this commission and moved its reference to the Committee on Constitutional Amendments. The absurd side of the assumptions made in the preamble is apparent; but the ridicule and scorn which they excite should not blind one to the arrogant claim therein set up. It is laughable to assert that a sect with less than 270,000 communicants, and with a history of less than a century, claims as its members all the baptized persons in the United States, including seven or eight millions of Roman Catholics; it is still more ludicrous to be told that the reason why we and all the other “baptized persons” do not recognize this sect as our mother the church is that up to this time she has chosen to call herself by a false name. The name—the name’s the thing wherewith to catch the conscience of the people! Let us only call ourselves something else, and then “all the baptized persons in this land”—Papists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Mormons, and all the rest—will hasten to exclaim, “Our long-lost mother! Behold your children!” This is the ludicrous side of the business, and it is funny enough. The serious side of it is the fact that a claim so arrogant should be seriously presented in a convention composed of respectable, and in some cases eminent, American gentlemen. Let us see what became of it.