The Influence of America on the Mind, Part III

By Charles J. Ingersoll. Philadelphia: Abraham Small. 1823.

I shall conclude with some views of the American church; which I hope to be able to shew is as justly entitled to that distinctive appellation as the church of Rome, the church of England, the Gallican church, the Greek church, or any others, to theirs respectively.

It is the policy or the prejudice of governments, which use the church as an engine of state, to decry institutions which separate them, and leave religion to self-​regulation. They are accused of infidelity and immorality. The want of ecclesiastical respectability is inferred from its want of political protection and influence. These Pagan doctrines have prevailed where ever Christianity has been unknown. They were Egyptian, Grecian, Roman; they are Mahometan. But they cannot endure the light of reason and truth. Whoever reads the text book of Christianity must be convinced that it is the religion of self-​government. No European dogma is more unfounded than that republicanism and infidelity are coadjutors. Intelligent men in the United States, with much more unanimity and sincerity than in Europe, believe that without religion humanity would be forlorn and barbarous. And in no country are those ecclesiastical classes and cures, which have formed parts of the institutions of religion, in all times, better established than in this. In estimating the progress and condition of the mind in America, therefore, I have neither disposition nor occasion to deny, that the condition of religion is one of the best tests of the general intellectual state. Independently of their help in the cure of souls, the clergy have always rendered the most important services to the human understanding. Learning and science were long in their exclusive care. In those periods when the mind was most depressed, the church was the chancery of its preservation. To it we owe nearly all the best relics of ancient learning: from it, we still receive much of our education; for here, as elsewhere, most of our teachers are ecclesiastics. It is therefore a very interesting inquiry how the church and its ministers, who are also the ministers of education, fare in any community.

Segregation from political connection and toleration are the cardinal principles of the American church. On the continent of Europe, toleration means, where it is said to exist, catholic supremacy suffering subordinate protestantism. In the united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, it means a protestant hierarchy, abetted by dissenters, excluding catholics from political privileges, and subjecting them to double ecclesiastical impositions. France, Italy, Ireland, and Spain, have been desolated by contests between church and state. Toleration has won at least part of these bloody fields. But a segregated church does not appear to have made any advance in Europe. In the United States, both of these principles are not only fundamental political laws, but ancient, deep-​seated doctrines, whose bases were laid long before political sovereignly was thought of, when Williams, Penn and Baltimore, by a remarkable coincidence, implanted them in every quarter, and in every creed. American toleration, means the absolute independence and equality of all religious denominations. American segregation, means, that no human authority can in any case whatever control or interfere with the rights of conscience. Adequate trial of these great problems, not less momentous than that of political self-​government, has proved their benign solution. Bigotry, intolerance, blood thirsty polemics waste themselves in harmless, if not useful, controversy, when government takes no part. We enjoy a religious calm and harmony, not only unknown, but inconceivable, in Europe. We are continually receiving accessions of their intolerance, which is as constantly disarmed by being let alone. Our schools, families, legislatures, society find no embarrassment from varieties of creed, which in Europe would kindle the deadliest discord.

That these consequences are not the fruits of lukewarmness and disregard to religion, remains to be shewn.

I shall touch but lightly on the dissenting church, as it is called in England; not because its condition in the United States is not worthy of regard, and a great argument for my object, but because its well known prosperity renders it almost unnecessary that I should dwell on any details of it. Always democratic even in Europe, no reason can be imagined why it should not thrive in the aboriginal republicanism of America, the natural and fruitful soil of spontaneous religion. Accordingly, there are upwards of seven hundred congregational churches in the New England States alone, and nearly that number of clergymen of that denomination, including pastors, unsettled ministers, and licensed preachers: from which enumeration I exclude the Baptists of that quarter, who are uniformly of the congregational order in church government. There is a theological seminary at Andover, in Massachusetts, containing about one hundred and fifty students in divinity. At Harvard college, there is a theological professor of the Anti-​trinitarian faith, with whom several resident graduates commonly study. Of the two hundred and thirty congregational ministers of Massachusetts, about seventy are Anti-​trinitarians. In Maine, there is a theological seminary, with two professors, and about forty pupils. Yale college in Connecticut, has a theological department attached to it, in which there are three professors, and a considerable number of students. In Cornwall, in Connecticut, there is also a Heathen mission school, in which, about thirty youths, born in India, on the Pacific ocean, and the western wilds of this continent, or other heathen places, are educated with special reference to ministerial duties in their respective birth places.

