mantown (1760), Hopewell (1756), the three Hopkins Schools, at New Haven, Hartford, and Hadley (1660, 1665, 1669), and the Boston Latin (1635),—all before the Revolution. But there were private Latin schools earlier than these; and it was common for clergymen to take academic pupils. Mr. Chauncey did so at Scituate. Before Manning and Stelle in Warren and Providence, Roger Williams did so (1654). No public school then existed in Rhode Island, an attempt at Newport in 1640 having failed.* Dorchester had a Latin school, mixed in its support, in 1639, and Hartford in 1638. The year before this Ezekiel Cheever had arrived at New Haven, and his school there for twelve years,―preparing students for Harvard,—was of the same mixed character. That of Daniel Maude at Boston two years earlier still. (1636) seems to have been altogether private, supported by contributions of Winthrop, Vane, and Bellingham. This brings us to the origin of the Boston Public Latin School (and of classical preparatory education in this country), either in the subscription of that year, or in the request of the townsmen the year before, of "brother Philemon Pormont" that he "be entreated to become schoolmaster,-but, in either case, a popular and not a State or public origin. Even Mr. Mann says, "Doubtless he received fees from parents." All this throws light upon the remark of the careful historian of New England§ upon the "grammar school" law of 1647, "the measure was all the more impressive for having originated in a general voluntary movement of the people." Voluntary schools had prepared its way.

And this is equally true of common schools. Though the distinction was made from the first between the two grades of

*Palfrey, ii, 48, cf. 237, note 1. Deane's Scituate, p. 92. "I suppose that there was no formal authority by which the towns could tax themselves till the State Act of 1647. But I do not think they cared much for such authority. As early as 1645 there is a vote providing for the mending of the school fence." MS. letter of Rev. Edward E. Hale, March 23, 1877. The New England ministers and magistrates acted "in advance of any legislation on the subject." Hon. H. Barnard in Stebbins's "First Cent. of Nat. Existence," p. 347. 10th Report, p. 7.

+ Palfrey, ii, 47.

§ ii, 262, note 2. Mr. Barnard thinks that Mr. Pormont's school was "elementary" and that of Mr. Maude, who was an educated clergyman, an endowed school of the higher grade" for the children of the "richer inhabitants." If so, both were on the voluntary basis. Stebbins' "First Cent., p. 347.

instruction, there were not everywhere two separate schools. The very first schools, being voluntary, were, even oftener than the later ones under law,-of a double character. There were private schoolmasters who were not at all classical scholars. The Latinity of Boston and New Haven even could not always be provided for. Not only did the towns act before the State, but the people moved for primary instruction earlier than the towns. Family schools came into existence. The laws requiring instruction by "parents or others" recognize this. Southward Church schools. The first common school in Pennsylvania (1683) was private, tuition eight shillings per annum.* New York had competition among private schools in 1670, when Jan Jaurians Beecker was "allowed schoolmaster at Albany," and they sprang up on every side not alone where there was no system by law. The children of Plymouth were "catechised and taught to read" in 1623, though they had "no common school, or means to maintain one;" and in 1635,-the same year the voluntary foundation was laid for classical learning at Boston, three years before the first Harvard class,-they had one, though "it was many years before public schools were established in Plymouth colony by law." The people looked after both elementary and advanced instruction before they "thought upon a College," and neither of the three was the child of governmental power.

Thus topples to the ground the absurd claim of precedence for higher State institutions in this country, and with it the long unchallenged assumption that all lower schools had their source in certain early laws, which have been quoted and requoted, aside from the history of the people, till the impression has been made that there was nothing else, or, at least, nothing earlier. Both higher and lower, doubtless, wherever they simply rest on taxation, have their source in law; but this is too much like an identical proposition for comment. The credit, however, of their beginnings belongs not to the State, but to that which is attempted to be robbed of it--the voluntary, philanthropic spirit of our fathers-"the love of freedom,

* Barnes's Cent. Hist., p. 88. VOL. XXXVI.

