RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Baptists
ber nearly 150,000, nearly 30,000 having been added within the past year and a half as a result of the great revival of 1904-05.
The Baptist churches planted in Ireland in the Cromwellian time by Thomas Patient and other London Baptists either became entirely extinct or survived in a very feeble way. About 1803 Alexander Carson (q.v.), who had been graduated a few years before from the University of Glasgow and was pastor of a Presbyterian church at Tubbermore with ample state support, reached
9. Alexan- convictions in favor of congregational der Carson cnurcn government and believers' Irish Bap- baptism so strong that he gave up his
tists. living and the prospect of a Glasgow professorship. With a few like-minded believers he organized a Baptist church which during his forty years of service grew to a membership of 500. His best-known work is his treatise on baptism, but his doctrinal and controversial writings are numerous. He is said to have contributed the scholarship to Haldane's commentary on Romans. He was closely associated with the Haldanes. Like the Scottish Baptists, Carson practised weekly communion. He also followed the Scriptural injunction " salute one another with a holy kiss," himself kissing one of the deacons, and others following his example. After the sermon the brethren were encouraged to exhort. He was frequently called to Scotland and England for sermons and addresses. Since Carson's time English Baptists have devoted much effort to the propagation of Baptist principles in Ireland with small numerical results.
In Scotland also the Baptist movement that flourished in Cromwell's time failed of maintenance. In the eighteenth century Sir William Sinclair of Keiss, Caithness, who had been baptized while visiting England, gained a number of adherents in his own neighborhood, whom he baptized and organized into a church (about 1750). This is the oldest Baptist church in Scotland. In 1765 Robert Carmichael, a Sandemanian minister of Glasgow, was baptized in London by John Gill. He baptized several members of his former church and organized them into a Baptist church. Archibald McLean, who had been a member of Carmichael's church in Glasgow, joined his former pastor in Edinburgh, was baptized by him, became his colaborer, and succeeded him (1769) with Dr. Robert Walker as coelder. McLean was a vigorous and somewhat voluminous writer, and his
10. Scotch works (published in seven volumes, Baptists. 1805) have exerted a profound influ- The Hal- ence on Scottish Baptist life and
danes. thought. By far the most important factor in the history of Scottish Baptists was the conversion to evangelical principles, and then to Baptist views, of Robert and James Alexander Haldane (qq.v.). The former was deeply interested in religious and philanthropical matters from 1793 onward, and in fifteen years spent $350,000 in educating and supporting evangelists, building chapels, circulating religious literature, etc. In 1799 James became pastor of an Independent church in Edinburgh and in 1801 his
brother built for the church a large tabernacle in which he ministered for fifty years. In 1808 both became avowed Baptists, and from this time onward, while conducting their work on somewhat broad lines, were highly influential in the propagation of Baptist principles. Christopher Anderson was converted under the ministry of James Haldane (1799). Through the influence of English Baptist students at the University of Edinburgh he became a Baptist, and was excluded therefor from Haldane's church. He was persuaded by Andrew Fuller to enter the ministry and in 1806 led in the founding of a regular Baptist church in Edinburgh, where he soon preached to overflowing congregations. His ministry of thirty years greatly strengthened the Baptist cause in Scotland. Anderson's church practised restricted communion and did not, like most Scottish Baptist churches, have plurality of elders or weekly communion. Among the most noted preachers of the Scottish Baptist churches, some of whom labored exclusively in Scotland while others did so in England, may be named Drs. Patterson, Landels, Culross, and Alexander Maclaren. Scottish Baptists have never gained great numerical strength, their present membership being less than 21,000. The Baptists of Great Britain number at present about 500,000, which, in view of the constant drain upon the membership by emigration, is a very creditable showing. This estimate takes account of about 400 unassociated churches. One of their greatest achievements was the raising of the £250,000 Twentieth Century Fund for home and foreign work.
II. Baptists in the United States. — 1. To 1740: About March, 1638, Roger Williams (q.v.), having been banished from Massachusetts two years before because of agitation against the charter, advocacy of extreme Separatist views, insubordination on conscientious grounds to the theocratic authorities, etc., and having settled on Narragansett Bay, felt it his duty, in cooperation with a dozen likeminded men and women who had followed him from Massachusetts, to introduce believers' baptism anew and to organize independently a new church on the apostolic model. Ezekiel Holliman first baptized Williams, who in turn baptized Holliman and the rest of the party. Winthrop attributes Williams's antipedobaptist views to the influence of the wife of Richard Scott, a sister of Mrs. Anne
Hutchinson, the antinomian agitator 1. Roger (see Antinomianism and Antino- "Williams. mian Controversies, II, 2). He was
already familiar with the opinions of the Mennonites and probably also with those of the followers of Smyth and Helwys and the contemporary Calvinistic antipedobaptists of London. He had reached the conviction that the ordinances and church order of the apostolic time had been lost by apostasy and, for the time, he was persuaded that a company of true believers had the right to restore them; but he did not long rest in this conviction. To the end of his life he maintained that true churches could only be constituted of regenerate members baptized upon a profession of their faith, and on many occasions expressed the conviction that in doctrine and practise the
Baptists