--- the leaders of men, these great ones; the modelers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realization and embodiment, of thoughts that dwelt in the great men sent into the world." To those who knew him, these words will appear strikingly applicable to John Williamson Nevin. In one sense, he wrought in obscurity. Leaving a large and well-known communion, not because he was dissatisfied, but because he felt called to a work which happened to lie outside of it, he went into another; one smaller in numbers, and with even less prestige than its size would have seemed to claim. In that smaller body he wrought out all his most characteristic thoughts, and saw them take form in a movement of which we might say, in the manner of Carlyle, that it is himself; a movement, however, so true to the original faith, the historic life, the present needs of the church catholic, that its significance cannot fail to appear more and more, as the general questions concerning the church and her unity are pressed upon our attention, and demand some worthy answer. We are well aware that this will seem extravagant praise to the reader, who is even now wondering whether he has ever heard the name. But that we are writing words of soberness, let the following quotation from Dean Stanley attest. In an address in March, 1879, after his return from the United States, he said: "Döllinger, when asked what theologians the Americans had produced, answered, 'Only two, - Channing, and the German Reformed pastor, Nevin,' the author of The Spirit of Sect,' and father of the accomplished chaplain to the American Episcopal Church at Rome." John Williamson Nevin was born in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, on February 20, 1803, and spent his boyhood on a farm. His father, John Nevin, was a cultivated man, a college graduate, and the family, of Scotch-Irish stock, were in good circumstances. From the atmosphere of old-fashioned Presbyterian family religion, he passed into a very different one when, at fourteen, he came to Schenectady, New York, to enter Union College. The type of religion prevalent there was emotional rather than educational and churchly; and his earnest nature was deeply impressed during a time of "revival," in which, after a period of gloom, he came out as one of the "converted." His training, up to the time of his leaving home, had been thoroughly and seriously Christian; baptized in infancy, he had been "taught to pray, to abhor . sin, to fear God, and to obey the Lord Jesus Christ." If evidence of piety were asked, we could but point to the marked purity and strict conscientiousness of his conduct. He was a Christian youth. But he had not had that "experience" through which others had passed, and which was deemed indispensable if one would be saved. So, under the pressure of his surroundings, like many another young Christian since, he was thrown into a state of great anxiety about his soul, and was led to think that his religious condition thus far had been one of dead formalism, from which he resolved to rouse himself; and finally, though not even then in a way satisfactory to himself, he "entertained a hope," and was considered to have "become a Christian." That in this awakening there was a genuine element, we would not deny. His Christian standing needed, of course, to become a matter of conscious choice, of personal reaffirmation, with himself; and in its poor, distorted form this process served that purpose. But the remainder of his college course, instead of being filled with a higher joy, was turned into a period of morbid introspection, and when he graduated in 1821, he was, as he himself many years later described it, "dyspeptic both in body and mind." At the age of eighteen he was considered still too young to enter upon professional studies, even if his health had permitted; moreover, he had not yet been able to come to a decision as to his calling in life. So he spent two years more in the quiet country home, and at the end of that time entered Princeton Seminary; not, indeed, sure that he was called to the gospel ministry, but hoping that before the close of the course his duty would be made clear to him. In linguistic and exegetical studies he led his class, and at his graduation he accepted an invitation to take charge of the department of Dr. Charles Hodge, who was to spend two years in Europe. Upon the return of the regular professor, young Nevin was called to a chair in the new Presbyterian Seminary to be established at Allegheny; and thither, after delays incident to the beginning of the undertaking, he went in 1830 to assume duties which in this later day are divided among several professors. Here he remained for ten years, with but a single colleague in the work, devoting himself specially to Biblical literature, but adding to his seminary duties such outside tasks as frequent (and gratuitous) supply of vacant pulpits, editing a reform journal, and in other ways putting forth efforts on behalf of temperance and the abolition of slavery. In fact, so pronounced was he in advocating these great causes that the conservatives of the General Assembly, on one occasion, informally begged him to desist. Nevertheless he retained throughout the confidence of his brethren, and was not molested in his position as a church teacher. It was during his ten years' professorship at Western Seminary that the great schism between the Old and the New School Presbyterians took place. Professor Nevin's ties all bound him to stand on the Old School side; it is worthy of note, however, that he requested an entry to be made on the records of his presbytery to the effect that in voting his adherence to the Old School Assembly he must not be understood to unchurch the New School Assembly, or to deny its legitimate succession. It was thought by his brethren that he was over-scrupulous in the matter, but they granted the request; when the two bodies came together many years after, it gave him pleasure to recall an action in which, in 1838, he had stood almost alone. During the latter part of his connection with the seminary at Allegheny, his views were in a transition state. His necessarily wide reading and study, reinforcing his extensive and thorough Biblical learning, served to broaden and vitalize his dogmatic views; and, to set him upon a different track, Neander's works