xt7vdn3zsz5p https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7vdn3zsz5p/data/mets.xml Hoss, E.E. (Elijah Embree), 1849-1919. 19161914  books b92-54-27062441 English Publishing House of the M.E. Church, South, : Nashville, Tenn. : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. M'Kendree, William, 1757-1835. William McKendree  : a biographical study / by E.E. Hoss. text William McKendree  : a biographical study / by E.E. Hoss. 1916 2002 true xt7vdn3zsz5p section xt7vdn3zsz5p 
X METHODIST FOUNDERS SE0RES


WILLIAM McKENDREE

        A BIOGRAPHICAL
                STUDY
                   BY

            E. E. HOSS, D.D.
         LAte Bishop of the M. E. Church, South



B     ILLIAM McKENDREE was the first native-
     born bishop of the Methodist Episcopal
Church in America. But he was to all intents
and purposes a bishop before his election, for he
served for several years as presiding elder in the
"Great West," holding Annual Conferences in the
absence of the bishop and having entire charge
over the preachers in his vast district. "He was
accustomed to keep house in his saddlebags."
Bishop Hoss follows his course with the sympa-
thetic eye of a kindred spirit, and the account is
enlivened by that chaste humor which all the
productions of the gifted writer reveal.



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WILLIAM McKENDREE



    A BIOGRAPHICAL

            STUDY






       By BISHOP E. E. HOSS





     METHODIST FO UNDERS' SERIES






           NASHVILLE, TENN.
        DALLAS, TEX.; RICHMOND, VA.
  PUBLISHING HOUSE OF THE M. E. CHURCH, SOUTH
         SMITH  LAMAR, AGENTS
               1916

 








































COPYRIGHT, 1914
     BY
SMIT  LAOAR

 






INTRODUCTION.



  AN adequate subject and a capable and dedicated
pen are the necessary conditions for making a pur-
poseful book, one that in itself has power to live and
accomplish the end of its writing. The wide religious
fellowship to which the present volume is particularly
addressed will, without debate, allow that in it these
conditions have been met. Such a presentation as it
makes of the apostolic career with which it deals has
long been a desideratum in the thought life of the
Church. It will not be denied that the biographical
studies of the early leadership of Methodism in this
country have, until more recent years, been found in
writings whose terms, while commendably sympathetic
and true to the vitalities involved, are not all that is
demanded by both the religious and philosophical in-
quisitiveness of our times. It is to effect this new
setting of old truths and to revive the too plainly
waning appreciation of heroic precedents that this
volume and others in the series of which it is a unit
have been written. A privileged perusal of these
pages while they were yet in ante-publication processes
has suggested to the writer of this introductory sketch
the possibilities with which they are charged.
  Without so much as touching upon the question of
inspiration-a matter that must remain inviolate in all
reverent thinking-the Book of the Acts is properly
thought of in connection with the authorship of St.
Luke. While it is impossible to imagine what the
                                          (I)

 



Life of William McKendree.



apostolic story had been coming from another hand
than his, it is quite allowable and reverent to plus its
inspiration with the personality and viewpoint of its
author. The viewpoint is, in fact, always an integer of
first importance, for it is the channel through which the
capabilities and fitness of the biographer's personality
find expression. Changed conditions and the emer-
gence of a new historical viewpoint have ripened the
conviction that our Methodist biography needs a new
and more natural setting. The classics of personal
history which we have so long used and revered will
continue to have their place in our denominational bib-
liography; but they must, more and more, fall to the
exclusive use of students and specialists and give place
in the hands of the general reader to fresher and apter
recitals of their narratives.
  These conclusions involve the doctrine of the con-
tinued activity of individual life. The souls of the
worthies of the past not only continue to walk the
earth, but their deeds have a continuity of force and
vitality which requires anew to be made manifest and
anew declared. Doctrines of essential belief and in-
stitutions reach the point of fixity both as to fact and
as to the forms in which they are expressed. But life
has in it no such finality; it is itself a continuous ex-
pression of doctrine and institutional truth. In this
the life which has entered into history and that which
is in the process of living are alike. Biography has
this advantage over history, except where history itself
is only a species of biography.
  The earlier history of American Methodism is easily
and naturally divisible into three periods, each period



2

 



Introduction.



