Salve mater

Front matter

Stat rei

Kg bh

Be : & b As AY i i Fr ‘ 2

Contents

PREFACE CHAPTER I IyrropucTionN—ANTECEDENTS

II St. Pavy’s ScHoor .

III Oxrorp IV Mryister1an Work V Detaware .

Chapter I Introduction——-antecedents

Durine the past year, I have had to make three decisions, vitally important to myself, and significant to friends as indicating abandonment of convictions which we have long shared as the basis of the chief hopes and energies of our lives. In the first place, it became necessary for me to resign jurisdiction over the Diocese of Delaware of which I had been Bishop for over ten years; in the second, to renounce the Orders of the Episcopal Church; and in the third, its Communion. These decisions were followed by recognition of the duty to seek admission into the Communion of the Roman Catholic Church. The decision about jurisdiction was reached in December, 1918, the one about Orders in the following June, and both carried into effect in a letter to the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church sent on July Ist. The other decisions were not reached until August. For several reasons, the intention to seek admission into the Roman Catholic Church has not yet (November) been carried out; so that this book has been written in, and out of, old surroundings. I know nothing yet of those which must determine future courses, if any space of life is still in store for me.

I owe some account of myself to two sets of people; first, to my friends in the Episcopal Church, especially my people in Delaware; and second, to pupils of past years who will wish to know the reasons which have forced abandonment of what they know to have been firmly held convictions. This book, therefore, has been written primarily for personal friends. ‘This fact explains the giving of personal details, and the assumption that the motive underlying its comments will be understood without need of special explanation.

I have undertaken to answer two questions: Why have I abandoned the Episcopal Church for the Roman Catholic? and Why did it take so long to see the duty? The attempt to perform this task during three quiet months in Birchmere has shown the necessity of touching on many matters of which at the outset I had no thought. It has-been necessary to review the course of my whole life, and to outline the whole of the experience which has been, responsible for the formation of views of what constitutes the Church.

To answer the first question, it has seemed necessary to give a detailed account of my religious education, indicating certain fixed points which have been decisive in the formation of all my ecclesiastical conceptions ; to summarize also an experience in ministerial work which induced the feeling that the Episcopal Church fails to realize ideals which her teaching has made me regard as all-important; and to outline various revisions of judgment in regard to the Roman Catholic Church, removing prejudices which until very recently would have kept me out of her Communion, and bringing con-

= viction that in this alone is full realization of the Christian life. I have wished to put myself on record in regard to changes of view on important matters, for the sake of correcting what I now regard as erroneous in my former teaching. Correction takes the form chiefly of addition. There is very little in what I have said in the formal teaching of past years, which I should now wish wholly to unsay; there is not a great deal that I should wish to say very differently: but I should add much, and the additions would wholly change my estimate of the English Reformation. Dr. Gairdner described the first stage of this as merely “the old religion with the Pope left out.” I should now wish to teach “ the old religion with the Pope put back.”

To answer the second question, it has seemed necessary to refer to antecedents and associations, which involved living for almost half a century with little actual knowledge of the Roman Catholic Church, and which made any change of ecclesiastical allegiance seem unnatural or impossible. I have referred in detail to my unusually pleasant and congenial experiences during four years of preparation for Orders in England, and during twenty-four years of ministry in the Episcopal Church, which seemed to impose special obligations of holding to my assigned post, and extenuate possibly, though they could not excuse, the slowness to heed the call to leave them all behind. It has been necessary also to detail erroneous conceptions of Roman Catholicism, and prejudices against it, which have only been overcome by a heavy bombardment of working facts.