in church history did the rest. But this was a very far-reaching intellectual and spiritual experience, and it did not at once come to full consciousness within him. Christological elements lay in his mind side by side with those of the mechanical and unhistorical system in which he had been instructed, and his masterprinciple was still in the latter, even while he was groping for a better. There is no evidence that, when a unanimous call was sent him in 1840 by the Synod of the German Reformed Church, he was at all disaffected toward the Presbyterian Church. The Seminary of the Reformed Church, then located at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, had suffered greatly from changes in the professorships, and by a series of providential events the attention of the Synod had been directed, greatly to his surprise, to Professor Nevin. Throughout life it was characteristic of him to pay the most scrupulous heed to everything that appealed to him as duty, and to submit every important question to his God in prayer. And although in this case he found many things to consider, and much to dissuade him from the step, his sense of duty became so clear and strong that he resigned his chair at Allegheny, received dis missal from his presbytery, and cast in his lot with a people that were strangers to him. He gave himself to them without reservation, and they warmly reciprocated by rallying about him, and allowing him all freedom in public teaching and discussion. In the long controversies that arose later, the great body of his Synod were always with him, giving him a calm and undisturbed support; for their confidence in his ability, his entire unselfishness, and his perfect sincerity could only grow the more he was really put to the test. In fact, a new life now opened before him. At Mercersburg he found Dr. Augustus Rauch, President of Marshall College, a man of great gifts, a thorough master in philosophy, whose “Psychology and Anthropology," published the same year, elicited high praise in many quarters. This man, whom the "Princeton Review" admired as "the elegant scholar, the tasteful critic, the philosophical guide to the interior of art," found in the new theological professor a most congenial co-worker; while the latter, in his turn, having long paid attention to German writers, felt it a precious privilege to have beside him a guide who was thoroughly at home in German literature and thought. To Dr. Rauch it was a new inspiration; to Dr. Nevin it was better than a course at European universities. The friendship so happily formed and so full of promise was, alas! to be of short duration. Within less than a year Dr. Rauch was taken ill and died, an irreparable loss to the college and the church. But practical affairs, and not merely academic pursuits, soon engaged Dr. Nevin's attention. He wrote for the church paper, seeking to awaken a deeper religious life; he went about among the churches, and by speech and pen enlisted popular interest in the endowment of the institutions at Mercersburg; he prepared, for the laity as well as the clergy, a series of articles on "The Heidelberg Catechism," in which he portrayed the beginnings of the Reformed Church, and set forth its true historic character, a character which he believed was in danger of being lost, and needed watchful effort to retain and restore. And in this he was not mistaken. Indeed, so soon was he to have proof of this in his own person that he had no time left him to anticipate the crisis. We refer to the once famous "Anxious Bench" controversy. The Reformed Church at Mercersburg, being without a pastor, was temporarily supplied by professors and students, and afterward, at Dr. Nevin's own suggestion, by a former Princeton Seminary friend of his. This preacher had adopted the so-called new - measures, and, having by his emotional sermons drawn large congregations, suddenly one Sunday evening, while Dr. Nevin was seated in the pulpit, produced the "Anxious Bench" paraphernalia, and in a short time converted the staid old church into a scene of noise and disorder. At the close of the "service" Dr. Nevin was requested to add a word, which he did in a somewhat different vein from the address preceding it. He showed the difference between coming up to the altar and coming to Christ; between excited feeling and true faith; and warned his hearers against self-deception. But this was not the end. The people loved to see their church crowded, felt that they could raise more salary for such a man, and decided to extend him a call. Distasteful as it all must have been to Dr. Nevin, he could, nevertheless, not suffer such a state of things to come upon the only Reformed Church in the place, the church which he himself, as well as the students, must regularly attend. He wrote a letter to the candidate, frankly telling him that while he hoped the call would be accepted, he also hoped that the "new measures" would be laid aside, and the catechetical system, as the legitimate system. of the Reformed Church, consistently used and faithfully adhered to; otherwise they two would be unable to work together harmoniously. The result was a very long and indignant letter in reply, and the candidate's refusal to come. Meanwhile, however, this emotional system had gained adherents among his own students; to whom, in his lectures on Pastoral Theology, he explained the reasons for his position, and the evils of this new type of religion as being in the end hurtful to true spirituality. These lectures he amplified and published under the title, "The Anxious Bench, a Tract for the Times," and the little book, which was soon translated into German, had an immense circulation. "Simeon the Stylite," the writer said in the course of his tract, "distinguished himself in the fifth century by taking his station on the top of a pillar, for the glory of God and the benefit of his own soul. This whimsical discipline he continued to observe for forty-seven years. Meanwhile he became an object of widespread veneration. Vast crowds came from a distance to gaze upon him and hear him preach. The measure took with the people wonderfully. Thousands of heathen were converted and baptized by his hand. Among these, it may be charitably trusted, there were some whose conversion was inward and solid. God may have made use of Simeon's pillar-sixty feet high to |