represented by a name that must survive as long as
the Wesleyan movement has a record or a represent-
ative on this continent. Asbury, McKendree, and
Soule are the trio of mighty names in which close the
details of a record as heroic and as potent for destiny
as any written in the uninspired annals of the race.
It would be a profitless task to determine which of
these was the greatest or which accomplished the
greatest end in his living. They rather make a unity
in the history which they wrought. The story of one
cannot be told without reciting material facts in the
lives of the other two. Their services covered well
the years of a century, but the witness of the first
overlaps the witness of the others so as to give a view
of the three standing in the same line of vision.
  Providence fulfilled itself and fulfilled the ethnic
and spiritual needs of life on this continent in the
selection of these three men to lead the fortunes of the
greatest religious movement which the continent has
known. The first, an Englishman, with the religious
prejudice of Anglicanism, was a type of one of the
dominant elements in early racial America; the sec-
ond, a Virginian, embodied the acquired instinct of
religious freedom and the political aspirations charac-
teristic of the colonists and their offspring; while the
third, a New Englander, mingled Puritan predilections
with atavistic Norman qualities and represented the
best-developed type of later American life. Here was
the whole religious and social life of the continent
rolled into the three patriarchs of early Methodism;
and these, in their turn, were by Providence rolled into



3

 



Life of William McKendree.



a unity of thought and action reaching through prac-
tically a century of time.
   The privilege of treating at this day of the deeds of
the second of this triad of early American Methodist
leadership is one to be coveted for the reason that it
furnishes the vantage for a backward and a forward
sweep of vision. It will be a pleasure to discover how
this volume has improved its opportunity. John Mor-
ley has, in his life of Gladstone, written a philosophical
history of England in the latter half of the nineteenth
century. He could not escape this chance, being true
to his subject. The modern bishop of the Church, in
sketching the career of his illustrious predecessor, has,
in various connections, effectively laid bare the secret
vitalities of that body of constitutional and adminis-
trative life known as historic Methodism. The value
of this service can be better calculated and will be bet-
ter understood after a generation has tried the contents
of this volume.
  The aim of the present revival of study in Methodist
biography has been not only to certainly find the
sources and trace the course of authority in our eccle-
siasticism, but more particularly to find the fountains
and inspirational causes of that exceptional spiritual
life which so long characterized Methodism and ef-
fectively to commend it to the generations of to-day.
  Personal experience has always been the true expos-
itive force in the history of religion. This force was
the characteristic manifestation of early Methodism,
which formulated no new doctrine and, at its beginning,
contemplated no ecclesiastical departure. It is always
to be remembered, too, that Methodism took its con-



4

 


Introduction.



fession out of the body of an older symbol; but it is
also to be remembered that it mightily interpreted old
doctrines and old formulas in the lives and testimony
of its adherents. In this it completed both the letter
and the spirit of the Reformation of the sixteenth
century, which was a correction of doctrine rather
than a revival of spiritual life. Justification by faith
as a doctrinal formula described the ultimate advance
of Luther's teachings, while the witness of the Spirit as
a vital experience described the goal of the Wesleyan
revival.
  The necessity for constantly reverting to this expe-
rience as a precedent for all Christian living, and also
the possibility of continually expanding it in the hope
of uncovering new incentives to seek it and new ave-
nues of approach to it, are additional reasons for these
latest essays in Methodist biography. The reader is
confidently advised that the author of this new biog-
raphy of the first native American bishop has not
failed to cultivate this possibility.
  A new and valid reason for the present writing is
the relation of the subject to the past fortunes and
future hopes of that branch of Methodism whose hab-
itat is in the lands so industriously cultivated by this
first American patriarch; and, indeed, the other two
mighty ones referred to are not less legitimately
claimed in this relationship. Not only is the earliest
spring of historic Methodism traceable to these zones,
but here, and under the superintendency of these men,
were its earliest victories planned and achieved. The
time has come, therefore, to set all these things in the
light of a narrative which shall be both unequivocal as



5,

 



6           Life of William McKendree.

to these claims and also just and discriminating in
favor of other relationships in the wider house of
Methodism. In a word, this new series of biographies
especially seeks to present a catholic story of the days
of genesis and heroism, one that shall live on and,
while teaching the equities of history, shall minister to
its unities in a future of possibilities already at our
door. It is not to acquit myself of a service of friend-
ship nor to discharge a conventional office, but rather
to speak out of the fullness of appreciation and as the
result of critical measurement, that I ascribe to this
volume the quality of justness, discrimination, and
catholicity in all these matters. I count it a great
happiness to have been accorded the privilege of in-
diting this foreword and of commending this volume
to the perusal and study of all our people.
                             HoRAcE M. Du BOSE.
  ATLANTA, GA., July 20, i9i4.


