CHAPTER III.
Characteristics of the Population—All Nationalities and all Social Peculiarities Fused into a Common Mass—Missourian—First Settlers of the State—Where From, and their Type of Domestic and Social Life—The “Kansas-Nebraska Bill”—Its Effect upon the Population of Missouri—“Emigration Aid Societies”—Extremes Brought Together in Missouri—Reflex Tides of Population—Rapid Increase—Unique Social Formation—Social Peculiarities Fuse—Religious Characteristics Become more Distinct—Religious Thought and Feeling, Doctrines and Dogmas, Sharply Defined and Fearfully Distinct in Missouri—Sects and their Peculiarities—Sectarian Strife Uncompromising—Why—Religious Controversy—Published Debates—Their Effect—Sectarian Bigotry and Intolerance—Differences, Essential and Non-essential—History Repeating Itself—Persecution the Same in Every Age—Early Martyrs and the Missouri Martyrs—“The Altar, the Wood and the Lamb for a Burnt Offering.”
The population of Missouri differs in some respects from that of any other State. There is a greater variety of nationalities blended, of blood mingled, and of national, political, social, domestic and religious characteristics crossed and intermixed than can be found in any other State.
Other States may have more nationalities represented in their population, and the political, social and ecclesiastical characteristics may be more sharply defined; but that fact only confirms the position taken—that in Missouri these characteristics lose their identity, to a greater or less extent, and become fused in the common mass. Nearly all the nationalities of Europe, and many of Asia, are represented in Missouri, but only a few years’ residence is sufficient to either destroy or modify their national characteristics.
The social and domestic peculiarities of every State in the Union, with many foreign states, are exotics here; while many of them die out altogether and are abandoned, others compromise and intermingle, until the type of social and domestic life is somewhat of a hybrid, and is peculiarly Missourian.
The bulk of the old population of the State was from Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee and Ohio, with a respectable number from Indiana, Illinois and New York. Up to 1855 and ’56 the types of social life existing in these several States were scarcely disturbed in Missouri. After the passage by Congress of the somewhat notorious “Kansas-Nebraska bill,” in 1854, and the organization of these Territories, the population of Missouri increased rapidly and became of a more general character.
“Emigration aid societies” in New England and the Eastern States threw into these newly-formed Territories thousands of families who represented in their social and religious lives the extreme of New England ideas and New England faith.
Emigration from the Southern Atlantic and Gulf States, whether by aid societies or otherwise, rushed to these Territories, bringing the extremest types of Southern life. The middle and Mississippi Valley States furnished their share, until the swelling population of Kansas presented a scene of contrasts and conflicts turbulent and exciting beyond anything before known in the history of territorial settlement.
It is true that it was the struggle of political parties for dominion, each seeking to incorporate its peculiar class of ideas and cast of policy into the corporatestructure of the future State by controlling the Territorial election; yet the effect upon the social and domestic peculiarities of Missouri, as well as the peculiar institutions of the State, was marked and decided.
Missouri caught the reflex tide of population, and her fertile soil, mineral wealth and commercial advantages not only retained this reflex population, but supplied an effective appeal to thousands more from all parts of the country—North, East and South—until for a few years her population increased at the rate of nearly one hundred thousand per annum. And yet, in her extended area of territory, this immense influx was scarcely perceptible. Along her rivers and railroad lines her population thickened, and her great commercial centres felt the life and power of multiplied agencies and resources.
Either the rapid growth of cities, the stir and excitement of trade, the strife for fortune and fame, the magical charm of Western life, or something else peculiar to the climate, the country or the people, all of these distinct and opposing types of social life, began soon to lose their “type force” and blend into a conglomerate social mass, with fewer Northern, Eastern and Southern peculiarities than Western—a rather unique social formation, which the modern sociologists have not yet classified.
Few Southern men and Southern families long retained their purely Southern style of life, and few Eastern or Northern men and families long retained the social and domestic habits that were peculiar to the latitude from which they hailed. It is easy to see how the social life that derives its characteristics from suchdifferent and distant systems would be peculiar in itself and to itself.
People lose their social characteristics much sooner and more easily than they do their religious peculiarities. The former are based on education, taste, association and habit, the latter on principles vital and divine. As every national and social characteristic known to American society has become mixed and blended in Missouri, so every shade of religious thought and feeling, every form of religious doctrine and dogma, together with every type of ecclesiasticism known to modern American civilization, exists in the hearts and homes of Missouri—at least to some extent. Nearly every shade of religious belief has a representative in Missouri, and stands out more or less distinct upon the moral phases of society.
