2
10
40
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/6f083273576965328f46dd3ca66ad998.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=N9iMAVApR7yvXwj5FQaKQnN%7ETyKxkg-pHAHllyw-qbmHfnJg6DEIWvMP-cY1rWuli7OkZHs9v2ROsJDd4ywuZSznxAb7hoUF61aobGlU4da9VgfYpmkv7cWEShxQ0lnWhntH-tkAPfA5KPbXtrfiiFfHdGYi-Ia2KJq1sA22v4VfNkpnp4tEmZmIbDRvvGljAvraJBVAd%7Ez5ci3d82n4681gX-PHO0gn13pwMZC%7EEVnR3FmYGu-B7yBtrhccRr0d0C-yB59FIpzmqv1m9SYNTCrcYYulUWmaxSkO%7EbeRnMLwnJMQw6ItWPmT9nEmL2-AdSTf99PbDk9g4B8UjebS4Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
34a32af006b149cc53fc85dcdc9132fd
PDF Text
Text
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY
ON
“ MAN, THE ONLY
REVELATION OF GOD
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
OCTOBER 6th, 1872.
[From the Eastern Post, October 11th, 1872.]
Last Sunday, at St. George’s Hall, Mr Voysey took for his text
Psalms, xvii., 15. “As for me, I will behold thy face in
righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy like
ness.”
In our meditations on the subject of Divine Revelation, he said,
we have arrived at a point where it will be necessary to meet the
objections of our opponents. We have come to the conclusion
that, in the ordinary popular sense of the word revelation, God
has made no such revelation to men. Never has he issued or sanc
tioned with His Divine authority a book, or church, or creed,
which is absolutely infallible. All productions assumed to be such
bear the plainest marks of human error and deficiency. But while
we have stated this conviction over and over again, we have at the
same time asserted that man is capable of discovering, and has
actually discovered, some true knowledge of God.
We do not deny that this small portion of truth may be held
with a great admixture of error, and at its very bejst can only be
an approximation to the absolute truth—a very short step, as it
were, in the right direction. We still confess our deep ignorance,
we still profess ourselves to be only learners, and we are prepared
�2*
THE REV. CHARLES VOYSEY, ON
to unlearn our errors, one by one, as they may be detected. Now
to those who already firmly believe in what I might call the mere
benevolence of the Great Spirit towards his creatures, this position
of comparative uncertainty is not in the least degree distressing or
paralysing. They know they are for ever safe in the hands
of a righteous God, and they are satisfied with what little
they know, so long as they are in the right way of learning more,
and taking every means for their own enlightenment, which is
sanctioned by their reason and conscience. But, on the other
hand, those who have been accustomed to lean on an external
authority, on Bible, on Church, or on Priest, are seriously dis
turbed by even a passing thought that their notions about God
may be false. The bare idea of being left to their own conscious"
ness for all their knowledge of God fills them with alarm, as when
a lame man is suddenly bereft of his crutches, or one who cannot
swim is thrown into the sea.
Never having walked without a crutch himself, and being sur
rounded by thousands in the same position, the believer in objec
tive revelation looks upon the crutch as a part of nature, a thing
indispensable to human welfare, and he turns round upon us who
have cast away our crutches with no little angry scorn, as if we
were monsters, and as unfit any longer for human society. And
if he attempt to reason with us it is on this wise—“Man,” he
says, “is by nature constituted to lean on an external authority,
and that authority we have, without a shade of doubt, in the
Bible and in the Church. Your religion, on the other hand, is
absolutely without any foundation but the imaginings and fancies
of your own brains. You would have me give up these long tried
and trusty supports, and depend alone upon my own fallible
consciousness. My ‘ heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked,’ as the Bible tells me, and I should be safer
without any religion at all, than with one based on the sandy
and treacherous foundation of my own misguided reason and cor
rupt heart.”
Our best answer to this will be: (1.) The religion which you
now accept on an external authority had for its origin nothing else
in the world than this human consciousness which you now despise.
Place all the religions of the world in their chronological order,
�MAN, THE ONLY REVELATION OF GOD.
3
and you will find that each one is the result of the revolt of
independent thought against the authority of the religion which
preceded it. Take the greatest teachers of religion and morality
and you will find them all in a position of greater or less hostility
to the age in which they appeared. They each and all began by
shaking off the shackles of existing authority, and setting up above
it the conclusions of their own consciousness. They simply saw
the defects in the systems under which they had been brought up,
and they openly pointed them out to their contemporaries.
(2.) Our next reply to the objection is—At all events we cannot
any longer abide by your revelation, for we have discovered errors
in it; to uur minds its represents God in an unworthy an I even
in a. degraded aspect, and whether our own conclusions about him
are absolutely true or not, we cannot hold any conclusions which
we have discovered to be false, and which seem to us derogatory
of His character. At our very worst we are better off than we
were before. If we had no light at all, it would be better than
being ensnared into the bogs and fens by the treacherous Willo’-the-Wisp.
(3.) But thirdly, we will tell you how our conceptions
of God are determined, in the first instance, how they
are sustained, and how they can be corrected and improved.
