METHODIST REVIEW.

NOVEMBER, 1885.

ART. I.-PHILIP WILLIAM OTTERBEIN.

The Life of Rev. Philip William Otterbein, Founder of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. By Rev. A. B. DRURY, A.M. Dayton, Ohio. 1884. PROBABLY We shall have to wait some time yet for a thoroughly satisfactory history of Christianity; one in which the growth of the Church, and the development of spiritual life begotten of faith in Christ in the various ecclesiastical organizations calling themselves Christian, are set forth in their proper relation to each other and to the divine purpose. But in this respect we are gaining greatly over our fathers. The later histories and biographies of the great men of the Church universal are written with a clearer apprehension of the divine immanence in the Church and in humanity. God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ; who, having accomplished his earthly mission, committed the reclamation of the world from Satan to the Holy Spirit operating through human instrumentality. Ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, said the ascending Lord. And so it was. The Christian Church as an institution among men, calling them to a life of holiness and service of Christ, began with the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It has had no other source of spir itual life. The outward form of the visible Church has been subject to human and worldly influences, which have at times. dominated and greatly depressed its spiritual life. For God is in the Church by the Holy Spirit, not as a power placed under the control and administration of ecclesiastical authority, but seeking a place in human hearts; willingly taking up his abode 51-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. I.

with those who receive him gladly and submit to his quickening and sanctifying power. The presence and influence of the Holy Spirit we may confidently affirm has been continuous in the Church, although we may not be able to trace his course with exactness nor measure the force of his operations. Nor shall we find it profitable to attempt a description of his manifestations, so various are his methods and instruments. But his presence has been always and every-where a call to holy living and a protest against the formalism and worldliness into which the Church may have fallen. He seeks and prepares his instruments by the simplest means, and generally without a hint of what may be expected of their labors.

The revival of spiritual religion in the eighteenth century, of which organic Methodism was the chief product, was not the invention of those who became its leaders. It was neither a new search after doctrine nor an awakening interest in ecclesiastical questions, although these afterward came up for consideration. Their single aim was to love God with an undivided heart, and to render him the most faithful service by calling men to repentance and faith in Christ. It was a wonderful manifestation and development of a spiritual awakening, or revival of religion, which may be quite clearly traced into and beyond the previous century. The Holy Spirit was making himself felt with increasing power, and in places widely apart, as professing Christians submitted their hearts to his teachings, and suffered themselves to be guided into all righteousness by a more thorough study of the Holy Scriptures. The period was one of those transforming ones in the history of Christianity which do not fall in with the conjectures of human wisdom, when here and there the spiritual atmosphere becomes charged with a fuller sense of God's personality, and the need of holiness preparatory to a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Wesleys, and their coadjutors and helpers, were chosen for this glorious work as ready and tractable instruments, and their work became the central and principal stream of spiritual influ ence that has made the nineteenth century memorable in the history of the Christian Church. The beginnings, which were in weakness, despised and ridiculed by those who counted themselves successors of the apostles, grew into a spiritual awakening that has produced the most wonderful restoration

of the spirit and practice of the apostolic times since the. Church began to fall away from the purity and fervor of her first love.

Methodism found in the American colonies a more inviting field than elsewhere. For the doctrines of the Methodist preachers, to a greater extent than they perceived at first, were entirely in harmony with the feeling of independence and sense of individuality that was making itself felt in every part of the land. The new conditions, following upon the organization of a new civil society of like spirit and aims, allowed Methodism to put forth its full energy, and gave free play to the itinerant system. There were at the time of its entrance into this country not a few spiritually-minded preachers. Although Whitefield's preaching had made a considerable impression in some parts, its influence had largely died out. The people, however, were eager to hear evangelical preaching, and it produced in every part of the country the same effects that had been observed in England. And in the central and southern portions of the extended field which it began to occupy it came in contact with a few ministers and churches, especially in the German settlements, animated by a spirit and purpose so like its own that a strong and lasting bond of sympathy was established between them and the Methodist preachers. We refer particularly to the revival of religion that had slowly made its way against many obstacles in a few congregations of the German Reformed and Mennonite Churches, in several localities in Pennsylvania and Maryland. This revival is not to be traced to Methodism, but to independent operations of the Holy Spirit then active in both hemispheres. That the contact and example of Methodism and the personal relations of Asbury with Otterbein and Boehm, the leading spirits of this revival among the Germans, greatly influenced its development, will hardly be doubted.

The life of Otterbein and the history of the religious organization which grew out of this revival, furnish a striking illustration of God's method of carrying forward his work of saving the world. It has so many characteristics which remind one of the Wesleyan revival that it might be described as a lesser Methodism the same in spirit, but not so far-reaching in thought or purposes. The publication, therefore, of a new

. and more clear-sighted life of Otterbein, the founder of the "Church of the United Brethren in Christ," in the centennial year of the Methodist Episcopal Church, adds interest to our studies of the period.

From the beginning of their acquaintance, not only were Otterbein and Asbury friends delighting in each other's company, but a remarkable confidence grew up between them. It was grounded in marked similarity of religious experience, a general agreement on theological questions, and reliance on nearly the same methods of evangelization and spiritual culture. Otterbein was older in years, but he had been slower in attaining spiritual insight, and perhaps never reached the confidence and vivid experiences of Asbury. He was wanting also in those executive qualities and the faculty of leadership which made Asbury the chief figure for so many years in American Methodism and impressed it with his characteristics. Their fields of labor were in the same region, separated by the barrier of diversity of language; but their aims and the results of their labors were so nearly alike, and wrought out in such harmony, that had the spirit of denominationalism been as fully developed in their day as it was fifty years after, the two friends might have joined hands and produced German Methodism in the closing years of the last century. But there was probably no serious thought of such an arrangement. Even Asbury, in whom the faculty of organization was so largely developed, was more concerned about saving souls than building a great ecclesiastical establishment. Otterbein was thoroughly content in a restricted sphere, moving forward almost reluctantly, at the suggestion of his associates rather than of his own impulse. He does not seem even to have been touched by human ambition. The volume before us, from which for the most part we obtain the facts of the life of this religious leader, does justice to his elevated Christian character, and places him in right relations to the Church of which he was the founder. It was his receptivity of the operations of the Holy Spirit, not ecclesiastical descent, that made him what he was. There are gaps in the record that we would gladly have filled, but sufficient remains to give a clearly defined figure of one chosen of God for labor and honor.

Philip William Otterbein was born in Dillenberg, a small