THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
agreed upon. In 1816 the first delegated General Conference was held, at which the name, " The Evangelical Association," was adopted. A publishing house which had been founded by John Dreisbach in New Berlin, Penn., was made an institution of the Church. The work of the denomination was at first exclusively German. But it gradually turned into English, while now it labors in a number of languages and nationalities.
The Evangelical Association is Arminian in doctrine, connectional in organization, and episcopal in government. The governing bodies are: (1) The Quarterly Conference, composed of the ministers and lay officers of a charge and presided over by the presiding elder of the district. It meets four times a year, manages the affairs of the charge and recommends candidates for the ministry. (2) The Annual Conference, which has administrative jurisdiction over a prescribed territory. At its sessions a bishop presides and assigns the preachers to their charges. It licenses and ordains preachers and acts coordinately with the General Conference in the enactment of constitutional law. (3) The General Conference, meeting every four years, and consisting of the bishops, general officers, ministerial delegates chosen by the Annual Conferences upon a basis of one to every fourteen members, and lay delegates to constitute about one-third of the entire body. This is the supreme governing, legislating, and judicial body of the Church. It makes laws in concurrence with the members of the Annual Conferences, elects the bishops and general officers, and is the final court of appeal.
A controversy of several years' duration led to the secession of about 50,000 members and the organization of the United Evangelical Church (q.v.) in 1891. The Evangelical Association in 1907 consisted of twenty-seven Annual Conferences, twenty-two in the United States, one in Canada, two in Germany, one in Switzerland, and one in Japan. It has 131,437 members; 1,587 ministers, itinerant and local; 2,232 Sunday-schools with 23,- 977 officers and teachers and 165,192 scholars; 1,201 Young People's Alliances with 39,143 members; 2,219 organized congregations; 1,854 church edifices with an estimated value of $6,340,966; 722 parsonages valued at $1,264,618. Its total property is valued at $7,942,740.03. Its people contributed $250,000 for missions and $1,476,771 for all purposes in 1906. It has a publishing house in Cleveland, Ohio, and a branch in Stuttgart, Germany Its educational institutions are North Western College, Naperville, 111., with four buildings, an endowment of $250,000, twenty-five professors, and 450 students; Union Biblical Institute, at the same place, with an endowment of $50,000, and forty students; Schuylkill Seminary, Reading, Penn., with $50,000 endowment; the Preachers' Seminary in Reutlingen, Germany; and the Correspondence College with headquarters at Reading, Penn. It has an orphan home at Flat Rock, Ohio, taking care of 150 children, three old people's homes, one in Philadelphia, one near Buffalo, N. Y., and one in Chicago, and a deaconesses' home and hospital in Chicago. It has missions in Japan
and China. Der christliche Botschajter, Th Evangelical Messenger, Das evangelische Magazin, and The Living Epistle, all published in Cleveland Ohio, are the church periodicals. S. P. Spreng.
Bibliography: R. 'S'eakel, Jacob Albright and his Colaborers, Cleveland, Ohio, 1883; idem, History of the Evangelical Association, 2 vols., ib. 1892-94 (comes down to 1850): idem, The Life of Bishop Joseph Long, ib. 1898' W W. Orwig, History of the Evangelical Association, ib. 1858; S. C. Breyfogel, Landmarks of the Evangelical Association, ib. 1887; S. P. Spreng, Life and Labors of Bishop John Seybert, ib. 1888; idem, in American Church History Series, xii. 383 sqq., New York, 1894; A. Stapleton, Annals of the Evangelical Association of North America and History of the United Evangelical Church, Harrisburg, 1896; the Discipline of the Evangelical Association, editions from 1809-1903.
EVANGELICAL COUNSELS. See Consilia
EVANGELICA.
EVANGELICAL SOCIETY OF GENEVA (S0- CIETE EVANGELIQUE DE GENEVE): The
oldest of the Continental Evangelical societies; founded in 1831 for the diffusion of sound doctrine throughout Switzerland and France. It has a theological school at Geneva, supports numerous missionaries, pastors, and colporteurs, and is dependent upon voluntary contributions derived not only from Switzerland, but also from other parts of Europe and even from the United States, which produce an annual income of about 260,000 francs. It is undenominational, having as its confession of faith substantially the creed of the Evangelical Alliance (q.v.). It is the product of the revival attending the labors of Robert Haldane (see Haldane, James Alexander, and Robert).
Bibliography : Recits et souvenirs de quelques-uns des ouvriers (published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary, 1881); and the " Annual Reports."
EVANGELICAL UNION: 1. The Evangelical Union of Scotland: A religious body formed at Kilmarnock, Scotland, May 16, 1843, at a meeting attended by four ministers, one evangelist, and eight elders, representing three churches and two preaching stations. The ministers — James Morison of Kilmarnock, his father Robert Morison of Bathgate, John Guthrie of Kendal, and Alexander C. Rutherford of Falkirk — had been virtually expelled from the Secession Church for holding the doctrine of an unlimited atonement and protesting against the condemnation of James Morison (q.v.) by the Secession Synod. The distinctive doctrines affirmed were " the universality of the atonement, the universality and moral nature of the influences of the Holy Spirit, and the simplicity of faith, which, by means of its object, Jesus Christ, as made known in the Gospel, brings peace to the conscience and purity to the heart." The Independent ecclesiastical polity was adopted, each church to be complete in itself. The membership of the union was soon increased and an impetus was given to its work by a number of churches, ministers, and students- John Kirk, Fergus Ferguson, Peter Mather, William Bathgate, and others — who were dissociated from the Congregational Union of Scotland for holding views similar to those of James Morison (see Ferguson, Fergus). It was not intended originally to be a sect or a separate denomination,