Of God’s nature as spirit, we do not propose to know anything more
than that He is not corporeal, nor material, for these conditions
would involve dimension, weight and locality,any one of which is in
herently antagonistic to our natural idea of the Divine Being. Of
God’s mode of eontact with the outward and visible universe we
also know nothing, but are forced to adopt the more reasonable of
two alternatives, either that he pervades all space and is immanent
in all matter, or else that He i3 limited in space, that in some plaoe
He is, and in another place He is not. Of His general benevolence
we must admit there are some tokenB in this little earth of ours,
seeing that joy greatly preponderates over misery; but if the Divine
character were to be only measured by this test, we should be
forced to admit that His benevolence was not by any means univer
sal or constant; that His tender me rciesare not over all Ria works
and that He failed in many striking instances to give joy to His
creatures. We turn elsewhere for instruction as to the moral
�4
THE BEV. CHARLES VOYSEY, ON
character of God. We look at man, we examine ourselves. In
relation to puzzling problems in th e outer world we feel the necessity
for faith and patience towards God, such as our children have to
exercise towards even the most loving parents. So for a time at
least we can put these questions on one side without forgetting
that they have been raised and must be answered. Meanwhile
we have been watching ourselves and observing the activity
of a principle or faculty within us which seldom slum
bers, and by which we distinguish between right and wrong ;
though we confess that our discernment is not always infallible,
yet the voice of conscience is always supreme, calling us invariably
to do what our judgment believes to be right, and commending us
only when we have done what seemed right or have tried to do it.
We discover two sides or aspects of our nature, a better and a
worse, and in our very souls we reverence the better and deplore
or despise the worse. This reverence for goodness as goodness is
universal in man, differing only in degree in proportion as different
men have higher or lower conceptions of what goodness is. But
the verdict of humanity has long been passed that morality, jus
tice, love, righteousness, goodness, call it what you will, is the
best and highest in man, and that the most righteous or most
loving man is also the noblest. From this we rise by one step into
a conception of God’s moral attributes. Without daring for one
moment to compare the infinite goodness of the great God with the
finite goodness of the noblest of man, we simply say—and we say
it with undaunted belief in its power to destroy every false
religion under Heaven—“ God must be at least as good as the
noblest of men.” What the man would not do in his best estate
that God would not do- What a holy man believes to be wrong
in himself or his fellows must be equally wrong in God. We
cannot any longer accept as a God one whose moral principles are
below those of his own finite creatures. We refuse to admit the
existence of a God who is under no moral obligations to them.
If this be not surer ground to go upon than that of aDy inflexible
and petrifie'l Bible or Creed, I leave the Christians themselves to
judge. It may seem pri ma facie unstable, but humanity is firmer
than any of the works or words of men. Mankind itself is the
ever expanding Bible on which the Divine Revelation is being
f
�MAN, THE ONLY REVELATION OF GOD.
written. Men turn to truth and righteousness as the needle to
the pole, and in spite of all surrounding uproar and confusion of
tongues, the heart of man is heard to day singing Hymns of
Praise more sublime than were ever heard before, his soul is
bigger with great thoughts of God’s wondrous love, and his con
science in the mam is more sensitive to the calls of a lofty obedience.
Man as a race is better to day than man ever was before ; and
inevitably he is being rewarded by gaining a purer and loftier
religion. He has wrought with more toil and love for his afflicted
brother, and the New Temple with its sublimer worship stands
open before him.
But it is the old old story. Every religion in the days of its
youth was the immediate result of some previous progress in human
morality. Take Christianity to witness what I say. The doctrines
of the Trinity, incarnation, atonement, the holy comforter, the
forgiveness of sin, and the eternal happiness of the redeemed, all
had once a relatively true and good sense, inasmuch as each was
an improvement on something which it displaced, and it was in
fact the result of humanizing a conception which before had been
brutal and savage. And if you want more proof that the real
origin of religious belief is the reverence for human goodness, take
not the mere Creed of Christendom, but take to witness the
cherished belief of its heart. The supreme God of its Creeds,
called profanely God the Father, is in reality a stern, cruel, im
placable tormentor of men, the fiend who will have blood to pacify
1 his anger, the scourge of nine-tenths of the human race whose
savage vengeance never flags, and whose burning wrath never
cools—this so-called God, where is he in the hearts of Christian
men and women ? To the credit of our race, such a God has been
banished long ago from the affections of men; almost from the
very cradle of Christianity the followers of Jesus drove that
horrid spectre from their minds, and clustered lovingly round the
feet of a poor Galiloean peasant because he was a good man. They
were right and Christendom is nobly right to day, to say v’e will
have Jesus for our God, our one supreme, our all in all
because he was a perfect man, rather than worship that ferocious
monster. At all events they are right to make such a choice be
tween making a God of that noble fellow-creature and worshipping
�<
THE EEV. CHARLES VOYSEY, ON
that hideous revolting and fiendish spectre whioh the creeds
firstname. Rightly have they dropped such an image out of their
souls’ thoughts, and enthroned the Nazarene. But they ought to
remember why they worship this man as God. Certainly not
because it was said that he was God, but because they believed
him to be perfect man. They first admired and loved him for his
goodness, and then they made him Divine, and robed him in all the
splendours of heavenly royalty out of their gratitude for his human
love. To tholse then who are really Christians and really religious,
we come on their own ground, and say, if it is human goodness you
really worship, we can shew you plenty of that quite equal to
Christ’s, and some even better still. We can show you at least
the same thing free from some of his personal errors. His concep
tions of God we declare to be in some respects deeply inferior to
ours. His attitude to those who disagreed with him or denied his
supremacy, we have now discovered to be wrong. There was often
a vindictive threatening tone about his discourses, which none of
his disciples now-a-days would think it right to imitate. Blemishes
such as these are not much certainly, but they are enough to show
that 1800 years have made a difference in the moral stature of
mankind, and that it is a mistake any longer to limit the moral
attributes of God to the imperfect exhibition of them by even the
noblest of men.