The Presbyterian church in the United States, in addition to the congregational, contains about nine hundred ministers, one hundred and thirty five licentiates, one hundred and forty seven candidates, more than fourteen hundred churches, and last year administered the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to an hundred thousand communicants. It has theological seminaries in the States of New Jersey, New York, and Tennessee: And, as is obvious from these indications, is established on broad and flourishing endowments.

I shall also very summarily touch the condition of those enthusiastic, and, for the most part, itinerant churches, which, ever since their first example in the appearance of the Franciscan and Dominican friars of the thirteenth century, in a similar manner and on similar occasions, have, under various tides, interposed their austere and reviving tenets, into the deserted or decaying quarters of christianity; whose popular and rallying doctrines have a highly beneficial influence on the morals of the community. The Methodist church of America contains three diocesses, eleven hundred itinerant clergy, exclusively clerical, and about three thousand stationary ministers, who attend also to other than ecclesiastical occupations. They reckon twelve conferences, and more than twenty five hundred places of worship. By the report to the Baptist convention, which sat in June last, at Washington, the places of worship of that persuasion are stated at more than two thousand three hundred; and they reckon a very large number of ministers. There are three theological seminaries of the Baptist church, one in New England, one in the interior of the State of New York, and one at the city of Washington. There were likewise two theological seminaries of the Methodist church, of whose services, however, it has been for the present deprived by accidental circumstances. It is a remarkable and most laudable characteristic of all these religious denominations that their means are applied among other beneficial purposes, always liberally to that of education.

The Universalists have one hundred and twenty preachers, two hundred separate societies, and eight periodical publications. The Lutheran, the Dutch Reformed, and Associate Reformed, the Moravians, the Friends, in short, almost an innumerable roll of creeds, have their several seminaries of education, their many places of worship, numerous clergy or preachers, and every other attribute of secular, as well as spiritual, religion in prosperity.

To the clergy of some of these sects, especially the Presbyterian and Congregational, the American revolution is deeply indebted for its origin, progress, and issue. The generous, yet jealous principles of self-​government, proclaimed as the motives of that event, have no more steadfast, uniform, or invincible adherents, than their followers. Polemical literature, metaphysical knowledge, pulpit eloquence, philological learning, invigorating the mind, and giving it power over the world, are superadded to the laborious and self-​denyed lives and pure ministry of these ecclesiastics. The dissenters in England form, no doubt, a body of learned and zealous divines: but from the time when England first sent her sons to New England to learn and teach theology to the present day, the American dissenting church, is, at least equal to that of the mother country in intelligence and influence, and much superior in eloquence.

But it is on the American church of England and the American church of Rome, that we may dwell with most complacency. Here, where no political predominance, no peculiar, above all, no mysterious, inquisitorial, arbitrary, or occult polity, no tythes, no titles, peerage, crown, or other such appliances sustain the ministry, where the crosier is as plain as the original cross itself, and the mitre does not sparkle with a single brilliant torn from involuntary contribution, – it is here, I venture to say, that within the last century, the church of England and the church of Rome have constructed more places of worship, (relatively speaking,) endowed more diocesses, founded more religious houses, and planted a stronger pastoral influence, than in any other part of the globe. It is in the United States of America, under the power of American religion that the English and Roman Catholic churches are flourishing.

