EVANGELICAL
642
EVANGELICAL
is also distinctly stated that no compromise of the
views of any member, or sanction of those of others,
on the points whereiii they differ, is either required or
expected ; but that all are held free as before to main-
tain and advocate their religious convictions, with due
forbearance and brotherly love. It is not contem-
plated that the Alliance should assume or aim at the
character of a new ecclesiastical organization, claiming
and exercising the functions of a Christian Church. Its
simple and comprehensive object, it is strongly felt, may
be successfully promoted without interfering with, or
disturbing the order of, any branch of the Christian
Church to which its members may respectively belong."
The Alliance thus lays claim to no doctrinal or legis- lative authority. In a pamphlet issued by the society itself this feature is thus explained: "Then it is an Alliance — not a union of Church organizations, much less an attempt to secure an outward vmiformity — but the members of the .\lliance are allies: they belong to different ecclesiastical bodies — yet all of the One Church. They are of different nations as well as of many denominations — yet all holding the Head, Christ Jesus. UnumcorjmssumiisinChristo. We are one body in Christ — banded together for common purposes, and to manifest the real imity which underlies our great variety. We are all free to hold our own views in regard to subsidiary matters, but all adhere to the cardinal principles of the Alliance as set forth in its Basis."
The Alliance arose at a time when the idea of imity was much before men's minds. Dviriiig the years that witnessed the beginning of the Oxford Movement in the Church of England, there progressed a movement in favour of union among men whose sjTnpathies were diametrically opposed to those of the Tractarians, but who in their own way longed for a healing of the divi- sions and differences among Christians. In 1842 the Presbji:erian Church of Scotland tried, though without success, to establish relations with other Protestant bodies. In England the progress of the Tractarian Movement led many distinguished Evangelical Non- conformists to desire "a great confederation of men of all Churches who were loyal in their attachment to Evangelical Protestantism in order to defend the faith of the Reformation" (Dale, History of Eng. Congrega- tionalism, 637). At the annual assembly of the Con- gregational Union held in London, May, 1842, John Angell James (1785-1859), minister of Craven Chapel, Bayswater, London, proposed the scheme that ulti- mately developed into the Evangelical Alliance. He asked: " Is it not in the power of this Union to bring about by God's blessing, a Protestant Evangelical LInion of the whole body of Christ's faithful followers who have at any rate adopted the voluntary princi- ple? . . . Let us only carry out the principle of a great Protestant Union and we may yet have repre- sentatives from all bodies of Protestant Christians to be found within the circle of our own United Empire" (Congregational Magazine, 1842, 435-6). The first definite step towards this was taken by Mr. Patton, an American minister, who proposed a general confer- ence of delegates from various bodies, with the result that a preliminary meeting was held at Liverpool in October, 1845, at which the basis of such a conference was arranged. On 19 Aug., 1846, at a meeting of eight hundred delegates, representing fifty denomina- tions, held in the Freemasons' Hall, London, the Evan- gelical Alliance was founded. All who would accept the Basis were eligible as members, and the represen- tatives of the various nations were recommended to form national organizations or branches, of which the British Organization, formed in 1846, was the first. These organizations were independent of one another and were at liberty to carry on their work in such a manner as should be most in accordance with the pecu- liar circumstances of each tlistrict. They have been formed in the United States, Ccrmany, France, Swit- zerland, Holland, Sweden, Italy, Turkey, Australia,
India, and several missionary countries. The French
national branch abandoned the Basis in 1854 and sub-
stituted for it a wider form of a Unitarian character.
The Alliance meets and acts as a whole only in the
international and general conferences, which are held
from time to time. The first of these was held in Lon-
don, 1851, and has been succeeded by others as follows:
Paris, 1855; Berlin, 1857; Geneva, 1861; Amsterdam,
1867; New York, 1873; Basle, 1879; Copenhagen,
1884; Florence, 1891; London, 1896 (Celebration of
the Jubilee); London, 1907, on which occasion the
Diamond Jubilee of the Alliance w-as celebrated.
These international conventions are regarded as of special value in the promotion of the aims of the Alli- ance. Another matter to which much importance is attached is the annual "Universal Week of Prayer", observed the first complete week in January ofeaeh year since 1846. At this time the Alliance invites all Christians to join in prayer, the programme being pre- pared by representatives of all denominations and printed in many different languages. The relief of persecuted Christians is another department of work in which the Alliance claims to have accomplished much good. Finally, in 1905, the Alliance Bible School was founded with headquarters at Berlin, un- der the direction of Pastor Kohler and Herr Warns, "to place before the students the history and doctrine of the Biljle in accordance with its own teaching". The reports of the conferences claim considerable suc- cess for these various works, a claim which cannot here be investigated. From its principles the Evangelical Alliance is necessarily o])posed to the doctrine and au- thority of the Catholic Church; and Catholics, while sympathizing with the desire for imion among Chris- tians, realize that the unity by which we are made one in Christ is not to be won by such methods. The motto of the Alliance is Unum corpus sumus in Christo.
The Evangelical Alliance (London, 1S471 and other reports of the International Conferences; Lichtenberger, Encyclop. des sciences religieuses (Paris, 1877), I. 193-200; Tanqoerey in Did. de thiol, cath., s. v. .Wiance: The Evangelical .Mlianee: its Basis, History and Aims (London, s. d.); Maintaining the Unity: Proceedings of Eleventh International Conference (London, 1907).
Edwin Burton.
Evangelical Church (in Prussi.\). — The six- teenth-century Reformers accused the Catholic Church of having adulterated the primitive purity of the Gospel by the admixture of un-Scriptural doctrines and practices; consequently they designated them- selves as "Evangelicals", or followers of the pure Evangel, in contradistinction to the un-evangelieal followers of Roman traditions and institutions. Al- most from the beginning the new Evangelical Church was split, first into two communions, the Lutheran and the Reformed, then into a multitude of sects which baflles the skill of statisticians. The cleavage arose through differences in the doctrine of Christ's presence in the Holy Eucharist. Luther taught the act- ual bodily presence of Christ in and with the elements, though denying Transubstantiation. Zwingli and the Swiss Reformers admitted only His spiritual presence. The Lutheran and the Reformed Churches form the two great branches of Evangelical Protestantism to which all the other divisions of Protestants are subordinate. The evangelical section of the Anglican (liurch stands midway between the High Church and the Latitu- dinarian Low Church. As a proper name with strictly limited meaning the designation "Evangelical Church " applies to a branch of the Protestant Church in Ger- many, formed in 1817 at the instance of King Fred- erick William III of Prussia, by a union of the Lu- theran and the Reformed Churches.
Hi.sTORY. — At the beginning of the nineteenth cen- tury religious life in Germany was at a low ebb. The Rationalism and Illuminism of the eighteenth century, openly encouraged by King Frederick II (the Great), had told severely on the supernatural life of the coun-