Our entreaty to the Christians, is “Give up your worship of Jesus
as a God, and come and fall down before the throne of the Great
Spirit, for we have found a God more noble than yours. In almost
every particular the conceptions which we have of God are more
exalted and pure than any which have gone before it- They are
attained in the same way as all other‘conceptions were, viz., by
the gradual advance in the moral and intellectual nature of man.
We do not say, and we do not mean, that we are better men and
women than you, and therefore we have a higher faith than yours.
But we do say that your faith was made to correspond with a lower
standard of humanity than is to be found to day, and you are stil^
clinging to it. Our faith is nobler than yours because we have
allo»ved ourselves to be taught by the moral progress of our own
times, and by the highest instincts of our souls. Your religion is
an anachronism; your hearts and lives are infinitely better than
�MAN, THE ONLY REVELATION OF GOD.
7
your creed. Take but one or two doctrines. Have you ever onoe
in your life acted so tyrannically, selfishly, and exactingly to your
neighbour as your God is represented as acting in the matter of
the atonement. Have you ever once treated your own child as He
is represented as treating His? And in the matter of punishment
or even revenge, have you ever been so cruel as to keep a dog or a
cat in torment for a week, for a day, for an hour, out of sheer spite
and vengeance? No I Don’t tell us then that you believe in that
infernal picture of God tormenting the damned, or that you
morally approve of the sentences passed by your Bible and
Creeds on those who reject your Saviour. You surely
cannot impute to your favourite God—to your own Jesus who you
say is to be presiding judge at the last—a cruelty, ferocity, un
merciful severity of which you yourself are absolutely incapable !
No indeed! Then, if not, you must perceive that the only ex
ternal Revelation worth trusting,to is to be found in the lives,
aspirations, and instincts of the very best hearted men, and in them
alone, and that they will only serve you for a time until the good
ness of their hearts and lives is again surpassed. More important
still, it will not serve you at all, but as you are good at heart your
selves. I see in this dispensation a most wonderfully wise
order of providence. This is a dispensation of Divine silence.
God makes no visible sign—He utters no audible voice. He knows
that he has given to us a nature which will never rest until it has
found Him, and the path by which He has set us to walk,
wherein we may find Him is none other than the broad and
common roadof duty and brotherly love. Here we are, all brought
together in many relations, that we may discover and then fulfil
our several duties to each other, and learn the highest lessons of
charity and self-sacrifice. By doing this and by learning these
lessons we see that we raise ourselves. We thereby get an insight
into true greatness, into real wealth, into abiding happiness. We
thus attain the ends for which we were here placed, first, the pro
motion of each other’s well-being; next, the elevation of ourselves
by the process. The third result is that by our own constant ele
vation we are approaching nearer and nearer to true conceptions
of God, to a real finding of him and seeing him, as it were, face
io face. It ought, I think, to be borne in mind as a
�8
MAN, THE ONLY REVELATION OF GOD.
special feature in our movement, one that distinguishes
it from orthodox religions on the one hand, and from pure
materialism on the other. We believe that the only, knowledge
of God attainable by man is attainable only by the practice of
goodness. A man must know first by his own heart what love is,
true, generous, unselfish, brotherly love, before he can put any
trust in the love of God, and the more nobly a man endeavours
to live, if he be not already the prey of superstition, the more
true and noble will be his conceptions of God. We preach, there
fore, that a religion not based upon morality is worthless, and
that obedience to conscience and generous instincts must go before
faith and worship, The orthodox would fain put the acceptance
of dogmas before the common duties of humanity. The materialist
would shut his eyes to everything but present obligations ; and
there is no doubt which is in the right path, and which in the
wrong. But we do not see the necessity for ignoring the religious
element because we insist on the moral as its foundation,
For to our moral instincts and our attainment of the knowledge
of goodness we must add our own deep and earnest aspirations as
witnesses of what God really is. I speak now not for myself only,
but for all religious souls. While my words convey to my fellow
men only the idea that my God is a magnified man, the image of
God in my soul is utterly different, infinitely more lofty, but it is
a conception for which I have no language. I cannot put this sub
lime feeling of the grandeur of God into words ; my imagination
draws pictures which no brush could paint, and in the depths of
my soul I am at length free from anthropomorphism ; but out of
that sanctuary I cannot pass without encumbering myself with
the fetters of human thought and language. It is ever so when I
meditate on the goodness of God, something indescribably higher
than those words express rises to my soul’s vision, including all
that I could possibly describe, but a thousandfold more. And so
it is that every spoken truth, every tale of human virtue, courage,
generosity, justice, and love, lights up the innermost shrine where
He dwells, and makes me feel how intensely real He is, and how
unutterably more glorious in majesty and in goodness than can
ever be represented by the most glowing colours of human elo
quence. No words so well express this possession of soul by the
Divine presence and its loftiest aspirations as those which I took
for my text—“As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness,
and I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.”
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Man, the only revelation of God. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, October 6th 1872
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Voysey, Charles [Rev.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [S.l.]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: From the Eastern Post, October 11th 1872. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[S.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1872
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CT22
Subject
The topic of the resource
Sermons
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Man, the only revelation of God. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, October 6th 1872), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
God
Man
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/711b1f0ff2abde2597e3a6ffb997e5dc.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=sYCi5vD3jh58AAgA0DvK7fXmOyEknCcw92cr9yvjeZE1YL2ePrzsV7-cISSaRWG3pWb8IMuJhJ44M-w-Vl94fcRNmAaRYSWwEm6YObjSP9pydaVfQLqPhEBZ7iwP7OwJCE4Zou7TESL7U6E3D-W7WezYujiv-tXRgMqv9zKA9QF0%7EdcxkUfo9pjM%7EZKHQ4bOMPiwWbmdz15fDuHsN5193gMRGs9wXhSg-sK3U6mWloi-eDKH18lmlShuZLw4xnoPLZi4d6uf9%7EKg337EFXsiGpSVDYt4TJ68oQ4FNDnWMRhCRz7XAOvapDX1j545AyeTj5ePjtpVtOwmgImi8QEf5A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
6fb0a80fe7744dd5b5cbedfba8902ca3
PDF Text
Text
“THE SPIRIT OF GOD.”
