This historical vignette will be different from my usual, because it deals with an extra-biblical Baptist organization – the sort of thing I usually shun or ignore. But this is slightly different, because it was not designed to usurp the authority of Christ or His church.
John Mason Peck was an important missionary to the American west. In addition to his evangelistic zeal, he was educated and scholarly, traveling with an extensive library. In November 1852 a fire destroyed his collection of theology and history books, along with his own memorabilia. That fire destroyed historical material which has never been replaced. With that in mind, on this day in 1843, Brother Peck became the corresponding secretary of the American Baptist Publication Society, and immediately he began calling for the establishment of a Baptist historical society where valuable and rare information could be gathered, studied and shared. Within ten years the American Baptist Historical Society separated from the Publication Society. Today, in Rochester, N.Y., it houses one of the largest collections of historic Baptist materials in the world.
Eight years later, in the January 1851 issue of The Christian Review, Sewell S. Cutting wrote the following: “No Christian denomination has been so indifferent to its history as our own. Our (Baptist) fathers have been left to sleep in dishonored graves. The labors they performed – the sufferings they endured – the heroic characters they bore – have alike been forgotten. The books which, amid penury and toil, they wrote in defense of their persecuted faith, are almost wholly unknown to those who now possess the noble heritage of religious freedom and Christian truth which they bequeathed. It is time for the honour of our name, as a Christian people, that this indifference were broken up, and that we begin to study for ourselves, and to teach our children the lives and deeds of the founders and fathers of our (Baptist) churches. We hail therefore with delight any discussion which shall make our brethren acquainted with the early history of their own denomination, or lead them to linger in pious reverence around the graves of those who, amid (vilification) and contempt, first taught the faith we cherish, and first established the institutions of religion and learning to which we are so largely indebted.”