+ Ibid, p. 89. 32

Palfrey, ii, 46.

knowledge, and virtue, which formed part of the original stock of Puritan character." Gradually primary schools passed into public hands entirely; secondary schools never but in part; the New England colleges never at all. Christian benevolence, the mother of all three, to this day claims the last, and, more munificently than State power can, provides for them. The student of history sees at once and clearly how the tide has run. The State university movement is not an ancient but a later one, "a reaction,"* against which the tide is now turning, and in favor of the methods of our fathers. The reasons why they adopted a different policy for that education which should and can be for the whole people, and for that which cannot are obvious to the scholar, the patriot, and the Christian. To discuss the validity of those reasons is no part of the object of this historical inquiry.

* New Englander, July, 1873.

ARTICLE V.-ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF A SOCIETY IN CONNECTION WITH A CHURCH.*

THE "church" is a voluntary spiritual association, having no civil rights or powers, and not known, at all, in civil law. The "Society," or "Parish," is a civil corporation which holds. the property and manages the temporalities of the community or congregation of people who associate together for the employment of a pastor, and the maintenance of religious worship. It usually includes the adult males of the congregation, whether or not they are members of the church.

The necessity for the existence of the Society, and its utility to the church, are just now coming into prominent discussion. Does the church need any helping Society? Is the Society really helpful to the church? Is this co-partnership of the spiritual and the temporal right? Ought the church to manage its own temporal concerns? The inquiry is equally pertinent to all denominations whose financial affairs are managed by "vestrymen" or "trustees," however named. The Episcopalians are discussing the question, and in some dioceses, only communicants of the church are eligible to the office of vestryman. The Baptists have some churches without Societies. Conflicts or friction between the church and the Society are frequent and sometimes deplorably harmful. Many churches in the Western States have no allied Society, and think that they manage their finances more successfully without it, than they could with it. The acknowledged importance of the subject led the National Congregational Council of 1874, to appoint a committee of seven to report upon it at the Council of 1877.

An inquiry into the subject includes four points, viz: as to I. The origin and history of the Society ;

II. Its advantages;

III. Its disadvantages;

IV. The desirableness of the church's assuming the whole management of the temporalities.

* Prepared by appointment as a report to the General Association of New York, and presented at the annual meeting in Norwich, N. Y., Oct. 25, 1875.

I. When, where, and why did the Society originate?

Our Lord Jesus found the church associated with the civil government, and sustained by it. But in His reconstruction of His church, He practically took it out of this connection with the civil government, as to control and material support, and placed it on a spiritual and voluntary basis. In the admirable description and picture of the Apostolic church, Acts ii, 44–47; iv, 32–37, no form of a co-operative secular Society is discernible. "Neither was there any among them that lacked." The church, a voluntary spiritual association, was complete and sufficient in itself for all the purposes of its existence. Thus starting out, it was immediately successful. For three centuries, the primitive churches, without the aid of secular societies, but in the face of hostility and persecution from the civil authority, grew and multiplied and managed their temporalities with success and rapidity of increase, which, if repeated in this nineteenth century, would fill God's people with joy unspeakable.

By the beginning of the fourth century, Christianity was acknowledged by the Roman empire, and the hitherto independent spiritual churches became incorporated with the civil government in a union of Church and State for thirteen hundred years. Of course this period of history furnishes nothing pertinent to our inquiry concerning churches as voluntary spiritual bodies. We come down to the settlement of America, and the planting of churches here, in the seventeenth century.

Historically the churches of all denominations in our country have inherited their church and society system as a relic from the union of church and State in the countries in Europe from which the first colonists to America came. Here, as in their native countries, they held the obligation of the civil government, or of all the inhabitants, in some manner to support or help to support the church. Every nation in Europe considered the church essential to its life, and a part of itself. The idea of a complete, formal separation of church and State had not then dawned upon the human mind. This result we have reached only step by step, through the slow progress of more than two centuries of discussion and struggling in England and the United States. The Puritans had it as the first step in their mission to develop and establish the congregational or