To the Episcopal Church I owe everything of chief value in my life; and especially the fixed ideas which, as they have worked themselves out in practice, have compelled my abandonment of her Ministry and Communion. In view of the abandonment, it may seem insincere to profess continuance of attachment; nevertheless it is simply true that, even with changed proportionate values, I still have great veneration for the Church and her achievements, and an enhanced feeling of personal gratitude for the associations and opportunities which were given me. From my point of view, I am simply carrying out more fully and consistently principles and duties, which, through the Episcopal Church, I have come to consider of highest importance, by giving allegiance where they seem to be given fullest realization. ‘“ Nought in life became him like the leaving of it.” In spite of having lost belief in Anglican Catholicity, my estimate of the Anglican Churches has not changed from “ good” to ‘“ bad,” but simply to “ good ” from ‘‘ best.” I wish my friends to know this. ‘To say so may seem insincere, inconsistent, incongruous. Nevertheless it is true. ‘This implies no uncertainty as to the duty either of giving up the Episcopal Church, or of submitting to the Roman Catholic. I have wavered a long time; but I am not wavering now. For long I have been uncertain what Our Lord’s Will for me was: now I know.

In thus accounting for myself, I have not wished to give the impression that I regard my course as edifying, or that recording opinions and acts implies approval. I think many of my past opinions utterly foolish, and many of my acts indefensible, especially the not seeing the duty of change several years ago. Those who disagree with my conclusions will be noticing personal limitations which may be taken fairly to discount my judgments. Things of this sort I have wished plainly to appear, although I have not commented on them. I remember a bit of advice once given me by the Reverend Dr. William R. Huntington: “ Don’t be so anxious to point out the weak points in your own position: let the other people find those.” I have no wish to undertake a defence of myself personally, least of all for my course during the past three years, a time of perplexity, fluctuations of feeling and judgment, inconsistency and paralysis of the will. ‘These are normal effects of doubt. As I wrote to a friend, “I have simply been an example of a ‘double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.’?” Yet I have confidence in the validity of my ecclesiastical judgments, not only for myself but for others with the same point of view. None of my opinions are original, in substance or form of statement. Yet as I have come to hold them, they have received corroboration and illustration from a varied experience.

The narrative is not an autobiography. I have tried to account for the development of opinions on one set of subjects, not to exhibit my personal life and work, matters of no interest to any except those who know all about them already. One’s personality, however, is a sort of Jack-in-the-Box, forever bobbing up, no matter kow often rapped on the head and clamped down: and many incidents in one’s experience contribute to the formation of any set of opinions. I have tried to tell everything that has bearing, even remote, on the formation of my opinions as to what constitutes the Church: but I have tried to exclude everything else. The narrative relates not to “a spiritual pilgrimage,” but to an ecclesiastical quest, to an effort to answer the question, “ What is the Catholic Church? ” The recording of the various phases and stages of this one aspect of one’s mental growth may give the impression that life has been one long Gregorian Tone—frequently offkey. My friends know that there have been frequent interludes of Gilbert and Sullivan!

The chief purposes of the book are two: to show that the giving up of the Episcopal Church for the Roman Catholic was, in its most obvious aspect, an act of simple honesty; and to publish such views on historical subjects as differ from those given in my former books. In dealing with these, I have not undertaken to give any complete presentation of the several subjects, merely to elaborate the special points which have induced me to abandon former contentions. ‘These chapters .are narrative, rather than argument; an account of modification or change in my own estimates, not an attempt to make such a statement as might seem conclusive to other people. They deal, however, with points of vital importance to all who have shared my old point of view. The book is partly confession, partly retraction, chiefly the avowal of hopeful conviction.

ANTECEDENTS AND EARLY EDUCATION

The Roman Catholic Church played no part in the world in which I was born and bred. My family belong to the Connecticut Western Reserve in Ohio with a background of Connecticut and Massachusetts: they were members of the Episcopal Church into which two generations had come out of New England Congregationalism. Our earliest American ancestor came to this country in the Mayflower in 1620; none from whom we derive descent came over later than 1680. Along every line we are descended from New England Puritans.

