Recollections of a Long Life: An AutobiographyCuyler, Theodore L. (Theodore Ledyard)
Religion
Recollections of a Long Life: An Autobiography
Cuyler, Theodore L. (Theodore Ledyard)
Clergy -- United States -- Biography; Cuyler, Theodore L. (Theodore Ledyard), 1822-1909
The first change for the better that I shall speak of is the progress I
have seen in church fellowship. The division of the Christian church
into denominations is a fixed fact and likely to remain so for a long
time to come. Nor is it the serious evil that many imagine. The
efficiency of an army is not impaired by division into corps, brigades
and regiments, as long as they are united against the common enemy;
neither does the Church of Christ lose its efficiency by being organized
on denominational lines, as long as it is loyal to its Divine head, and
united in its efforts to overcome evil, and establish the Kingdom of
Heaven. Some Christians work all the better in harness that suits their
peculiar tastes and preferences. Denominationalism becomes an evil the
moment it degenerates into bitter and bigoted sectarianism. Conflicts
between a dozen regiments is suicide to an army. When a dozen
denominations strive to maintain their own feeble churches in a
community that requires only three or four churches, then sectarianism
becomes an unspeakable nuisance.
I could cite many instances to prove the great progress that has been
made in church fellowship. For example, my early ministry was in a town
in which the Society of Friends had a large meeting house, well filled
by a most intelligent, orthodox and devout congregation. But its members
never entered any other house of worship. I had the warmest personal
intimacy with some of its leading men, but they would say: "We would
like to hear thee preach on First Day, but the rules of our society
forbid it." I have lived to see the day when I am invited to speak in
Friends' meetings, and I have rejoiced to invite Quaker brothers, and
sisters also, to speak in my pulpit. When I visit London, the most
eminent living Quaker, J. Bevan Braithwaite, welcomes me to his
hospitable house, and we join in prayer together. I wish that the
exemplary and useful Society of Friends were more multiplied on both
sides of the sea.
During the early half of the last century sectarian controversies ran
high, especially in the newly settled West. It was a common custom to
hold public discussions in school houses and frontier meeting houses,
where controverted topics between denominations were presented by chosen
champions before applauding audiences. Ministers fired hot shot at one
another's pulpits; churches were often as militant as mendicant, and all
those polemics were excused as contending most earnestly for the faith.
Both sides found their ammunition in the same Bible. When I was a
student in the Princeton Seminary, a classmate from Kentucky gave me a
little hymn-book used at the camp meetings in the frontier settlements
of his native region. In that book was a hymn, one verse of which
contains these sweet and irenic lines:
"When I was blind, and could not see,
The Calvinists deceivèd me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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