 










                    CONTENTS.


                       CHAPTER I.                  PAGI.
Parentage, Birth, and Early Life .......................   g

                       CHAPTER II.
Genesis of Religious Experience ........................ I7

                      CHAPTER III.
Call to the Ministry .................................... 33

                      CHAPTER IV.
Four Years a Circuit Preacher .......................... 39

                       CHAPTER V.
Four Years More on the Circuit, with an Episode ........ 48

                      CHAPTER VI.
First Five Years in the Presiding Eldership ............. 66

                      CHAPTER VII.
Set over the Forces in the Great West .................. 73

                     CHAPTER VIII.
Taking a Fresh Start in Kentucky ...................... 88

                      CHAPTER IX.
Elected to the Episcopacy .............................. io6

                      CHAPTER X.
First Quadrennium   in the Episcopacy ................... i20
                                               (7)

 




8           Life of William  McKendree.

                     CHAPTER XI.                 PAGIL
At His First General Conference as a Bishop ............ i39

                     CHAPTER XII.
In Full Swing.      ........    ;49

                    CHAPTER XIII.
Senior Bishop of the Church ....................          i6i

                     CHAPTER XIV.
Defending the Constitution ....................' 73

                     CHAPTER XV.
Nearing Port....................                   197


 






LIFE OF WILLIAM McKENDREE.



                  CHAPTER I.
       PARENTAGE, BIRTH, AND EARLY LIFE.
  WILLIAM MCKENDREE, the first native American
bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was born
in King William County, Va., forty miles northeast
of the city of Richmond, July 6, 1757. He was the
eldest of the eight children of John and Mary Mc-
Kendree, an intelligent, self-respecting, and God-
fearing couple, who belonged to what is sometimes
condescendingly called "the middle class of Virgin-
ians." If anything at all has been preserved concern-
ing his remoter progenitors, it has wholly escaped my
research. The family name, however, shows that they
were of Scotch origin, though, as was the case with
thousands of others of the same blood, they probably
reached America by way of the north of Ireland.
These transplanted Scotchmen are a masterful race.
Wherever they have gone they have left an indelible
mark. What they have contributed to the life and
growth of the United States in particular can scarcely
be overestimated.
  John McKendree does not appear to have been, ex-
cept in the matter of his moral and religious probity,
a very uncommon man. He was one of the undistin-
guished multitude of faithful souls whose names,
though not known in the earth, are written in heaven.
By vocation he was a planter, owning his own lands
                                       (9)

 



Life of William McKendree.



and a few domestic servants, and making always a
comfortable subsistence; but never accumulating any
considerable fortune, nor achieving social or political
eminence. Bishop Paine describes him as follows:
"With strong domestic affections, and without any de-
sire for notoriety, he led a humble, industrious, and re-
ligious life." Removing in I764 to James City County,
and again in I770 to Greenville County, he finally, in
i8io, migrated with his youngest son, Dr. James Mc-
Kendree, and three other of his children to Sumner
County, in the then young State of Tennessee. From
this last of his earthly homes, which was the free gift
of the generous and large-hearted Rev. James Gwin-
a good farm of three hundred acres-he passed to his
heavenly home on his eighty-eighth birthday, October,
i8io.
  Mary McKendree, whose maiden name, strangely
enough, is not known, was a woman of great strength
and gentleness of character. In every respect she was
fit to be the mother of her famous son. Becoming an
invalid in 1769, she was confined to her room till her
death, twenty years later. But even under so great a
disability she continued the wise management of her
household affairs and looked well to the rearing of her
children. The exquisite sweetness of her temper, to
which there is abundant testimony, left an impression
on their minds which neither time nor change could
ever obliterate.
  Speaking of the McKendrees in general, Bishop
Paine says that one of their most marked characteris-
tics was their strong family love. In the course of
years they became widely scattered in Virginia, Ten-