The Kinsmans derive from Robert Kinsman, who came to Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1635; whose grandson, Robert 3rd, removed to Norwich, Connecticut, in 1721. Among the families from whom we are descended through Kinsman marriages, are the Conants, Burleys, Warrens, Watermans, Thomases of Marshfield, Perkinses of Norwich, and Douglases of Plainfield. My great-grandfather, John Kinsman of Norwich, was one of the largest landholders in the Connecticut Western Reserve. His land list for 1813 showed holdings in every County, including Cunningham’s (Kelley’s) Island, amounting in all to forty-six thousand acres, of which the largest tract was in Trumbull County in the townships of Gustavus and Kinsman. My grandfather, his youngest son, was born in, Kinsman in 1807, was after his father’s death associated with his uncle, General Simon Perkins, in the Land Office in Warren, where ke built the family homestead in 1833, and spent his life. | |

In 1840, he married Cornelia Granger Pease, youngest daughter of Judge Calvin Pease of Suffield, Connecticut, who served several terms on the Supreme Court of Ohio, and was for a time Chief Justice. The

Peases are descended from Robert Pease of Salem; and through them we are connected with the Goodells of Salem, Adamses of Ipswich, Spencers of Hartford, Kings of Enfield, Risleys of Glastonbury, and Grants of Windsor. My father, Frederick Kinsman Jr., was born in 1841, served in the Civil War in the 84th Ohio and as First Lieutenant of the 171st Ohio, and in 1867 married Mary Louisa Marvin.

My mother’s father, Joseph Marvin, was born in Lyme, Connecticut, in 1807, a descendant of Reinold Marvin who settled in Lyme in 1640, and of Beckwiths, Demings, Lords and Millers, all of them families of the south Connecticut Valley. In 1837, he married Lucy Temple Dana, born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, a descendant of Richard Dana of Cambridge, and connected with the Buckminsters and Stanifords of Ipswich, Lees of Marblehead, Thorndikes of Beverley, and Tracys of Newburyport. Her grandfather, Dr. Joseph Dana, was for sixty-six years pastor of the South Church in Ipswich; an uncle, Dr. Daniel Dana, was pastor of the South Church, in Newburyport, and President of Dartmouth College; another uncle, Dr. Samuel Dana, was pastor of the South Church in Marblehead; and her father, Dr. Joseph Dana, removed from Newburyport to Ohio, to become Professor of Languages in the College at Athens, at one time destined to become the University of Ohio. All of my _ great-grandparents removed from New England to Ohio prior to 1830; my grandparents, although born elsewhere, all lived in Warren, where my parents and I were born.

Those who know Connecticut, Massachusetts, and the Connecticut Western Reserve in Ohio, will recognize what sort of religious and ecclesiastical background the names enumerated signify. All our forbears were New England Congregationalists, some in later generations being Presbyterians, one family Episcopalians. My great-grandmother Kinsman was chiefly instrumental in building the Presbyterian Church in Kinsman and gave the glebe. My grandfather Marvin, a graduate of Athens College, whose family were Presbyterians, became a Methodist minister, although never holding a regular charge.

My Kinsman grandparents became Episcopalians, as did my mother, who from her childhood preferred the Episcopal Church, and was confirmed while at boardingschool in Batavia, New York. My grandfather Kinsman was chief contributor to the building fund for Christ Church, Warren, in which my grandmother was a devout communicant. In view of their connection with the church, it was not inappropriate that the window over the altar was placed there as their memorial by their sons. My father and mother were married in Christ Church; and I was baptized there by the Reverend Cornelius Stevenson Abbott Sr. when I was four weeks old.