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT THE REV. CHARLES VOYSEY’S SERVICES, ST.
GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, AUGUST 2nd, 1874, by
MR.
HOPE
MONCRIEFF.
[From the Eastern Post, August 8th, 1874]
On Sunday (August 2), at the St. George’s Hall, Langham-place,
Mr. Hope Moncrieff took his text from Job xxxii., 8., “There is
a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them
understanding. ”
He said—The present is called an age of knowledge, and rightly
so-called in comparison with the ages that have preceeded it. But
they are our wisest men who remind us that the real lesson of
modern science is, how much we may know, how little we do
know. We can write volumes on the nature and history of our
world, but all our faculties are lost in amazement before the
ineffable wisdom that has so marvellously made and fitted it for
such myriad gradations of life. We can measure the stars, we
can tell their times and distances, but the further we push our
conquests into space, the more surely does the boldest mind refuse
to set bounds to the universe, even in imagination. We can
analyse matter, following it into its most intricate combinations;
we may claim to explainits influence in the subtlest manifestations
of life; but none can say what life is, or how will and power can
be infused into the senseless clod.
With less assurance we may
dogmatise in the metaphysical parts of human nature; we may
endeavour to resolve man’s highest attributes into their component
parts; we may think that we have traced his virtues and vices
more or less closely to custom, hereditary instinct, bodily constitu
tion, in short, we may come nearer to the modus operands of the
rarer phenomena of being, but only with more awe to pause before
the question—how came this mortal frame by the first breath of
spiritual life; who taught man thus to love and hope and trust ?
�2
Whence this spirit which now prompts the ignorant child to over
come its selfishness at the call of affection and duty, and now
reveals a new moral law to the prophet of all ages .?
In its first survey of the aspects of our existence, knowledge,
indeed, helps us only to despair, showing us all the more clearly
that in life we share the necessities of the beast, and in death
the vileness of the dust. But this very despair arouses us to look
further, and our consciousness of the unworthiness of such a fate
marks us out as superior to the rest of creation. We gaze stead
fastly, and throughout all the dark tangled web of human life, we
perceive one gold thread, broadening and brightening as our eyes
are fixed upon it, hidden often, but- broken never, linking age to
age with a divine continuity, having neither beginning nor end,
coming from that same eternal light that gave us birth, and going
before us into that darkness which awaits our souls. Among the
gross promptings of sense, we feel a purer influence that strikes
the tunefullest chords of our hearts, calls our noblest instincts to
life, and bids us rise in arms against the tyrannous strength of our
animal nature. Though imperfection besets us at every step,
though difficulties and darkness are around us, though with
a’l living creatures we are hurried on in the struggle for
existence, our lives present one phenomenon unparallelled in all
our knowledge, and inexplicable by all our philosophies. Man
will struggle against himself, will help his fellow-man, will look
up from earth and seek a treasure that has no other coin but faith,
will joyfully resign his fleshly will, and pray that through suffering
and labour he may be made perfect, even as he trusts that perfec
tion exists, and shall one day be beheld by him in all its glory.
To this spirit that is in man we are wont to give a name, that
may be disputedly some who, in their own lives, feel and show its
power. Apart from the clear light of faith, apart from tradition
and customary beliefs, the most thoughtful of mankind, looking
reverently into the mysteries of existence, seeing how the human
soul sets a cloud hidden point, as surely as the needle to the pole,
feeling how weak we must indeed be without the aid of such
strength and wisdom and provident care as are revealed in the
meanest object at our feet—the most thoughtful of men, I ven
ture to say, have been constrained to kneel in adoration and call
�Upon the name of God, the Maker and father o£ all. There are,
perhaps, those among us who do not recognise this divine author,
let us not say because their hearts are hardened, but because they
are dazzled to blindness or awed into silence. Those who can
render a reason for calling themselves Atheists, are seen to humble
themselves, not indeed before a Person, but before a Thing, which,
as they conceive of it, might indeed be called divine by our mortal
tongues.
We need not fight with names, and the proofs of God’s exist
ence and nature must be sought by every thinking man in his
own nature and experience of life. What I wish to dwell on at
present is the reality of this faculty by which we apprehend the
importance of things not seen. Call it what you will, altruism,
the enthusiasm of humanity, an anonymous power that makes for
righteousness, the working of that force which we name the spirit
of God, is as much a fact as any law of the physical world.
Theorize on the cause as we may, we see and feel the effect, and
surely we cannot ascribe a mere human source to that influence
which has thus enlightened the dim conscience of man. Again
and again have its prophets appeared to guide us to ever higher
prospects of the moral law. Again and again, deliverers have
been sent to free the soul from the bonds of ignorance and selfish
ness. In all tongues words have been spoken such as man never
spoke before, words which to us, perhaps, sound as truisms but
were once rightly received as revelations. In all nations un
learned men and woman have been taught by a grace which to
them, at least, was thenceforth nothing but divine. In all ages
the sons of God, have come clothed in this spirit, and though they
have been poor and despised and rejected of the foolish crowd they
have never wanted disciples among the more ardent souls, willing
to leave all and follow him who had the words of eternal life.