10

 


Parentage, Birth, and Early Life.



nessee, Alabama, and South Carolina; but they never
lost their intense affection for one another. Bishop
Asbury in a notable passage in his Journal tells how
he and Bishop McKendree once became the guests of
the latter's younger brother, Thomas, in South Caro-
lina, and dwells on the glad welcome and "the noble
feast" which they received.
  The life of an average Virginia family in the days
of which I write was rather colorless and uneventful.
More than a hundred and fifty years had elapsed since
the first English settlers came to Jamestown. Pioneer
conditions had largely passed away. Except on the
Western frontiers, toward the Blue Ridge and the
Alleghanies, Indian wars, with their excitements, were
things of the past, though as late as 1770 Lord Dun-
more sent his famous expedition under Andrew Lewis
to Point Pleasant, on the Ohio River. Society, for the
most part, had settled down to an easy and common-
place way of getting on. There were only a few
towns, and they were small and insignificant. The
great majority of the white people resided on their
own farms and tilled the fields with their own hands.
Negro slavery had become a fixed institution, but had
taken on a gentler form than anywhere else in the
world. Not one-fourth of the people were slave-
holders. If riches did not abound, poverty was like-
wise rare.
  There was much good social fellowship, which was
always accompanied by an abundance of eating and
often by entirely too much drinking. The word
"neighbors" meant all those living in a day's horse-
back ride of one another. They were much given to



II

 



Life of William McKendree.



the interchange of hospitalities. It was customary to
keep open house both for friends and for strangers.
Nobody but a churl turned a visitor away from his
door. A traveler of decent appearance might pass from
one side of the colony to the other and scarcely be
taxed for a night's lodging.
  Here and there lines of social cleavage were more
or less distinctly drawn. In the Tidewater region es-
pecially and along the Upper Valley of the James a few
great families, nearly all of which had crossed the
ocean during Cromwell's time, exercised a sort of
natural sway over their several communities. But in
spite of all that has been said about the dominancy of
these Cavaliers, the fact is that in the body and bulk of
her citizenship and in the great currents of her life
Virginia was and has always remained essentially
democratic. The most of the men who followed George
Washington and the most of those who followed
Robert E. Lee were what in England would have been
called yeomen. It is important to bear this in mind, as
the contrary impression has been made by many
writers, from one of whom I shall presently quote.
  Educational opportunities in Virginia, except for
the wealthy, were not good. In all America there
were only three or four colleges, and in Virginia only
one. Even ordinary schools were few and generally
of inferior quality. Those who could afford it usually
employed private tutors for their sons out of England.
Mr. Dempster and Parson Ward, of Thackeray's great
novel, are types each of a large class. Many young
men besides Henry and George Warrington were sent
across the sea to finish their studies and polish their



12

 


         Parentage, Birth, and Early Life.    13

manners. Let us hope that the most of them fell into
better company than those two brothers encountered.
While many good private libraries could be found in
the homes of the richer folk, it must be confessed that
books were inaccessible to the masses. Of newspapers,
which are now regarded as indispensable vehicles for
the dissemination of intelligence, there were none at
all; but of oral discussion, both in private circles and
in public places, there was a great deal, and it wrought
largely on the public mind.
  Even George Washington grew up with a limited
range of book knowledge; and it is not strange that
William McKendree should have acquired still less.
To the end of his life, though he learned to speak his
mother tongue with precision and force, he would no
doubt have been bothered by an examination in gram-
mar, and he often took uncommon liberties with Eng-
lish orthography. Who his teachers were, we are no-
where told. One of them is handed down to us anony-
mously as "a vain man," not much better, probably,
than an Irish hedge-master. Seventy-five years ago
there was a tradition still floating through the Church
to the effect that McKendree was a dull, slow boy; but
his best biographer discredits it, and says: "While it
may have comforted many a lazy and unpopular young
preacher, it was probably without foundation in fact."
  When McKendree was born, the first breath of dis-
content with the colonial policies of Great Britain had
scarcely passed over the land. The most of the Vir-
ginia people still cherished a loving reverence for old
England, called it "home," and gloried greatly in the
fact that they themselves were men of English speech

 


Life of William McKendree.