Until the revolution, the church of England was the established church in all the American colonies. In Maryland and Virginia, where it was most firmly seated, a sort of modus or composition for tythes was assessed by law, either on the parishes or by the polls. In Virginia there were moreover glebes annexed to the parish churches. In New York, there was also a fund taken from the public money, appropriated to the few parishes established there. Throughout New England, Pennsylvania, and the other colonies, if I am not misinformed, though the church of England was the national church, yet it languished in great infirmity, having no other support than the pew rents and voluntary assessments which now, under a very different regimen, supply adequate resources for all the occasions of an establishment which has no rich, and no very poor pastorates.

The whole of these vast regions, by a gross ordinance of colonial misrule, were attached to the London diocess. Most of the incumbents, it may be supposed, those especially supported by tythes, at such a distance from the diocesan, were supine and licentious. As soon as the revolution put a stop to their stipends, they generally ceased to officiate: and in Maryland and Virginia, particularly, the Methodists and Baptists stepped in to their deserted places. The crisis for the church of England at this conjuncture, was vital. Several of its ministers at first joined their compatriots for the independence declared. But few endured unto the end of the struggle. When the enemy were in possession of Philadelphia, then the capital of the country, where Congress sat, and that inimitable assembly was driven to resume its deliberations at the village of Yorktown, they elected for their chaplain, a clergyman of the church of England, who had been expelled his home in this city by its capture. Every ingenuous mind will do justice to the predicament in which such an election placed an American pastor of the English church. The cause of independence, to which he was attached was in ruin; the government forced from its seat, the army routed and disheartened, the country prostrate and nearly subdued by a triumphant enemy in undisputed occupation of the capital. The chaplain elected by Congress under such circumstances proved worthy of their confidence. Without other attendant, protection, or encouragement, than the consciousness of a good cause, he repaired to the retreat of his country’s abject fortunes, to offer daily prayers from the bosom of that immortal assembly which never despaired of them, to the almighty providence, by which they were preserved and prospered. The chaplain of Congress, at Yorktown, has been rewarded for those days of trial. Already, in the compass of his own life, and ministry, he is at the head of the ten bishoprics into which the American church of England has since then expanded in the United States, with three hundred and fifty clergymen, about seven hundred churches, a theological seminary, and every other assurance of substantial prosperity. Within his life time there was but one, and at the commencement of his ministry but three episcopal churches in Philadelphia, and they in jeopardy of the desecration from which they were saved by his patriotic example and pious influence. It would be an unjust and unacceptable homage, however, to him, not to declare that the intrinsic temperance and resource of popular government mainly contributed to the preservation of the English church in America, where it has since advanced far more than in the mother country, during the same period, and where it is probably destined to flourish greatly beyond the English example. Of this there can be no doubt if it thrives henceforth as it has done heretofore: for under the presidency of a single prelate, still in the effective performance of all the duties of a good bishop, and a good citizen, the American church of England, without a particle of political support, has, as we have seen, extended itself. Within a few years a million of pounds sterling were appropriated by parliament, on the special recommendation of the crown of Great Britain, for the repair and construction of churches; with views doubtless to political as much as to religious consequences. I venture to predict that within the period to elapse from that appropriation to its expenditure, a larger sum of money will have been raised in the United States by voluntary subscription, and expended for similar purposes and to greater effect.

