CHAPTER II.

SECOND PERIOD, 1774-1789.

1. Otterbein in Baltimore.

THE year 1774 marked an important era in the history of Mr. Otterbein's work in America. Assuming charge in the city of Baltimore of an independent congregation, he was in a position to hold fraternal relations with, and, in time, to exercise a general spiritual oversight over, congregations which on account of their advanced evangelical position had become either in part or wholly separated from their parent denominations. Step by step, and without any purpose on his part to form a new and separate religious denomination, Mr. Otterbein was led onward in a course which, under the shaping hand of Providence, ultimately led to this result. It should be distinctly noted that he did not at this time, and indeed not for many years afterward, entertain any thought of such separate organization. Like Mr. Wesley, the leader of the movement which gave Methodism to the world, he was disposed to cling to his own mother-church, and, in fact, he never did formally separate himself, nor was he by any formal action of the cœtus ever separated from the German Reformed Church. His practical coöperation with the Reformed Church toward the close of his life ceased, but his friendly feeling toward that church never changed, and his name remained on the records of the cœtus up to the end of his life. But his work, for which God seems to have espe

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cially fitted and called him, like that of Mr. Wesley, grew steadily, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, expanding finally into proportions beyond all his earlier thought.

The long connection of Mr. Otterbein with the independent congregation in Baltimore, covering a period of thirty-nine and a half years, will justify a brief statement of the history and position of that church. The first German Reformed Church in Baltimore was organized about the year 1750. A regular pastor was not secured until 1760. During Mr. Otterbein's residence in Lancaster, and before a settled pastor was obtained, he frequently visited this congregation, thus sowing at this early date the seeds of spiritual truth which afterward resulted in what came to be known as an evangelical party in the church. About the year 1770 grave troubles arose in the congregation, the evangelical party desiring, on special grounds which need not here be referred to, a change in the pastorate. Their efforts in the congregation and before the cœtus proving unsuccessful, they decided to separate themselves from the congregation, and in 1771 purchased ground for building, and soon after began the erection of a small house. The ground so obtained, situated on Conway Street, Howard's Hill, is that upon which still stands the old historic brick church which was erected during Mr. Otterbein's pastorate, in 1786. The title to this ground. was vested in chosen members of the congregation, and not in trust for the German Reformed Church. The form of this trust, transmitted from time to time, was toward the middle of the present century challenged in the civil courts, but after tedious and exhaustive inquiry was fully confirmed. The party thus withdrawing from the first church was under the leadership of Rev. Benedict Schwope, a minister in regular standing in the Reformed Church.

But it is chiefly in its spiritual and ecclesiastical as

pects that this congregation presents an interesting feature in early United Brethren history. Ecclesiastically, the congregation was separated from the German Reformed Church, though for several years earnest efforts were made by the cœtus to bring about a reconciliation between the two congregations. The pastor of the first church having finally resigned to make room for harmony, the congregation immediately, without conferring with the evangelical party, chose another pastor, who was even less acceptable to them, and further efforts at reunion were abandoned. In 1774 Mr. Otterbein was solicited to take the pastoral care of the new congregation, Francis Asbury of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who at this time had not yet met Mr. Otterbein, but had heard of his evangelical work, using his good offices, by means of a courteous letter, to secure Mr. Otterbein's acceptance. After due consideration, Mr. Otterbein accepted the proffered charge; but while he retained to the end of his life a nominal relation to the cœtus of the Reformed Church, and for many years attended regularly its sessions, the independence of the congregation remained intact, nor did Mr. Otterbein in any degree intermit those evangelistic labors in other places in which he had so long been accustomed to engage. He was now in the full vigor of his mature life, being fortyeight years of age, and having been twenty-two years engaged in the pastoral work in America.

The enlightened Christian thought of the present day, a time in which the spirit of Christian unity is widely cherished among Protestant denominations, regards with disfavor all movements having the appearance of schism. Yet in times past, under the providence of God, separation was sometimes a source of the greatest good. When true spiritual life was repressed, and dead formalities, often associated with even gross immoralities, held sway in the

SPIRITUAL DESTITUTION.

331 church, and those who sought to live godly lives were mocked and scoffed at, and even persecuted by their unspiritual associates in the church, such separation became sometimes a necessity. The history of the Christian Church abounds with illustrations of this kind. Unhappily, such a low state of spiritual life prevailed extensively among the churches in America in the period which brought to this country Otterbein, and, shortly after him, the leaders of the Methodist movement. On this subject the testimony of distinguished writers in other churches, as Dr. Nevin, of the Reformed, and Dr. Kurtz, of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, is strikingly in point. Dr. Nevin, who strongly disapproved Mr. Otterbein's methods, says this of the prevailing condition of things in Mr. Otterbein's time, in his twenty-eighth lecture on the Heidelberg Catechism, published in 1842: "To be confirmed, and then to take the sacrament occasionally, was counted by the multitude all that was necessary to make one a good Christian, if only a tolerable decency of outward life were maintained besides, without any regard at all to the religion of the heart. True, serious piety was indeed often treated with marked scorn. In the bosom of the church itself it was stigmatized as Schwaermerei, Kopfhaengerei, or miserable, driveling Methodism. The idea of the new birth was treated as pietistic whimery. Experimental religion in all its forms was eschewed as a new-fangled invention of cunning impostors, brought in to turn the heads of the weak and lead captive silly women. Prayer-meetings were held to be a spiritual abomination. Family worship was a species of saintly affectation, barely tolerable in the case of ministers (though many of them gloried in having no altar in their houses), but absolutely disgraceful for common Christians. To show an awakened concern on the subject of religion, or a disposition to call on God in daily secret prayer, was

to incur certain reproach. . The picture, it must be acknowledged, is dark, but not more so than the truth of history would seem to require.”

That Dr. Nevin was not writing with the thought of defending those who participated in the revival movements of that time is quite evident from what he further says. After speaking of losses sustained by the Reformed Church. through defections to other denominations, he proceeds to speak of distinct organizations which he says "started forth originally from the Reformed Church itself, and have since acquired very considerable volume, made up in great measure of German material, though not all gathered from the Reformed connection. Otterbein, of Baltimore," Dr. Nevin specifically continues, "at a comparatively early period (1789) became the founder of one of these organizations. He was a good man, who seems to have been driven into a false position by the cold, dead temper that he found generally prevalent in the regular church."

To the same purport as to the religious state still prevailing in the older churches in the early part of the present century, is the following from the pen of Dr. Benjamin Kurtz, in "The Lutheran Observer" of January 12, 1855: "Some thirty-five years ago [1820], when God in his mercy sanctioned our labors with a glorious outpouring of his Holy Spirit, and for the first time in our ministry granted us a mighty revival, the opposition of the world and of the devil was almost unparalleled. A revival in the Lutheran Church was a new thing in that day. We had never heard of but one, and that was in Brother Reck's church in Winchester, Va. He can testify to the bitterness, malevolence, and awful wickedness that characterized the adversaries of such divine visitations, in those days of ignorance, hardness of heart, and spiritual blindness."

This low condition of religious life which prevailed șo