CHAPTER VI.

"The world will outgrow theories in science and systems of philosophy and forms of speculative thought, but Christ and Christianity never.

Our New Departure.

It was night on Cedar Creek; night in the valley of the Shenandoah; night on the dark spurs of the Massanutten hills; the night of the 18th of October, 1864. Flushed with its recent victories, the army of the Shenandoah, 20,000 strong, lay encamped in fancied security under the shadow of the Massanutten. A half-dozen miles beyond the farthest pickets was gathered the remnant of Early's routed and disorganized army wearied with the enforced retreat of eighty miles, when, with sword and bayonet and relentless artillery, the brilliant and strategic manœuvres of Sheridan had sent the rebel thousands "whirling through Winchester." Confident in their strength and sated with success, the usual rigors of the camp had been relaxed within the Union lines; the General himself was miles away; officers and men, in the bracing air of that Virginia autumn night, had given themselves to enjoyment, and, tatoo over, the heavy slumber of the unconscious army was one of perfect tranquillity. But across the fields, around the base of Fisher's Hill, crept slow and stealthily that calm October night the hurriedly reorganized but bravely determined ranks of the rebel army. Original in its conception, audacious in its execution, threatening in its results," the desperate move by which the routed rebel leader sought to retrieve his crushing defeat would, if successful, have given him deserved pre-eminence as a daring and masterly strategist. With phantom-like tread, with brief and whispered commands, now toiling over mountain ridges, now fording the shallow river, silently-past the Union outposts, silently

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past the white tents of the sleeping army, silently-past picketpost and guard-line glided the rebel host through the gray fog of the fast-coming dawn. Then with a tremendous burst of musketry, with a sharp and sudden bayonet charge, it flung itself in irresistible columns upon the bewildered and outflanked columns of the Union army.

Startled from its false security, the whole camp sprang to arms, but all too late. Too late! for with the overwhelming rush of conscious advantage and the inspiration of certain victory, the rebel ranks charge again and again, driving before their pitiless bayonets regiment, corps, and brigade, until, defeated, disheartened, overcome, the Stars and Stripes turn in flight, and the foe is master of the field.

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Suddenly from out those retreating ranks a new cry rises, breaks, and swells into a glorious cheer-a cry of joy, of hope, of exultation, as, like the flash of a meteor, straight into the midst of the routed and broken columns dashes the now famous black charger of the General, and from lip to lip leap the words, Sheridan has come!" With wonderful celerity and marvellous power, with quick perception and lightning-like action, with resistless magnetism and inspiriting commands, the General turns back the tide of retreat ; scattered and flying regiments unite and become again assaulting forces; muzzle to muzzle and breast to breast, rages again the fierce struggle for the mastery; then with the unconquerable determination of a new-born purpose, the vanquished become the victors, dishonor gives place to glory, despair to exultation, and that night the Union ranks again rest the conquerors, while out of a disgraceful defeat springs the greater and more enduring victory.

For eighteen Christian centuries the banner under which all creeds could rally, all sects enroll themselves, had been the golden banner of the cross, the oriflamme of the Lord Christ. However theologians might differ or sectarians

wrangle, alike Apollos and Cephas, Arian and Athanasian, Catholic and Protestant, Churchman and Dissenter, Orthodox and Universalist, could meet upon the one common ground and battle under the one common standard of the -Saviour of the World, proclaiming his divinity, his supremacy, his eternity. It was reserved for the mid-watches of the nineteenth century of the Christian era to covertly assail, under the very folds of that protecting banner, the great Captain of Salvation, and for a young clergymanearnest, cultured, and thoughtful, but skeptical, negative, and mystical-to lead step by step, doubt after doubt, denial after denial, an ever-increasing and propulsive disbelief which culminated finally in open avowal, demoralizing and devitalizing the Unitarian Church, and with the guise of a reformer but the icy touch of an Afreet to chill the glowing and expanding heart of Liberal Christianity.