The Roman catholic church grows as vigorously as any other in the soil and atmosphere of America. The late (first) archbishop of that church, likewise adhered with unshaken and zealous constancy to the cause of the American revolution: and indeed, served for it in a public station. His illustrious relative is one of the three signers of a charter, destined to have more influence on mankind than any uninspired writing, who have lived to enjoy its developments during half a century; in which period, all North and South America have been regenerated, and the most intelligent portions of Europe quickened with the spirit of that political scripture. He periled a million of dollars when he pledged his fortune to the declaration of independence: as to the short sighted, the patriot priest might have seemed to risk his religion when he abjured European allegiance. But neither of them has had reason to regret the effects of self-​government on a faith of which they have both, at all times, been the American pillars and ornaments. From a mere mission in 1790, the Roman catholic establishment in the United States, has spread into an extended and imposing hierarchy; consisting of a metropolitan sea, and ten bishoprics, containing between eighty and a hundred churches, some of them the most costly and splendid ecclesiastical edifices in the country, superintended by about one hundred and sixty clergymen. The remotest quarters of the U. States are occupied by these flourishing establishments; from the chapels at Damascotti (in Maine) and at Boston, to those of St. Augustine in Florida, and St. Louis in Missouri. There are catholic seminaries at Bardstown and Frankfort in Kentucky, a catholic clerical seminary in Missouri, catholic colleges at St. Louis and New Orleans, where there is likewise a catholic Lancasterian school, two catholic charity schools at Baltimore, two in the District of Columbia, a catholic seminary and college at Baltimore, a catholic college in the District of Columbia, a catholic seminary at Emmitsburg in Maryland, a catholic free school and Orphans’ asylum in Philadelphia. These large contributions to education, are not, however, highly respectable and cultivated as many of them are, the most remarkable characteristics of the American Roman catholic church. It is a circumstance pregnant with reflections and results, that the Jesuits, since their suppression in Europe, have been established in this country. In 1801, by a brief of pope Pius the seventh, this society, with the concurrence of the emperor Paul, was established in Russia under a general authorised to resume and follow the rule of St. Ignatius of Loyola; which power was extended in 1806, to the United States of America, with permission to preach, educate youth, administer the sacraments, &c. with the consent and approbation of the ordinary. In 1807, a noviciate was opened at Georgetown college in the District of Columbia, which continued to improve till 1814, when, being deemed sufficiently established, the congregation was formally organised by a papal bull. This society now consists of twenty-​six fathers, ten scholastics in theology, seventeen scholarships in philosophy, rhetoric, and belles lettres, fourteen scholastics in the noviciate, twenty-​two lay-​brothers out of, and four lay-​brothers in, the noviciate; some of whom are dispersed throughout the United States, occupied in missionary duties, and the cure of souls. This statement is enough to prove the marvellous radication of the strongest fibres of the Roman Catholic church in our soil. But the argument does not stop here. The oldest catholic literary establishment in this country, is the catholic college just mentioned, which was founded immediately after the revolution, by the incorporated catholic clergy of Maryland, now capable of containing two hundred resident students, furnished with an extensive and choice library, a philosophical and chemical apparatus of the latest improvement, and professorships in the Greek, Latin, French and English languages, mathematics, moral and natural philosophy, rhetoric, and belles lettres. This institution, I have mentioned, was put in 1805, under the direction of the society of Jesuits: and that nothing might be wanting to the strong relief in which the subject appears, the college thus governed, was by act of Congress of the United States of America, raised to the rank of a University, and empowered to confer degrees in any of the faculties. Thus, since the suppression of the order of Jesuits, about the time of the origin of the American revolution, has that celebrated brotherhood of propagandists been restored in the United States, and its principal and most operative institution organised and elevated by an act of our national Legislature.