I was therefore brought up in the Episcopal Church in Warren.* I had my first religious instruction from

*The beginnings of my ecclesiastical career were ominous. A letter of my grandmother’s, written just after I was four years old, describes me as a disturber of the congregation. “Little Cornelia was on her best behavior and seemed very my mother, who was also my first Sunday School teacher, as she had charge of the Infant Class for a number of years. Later I was placed in a class taught by Miss Mary Iddings, who was the first to make me memorize the Prayer Book collects. For a year I also attended a class in the Presbyterian Sunday School, taught by Miss Ella Estabrook, my teacher in grammar school, who trained me in habits of reading the Bible. My connections and associations gave me a feeling of filial veneration not only for the Episcopal Church, but also for the Presbyterian, Congregational and Methodist Churches, to which so many of my own people belonged.* No one whom we knew was a Roman Catholic. In our world the Roman Catholic Church did not exist, save as a phenomenon in European travel, a bogy in history, and an idiosyncrasy of Irish servants.

So nearly as I can remember, the chief impressions left upon me by the religious training of home and Sunday School were, that God is our Father, that Our much gratified with her first visit to her Grandmamma. She is a nice baby; and I am very proud of my little namesake. Freddy improves all the time, and is one of the dearest little boys I ever saw. You never saw anything like his devotion to his little sister. I believe he kisses her a thousand times a day. Last Sunday he went to church with the nurse and sat in our seat. Jenny Adams was there and sat with Mrs. Glidden. It was too funny to see their flirtation. They got their heads together and whispered; and then Fred would put his arm around her neck so lovingly, that it set nearly everyone to laughing in the church. I should judge that some of the congregation were more interested in watching them than in the sermon.”

“In later years I have said many things indicating that Unitarianism seems to be Christianity almost evaporated. Yet

Lord gave an example of a beautiful life, and that it was one’s duty to say prayers, to read the Bible and to attend church regularly, all for the purpose of keeping one’s conscience active. My mother trained me in habits of obedience and industry; and stimulated the workings of my conscience, which, I think, was a sensitive one. Prayers consisted simply of the Lord’s Prayer and such petitions for blessings on relatives and friends as I devised for myself. They would have been addresses to God the Father; for although I knew Our Lord was Son of God, I can not recall that I had any sense of His constant presence. I do not remember that church services made any special impression, although I attended them regularly. What I liked least was the sermons, which always seemed unintelligible.

I have high respect for Unitarians as clear-headed and consistent with an admirable record for culture and philanthropy. This I have expressed in two books. Respect for them dates from my boyhood when I was devoted to the stories of Miss Louisa M. Alcott, whom I knew to be a Unitarian. Her boys and girls were among the best friends of my young days; and her stories have always seemed to me to reflect the most healthy and admirable aspects of American life. My regard for them was brought vividly home in 1917 when I went to see a filmversion of Little Women in New York. It seemed to bring up all the best hopes of my boyhood; and in certain scenes I found myself disgracefully disposed to weep. Looking furtively about to see if I had been caught at it, I discovered that the greater part of the audience was composed of grayhaired ladies and bald-headed men, many sniffing and making suspicious displays of handkerchiefs. It was a gathering of boys and girls of the late ’70’s and early ’80’s; and I was not alone in reviving the wistfulness of a vanished youth.

From the time I was eight, I was an insatiable reader, and had many books from the Sunday School Library; but I recall none that made any sort of religious impression. I think I did not read much in the Bible until I was eleven or twelve; but diaries kept at twelve show that I read three chapters a day, and five on Sundays. My first Bible shows marking of passages I thought specially good; and the solid lines in most places seem to indicate that it seemed disrespectful to leave any passage without token of approval! It would seem to me that those responsible for my religious training did all they could for a small boy.

We lived in Warren until I was thirteen years old. I was always interested in out-of-door activities, especially riding and driving, but always found time for reading. ‘To my two grandfathers I owe an especial interest in history. They stimulated my curiosity about family traditions, the annals of the Western Reserve, and the history of the United States. I was also much interested in Dickens’ Child’s History of England; but American history was always to the fore. I was secretary of a Boys’ Literary Club, at which biographical sketches of famous Americans were read. My own papers show much interest and considerable reading for a boy of twelve. I had an uneventful, healthy sort of boyhood, with good, simple educational foundations ; but, although I think I had a vivid imagination, I cannot remember that it was particularly directed to religious matters. Religion seemed to be chiefly a matter of studying the Bible; and I found American history much more interesting.

