BIBLIOGRAPHY. I. GENERAL SOURCES. Asbury, Bp. Francis., Journal. New York, Methodist Book Concern, 1852, 3 vols. Bruce, Alexander Balmain, D.D., Apologetics. Scribner's Sons, 1893. New York, Charles Dorchester, Daniel, D.D., The Problem of Religious Progress. New York, Methodist Book Concern, 1881. Dorchester, Daniel, D.D., Christianity in the United States. New York, Methodist Book Concern, 1888. Dwight, Timothy, D.D., Travels in New England and New York. New York, G. & C. Carvill, 1822, 4 vols. Horne, A. R., History of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. New York, E. Steiger & Co. Kapp, F., Die Deutschen im Staate New York während des 18. Jahrhunderts. New York, Steiger, 1886. Kurtz, J. H., Church History. Eng. Trans. New York, Funk & Rupp, Thirty Thousand Names. New York, E. Steiger & Co. II. SPECIAL SOURCES. Breyfogel, S. C., Landmarks of the Evangelical Association. Cleveland, O., Lauer & Mattill. Discipline of the Evangelical Association, 1839. Dreisbach, J. (Unpublished Journal), 1839. Orwig, W. W., History of the Evangelical Association. Vol. i. (all pub.), Cleveland, Chas. Hammer, 1858. Yeakel, R., History of the Evangelical Association. Vol. i., Cleveland, O., Lauer and Mattill, 1892. THE EVANGELICAL ASSOCIATION. CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE EVANGELICAL ASSOCIATION. THE Evangelical Association took its rise in the eastern part of Pennsylvania, under the labors of that godly minister of the gospel, Jacob Albright, among the Pennsylvania Germans, descendants of German immigrants, who had colonized that section of our country in the eighteenth century. In order to understand the circumstances which led to the organization of this church, it will be necessary to sketch, briefly, the history of early German immigration, and the religious condition of these people in the latter half of the last century. William Penn, the founder of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, gave the first impulse to this immigration by the guarantee of religious liberty in his colony. This proved a most attractive consideration to the victims of religious intolerance on the continent of Europe. The first colonies to emigrate from Germany left the Old World for the New from the same considerations that moved the Pilgrim Fathers who came from the British Isles in the "Mayflower," viz., to escape religious oppression and find religious liberty. The "Mayflower" of German immigration was the British ship "Concord," which landed in the harbor of Philadelphia October 6, 1683, bringing among its passengers the first colony of Germans, who settled in Pennsylvania. The tide of German immigrants soon assumed gigantic proportions, so that, according to the historian J. D. Rupp, more than thirty thousand names of Germans, Swedes, and Dutch were numbered among those who settled in this country between 1727 and 1776. Many Germans at first settled along the Hudson River in the province of New York, where their nomenclature is still preserved in the names of many towns and villages. But the provincial government of New York was far from exercising that religious1 toleration which was desired, hence these people sought a final refuge in the more liberal domains of Pennsylvania. These German immigrants were almost purely Protestant. They were men of energy and iron will, a good foundation for a new nation. The causes of this extensive migratory movement from the land of Luther and the Reformation to the British colonies of the New World are not far to seek. Professor Seidensticker, in his "Geschichtsblätter," tells us that the motive was a religious one. Like the Puritans and Quakers themselves, these also sought escape from religious intolerance and found an asylum in America. Under the terms of the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, by which the Thirty Years' War was concluded, none but the Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed Confessions were recognized by the German Government. It was the triumph of state churchism in continental Europe.2 Pietists, Mennonites, Schwenkfeldians-in fact, all who dared to differ from these confessions or to stand aloof from the recognized communions-were exposed to various forms of persecution. Among these the inhabitants of the Rhenish prov 1 Professor Seidensticker's "Geschichtsblätter," p. 23. THE PALATINATE. 387 inces constituting the Palatinate were perhaps the most unfortunate. The Palatinate was one of the principal theaters of that bloody war, in which their lands were devastated and their homes destroyed by marauding troops under such barbarous leaders as Spinola, Mansfield, and the bloody Tilly, besides the ravages caused by the Spanish invasion under Gallas, in 1635. Successive storms of pillage, fire, and bloodshed devastated that unhappy land. Louis XIV. of France twice invaded these already devastated provinces. His well-known motto was: "A desert shall henceforth be the boundary of France." But, in addition to this, the Protestants of the Palatinate fell under the persecutions of Catholic rulers. The only hope of relief was emigration. Among those who thus left the devastated scenes of the fatherland to seek a home and freedom to worship God in the New World was John Albright, the father of Jacob Albright. He was one of three hundred and thirty German passengers who came to Philadelphia September 19, 1732, on the ship " Johnson." 1 The spiritual and moral condition of these new settlers in the wilds of America became a deplorable one. They had freedom to worship God, but many influences tended to their spiritual deterioration. The struggle for subsistence, the battle for bread, the herculean task of subduing an interminable wilderness, absorbed time and strength, and prevented the cultivation of spiritual life. The effort to gain a home in the New World put into the background every thought of gaining a home in heaven. They were almost entirely without competent spiritual leadership. Here were, according to Professor Horne's "History of Lehigh County," two hundred and eighty thousand Germans, of all shades of religious belief, peopling the eastern section of Pennsylvania, with scarcely a spiritual leader 1 "Rupp's "Thirty Thousand Names," pp. 75, 76. among them, certainly none whom they would all follow. They were, of course, the scattered sheep of various sects, as well as many of the established or recognized confessions. There were, indeed, a few good and noble men among them. Rev. Henry M. Muhlenberg, from the University of Halle, labored quite successfully among the scattered and neglected members of the Lutheran Communion, Rev. Michael Schlatter, a Swiss pastor, performed a similar service among the Reformed, besides Count Zinzendorf, the pious founder of the Moravian Brotherhood. But what were these among so many? Upon the whole, the people were like sheep without a shepherd. Disorganized, untaught, worldly-minded as they were, the condition of society became deplorable in the extreme. At best there was but a form of godliness; to the power thereof they were for the most part entire strangers. Without church edifices and without good pastors Sunday became a day of carousal instead of religious devotion. Drunkenness, profanity, and excesses became the order of the day.1 A few pastors gradually came among them, but they were either political refugees, reckless adventurers, or infidel students from the German universities. Dr. Kurtz, in his "Church History," declares that crowds of rationalists went forth from the German universities of Halle, Berlin, Tübingen, Göttingen, and others, who for seventy years held almost all the professorships and pastorates of Protestant Germany. The same authority assures us that in the age of Frederick the Great there prevailed a general hostility to all positive Christianity, not only in Germany, but in France and in England. It was the age of rationalism. Even the supernaturalism of the pietistic Spener and his co-religionists, by appealing to the inner spiritual illumination, independent of the Word of God, as an anti 1 See Dorchester's "Christianity in the United States." |