In like manner, the Sulpitian monks have been incorporated by act of the legislature of the State of Maryland, in the administration of the flourishing Catholic seminary at Baltimore. Still more remains, however, to be made known: For so silent and unobtrusive is religious progress, when neither announced nor enforced by political power, that it is probable, that many of these curious details may be new to some of those who now hear them mentioned. Those religious houses and retreats, which have been rended from their ancient seats in so many parts of Europe – monasteries and convents – are sprouting up and casting their uncultivated fragrance throughout the kindlier glebes and wilds of America. Even where corruption and abuse had exposed them to destruction, learning turned with sorrow from the abomination of their desolation, and charity wept over the downfall of her ancient fanes. But here, where corruption and abuse can hardly exist in self supported religious institutions – what have we to apprehend from these chaste and pious nurseries of education and alms? What may we not hope, on the contrary, for the mind, from their consecration and extension? In the oldest religious house in America, that of the female Carmelites, near Port Tobacco, in Maryland, the established number of inmates is always complete. The convent of St. Mary’s, at Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, contains fifty nuns, having under their care a day school, at which, upwards of a hundred poor girls are educated. The convent of the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, incorporated by the Legislature of Maryland, at Emmittsburg in that State, consists of fifty-​nine sisters, including novices, with fifty-​two young ladies under their tuition, and upwards of forty poor children. A convent of Ursulines, at Boston, is yet in its infancy, consisting of a prioress, six sisters, and two novices, who undertake to instruct those committed to their charge in every polite accomplishment, in addition to the useful branches of female education. The Emmittsburg Sisters of Charity, have a branch of their convent for the benefit of female orphan children, established in the city of New York, where the Roman Catholics are said to have increased in the last twenty years, from 300 to 20,000. The church of St. Augustine, in Philadelphia, belongs to the Augustine monks, by whom it was built. There is also a branch of the Emmittsburg Sisters of Charity in this city, consisting of several pious and well informed ladies, who superintend the education of orphan children. The Daughters of Charity, have another branch in Kentucky, where there are, likewise, a house of the order of Apostolines, lately established by the Pope at Rome, a cloister of Loretto, and another convent. In the State of Missouri, there is a convent of religious ladies at the village of St. Ferdinand, where a noviciate is seated, of five novices and several postulants, with a thriving seminary, largely resorted to by the young ladies of that remote region, and also a day school for the poor. In New Orleans, there is a convent of Ursuline nuns, of ancient and affluent endowment, containing fifteen or sixteen professed nuns, and a number of novices and postulants. The ladies of the Heart of Jesus, are about founding a second establishment for education at Opelousas. 1 will terminate these curious, I hope not irksome, particulars, by merely adding, that in Maine and Kentucky, there are tribes of Indians attached to the Roman Catholic worship, whose indefatigable ministers have always been successful in reclaiming those aborigines of this continent. Vincennes, the chief town of Indiana, where there is now a Roman Catholic chapel, was once a station of the Jesuits for this purpose.

Upon the whole I do not think that we can reckon less than eight thousand places of worship, and five thousand ecclesiastics in the United States, besides twelve theological seminaries, and many religious houses, containing, the former, about five hundred, and the latter three hundred votaries; all self-​erected and sustained by voluntary contribution, and nearly all within the last half century. If this unequalled increase of churches and pastors, and worshippers, attests the prosperity of religion, we may rest assured of its welfare without tythes or political support: and we need not fear its decline from the ascendancy of republicanism.

In proving the existence and magnitude of the American church, I have incidentally, I hope sufficiently, explained its character. For the most part well educated, well informed, and well employed, eloquent, unpensioned, self-​sustained, trusting to their own good works, and relying on no court favour or individual interest for advancement, exempt from that parasite worldly-​mindedness which the honest Massillon, even when preaching before Louis XIV, denounced as the canker of political religion, the American clergy are necessarily called upon to think, to read, to write, to preach, and officiate more than the European. Accordingly the divinity of the American church, if I am not mistaken, is much more active at this time, and its literature more efficient than that of England. Indeed it is hardly to be accounted for, that with the great inducements, means and opportunities of the dignitaries of the English church, the mind is at present so little benefited by their contributions to its enlargement I by no means design to speak disrespectfully of personages of whom I know little more than their titles; nor do I call in question their learning, their piety, or even their partial usefulness. But assuredly it is fair to infer some radical defect in the system, when of all the modem English bench of bishops and arch-​bishops there are very few, I believe, at present in any way known to literature, not one distinguished for eloquence, and on that noble theatre, the house of peers, who ever heard of their performances? Relying on political protection, they seem to have lost the stimulus which urges their American brethren to incessant labours for the furtherance of religion, by eloquent sermons, by contributions to clerical literature, and by the ardent exercise of all their duties. The Roman Catholics boast of numerous converts from protestantism in Europe. Where is the spirit of Tillotson and Sherlock, the English successors of the Chrysostoms and the Bazils ? Not in England at present. The works of the great fathers of the English church, those wells of doctrine as of language undefiled, appear to be much more likely to be replenished and perpetuated in America.

