592 



PRESBYTERIANS. 



the committee, whether suggestive, revisional, 

 supplemental, or substitutional changes, or no 

 change at all." The recommendations of the com- 

 mittee were adopted. The committee appointed 

 in pursuance of them consisted of the Rev. Drs. 

 Charles A. Dickey, moderator, chairman; Herrick 

 Johnson, Samuel J. Niccolls, Stephen W. Dana, 

 Daniel W. Fisher, William McKibbin, Samuel P. 

 Sprecher, George B. Steward; and elders E. C. 

 Humphrey, Daniel W. Noyes, William R. Crabbe, 

 John E. Parsons, Elisha Frasher, Benjamin 

 Harrison, and John H. Harlan. A change in 

 the method of appointing the committees of the 

 Assembly had been suggested by the presbytery 

 of Peoria in an overture sent to the preceding 

 General Assembly, but had not been acted upon 

 by it. The plan had become known throughout 

 the Church as " the Peoria overture." The com- 

 mittee to whom the subject was referred pre- 

 sented majority and minority reports upon it. 

 The majority report recommended that the rules 

 bearing on the subject be amended so as to in- 

 clude a provision that " the moderator shall upon 

 the organization of the Assembly appoint a com- 

 mittee of ministers and elders to aid him in the 

 appointment of standing committees, said com- 

 mittee to be composed of 21 commissioners from 

 different parts of the Church, not more than 2 

 of whom shall be from any one synod." The 

 minority report was the Peoria overture itself, 

 and was as follows : " For the purpose only of 

 electing standing committees the General Assem- 

 bly shall be divided into 22 electing sections of 

 as nearly as practicable equal size, by combin- 

 ing the smaller synods and dividing the larger by 

 presbyteries where necessary. The standing com- 

 mittees, except those on mileage and finance, 

 shall be numbered consecutively; the electing 

 sections shall be numbered in like manner. 



" The standing committee shall consist of 11 

 ministers and 11 elders, excepting those on 

 mileage and finance, which shall each consist of 

 11 elders. On odd-numbered years each odd- 

 numbered section shall elect 1 minister for each 

 odd-numbered committee, and 1 elder for each 

 even-numbered committee, and 1 elder for the 

 finance committee. On the same year, each even- 

 numbered section shall elect 1 minister for each 

 even-numbered committee, and 1 elder for each 

 odd-numbered committee, and 1 elder for the 

 mileage committee. On the even-numbered years 

 this order shall be reversed. The standing com- 

 mittees shall elect their own chairmen." The 

 minority report was substituted by amendment 

 for the majority report, and was adopted. In 

 the matter of " vacancy and supply " the As- 

 sembly provided for the constitution of a com- 

 mittee in each presbytery to have supervision of 

 all vacant churches within its bounds, whose 

 duty shall be to prepare and keep a list of such 

 churches and of the effective unemployed min- 

 isters of the presbytery, and to arrange for the 

 supply of the churches from the list of available 

 ministers and from such other sources as may 

 be suggested by correspondence; and, further, of 

 similar committees w'ith like duties for the 

 synods. The case of the Rev. Dr. A. C. McGif- 

 fert, charged with having published doctrines 

 contrary to the Presbyterian faith in his book 

 The Apostolic Age (see Annual Cyclopjpdia for 

 1898, page 651, and 1899, page 728), having been 

 removed from the purview of the General Assem- 

 bly by his withdrawal from the Presbyterian 

 Church, a minute was adopted declaring that 

 " tlie case be and is hereby closed." An amend- 

 ment proposed to the section of the Form of 

 Government defining the constitution of a pres- 



bytery prescribing that only active members shall 

 vote was sent down as an overture to the pres- 

 byteries. The resolutions on Sabbath observance 

 pronounced any and all secularization of the 

 Christian Sabbath day destructive of its benefi- 

 cent design and inimical to both public and 

 private morality; declared the preservation of 

 the Sabbath to be dependent on the action and 

 influence of members of the Christian Church; 

 and after particularizing various current forms 

 of secularization, ailirmed that " any and all 

 efforts to promote commercial or business inter- 

 ests and financial gain at the expense of the 

 sacred character and religious uses of the Chris- 

 tian Sabbath are inimical to the best interests 

 of society and the state." 



The McGiffert Case. The case of Prof. A. C. 

 McGiffert, of Union Theological Seminary, charged 

 with the publication of heresies in his book on The 

 Apostolic Age, was referred by the General As- 

 sembly of 1899 to the Presbytery of New York 

 for action. When it was afterward brought up at 

 a meeting of the presbytery the charges were dis- 

 missed. At the semiannual meeting of the presby- 

 tery, April 9, Prof. McGiffert presented a letter 

 requesting that his name be dropped from the 

 rolls. In making this request, the writer declared 

 that his withdrawal was not because he regarded 

 the charges of heresy preferred against him as well 

 founded, or because he recognized the justice of 

 the accusations that had been made for he still 

 believed that his views were in harmony with the 

 faith of the Presbyterian Church and of evan- 

 gelical Christendom in all vital and essential mat- 

 ters; but he could not feel that it was his duty 

 to go through the trial before the General As- 

 sembly which an appeal from the action of the 

 presbytery would precipitate, and needlessly to 

 prolong the agitation of the subject. He regarded 

 the principles" on which heresy trials are conducted 

 and their judgments governed as, from the point 

 of view of the honest seeker after truth, funda- 

 mentally unsound. " Only by patient study and 

 free discussion can the truth be reached, and the 

 attempt to determine the correctness or incorrect- 

 ness of historical conclusions by their conformity 

 to a confessional standard tends to obscure truth's 

 supremacy and to promote indifference to its 

 claims." Prof. McGiffert had felt it his duty t<> 

 maintain as far as he could the historic rights of 

 Christian scholarship and the historic liberty of 

 Christian thought and speech within the Presby- 

 terian communion by refusing to withdraw even 

 at the suggestion of the General Assembly. " For 

 while it can matter little whether the particular 

 views I hold are pronounced sound or unsound 

 by an ecclesiastical tribunal, it matters much 

 whether a great Christian communion like the 

 Presbyterian Church, which has stood in the past 

 for stalwart, intellectual Protestantism, shall com- 

 mit itself irrevocably to the unprotestant policy of 

 closing its eyes to all new light, and so make it 

 increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for honest 

 seekers after truth to do within its ranks their 

 part of the one great work to which God has called 

 his people." He had therefore remained within 

 the Presbyterian Church, and had even been ]>rc 

 pared to face a trial, but the action of the preshy 

 tery in dismissing the charges against him had 

 relieved him from the particular responsibility 

 resting upon him, and made it possible for hin. 

 to withdraw without detriment, and even, he be- 

 lieved, with advantage to the cause of truth am 

 liberty. 



The presbytery unanimously, by resolution, ex- 

 pressed the sincere personal affection of the mem- 

 bers for Prof. McGiffert. 