Christ Church, Warren, was associated with the end, as well as with the beginning, of my life in the Episcopal Church. It was there on the Second Sunday in Lent, 1919, that I last celebrated and received Holy Communion.

Chapter II

At fourteen, I was sent to St. Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire, entering in September, 1883, and leaving i June, 1887. All definiteness in religious impressions seems to have been derived from St. Paul’s. The School at that time had a recognized place as first among church-schools for boys, and after thirty years of steady development was nearing the end of the first period in its history. It was inevitable that it should outgrow the simpler equipment and methods of its first days, from being a family become a college, and that change should indicate progress: yet all the older St. Paul’s boys will ever feel that the first chapters of the School’s history constitute its golden age. If it were necessary to specify a moment when this came to an end, it is probable that it might be placed in 1887, the year when the Old Chapel was superseded by the New. My VI Form year was the last in which the Old Chapel was the centre of the school life. It is easy to illustrate that this was a time of transition.

In its beginnings, St. Paul’s School simply meant Dr. Henry Augustus Coit, who might well have said, L’Ecole? C’est moi. He had derived his ideals from Dr. William Augustus Muhlenberg of St. Paul’s College, Flushing, which he had attended; and of a number who in various places followed the Muhlenberg tradition, Dr. Coit gave it its fullest and most permanent embodiment. Dr. Muhlenberg’s school was a family of boys, of which he was “ school-father,”’ the spiritual guide, friend, and father-confessor of his “ schoolsons,” not merely schoolmaster; and everything was dominated by his own personality. He had a genius for appraising the moral and mental value of external surroundings, knew the use of color and music in young lives, was an artist in his use of religious services, and although there was no talk about “‘ psychology ” day, he knew all about boys’ souls and how to get at them. What Dr. Muhlenberg was at St. Paul’s on Long Island, Dr. Coit was at St. Paul’s in New Hampshire. ‘There were differences; but the type was the same. Dr. Muhlenberg had greater esthetic development, and was a musician; Dr. Coit was the more scholin his arly and a brilliant teacher. But in each school the headmaster’s personality dominated and left its impress chiefly by giving a standard of spiritual values.

This is possible in a family of fifty, or even a hundred, boys, as it is not in a larger community. No one but Dr. Coit, under whose hand the whole work at St. Paul’s had grown from small beginnings, could have exercised omnipresent parental control as long as he did. In my day there were three hundred and fifty boys in the School; and although the Rector did no teaching except of Sacred Studies in the upper Forms,* my impression is that he was to the boys of my day, individually and

* Asa IV Former, during the illness of a master, I had him for two months in Virgil. The second and third books of the collectively, all that he had been during the heroic period of the ’60’s and ’70’s; at any rate I have always seemed wholly to understand the particular brand of loyalty belonging to St. Paul’s boys of the first generation. During the last seven or eight years of his life, he lost something of his grip of many things; the School was larger; he was physically less vigorous; Mrs. Coit had died. The difference was marked by the difference in the impression he made in the two Chapels. There was no change in himself, but distinct change in the way in which he appeared in the larger environment.

In the Old Chapel he filled the place. He had a spiritually dramatic sense, great power of conveying emotional impressions, and by tensity of his personal devotion, permeated and controlled the congregation. His power was like that of the conductor of an orchestra, who indulges in little or no movement and whose eyes seldom leave his score, yet who dominates his musicians by tensity of feeling for the music itself. So Dr. Coit, whether he himself were conducting the service or not, could compel attention to its meaning and lead in devotion. He read exquisitely with dramatic interpretation that in no way suggested striving for effect.* He also led the singing, not audibly as Dr. Muhlenberg would have done, but visibly. His lips moved reverently

Aeneid which we read with him stand out vividly as no other classics I read in school.