And not once only, but wherever the broken, wearied heart, has
sought the priceless blessing of communion with this spirit, it has
found a strength which no human power could daunt, a peace
which nought on earth could give or take, away. These witnesses
all declare that there is a spirit in man, and with one voice pro
claim that by the inspiration of the Almighty they understand the
secrets of this troubled life.
�4
Wheh We see koW tniicfk the spirit of God has done for us, we take
hope; it is when we perceive how hardly the heart of man is open
to its gracious influences that we may well lose courage. Not only
have we to fight our way out of the darkness of utter ignorance,
but when we think that we see clearly there is an ever present
temptation to limit his greatness by our weak imaginations, to
doubt his power beyond our personal experience, to seek to bring
Him nearer to us rather than to raise our souls to Him. We
trust in the familiar means by which we think His grace has been
given; we shut our ears to the promise that it will be given in all
ways, at all times, and for all our needs. We believe readily that
God has inspired a book, or a place, or an institution, or a person;
it is hard for us to believe the plain truth that His spirit is in the
human soul, and that we, too, weak and worthless as we are, may
partake of this heavenly enlightenment.
To this very doubt we often give the name of faith, and this
trust in our weakness we are prone to boast of under the title of
humility. Some of us are so humble that they presume to judge
the rest of their race, and to offer up thanks that they are not
like the publicans and sinners around them, so ignorant that they
alone claim to know the whole counsel of God, so weak, that if you
credit them, none others stand firm but they. Such are the men
who are so ready with the nicknames of heretic and infidel, who
turn their backs on the glorious Bun and would forbid us to look
upon it save through their stained windows, who try to force the
scanty grace which they call sufficient upon us who seek for better
things. Light they have among them, for the light cannot but
fill the world, but see how they labour to obscure it with the dark
ness of their minds. Look how their temples are foul with dust
and cobwebs, and choked up with the lumber of a byegone age.
Hear how their words are bitter and empty, often the mere parrot
like repetitions of the phrases of a dead devotion, God is for
them not the Eternal Life of the Universe, but a mere magnified
Master of ecclesiastical Ceremonies or Examiner of Theological
Knowledge, dwelling not in and throughout His works, bur in some
vaguely conceived locality hard by within reach of the wings of our
feeblest aspirations. His spirit is no longer working in every soul
of man, but is degraded to be a mere mechanical force, given forth
�by engines of which these bigots keep the key* They strive to
quench, the spirit—to despise all new prophesyings; God has
spoken once—to them, and has now retired from the guidance of
human affairs, leaving them as his vicars and sole interpreters on
earth. Thus religion loses its divine character, and becomes a
mere clever contrivance for securing a degree of order and comfort
in this world, and a hazy prospect of sufficient prosperity here
after.
We are all ready to use this language of other sects which
deny our doctrines. These Romanizers, say some, are dark-minded
and dangerous • their pretences that the spirit is the inheritance of
their sole priesthood, may well be called presumptuous; their
boasted rites only serve to numb the soul; it were a Christian
duty to root out such superstition from the land. But the Protes
tants soon let us know that we are to be set free from one set of
fetters, only to be invited to fit ourselves with another, under
pain of theological reprobation and its consequences in this world
and the next. And even we who claim the name of Liberal
thinkers may constantly catch ourselves planning new prisons for
the soul, which would be a little more airy than the old ones, but
prisons still, though we call them temples. We are all prone to
forget that God is Almighty, and dwells in no temple but the
heart of man. Most of us, if we were humble enough, might
understand only too well what the weakness is that leads us to
put our faith in the forms and shows of spiritual things. How
few are wise enough to receive aright the new messages which God
ever sends to remind us of the greatness of His glory, and which
this false faith ever labours to petrify into new idols to arrest the
eyes that would look up to Him !
Is not this the history of every development of religion ? The
true prophet, the God-kindled soul, the real lord and master of the
conscience, appears among us, and leaves behind him a glowing
thought to lighten our darkness. Then comes the tribe of lower
minds, theologians, critics, scribes, who do their best to stifle and
confine his revelation, and would wholly extinguish it, but for the
divine strength which again and again bursts the bonds of man’s
folly. Jesus of Nazareth was scarcely vanished from the scene
before his disciples must need set to this work upon his teaching,
�and theirs is a remarkable example of the way in which a gran4
new lesson is dealt with by our petty conceits. I select an
apparently insignificant feature of their earthly mindedness; one
of his twelve chosen companions was wanting, and they imagined
that their first duty was to fill up the number which in their eyes
had a mystic sanctity, little knowing that outside of the sacred
band should arise th© man who was to play the most important
part in shaping the new creed. Later on, it was declared that
there must be four gospels among other reasons, because there
were four seasons, and four quarters of the earth, and four gospels;
there have been ever since to all orthodox Christendom, though in
every century God has inspired his evangelists to give new hopes
to their fellow men. Need I remind you of that same unhappy
weakness which has led men to attempt divisions and definitions of
the Almighty according to their conceptions, and would fain
sacrifice the grandeur of His unity to such puerile love of accuracy
and neatness of form. Alas ! such want of spiritual insight was
no characteristic of the past; we have but to look around us
to see how the earthly soul still loves to feed on the husks of
piety. How many men and women are there, whose eyes are
blind to the love that falls upon us from heaven in every sun and
shower, whose ears are deaf to the varied voices of hope and faith
that rise in one grand sweet harmony from the hearts of the
whole human race, to whom the true communion of Saints is
but an empty name, but who take great satisfaction in thinking
that at this moment so many persons in England are going through
the same form of prayer, under the ministry of priests dressed in
the same fashion, and making the same motions at the same places,
in churches built and adorned after somewhat the same pattern.