These do not blend. No moral alchemist can fuse the distinct religious peculiarities of a people. Men may relinquish their social and domestic characteristics because they are matters of taste or convenience; but to give up their distinctive religious characteristics is considered a sacrifice of principle and conscience.
Men do not struggle long to maintain and propagate that which was peculiar to their former social life, but will contend forever for that which is peculiarly distinctive in their religious belief. That which men hold lightly and esteem of little value to them elsewhere assumes an importance and a value in the West, and will not be surrendered tamely. Religious ideas which in Massachusetts and South Carolina existed in the mind crudely or loosely; exerting no influence upon the life, would in Missouri take a permanent shape, seek affinities,and ultimately grow into churches struggling for a place in the great moral agencies of the State. Men whose religious habits were scarcely formed, and whose lives had not assumed any positive ecclesiastical type in the older States, on coming to Missouri became positive, decided, unequivocal, sectarian partisans, and often uncharitable bigots. Men who would contend fairly for their distinctive tenets elsewhere contend fiercely here, and very few live long in this State without espousing, to some extent, the cause of some religious sect.
There are causes for this state of things. Society is, to a great extent, in a formative state. In very few places, if any, has society settled down into grooves, and channels, and circles, and social and church castes, as in the older States; and then society exists in a great variety of unassimilated elements, Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western; English, French, German, Scotch, Irish, with a hundred different shades of social and domestic life, which are too distinct to become homogeneous, and which seek in church creeds and church associations their social as, well as religious affinities.
The result is that, perhaps, no other State can furnish as great a variety of distinct sects, or denominations of Christians, with the religious population so liberally distributed amongst them. There may be more sects in States that have a much larger population, but in proportion to the population, no State has a greater variety of churches which accommodate such a diversity of belief, each of which has so large a hold upon the public mind.
It would, indeed, be anomalous if all of these sectscould exist together in peace. Missouri can not claim such exceptional distinction. In, perhaps, no State or country has denominational contention and strife been more general and uncompromising.
Not willing to accept the standards of doctrine published and recognized by each church, nor to abide by the verdict of learned debates upon all questions of difference, ministers and members, with astonishing freedom and with defiant presumption, enter the arena of controversy, public and private, with a zeal and a spirit equally hurtful to Christian charity and the general cause of true piety. Nothing can awaken a community more generally and excite the people more intensely than a public debate, formally arranged and pitched by two noted champions. The notoriety gained by theantagonistæoutlasts, if it does not outreach, the settlement of disputed questions. And, then, each man or woman, however old or young, must become an adept in religious controversy, and convert every road side, street corner, shop, office, counting room, kitchen and parlor into a place for petty, spiteful theological disputation. Instead of edifying one another in love, and deepening the work of grace in the heart by appropriate religious conversations, they embitter the sectarian spirit, destroy Christian charity, alienate personal friendship, a and “dote about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, perverse disputing of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth.”
With many, sectarian jealousy is equaled only by sectarian bigotry, and the great work of soul-saving is made only tributary to denominational success. Indeed,many go so far as to deny the virtue of saving grace to all but themselves, and vainly imagine that the saving virtues of the atonement are transmitted to the hearts of men only through their church ministrations and distinctive ordinances.
Nothing excites sectarian jealousy more thoroughly than great religious awakenings and revivals in any given church. It is natural that the minister of the gospel who, as a human instrument, is very successful in winning souls to Christ should be “highly esteemed in love for his work’s sake,” and yet nothing exposes him more to the unjust criticisms and unchristian detractions of his less successful brethren in the ministry. Let a revivalist be successful in stirring the religious life of a whole community and in producing a general religious awakening, and the ministers and members of other churches, instead of joining heartily with him in the great work and laboring together for the general good, will watch with jealous interest the progress of the work, discuss with uncharitable criticism its character, and seize the first opportunity to begin a meeting Of their own, that they may make the religious awakening of the community inure to their denominational advantage. Should the revival occur in a small town where the whole population Christianized could not more than adequately support one healthy church organization, with one pastor, instead of assimilating all the religious elements, it would act like a moral solvent, disparting and isolating each shade of religious belief and thought. “Where two or three are gathered together” of the same belief they will organize, send for a pastor and set up for themselves.Thus the little community becomes divided into little sectarian factions, each to drag out a half-conscious, miserable, contentious existence, instead of uniting in one large, healthy, self-sustaining congregation, with all the benefits and advantages of a first-class minister well supported, a good church and Sabbath school, with all the regular ministrations of the gospel.
These things can not be affirmed of all ministers of the gospel, nor of all churches and communities in Missouri; but the facts are too common, too prominent and deplorable to be overlooked in any legitimate search for the animus of sectarianism in Missouri.
