RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
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jointly with the assembly of the northern church. A decided step has recently been taken in the work of ministerial relief. An endowment fund has been raised for this cause, amounting to $274,429, and the effort to increase this to half a million dollars gives promise of early success. In 1906, the assembly appointed an Executive Committee of Schools and Colleges. This is the practical expression of a more determined purpose to put the institutions of the church on a better financial footing, and to prosecute the work of Christian education with renewed zeal. A yet more recent development of the church's life was the creation by the assembly of 1908 of a permanent Committee of Evangelism. This was in response to an aroused and intensified interest in the direct work of reaching the unconverted. The church has expanded from 105,956 members in 1874 to 279,803; but there is a wholesome discontent with the rate of progress in the past, which prophesies a more aggressive and fruitful future.
The specific causes which led to the organization of the Southern Assembly have long since passed away. The relations between this church and that of which it once formed a part are close and fraternal, enabling them to cooperate in many forms of Christian service. There exist reasons, however, which, are thought to justify a continued separation. It is believed that by independent existence the church can bear a more effective testimony to certain principles which need emphasis — such principles, for example, as strict construction in the use of creeds; the exclusively spiritual mission of the church; and the absolute authority of the Bible as being the infallible Word of God from Genesis to Revelation. In other words, the church believes that it owes a duty to doctrinal conservatism which it can best discharge by maintaining its autonomy.
R. C. Reed.
3a. Cumberland Presbyterian Church Before the Union of 1906: This church began its career as a distinct organization Feb. 10, 1810, and ceased to exist as such by an act of " union and reunion " with the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (see above, VIII., 1) May 24, 1906. It originated in the remarkable revival of religion which in 1797 began to develop in what was then known as " the Cumberland country " in southwestern Kentucky and Tennessee, under the ministry of the Rev. James McGready (q.v.; also see Revivals op Religion). The revival rapidly grew . _ . . to such proportions as to create a demand for ordained ministers greater than could be supplied; the country had only recently been settled, and in those days it was far away from the sources of supply. The Cumberland presbytery ordained certain men who in respect to educational preparation fell somewhat below the requirement of the standards to which that presbytery was amenable, and this produced dissension in the synod of Kentucky, of which the Cumberland presbytery was a member, which culminated in 1806 in the dissolution of the presbytery. The synod annexed to the adjoining Transylvania presbytery the members who had not been placed under prohibition to preach the Gospel and administer its or-
dinances, by the committee appointed by the synod, in 1805, to take charge of the matter. The Cumberland presbytery had taken the ground in the controversy, that the proceedings of the committee appointed by the synod were unconstitutional, and, of course, that the proscribing act was unconstitutional and void. Nevertheless, from a general respect to authority, and from a desire to procure r, reconciliation and enjoy peace and quietude as far as possible, both the proscribed members, and those who had promoted their induction into the ministry and sympathized with them, constituting a majority of the presbytery, organized themselves into what they called a " council," determining in this manner to carry forward the work of the revival, to keep the congregations together, but to abstain from all proper presbyterial proceedings, and await what they thought would be a redress of their grievances. This council continued its organization from Dec, 1805, to Feb., 1810. By that time the members became satisfied that they had nothing to hope, either from the synod or the general assembly. As a last resort, and in order to save what they represented to the general assembly as " a very respectable congregation in Cumberland and the Barrens of Kentucky," two of the proscribed ministers, Finis Ewing and Samuel King, assisted by Samuel McAdow, one of those who had been placed under an interdict by the commission for his participation in what they denominated the irregularities of the presbytery, reorganized the Cumberland presbytery at the house of McAdow, in Dickson County, Tenn., on Feb. 4, 1810. It was organized as an independent presbytery. It will be observed that it was a reorganization of a presbytery which had been dissolved, which had received its name from its locality. The church which grew from these beginnings naturally took the name of its first presbytery as a prefix. It grew rapidly, extending from Pennsylvania to the shores of the Pacific, and from the Great Lakes to Louisiana and Texas.
The new presbytery immediately set forth a synopsis of its theology and of the principles of action by which it proposed to be governed. Its theology was Calvinistic, with the exception of the offensive doctrine of predestination so expressed as to seem to embody the dogma of necessity or fatality. The construction which, in
2 ndP^rin7 °PPosition to the letter> or form> of the circles " Calvinistic symbols, they put upon the " idea of fatality," was: (1) that there are no eternal reprobates; (2) that Christ died, not for a part only, but for all mankind, and for all in the same sense; (3) that persons dying in infancy are saved through Christ and the sanctification of the Spirit; (4) that the Spirit of God operates on the world, as coextensively as Christ has made the atonement, in such a manner as to leave all men inexcusable. The exception of this one " idea of fatality," corresponding to these four points, must have meant and included only their antipodes: (1) eternal reprobation; (2) an atonement limited to the elect members; (3) the salvation of elect infants only; (4) the limitation of the operations of the Spirit to the elect. Aside from these points,
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