In many of these churches, perhaps, people are praising their God
with the obsolete phrases of mediaeval superstition, and hugging
to their souls theological epithets, which in all probability they do
not even understand, with an affectation of as much fervour as if
these expressed the great, yet simple truths that are our real
consolation and hope. And in how many pulpits, now, are
preachers not instructing their docile flocks that God has emptied
into a book, into a sacrament, into a priesthood, that inspiration
which is the inheritance of all His children ! Let us not speak
�7
bitterly against priests and preachers. They are always invited
to make Gods for a thoughtless and unbelieving people. It is
when we neglect the spirit for the letter, when we are careful
io observe customs and ceremonies, and neglect judgement and
mercy and true obedience, that our priests are found quarreling
about the colour of vestments and the authority of creeds, and
dogmatizing upon inspiration to disciples who care not to be in
spired. With souls so nourished, priests and people are ready to
fall together an easy prey to that real infidelity whose sacrament is
worldly gain, whose creed is fleshy lust, and whose gospel—to
morrow ye die.
Against these pernicious influences there is but one resource.
We must remember that the light is eternal at which man has so
often rekindled his flickering faith. W e look away from our own
imperfection to the work of the divine spirit, and see that it is
still striving with us. It works like the invisible forces of nature
that fill all space ond inform all substance, and when our In
fallibilities have decreed that it is to use such and such a channel,
behold! it bursts forth through unlooked for ways, wherever a
human soul is hungering and thirsting after righteousness. It owns
no laws but those natural ones of progress and development, which
the Almighty in His inscrutable wisdom has appointed, and the
unchangeableness of which is b it a guarantee that He will never
forsake us. Not a grain of sand, not a drop of water can be lost
from the earth; what force shall annihilate heavenly truth %
The forms in which we enclose it, perish and pass away into new
manifestations of our unskilfulness; but the word of God, once
spoken to the heart of man, can never die—nay more, it must grow,
and though to our sight it be but as the smallest seed, in time it
will become a mighty tree. Our mad hands may labour to uproot
the tender shoots of grace, but when they are withered in death,
the desert will blossom like the rose. Tyrants and traitors take
counsel to slay spiritual life, and lo 1 the cross or the scaffold is but
its throne, and high priests and cunning scribes and bigoted
crowds come to prostrate themselves before its crown of thorns.
Our prophets are stoned, but among the ponderous sepulchres
beneath which another age will bury their teachings, the sacred
line will not be extinct, and the anointed of the Lord will be
�8
found willing to dare and suffer all things in the service
of His spirit. The human soul goes often into captivity, but always
it shall return with songs of joy and gladness. For the spirit is
ever in man, and from age to age it is the inspiration of the
Almighty that gives him understanding.
-
“ God is not dumb that He should speak no more ;
If thou hasc wanderings in the wilderness,
And find’st not Sinai, ’tis thy soul is poor.
There towers the mountain of the Voice no less,
Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends,
Intent on manna still, and mortal ends,
Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore.
“Slowly the Bible of the race is writ.
And not on paper leaves or leaves of stone;
Each age, each kindred adds a verse to it,
Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan,
While swings the sea, while mist3 the mountains shroud.
While thunder’s surges burst on cliffs of cloud.
Still at the prophets’ feet the nations sit.”
Why then, are we so unbelieving ? Why should we thus learn
grand national history which we dishonour by our superstitious
veneration of its letter, so that its spirit is sealed from us? The
Jews ceased to be a great people and teachers of Gentile
nation, when they came to look upon their Lord only as a Deliverer
in the dim past, or as a Messiah in the far-off future. They pre
served their glory and their inspiration so long as they believed
that He was among them, and called upon the name of the living
God. The work of each hero and prophet was then but the war
rant of new deliverances, purer revelations. What was the re
quest of the great prophet’s greater disciple when his master was
taken from him ? Not that lie might have understanding to store
up the lessons of the departed teacher, and to expound his words,
but Elisha was bold and cried, let a double portion of Thy spirit
be upon me. He trusted that his eyes could be opened to see
greater things ; nor was his faith in vain.
This should be an example for us.
It is no pre
sumption in man to trust in the fountain of the sacred
spirit as ever flowing and inexhaustible. We may despise
the pure water, but we cannot taint the spring. Grateful
for the lessons that have been given us,^through history, through
nature, through the still small voice of conscience, humble when
we consider the perverseness which we oppose to the divine teach
ing, let us take courage from God’s greatness against our
infirmities, and praise His name for what we shall yet learn of His
ways.
Eastern Post Steam Printing Works, 89, Worship-street, Finsbury, E.C.