Where the differences between denominations are essential they are agreed upon their differences and live in peace, each pursuing a distinct line of operations in its own way unmolested, and their lines rarely, if ever, cross each other. On the other hand, where the difference is non-essential, they will not agree to disagree, and wrangling and contention, disputings and debates, mark the conflict. Where the difference lies in fundamental doctrines, debates are rare and formal. If the difference lies in ecclesiastical polity, or in forms of worship, or in sacraments or modes of ordinances, the discussions are interminable and the petty disputations endless. The nearer denominations approach each other in all that is essential in doctrine, worship and works of righteousness, the deeper seated and more bitter the jealousy and strife between them. Non-fraternization and non-intercourse are maintained with much punctiliousness between those Churches which are one in origin, one in doctrine, and one in all of their essential characteristics, but which have separated from eachother upon questions of ecclesiastical polity, or for some other like cause.
Judging from the character of the strife between them, their methods of ecclesiastical warfare, and the downright animosity that enters into and characterizes these strifes, one would readily suppose that, according to their own interpretation, their peculiar commission is to overcome, root out, exterminate and supplant the church that bears the same “image and superscription.” Particularly is this true when the essential grounds of difference are political.
For confirmation of this position it is only necessary to refer to the two Methodist, the two Presbyterian, and recently the two Baptist Churches of this State, which are divided, not upon doctrines or ordinances, but upon questions of ecclesiastical polity—whether ecclesiastical bodies, as such, have the right to legislate upon or intermeddle with questions that belong to the State, and must be controlled by the State.
This allusion is sufficient for the present purpose. It only remains to be noted here how readily ecclesiastical partisans take advantage of everything in political and civil strife that will confer upon them power and position. How readily they identify themselves with dominant parties, if by so doing they can damage their ecclesiastical opponents and gain position and power for themselves! How heartily they endorse the policy of the party in power, if by it their own disability is exchanged for temporary enfranchisement, and their own minority is invested with temporary power to oppress and persecute the hated majority!
History repeats itself; and the genius of religiouspersecution and proscription has discovered very few new expedients and adopted very few new instruments since the days of the Master. The manger of Bethlehem cradled the Incarnate Innocence, and Pilate’s judgment hall gave birth to the diabolical genius of persecution, which was equal to the task, in that it did there and then invent and employ the only expedient that could at once be successful in the crucifixion of Incarnate Innocence, and in transmitting itself to every country and age with undiminished efficiency to pursue to prison and to death the followers of its first and greatest Victim as long as time should last. The cry of disloyalty and treason made by ecclesiastics is now, as it always has been, the strongest appeal to the guardians and defenders of the State; and as that was successful before Pilate, and forced him to sign the death warrant of the Master, so it has been successful in every tribunal of earthly power, and procured the death warrant of all the martyrs in every country and age, and under every form of government and every phase of ecclesiasticism from that day to this. “We found this fellow perverting the nation, forbidding to give tribute to Cæsar, saying that he himself is Christ—a king.” “If thou let this man go thou art not Cæsar’s friend; whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Cæsar.” Such declarations made by the High Priests of the Church could, and did, influence the Roman Procurator against the convictions of his better judgment, against reason, against all the facts, again right and against innocence. What were all these to the life blood of their victim?
In some form or other these charges have been repeated in every systematic persecution of ministers of the gospel and martyrs for the truth, from Stephen,Antipas, Polycarp and Barnabas to the Bartholomew Massacre in Paris, and from the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the Papal Inquisition to the last great tragedy in the drama, occurring during and since the late civil war in America, in free Missouri and under the ægis of institutions that boast of religious liberty, and the sanction of men who profess to represent the advanced Christian civilization of the age.
But, then, “the disciple is not above his Master, nor the servant above his Lord.” “Remember the word that I said unto you, The disciple is not above his Lord. If they have persecuted me they will persecute you.”
They beheaded John, crucified Christ, stoned Stephen, murdered Paul, “and others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment; they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented; of whom the world was not worthy.”
Every age and country have reproduced in some form the altar and the victim, the persecutor and the persecuted, the Caiaphas and the Christ, without material alteration in the charge or the trial. Missouri has provided the altar, the wood, the fire and the sacrifice for the offering demanded by this age and country in the interest of the Church. Woods, Sexton, Glanville, Wollard, Robinson, Wood, Headlee and others supplied the sacrifice.
While this chapter prepares the way, in an important sense, for the better understanding of the subject in hand, it will also embody a standing declaration and testimony against the peculiar spirit and character of sectarian strife in Missouri.