some of the bishops left the chancel and sought him amid the worshipers and urged his presence among them, the public recognition was too convincing of the general sentiment, and he yielded and joined them at the altar, to the great joy of all present. At the first business session of the Convention the secretary of the House of Deputies proceeded, as he had at the Convention of 1862, to call for the Southern deputies, the roll beginning with Alabama. The general failure of response did not diminish the validity of the recognition, and the answer to the roll-call by clerical and lay delegates from Tennessee, North Carolina, and Texas gave indication and promise that the absence of the South was but temporary. Bishop Lay, of the Southwest, had joined Bishop Atkinson, of North Carolina, in Philadelphia, and they together sent an inquiry, through Bishop Horatio Potter, to the House of Bishops concerning the terms on which they would be permitted to take their seats in the house. The Bishop of Maryland, whose loyalty was as unquestioned as his greatness, moved that "the Bishop of New York be requested to ask his brethren, in behalf of whom he had consulted the house, to trust to the honor and love of their assembled brethren." Such courtesy and confidence were irresistible. The reunion of the church was cemented by the charity which "thinketh no evil." As the church had maintained its loyalty, so it could without peril manifest its concession; and in the service of "thanksgiving for the restoration of peace to the country and unity to the church" it refrained from all expressions which could wound those who were once again represented in its assembly. Some thought that too much deference was shown, but it was an indication of a spirit of reconciliation and peace. The few obstacles to complete reunion, as we have before related, were soon removed, and all traces of strife presently vanished away.

The church, which in 1859 had, by the election of Dr. Talbot as Bishop of Nebraska and the Northwest, and of Dr. Lay as Missionary Bishop of Arkansas and the Southwest, made its jurisdiction coextensive with the boundaries of the United States, was again one throughout the whole national domain. The consecration of Bishop Quintard for the vacant Southern diocese of Tennessee crowned the work of reunion by a most significant act; and the presence and participation in the service of Bishop Fulford, metropolitan of Montreal, contributed to a growing sense of the unity of the church throughout the whole American continent.

CHAPTER XVII.

FROM THE REUNION OF THE CHURCH TO THE PRESENT

TIME (1865-95).

THE fullness of life which characterized the nation after the cessation of the war was characteristic also of the church. Before that lamentable interruption of its activities all the elements of successful advance had been found present in it. It had become in 1859 coextensive in its episcopate with the national domain. It was increasing its educational institutions. Its missionary operations were thoroughly organized and efficient. Its worship was taking on a warmer tone, and its church buildings displaying a nobler type. The controversies through which it had passed had sobered its mind and softened its heart. Even its course during the war was one of advancing growth.

All the favorable features of its organization now received an impetus and an enlargement consequent on the experience which the civil conflict had engendered. The movements of armies, constituted largely in their ranks as in their officers of the educated classes, had given a larger scope to the general intelligence. Men had traveled far, and seen strange communities, and awakened to a sense of wider relations, in their pursuit of war. All forms of religious belief and organization had been jostled together in the companionship of arms, and the humanitarian work of the Sanitary and Christian commissions had enlisted the labors of Christians of every name. The chaplains of the

army had ministered to every variety of faith among the soldiers, and had illustrated every variety of faith among themselves. This larger association of both laity and clergy had widened their mental horizon, while the solemnities of war had deepened religious conviction. A number of the best bishops of this latter period, such as Elliott of Texas, Galleher of Louisiana, and Dudley of Kentucky, came from the officers of the Confederate army, where they had learned to know the stern realities of life and the necessity of religion to meet and mitigate them. The chaplains of the Union army and those whom they had served had gone through the same educative process. It is not strange that the church should emerge from this baptism of blood with a nobler consecration and an enlarged conception of her task. That she was not freed from many clogging infirmities the record of these last thirty years abundantly proves, but the record also shows a far ampler life and an effort to rise to far nobler conceptions of her task than had marked any previous period of her history. Her literature, which had been chiefly controversial and polemical, became more genuinely original and spiritually suggestive. Not to attempt the mention. even of the numerous volumes which illustrate this larger mental life, we cannot but find in such volumes as "The Church Idea," by Dr. William R. Huntington, "The Relation of Christianity to Civil Society," by Bishop S. S. Harris, the various volumes of Bishops Littlejohn and F. D. Huntington, "The English Reformation," by Bishop John Williams, "The Primary Truths of Religion," by Bishop Clark, "The Epochs of Church History," by Dr. E. A. Washburn, and most notably the "Sermons" and "Lectures on Preaching," by Phillips Brooks, "The Continuity of Christian Thought," by Professor Alexander V. G. Allen, and "The Nation" and "The Republic of

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God," by Rev. Elisha Mulford, a far wider vision and a deeper philosophical conception, as well as a nobler literary form, than in any theological literature the church had previously produced.

Again, in her educational life the church in the last thirty years has greatly enlarged, as well as deepened, her work. The Philadelphia Divinity School was incorporated, under the auspices of Bishop Alonzo Potter, in the early years of the war, in 1862, when Northern students were cut off from the seminary at Alexandria. It was founded in no narrow spirit, but with the liberal conceptions of its great patron; and its course, under the able Dr. Goodwin, the scholarly Dr. G. Emlen Hare, and the genial and widely read Dr. Clement Butler, has been one of marked ability and value. The Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass., was incorporated just after the war, in 1867, founded by the munificence of Mr. Benjamin T. Reed, and since endowed with princely gifts by Mr. Robert M. Mason, Mr. Amos A. Lawrence, and Mr. John A. Burnham, all of Boston. Under its successive deans, Dr. John S. Stone, Dr. George Zabriskie Gray, and Dr. (now Bishop) William Lawrence, together with its distinguished professors, it has made itself a power in the church. In the words of Dean Gray, "The aim has been to be independent of all schools or parties, and to make the teaching as comprehensive as the church itself, and as impartial toward all loyal members thereof." These two institutions, with the Western Theological Seminary, inaugurated at Chicago in 1885, are the principal new foundations for theological education of this period, but the schools earlier formed have also greatly increased .their efficiency. The General Theological Seminary in New York has enlarged its teaching faculty and developed its curriculum and multiplied its students under the recent rule of Dean Hoffman, whose