In this review, I have of course abstained from all polemic and various other delicate considerations connected with it: confining myself to the actual progress of religion as indicative of the tendency of the mind on that subject in this country. Anti-​trinitarians and Jesuits, convents, and quakers, all grow and thrive together. The most imposing Roman catholic cathedral, and a considerable Unitarian church are built within the sound of each others service; and neither the intelligence nor the tranquility of the community has suffered by their neighbourhood. There may be those who think indeed that the growth is inordinate, that the establishments are on a scale of expense and influence disproportioned to our numbers, our principles, and even our independence. But to all such suggestions the answer is, that while the whole is spontaneous, there can be nothing to apprehend.

My undertaking will be unfinished, if I do not explain the political and physical causes of the results, to which attention has been invited. But that task, I may not attempt on this occasion, if ever. It is said to be the American fault, to expend itself in details, instead of reasoning by generalisation. I am very sensible of this, with many other faults, in this discourse, in which, scarcely any thing more is attempted than the collection of facts. But, however imperfect the performance, my views will be accomplished, if the glimpses thus afforded should induce some qualified person to examine and explain the subject philosophically. The operations of American institutions on the human understanding, are a noble study for the labours of a life. The most intelligent portions of mankind, are animated by their impulses; which already actuate, and, before long, must regulate the destinies of the world. The first settlement of this continent was from England, in a state of revolution, when all minds were exercised with new ideas of religious and political liberty. The associates of Pym and Hampden, and Raleigh, Penn and Locke, founded our institutions. A republican empire, really representative, always as it were, in a state of temperate revolution, has been ever since exciting and evolving the great principles of free agency. Our simple and peaceable, but irresistible, religion and politics, are inoffensively reforming the brilliant abuses, which feudal and chivalric barbarism have rivetted on the nations of Europe. This rouses detraction against the whole elements, moral, physical, and intellectual, as well as political, of our existence. Naturalists, and statists, philosophers, historians, ambassadors, poets, priests, nobles, tourists, journalists – I speak with precision to this catalogue – have in vain sentenced this country to degradation. It already ranks with communities highly refined before America was discovered. France and England were enjoying Augustan ages, when the place where we are met to discourse of literature and science, was a wilderness. But one hundred and forty years have elapsed, since the patriarch of Pennsylvania first landed on these shores, and sowed them with the germs of peace, toleration, and self-​government. Since when, a main employment has been to reclaim the forests for habitation. It is not yet half a century since the United States were politically emancipated; it is only since the late war that they have begun to be intellectually independent. Colonial habits and reverence still rebuke and counteract intellectual enterprise. Education, the learned professions, the arts, scientific and mechanical, legislation, jurisprudence, literature, society – the mind in a word – require time to be freed from European pupilage.

It was not in a spirit of hostility to any other country, that I undertook to shew what has been already done in this: but by that review to encourage further and keener exertions.

To those who will inquire and reflect, the encouragement of philosophy is as strong as the instinct of patriotism. But the empire of habit and of prejudice is in strong opposition to the supremacy of thought and reason. There was a time when it was not considered disaffection to be ashamed of our country, nor disloyalty to despair of it, when we re-​colonised ourselves. But within the last ten years, especially, the mind of America, has thought for itself, piercing the veil of European beau ideal.

Still less, however, than national disparagement was national vanity the shrink of my sacrifice. Comparative views are indispensable. I might have compared America now with America forty years ago, which would have presented a striking and enlivening contrast. But I preferred the bolder view of America compared with Europe, disclaiming, however, invidious comparisons, which have been studiously avoided. The cause asserted is of too high respect to be defended by panegyric, or avenged by invective. The truth is an ample vindication. Let us strive to refute discredit by constant improvement. Let our intellectual motto be, that naught is done while aught remains to be done: and our study to prove to the world, that the best patronage of religion, science, literature, and the arts, of whatever the mind can achieve, is SELF-GOVERNMENT.