Other Movements. In addition to the above mentioned historic and psychological religious movements distinctive of the churches, I should say that there are certain movements today common to them all. One is the missionary ideal and effort: each Church is moving forward propagating its own specific principles, urging men to follow with them to serve our common Master; each is striving to go out and to send out its influence to make this land of America a Christian land; and each is putting forth its prayer and its power to make all heathen lands acknowledge Christ Jesus as their Lord and Master. Another is the holding together more and more tenaciously the few fundamental truths of Christ, which may be summed up in the Apostles' Creed, and allowing a wide divergence of opinion on matters of religious theology and philosophy. A third is the growing perception that religion must affect conduct, that it is the power of God unto salvation from sin and into righteousness of life, rather than a matter of mental conviction or of emotional experience. A fourth and last is the movement towards unity; the intermingling in worship, the toleration of differing opinions, the kindliness of feeling, the willingness to see the good in the distinctive positions of the others. Thus we see that the special principles of each Church are softened and tempered as they come into contact with those of the others; thus we find that each is absorbing for its own some of the good which it has come to find in the others; thus we perceive that each is slowly realizing that the whole truth and power of God is larger than any one of us has seen, and, therefore, to rejoice in the good that comes to mankind from each and all. So, then, these religious movements are blending more and more into one mighty stream of moral and spiritual influence on the people of our beloved land, and are making sweeter, richer, stronger its growing and advancing civilization. ROBERT STRANGE, Bishop of East Carolina, of the Protestant Episcopal Church. CHAPTER IV. DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE SOUTH. HE principles of the Reformation of the Sixteenth century involved the principles of religious freedom. But this implication was not seen; or, if seen, was not regarded as a principle whose application was practicable or desirable. The antagonistic principle of the propriety of the union of church and state continued to prevail. Every Protestant body which practically was able to do so, came into close union with a civil power, its creed becoming that state's religious creed. The logic of such a union was intolerance of every other form of religion than the state's form. Hence the Protestant belief in the inalienable right of man to the exercise of his private judgment in all matters of religion was accompanied by little tolerance for any who, in the exercise of that God-given right, differed in the more important conclusions thus reached. Only less tolerant of differing Protestant faiths than of the Papal faith, European Protestant intolerance waxed and waned, but always obtained throughout the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries. Vol. 10-30 Religious Liberty in the Colonies. The early North American colonists, whether coming to find an asylum in which they could worship God in their own preferred way, or coming as members of the established church of their native land, came possessed by the principle of intolerance and ready to apply it against all representatives of other faiths than their own. The most liberal colonies were those founded by Lord Baltimore, William Penn, and Roger Williams. Two of these men were moved by altruistic considerations in part, but to each of them self-interest dictated his liberal course. Even they advocated only a circumscribed liberty. "Baltimore only professed to make free soil for Christianity. Penn only tolerated those who believed in one Almighty and Eternal God, the creator, upholder, and ruler of the world; and denied the right to hold office to all except Christians. Williams' charter was expressly to propagate Christianity, and under it a law was enacted excluding all except Christians from the rights of citizenship, and including in the exclusion Roman Catholics." Moreover, Episcopalian intolerance was established in Maryland as early as 1692, and prevailed throughout the remaining life of the colony. Up to 1776, "although more than one sect had claimed religious freedom and an absolute divorce of church and state, no civil government had ever allowed the claim." Providence assigned to one of the Southern colonies of North America the function of incorporating into the foundation of her government the recognition of the right of all men to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience; and the function of leading the national government and all the several states of the American Union to similar positions. In the brief study of the advancement of religious liberty in the South, the colonies of Maryland, Georgia and the Carolinas, for the most part may be disregarded. In each of these colonies along with the Established Church, in behalf of which a high degree of intolerance was sometimes shown, there commonly existed only a limited intolerance. Hence Dissenters were not provoked to fight efficiently for larger things. The real struggle in behalf of religious liberty went on in Virginia. The early colonists of Virginia were, in the main, conforming Englishmen. They had not come over for religious reasons but to improve their fortunes. They naturally established the Church of England by law. As the Church of England did not become thoroughly episcopal till the act of Uniformity of 1662, passed by the Cavalier Parliament, it was roomy enough for many on whom episcopacy sat lightly. As large freedom was encouraged by the Virginia Company of London, and as the English government showed breadth of mind after it took immediate oversight of the Virginia colony in 1624, it was natural that many should come into the colony, some of whom had small sympathy for exclusive episcopacy, and some of whom were Separatists. The majority in the colonial legislature developed a rigid episcopacy, however. Beginning as early as 1624, the House of Burgesses enacted statutes designed to bring "Our Church as near as may be to the canons of England," and culminating in that of 1624, requiring the governor and council to expel all Non-Conformists, and in the severe laws of 1662, intended for all Separatists but especially for the Quakers. These laws were applied with much resolution. Non-Episcopal colonists were driven away into Maryland, the Carolinas and elsewhere. The Act of Toleration. The revolution of 1688, which put William of Orange and Mary, his wife, into the place of James Stuart on the English throne, is justly regarded as epochal in the history of religious liberty. "The privileges of conscience having had no earlier Magna Charta and petition of right whereto they could appeal against encroachments," William secured the passage of the Act of Toleration. "This act exempted from the penalties of existing statutes against separate conventicles, or absence from the established worship, such as should take the oath of allegiance and subscribe the declaration against popery, and such ministers of separate congregations as should subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England," three of those articles and a portion of the fourth excepted. It gave also an indulgence to Quakers without this condition. Meetinghouses were required to be registered, and were protected from insult by a penalty. The Toleration Act gave but a scant measure of religious liberty. The Dissenters still labored under civil disabilities. The Test Act and Corporation Act still stood between them and civil office. But small though this chartered right of religious liberty was, it was a bulwark of that degree conceded; and involved in it seeds germinant and growing into larger liberties. Rev. Francis Makemie and the Presbyterians. Meanwhile, about 1683, Presbyterians in the county of Accomac and on Elizabeth River, taking advantage of certain favorable local conditions, secured as their minister Rev. Francis Makemie, of typical Scotch-Irish character. Makemie suffered for years under the laws of Virginia, for he "Durst |