THE NEW SCHAFF-IIERZOG
America they avowed their earnest purpose to serve as Christian missionaries. The Plymouth Pilgrims made attempts in tliis direction, but found few natives in their vicinity. There were more near the Bay Colony, and Rev. John EHot (q.v.) undertook work among them in 1646 and continued it until 1690 with remarkable success. The Congregational Home Missionary Society was organized in 1S26, and the American Missionary Association, to do similar work among negroes, Indians, and the Chinese in this country, in 1846. The former has lately begim work in Cuba also and the latter in
Porto Rico and tlie Sandwich Islands. 10 Home "^^^^ Congregational Sunday-school and Mission Publishing Society, founded in 1832, Work. organizes Sunday-schools and sup- Other plies religious and general literature. Societies. The Congregational Church Building
Society, formed in 1853, aids in erecting houses of worship and parsonages. These societies have established and equipped thousands of churches and Sunday-schools, and the Congregational Education Society, started in 1816, has aided thousands of young men into the ministry. The American Congregational Association, organized in 1S53, has erected in Boston a fine building as the denominational headquarters, which contains the Congregational library, a large collection specially rich in denominational, colonial, and sociological literature. The world-wide Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, although now undenominational, was founded in 1881 by Rev. F. E. Clark, then pastor of the Williston Congregation, a church in Portland, Me., and gained its first successes among Congregationalists.
Congregational foreign mission work is in charge of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Established in 1810, it has had successful missions among the Choctaw and Cherokee Indians
in our own country and in Mexico, 11. The Spain, Austria, European and Asiatic American Turkey, Persia, Ceylon, the Madura Board. and Marathi districts of India, China,
Japan, Central Africa, Zululand, the Sandwich Islands, Micronesia, and the Philippines. Some of these missions have outgrown the need of external aid. Several have been transferred to other denominations. One or two are but recently established. The Board now has ninety-six stations.
II. Educational Work: Congregationalists always have zealously promoted popular education. In the United States they have founded Harvard, Yale, .Amherst, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Middlebury, Williams, Oberlin, Illinois. Beloit, Carleton, Washburn, Colorado, Berea, Fisk, Atlanta, 1. America, and other universities or colleges, more than forty in all, as well as Mt. Holyoke, Smith, and Wcllesley, among women's college^, and many high-class preparatory schools, including the two famous Phillips Acailcniies. But none of these institutions arc sectarian. Robert College, at Constantinople, and the Doshisha University, at Kyoto, Japan, and other such educa- , tional centers are results of their missionary labors. The American Board has established seventeen in
various lands. There are eight Congregational theological seminaries in the United States: Andover, Atlanta, Bangor, Chicago, Hartford, Oberlin, Pacific (Berkeley, Cal.), and Yale.
In Great Britain and its colonies there are fifteen such institutions, usually uniting the work of the college and the theological school: Bala-Bangor; Brecon Memorial; Carmarthen (Presbyterian with Congregational affiliations) ; Ches- S. Great hunt at Cambridge; the Edinburgh Britain and Theological Hall; Hackney, at Hamp- Colonies. stead; the Lancashire Independent, at Manchester; Mansfield, at Oxford; New, at South Hampstead; the Nottingham Congregational Institute; Western, at Bristol; the Yorkshire United) at Bradford; the Montreal Congregational College; the Victoria Congregational College, in Australia ; and Camden College, at Sydney, N. S. W The London Missionary Society also has ten institutions of learning in heathen lands.
III. Theology: Congregationalists regard the Bible as the only, and sufficient, rule of faith and practise. In doctrine they agree substantially with the other Evangelical denominations. The earliest surviving Congregational creed is that of Henry Barrowe and John Greenwood in 1589 (True Description, 1-5), but it was only an unauthoritative expression of personal conviction. 1. Creeds Afterward Congregational churches and generally accepted the Westminster Platforms. Confession (1646) and the Savoy Declaration (1658). The former was based upon the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, but was more Calvinistic. It embodies the teachings of the Reformed Churches on the Continent as well as in Great Britain. It founded the authority of the Scriptures upon internal evidence and the testimony of the Holy Spirit instead of upon the external witness of the Church; emphasized predestination and limited redemption, and the fact of two divine covenants, of works and of grace, with men; urged the Puritan view of the Sabbath; gave to presbyteries and synods large legislative and judicial authority; and conferred upon the civil magistrate power to prohibit or punish heresy, idolatry, and blasphemy. The Savoy Declaration differed little from the former, but, discarded its Presbyterianism in polity and denied the authority of magistrates to interfere with ecclesiastical liberty. Modern British churches nominally adhere to the Decl.iration of Faith of the Congregational I'nion of England and Wales in 1833, which is briefer and less severely Calvinistic, but which probably would not be adopted now, partly because of changes of doctrinal emphasis and partly because such statements are increasingly believed to interfere with Christian freedom. Subsequent American utterances have been the Burial Hill Declaration (1S65), adopted at Plymouth by the General Council held at Boston, wiiich reaffirmed somewhat indefinitely the symbols of the seventeenth century, and the Creed of ISSli, formulated by a committee provided for by the Triennial National Council in 1880, which set forth tersely and fairly the bcHef generally held by t he cluirchos then. This creed is that commonly [irofessed at present. But the admirable statement