Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

424 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
he also treasures a record of baptisms, to which great value attaches.
Both of these genuine relics of the early days of Presbyterianism in
Upper Georgia were sent, through Mr. C. A. Rowland, of Athens, to
the Jamestown Centennial Exposition, where they attracted much
interest.
It was at Lexington, in 1828, that the Presbyterian Theological Semi
nary, now located at Columbia, South Carolina, was first established,-
and the house in which this famous school of the prophets was organized
was still standing in 1912—after the lapse of eighty-four years.
Presbyterianism, with its rigid system of Calvinistic theology, was
a splendid discipline for pioneer days. But allied to Scotch-Irish thrift,
on the one hand, and to Huguenot exclusiveness, on the other, it en
countered some difficulty in making its peculiar doctrine of election
popular. Moreover, its style of preaching was coldly intellectual. It
possessed little emotional warmth; and, notwithstanding the decline of
Episcopacy, with the outbreak of the Revolution, the Presbyterians,
while reaping a substantial harvest out of these conditions, still left a
rich virgin field in which Baptists and Methodists at a later period were
destined to gather golden sheaves.
The Lutheran Church was planted in Georgia by the pious Salzburg-
ers at Ebenezer in 1733. Here, at the outbreak of the Revolution, there
was a strong church. Likewise, in Savannah, we find a congregation of
Lutherans during the Colonial period. The Moravian Church was
brought to Georgia in 1735 by a colony of Moravians, under the pious
Dr. Gottlieb Spangenberg. These colonists made a settlement at Irene,
between Savannah and Ebenezer. More than any other religious sect,
the Moravians were successful to a'marked degree in missionary activi
ties among the Georgia Indians. There are still to be found in Murray
County the relics of an old mission established by the Moravians among
the Cherokees, before the close of the eighteenth century; but like the
Cherokees themselves, these gentle evangels of peace have long since
disappeared.
We have already given an extended account of the first settlement
in Georgia made by the Jews.
Congregationalism entered the state in 1752 when the Dorchester
Puritans settled at Midway, on the rich alluvial bottom lands of the
Georgia coast. But while the church at Midway was Congregational
in form, it became a germinal center of Presbyterian activities; and
not until a much later day did Congregationalism as such acquire a
foothold in Georgia. But while the church at Midway became a nursery
of Presbyterianism, unsurpassed not only for the number of its contribu
tions to the Presbyterian pulpit but for the high intellectual and moral
character of the men who bore its religious impress, this historic old
plant was nevertheless a Congregational church. It was due entirely to
environment that its fruitage was gathered by Presbyterians. As we
have already seen, the church at Midway indoctrinated a community in
which the Revolutionary fires were first kindled in Georgia; and from
which governors, United States senators, congressmen, educators, scien
tists, diplomats, missionaries and divines have sprung in numbers
equaled nowhere in America by a community of like size and character.
There is an explanation for this failure of Congregationalism to propa-