* Fine reading is almost a lost art. The only one who in recent years has seemed to me to have something of the reverent artistry I recall in Dr. Coit, and a few others whom I remember in my youth, is Dr. Houghton of the Transfiguration, New York.

ST. PAUL’S SCHOOL te and. intelligently, repeating the words of the hymn, the sentiment of which he deeply felt; as a “* well-tuned cymbal,’ he stimulated the “ loud cymbals.”” Yet I do not think he could sing or had keen appreciation of music apart from associations and its use in expressing religious emotion. Several old St. Paul’s boys were once discussing this. We knew we had always seen him sing; yet we knew of no one who had ever heard him. We were positive, however, that he led the congregation in hymns quite as much as Mr. Knox, though in a different way, if not the choir in anthems! There was no doubt about his leading in the prayers and responses, and from the pulpit he could hold attention and guide thought and feeling, though he read his sermons, always expressed in beautiful and forcible English. As he moved majestically from his stall to the altar, the folds of his long surplice swaying rhythmically, he focussed attention in such a way as to create the feeling that he was leading all to participation in an act of special holiness. Whether in his stall, in the pulpit, or at the. altar, he was a centre of energy for the men and boys of his large ** household ” ; his power was concentrated in the Chapel, which, as he often reminded us, was the centre of the School, and its services of the School’s life.

It was never the same in the New Chapel. At the time of the consecration he had been crippled by a fall, and had to delegate his natural duties to others. Later, although the New Chapel perpetuated and improved on traditions and customs of the Old, the Doctor, in a stall at one end and making his way to the pulpit by a sort of surreptitious entry from the vestry, never filled and dominated the larger place as he had the smaller. The stately services in a college chapel have an impressiveness all their own; but they must inevitably lack something of the effect of the more intimate devotions of a big family oratory. In later years I spent five years as Master at St. Paul’s and have many cherished associations with the Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul (New) ; but I have always been thankful that my own schooldays were spent in St. Paul’s Chapel (Old) with all that that signifies of coming more closely under the spell of Dr. Henry Coit.*

When my mother took me to St. Paul’s, she said to Dr. Coit, ‘* We have done the best we could for Fred, and now we leave him entirely to you.”’ He replied, “ I wish all parents sent their sons in the same way.” I always felt that the Doctor understood me perfectly and took a special interest in me—every St. Paul’s boy thought precisely the same!—and could always go to him quite naturally and trustfully. Yet I do not remember that I often saw him alone except during my VI Form year, when, as head-editor of the Horae Scholasticae, I had to submit copy for his inspection,

*T have more special associations with the Old Chapel at St. Paul’s School than with any other church-building. There I was confirmed by Bishop Niles of New Hampshire on Ascension Day, 1885, kneeling at the Epistle end of the altar; there I made my first Communion shortly after on the last Sunday of term, kneeling second from the end of the kneeling-pace on the Gospel side; there I was ordained priest by Bishop Niles on July 1, 1896, with Mr. Parker (afterward Bishop of New Hampshire) preaching the sermon; and there on the following Sunday I for the first time celebrated Holy Communion.

and when I read with him three books of New Testament Greek.* Yet of all the personal influences in my life the one that has counted for most has been that of Dr. Henry Coit.

I have no distinct recollection of his sermons or of details in his instructions for Confirmation, although I have never forgotten his catechisms which we memorized. His influence tended to create not so much definite intellectual convictions as deep moral impressions. These, however, were always directly associated with the great simple Christian truths; and to the teaching at St. Paul’s I owe fixed points of view on religious matters. From Dr. Coit I had foundations on which only one sort of superstructure was possible, outlines which could only be filled in in particular sorts of ways. On the great things he was clear and insistent, on details vague; many things which formed part of his teaching were not things he definitely stated so much as things he permitted, or even compelled one, to infer. The chief impressions which he left on my mind and conscience, or deepened if they existed already, were those which would, I think, be recognized as central in his teaching by any of the old St. Paul’s boys. They may be summarized under three heads.