��
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The spirit of God: a sermon, preached at the Rev. Charles Voysey's services, St. George's Hall, Langham Place, August 2nd 1874
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Hope Moncrieff, A. R.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Eastern Post
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1874
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G4833
Subject
The topic of the resource
Sermons
God
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The spirit of God: a sermon, preached at the Rev. Charles Voysey's services, St. George's Hall, Langham Place, August 2nd 1874), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Morris Tracts
Religion
Sermons
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/b14d80cf24283532d41c439a2a3e26d8.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=UTfs%7Emaqqxjdt24qJ1b9w7WShOoCjYNKEg0ROkSe9HkOMM7viRQck3tIYCgAjcOxkySPtuLWw%7EWYFn-9GKBdYnn4Jwa6gk4Xsc7jbPKNvhZDqZ6CyHI1JzY-gUql3r7V0O24NRaUQm4b58Pz-1M3tZPezZC6qSXnk8Ei0UWribmXmUoVtFag8OxSrJ25g4Q0%7EONnxbsNLoT14b9KcEEkZjNclEyc9uaetEfaKqT0UKiJUw0lVUraiP7Jp4UiT0-UVYD205aU2OomiGqADcjDNZw0fOpXQHt-ffwWg9KJ1Aq3ijiGMJFLpezs03bx3165eaVb3ufTIT2HGMIZW2gP3w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
186abff5618bfaeb7a11e455c9d537ca
PDF Text
Text
Reading.
[Mar.
READING.
A SERMON.
BY E. H. SEARS.
“ Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weari
ness to the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments : for this is the whole duty of
man.” Ecclesiastes xii. 12, 13.
There is a story of an Eastern, monarch whose purport is very
much like the advice of Solomon, and seems like another edition
of it. The monarch had a library which contained books enough
to load a thousand camels. “I can’t read all that,” he said to his
librarian; “just reduce it down and let me have the substance and
essence of it.” So the librarian reduced it down and put it into
a number of volumes which would make only thirty camel loads.
“ I have not time, nor strength, nor eye-sight to read thirty camel
loads of books; reduce it still more.” So the librarian distilled it
again and put. it into a number of books sufficient to load only a
single ass. “ Too bulky yet,” said the monarch. “ Reduce it more.”
Whereupon the librarian treble distilled it and reduced the whole
to these three sentences written on a palm-leaf: —
“ This is the sum of all science —Perhaps.
“ This is the sum of all morality—Love what is good and prac
tice it.
“ This is the sum of all creeds — Believe what is true.”
Solomon, the reputed author of the book of Ecclesiastes, had
literary resources, it would seem, not less ample than those of the
Kaliph of Bagdad just quoted. Solomon was himself a great
writer of books and a great reader. He composed or collected
three thousand proverbs and one thousand and five oriental songs.
He studied botany, natural history, astrology and necromancy, the
ancient spiritualism, so that there was a concourse of strangers
from all countries to hear his wisdom. Arabian legends even to
this day preserve traditions about him which harmonize with those
of the Hebrew scriptures. They describe him as:—
“ The kingly sage, whose restless mind
Through Nature’s mazes wandered, unconfined,
�BT874.J
Reading.
51
Who every bird and beast and insect knew,
And spake of every plant that quaffs the dew.
To him were known, so Hagar’s offspring tell,
The powerful sigil and the starry spell,
The midnight call, hell’s shadowy legions dread,
And sounds that burst the slumbers of the dead.”
And yet, a great deal of this supposed knowledge, indeed all
he had gathered about the starry spell and the state of the dead,
would probably be reduced in the last analysis to—perhaps. And
his three thousand proverbs and one thousand and five canticles
he distils down into this sentence: “Fear God and keep
his commandments.” How true is one of his proverbs
still preserved to us, “ There is nothing new under the
sun.” And the gathered wisdom of one age anplies to the prac
tice of all ages.' It still remains true that of making books there
is no end, and if we are to read them all, it would not only be a
weariness to the flesh, but a whelming flood of nonsense upon the
brain. Making books has become the art of inflating the currency
of mind and thought, not merely pouring knowledge from one
reservoir into another, but diluting it till only a pale tinge of it is
discernible.
New discoveries in science are heralded forth,
specially in geology and anthropology, which are gopag to super
sede Revelation. We buy up the books and read them through,
and so far as religion stands affected we reduce tlie new science
in them to a “ perhaps,” or at most to such a compass that you
could write it out on a palm-leaf. We say this without denying at
all the progress of discovery in physical science and mechanical
arts and all that goes to affect our physical comfort and well-being
in this world, and our knowledge of human nature so far forth as
it has gone into history and been crystallized there. But for
all the purposes of individual improvement, edification and sub
stantial knowledge, we must adopt the same process now that the
Kaliph adopted and that Solomon recommended. Instead of casting
ourselves at random on this ocean of a watery literature, we must
select, distil and concentrate if we mean to read to any purpose or
any wise and beneficent end. And now in unfolding the subject
let us endeavor to see, how reading books may be made, not a
weariness and a means of deterioration, but a means of moral
health, progress and enlightenment.
�52
Reading.
I. And the first condition is to read with a moral purpose and aim.
That done, all the rest will follow in its natural order. The moral
law applies to reading as to anything else. Reading, like business,
has a twofold province. One is work and the other is play.
One requires thinking, the other is relaxation from'all thinking.
Both have their use, for play as well as work has its rightful place
in the economy of life. But if a man plays all the time, he be
comes lazy and shiftless and there is a relaxation of all his muscles,
and he becotnes demoralized and a burden to himself. If
reading is all for amusement and under no controlling moral
purpose and direction, the muscles of the mind become flabby,
and instead of evolving intelligence, the faculties are dulled and
dimmed and the very power of earnest thinking is well-nigh gone.
In reading for amusement, we float simply; we give up all self
direction on a stream of words and drift along with the story. We
only read that which comes very near to our own level. But
to read with a moral aim, requires of us to grapple with books
which are above our level; to gird up the loins of the mind; to sift,
compare, concentrate and note down, with pen in hand, and ar
range and find what is wheat and what is chaff, winnowing out the
one and saving the other upon our palm-leaf. And this calls into
exercise the higher ranges of the faculties ; the power of attention,
the power of intellect, the moral taste and the moral judgment,
till the muscles of the mind get the consistency of iron. I think
we overestimate the benefits which mere reading is calculated to
give. We forget that in some of the grand epochs of history the
greatest readers were the greatest dolts, and the men of the most
practical common sense could hardly read at all.