and blood. In all his wide domain King George had
no more loyal subjects than they. Any slightest sug-
gestion of rebellion or revolution would have been
cried down by them as a piece of treasonable folly.
But events were shaping themselves beyond the knowl-
edge or will of men. There is an element in the growth
of nations that operates as inevitably, yet often as in-
visibly, as gravitation-the element of Divine purpose.
In her season of apparent repose and inactivity Vir-
ginia was quietly nursing the strength which she would
sorely need in the coming contest for freedom, a con-
test in which she bore so conspicuous and glorious a
part.
  It is a little off the track of my theme, but I cannot
forbear to reproduce here from Senator Cabot Lodge's
"Life of Washington" a passage which, barring the
undue emphasis put on the aristocratic spirit of the
colony, is both true and illuminating: "There was
nothing languishing or effeminate about the Virginia
planter. He was a robust man, quite ready to fight or
to work when the time came, and well fitted to deal
with affairs when he was needed. He was a free-
handed, hospitable, generous being, not much given
to study or thought, but thoroughly public-spirited
and keenly alive to the interests of Virginia. Above
all things else, he was an aristocrat set apart by the
dark line of race, color, and hereditary servitude, as
proud as the proudest Austrian with his endless quar-
terings, as sturdy and vigorous as an English yeo-
man, and as jealous of his rights and privileges as any
baron who stood by John at Runnymede. To this
aristocracy, careless and indolent, given to rough



14

 



Parentage, Birth, and Early Life.



pleasures, and indifferent to the finer and higher sides
of life, the call came, as it comes to all men sooner or
later; and in response they gave their country soldiers,
statesmen, and jurists of the highest order and fit for
the great work they were asked to do. We must go
back to Athens to find another instance of a society
so small in numbers and yet capable of such an out-
burst of ability and force. They were of sound Eng.
lish stock with a slight admixture of Huguenot, the
best blood of France; and although for a century and
a half they had seemed to stagnate in the New World,
they were strong and faithful and effective beyond the
measure of ordinary races when the hour of peril and
trial was at hand."
  It was such a civilization as this, speaking generally,
that constituted the background of McKendree's life.
In all that the word can mean, he was a true Virginian,
though he never paraded the fact. Before he had quite
passed his eighteenth year, the War of the Revolution
broke out. In less than a generation Virginia had en-
tirely changed front. In spite of her ancient loyalty
she was the first of all the colonies, in the "Resolves"
proposed by Patrick Henry in i765, to proclaim un-
dying resistance to the unjust exactions of the British
Crown and Parliament; and she now threw herself
with the greatest spirit into the armed conflict, rejoic-
ing that the supreme leadership in this great emergency
had been bestowed upon her favorite son.
  Before the war ended, McKendree joined the army.
The exact date of his enlistment is in doubt; but the
fact is beyond dispute that he rose to the rank of
adjutant, and was present in that capacity when Corn-
       2



is

 



Life of William McKendree.



wallis surrendered at Yorktown, being then twenty-
four years of age. The probabilities are that he saw,
all told, about two or three years' service. The experi-
ence that he thus acquired in dealing with men proved
of large value to him in coming years. To the end of
his life there was something of the soldier and the com-
mander in his character. He was in his prime the
captain of the itinerant hosts, and rode at the front as
one not unused to such a place. But it was only on
the rarest occasions, and then with great modesty, that
he ever referred to his military career. Nor did he
even in extreme old age apply for a pension. He was
incapable of putting a market value on his patriotism.
Bishop Robert Paine, who was on terms of the closest
intimacy with him for many years, acting as his aman-
uensis, traveling thousands of miles in his company,
and passing over many of the Revolutionary battle
fields, says that he never once heard him allude to his
own part in the struggle: "In him the soldier of civil
liberty was merged into the nobler character of a true
and valiant soldier of the Cross. Having done his duty
to his country in an emergency, he was contented, and
never boasted of the fact." Still, it is a matter of rec-
ord that when on a certain occasion in 1807 a company
of roughs, led by a Major Somebody, undertook to
break up one of his camp meetings on the frontier of
Illinois, he announced from the pulpit that he and some
of his companions had fought for their country and
could not be intimidated or overawed by a show of vio-
lence. The hint proved effective, and the roughs re-
tired.



i6


 






CHAPTER II.