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In May, 1841, Theodore Parker preached his celebrated sermon on the Transient and Permanent in Christianity," and later, in 1846, returning from Germany, with his powerful but Christ-denying brain teeming with transcendental theories, he disseminated from his Boston platform those seeds of unrest and distrust which proved the wreck of many an earnest and yearning soul. Theodore Parker was but the logical antithesis to Cotton Mather, and the illimitable broadness of the Music Hall platform was but the antipode of the woman-burning superstitions of Gallows Hill. Here again the overswing of the protest against puritanic narrowness gave in its stead a Christless and unbounded liberty. Over all was skilfully thrown the seductive glamour of that cultured doubt which denies the unknowable, because it savors of the unfathomable, and gives in place of a formative spirituality a destructive intellectuality. Proclaimed with force and earnestness by a gifted and eloquent preacher, this Christ-doubting theory lured like a siren many a roving believer, many an unstable minister, who, mistaking the seductive strains of an æsthetic iconoclasm for the glorious harmonies of nature's divinest sym

phony, cast away Christ-their only sure anchor-and drifted aimlessly but willingly toward the shifting sands of unbelief.

The evil effects which must inevitably attend this dechristianization of the Saviour's mission were apparent to the clearest thinkers of our Church. And to no one were they more plainly patent than to Mr. Brooks. Himself a leal and loving follower of the Lord Christ, every fibre of his being all aglow with the fervor of this love and loyalty, he resisted with voice and pen every attempt to dethrone his Master. Others might tacitly accept the situation, however much they might deplore the drift of opinion, but his stalwart nature knew no compromise. Writing to the Trumpet, in relation to the "New Infidelity," he says, with little attempt to soften his words: "I have no fears for Christianity. It has withstood too many assaults and survived too many crises for this. But the circumstances of our times are peculiar, and the relations which infidelity assumes to Christianity are different from what they have ever been before. Unlike their predecessors in unbelief, the disciples of our modern infidelity claim to be Christians, to be recognized and fellowshipped as such; to go forth as the accredited ministers of Christ, while they impeach His authority and deny the truthfulness of the record by which only do we learn what He was and what He taught. Like one of old, they say Hail Master!' to betray him."

And so, in whatever form or in whatever guise this pseudo-Christianity reared its head in Christian pulpits or in Christian homes-whether as Parkerism, Rationalism, Free Churchism, or Liberalism-he labored to unmask and defeat it.

To the revolt against Christ, to the protest against inspiration, to the levelling assaults upon the Saviour's regal divinity, he made but a logical, reasoning objection, holding that every man had a right to his opinions, but that Mr. Parker and his followers, standing in Christian pulpits, and asserting their claims to fellowship as Christian ministers, should thus belittle the holy name of Christ, was deemed by

him at once an anomaly in religion and an insult to the Master himself.

'Theodore Parker and those who work with him," he writes in 1847, "are this moment doing more to unsettle the minds of men in respect to Christian faith and its evidences, than a score of Kneelands and Wrights could do, because they work as Christians and not as infidels, and thus take men at unawares." Time did not weaken the force nor stay the arm of this stout defender of the cross; for, thirty years later, he wrote on the same general theme: "We stand-we always have stood-for the Bible, for Christ, and the Divine Authority of his religion. As a branch of the Church of Christ we exist solely to convert men to faith in him, and to persuade them to accept and follow him as Lord. So existing, we should become a lie the moment we should lose sight of this purpose, and admit to our fellowship, no matter on what pretext, men without faith in the Bible or in Christ as the Sent of God."

It was at the time when the controversy on this subject was beginning to agitate the churches that Mr. Brooks received and accepted the call to Lowell, Mass. The invitation thus extended was represented to him as a unanimous one and so glowing was the picture presented to him that he entered upon his new pastorate with the brightest hopes and anticipations. Projecting himself with his usual vigor into all the plans and work of his Church-organizing, developing, strengthening, he labored strenuously in its behalf. But scarcely two months had passed before his eyes were opened to the new elements in the existing state of affairs. He had succeeded to a post held through an entire decade by an honored and eloquent pastor, and though his industry, integrity, and singleness of purpose were fully recognized, as well as his great ability and eloquence, yet they were of so different a style and type" that he encountered in the parish a spirit of dissatisfaction which, nettled and regretful because a favorite clergyman had departed, thought far too little of Church interests and neglected to

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