        GENESIS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
  IT is proper to say here what ought perhaps to have
been said before, that the state of religion in Virginia
during and immediately after the Revolutionary War
was exceedingly low. The Church of England, it is
true, had been from the beginning established by law,
but it had never been profoundly loved by the people
as a whole. In its most prosperous estate it had ninety-
six parishes served by ninety-three ministers. By a
policy which seems strange indeed, and which would
not now be possible, it had never had a resident bishop.
The Bishop of London, to whose diocese the colony
belonged, and who exercised a sort of absent juris-
diction, was represented on the ground by a com-
missary. For fifty years the Rev. Dr. John Blair, a
Scotchman of ability and character, to whom Virginia
owes a greater debt than she can ever pay, had filled
that sub-Episcopal post. However it may be with
Churches that hold to a non-Episcopal form of govern-
ment, it is at least true that an Episcopal Church with-
out a bishop in presence and authority is something of
an anomaly and cannot develop in an orderly and
healthy fashion.
  When the fighting began, in 1776, a great many of
the clergy forsook their flocks and fled to England.
It is not at all uncharitable to say that, as far as the
most of them were concerned, their room was better
than their company. Their departure was, at any rate,
                                        (17)

 


Life of William McKendree.



no great loss to the cause of good religion or good
citizenship. Leaving out exceptional cases, they were,
both in the matter of character and in the matter of
competency, far from measuring up to any proper
standard, and would not be tolerated to-day in any
Church in America. The Episcopal Church in Vir-
gin]a would now exclude them without a moment's
hesitation. Not a few of them were given to drinking,
gambling, cock-fighting, horse-racing, and many other
such improprieties. Not many of them showed any
deep sense of concern for the honor of their office or
for the souls of their flocks. With such ministers it
was certain that the laity would not furnish many
shining illustrations of the graces of Christianity. Dr.
Hawks, the historian of the Church, says that "between
the two classes there was a mutual action and reaction
of evil; each probably contributed to make the other
worse."
  About the only thing in regard to which these lead-
ers in Israel showed any great activity was in seeking
to repress all forms of dissent. Though not quite so
bad in this respect as the New England Puritans, they
were still bad enough in all conscience. The testimony
of Dr. Hawks is as explicit as words could make
it, and it is fully confirmed by many good authorities.
Parsons whose daily lives were a shame and a scandal
poured out the full measure of ecclesiastical censure
and wrath upon Quakers, Presbyterians, and Baptists
who were guilty of no offense except that they would
not conform to the usages of the Church of England.
These good people were dragged before petty magis-
trates, insulted, fined, beaten, and imprisoned. The



I8

 

Genesis of Religious Experience.



Baptists, who made their first appearance in the colony
as early as I714 and became very active after i740,
bore the brunt of the persecution, and stood stead-
fast as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. Nothing re-
strained such acts of violence as those just mentioned
except a growing public opinion against them. It is
not strange that the successors and descendants of
those courageous early Baptists have carefully pre-
served the keys and bolts of the jails in which so many
noble men were confined and from the grated windows
of which they preached to the curious multitudes that
thronged upon the outside. "Soul liberty" is a great
inheritance, especially when purchased at the cost of
suffering and shame on the part of one's ancestors. To
any one that knows the historic traits of the Presby-
terians, who also began their work about i740, it is
hardly necessary to say that they too stood their
ground.
  In a letter written in 1764 James Madison, then a
youth of fine intelligence and aspiring spirit, says:
"Pride, ignorance, and knavery -prevail among the
priesthood, and vice and wickedness among the laity.
This is bad enough, but it is not the worst I have to
tell you. That diabolical, hell-conceived principle of
persecution rages among some; and to their eternal in-
famy the clergy furnish their full quota of imps for
such purposes. There are at this time in the adjacent
county five or six well-meaning men in close jail for
publishing their religious sentiments, which in the main
are very orthodox." One of the three things that
Thomas Jefferson ordered to be carved on his tomb-
stone was the fact that Virginia in 1785, under his



I9

 

Life of William McKendree.



leadership, enacted a statute for religious freedom. On
such an achievement he had full right to congratulate
himself. Massachusetts did not take the same step till
far along in the nineteenth century.
  But there is another side to this dismal picture. The
Church