Charlemagne, the master mind of his age, from whom more than
from any one person modern history takes its rise, if I remember
well, could neither read nor write, for all the learning was in the
keeping of the monks, the narrowest and most senseless of all
classes. Reading, like affairs, ought to enlarge our horizon and
kindle our intelligence, and if it does not accomplish this, the art
of printing might just as well not have been discovered, so far as
we stand affected individually.
II. Reading then with a moral aim, what will be its special di
rection and purpose ? Evidently the first thing which one will
�•
■
1874.]
Reading.
*
*
53
want to know and understand will be the nature of the house he
lives in. I mean the body which we inhabit, on whose conditions
our work in the world so much depends. This mechanism which
we call a body is wound up, so say the physiologists, to ’ go an
hundred years, and then to stop its motions gently and without
pain. But instead of that it rarely runs down, but its wheels are
crushed and broken on an average within less than forty years.
The organic laws are the statute-book of the Almighty, written out
within us by his own finger. All needless violation of them is in
temperance in some form and the breaking of the Divine com
mandments. And it is just as much our duty to learn them and
keep them as it is to learn and keep the ten commandments
of the decalogue. For this is the very foundation of all
our spiritual building and enlargement. Morbid conditions
of the body often generate morbid conditions of mind. Anger
in one may produce anger in the other, and the whole
fabric of religious faith and hope go down in night because
the physical flooring has been broken through and d^troyed. 1 A
living writer tells us that the very foundation^ of womanhood here
in America are becoming sapped and undermined; and that both
manhood and womanhood will dwindle away together unless we
come back to obedience. His array of facts is worthy of some
thing better ,than senseless denunciation.®-{They demand thought;
ful study at least on the part of all teachers and parents, for man
hood and womanhood go down together, if at a#. It all shows us
that there is one book, which at the beginning every one ought to
read under a solemn sense of®espon&bility, — our own book of Life,
which the psalmist calls the Book of God, in which all our mem
bers are written. It should be read till its lessons stand out in let
ters of light, and with the assurance that if disobeyed, they will
turn to letters of fire. And when we read and understand, we
are not only learning the Divine Laws and how to keep the com
mandments, we are drawn up among the Divine wonders beyond
any which romance has ever told, and join in the adoration of the
Psalmist, “ I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully
made.”
I do not mean to deny that there is a moral meaning in sick
ness, and moral uses of pain, and that sometimes the spirit within
�54
*
Reading.
[Mar.
puts on a clothing of beauty and grace which transfigures and hal
lows all this clay tabernacle, and shines even brighter through the
rents made in it by disease and suffering. That, however, is when
sickness comes in the order of the Divine Providence, and is re
ceived and accepted as such, and cannot be helped. But the normal
state in which we best serve God and man is health, which means
wholeness,—-wholeness of mind, body and soul, in which all their
consenting harmonies are a song of praise, for then we do not
know where body ends and spirit begins, so perfect are their
chimes and melodies. Very often a violation of physical law
away back in childhood begins with slight derangement, which
grows and grows into growling discords that shake the whole fabric
into dust, just because a person would not read carefully this book,
in which all his members are written, and read it under the injunc
tion, “Pear God and keep his commandments,”-—the prime com
mandments written all over and within you.
III. And we come to a third condition, that in all our reading
we observe carefully the laws of perspective. In reading books
we simply put the glass to our eye for the enlargement of our
vision. The field enlarges in two directions, one direction through
space and one through time; one going round the globe and beyond
the stars, and the other back through the ages to the beginning of
things. But in this immense field things near are more important
to us than things far. He who tries to explore this immense field
indiscriminately will be lost and bewildered. Things that are near
first, things that are far off afterward ; things that lie about me
first, my own state, my own people, involving the questions of to
day, that I may knowhow to act in my own sphere and how to vote
and how best to discharge my duties to the community and coun
try I live in. These come first; and there is biography, and ro
mance which is veined with history, all of which can be selected
and arranged so as to light up the sphere of my personal duties
with growing illumination and kindle the fires of patriotism at the
same time. With this controlling purpose, reading has a plan and
a growing interest, and study and amusement get so blended that
you hardly know where one stops and the other begins. Whether
you are reading the American histories or the Cooper novels, they
all combine to one end. They light up this sphere of American
�1874.]
Reading.
•
55
life and manners and scenery, where the great modern drama is
rolling along in which every young man and woman has a probation
and a part’ to play. Reading with such a plan will be sure to touch
one’s enthusiasm, and when this has once been kindled it is the
pledge of all true progress; for it wakes up a hunger and thirst
which larger plans of reading and improvement are to satisfy.
And then the perspective enlarges in both directions, taking in new
fields of vision as long as we live, and revealing God in all history
and all nature and giving unity to the whole.
IV. And this brings us to religious reading; though if one
reads with a controlling moral purpose, it is all religious, or becomes
so, at last. But then there is a separate class of what are called
distinctively religious books, and it seems to me a capital mistake to
read only what lies down upon our own level. A faith that is worth
having is never gained in that way. It is gained by reading what
is above our level, and demands concentration, and comparison, and
sifting and analysis, and reconstruction, till we are drawn up into
the heart of great subjects and are fired and greatened by the
themes.
Simplicity in religion becomes exceedingly simple when it only
deals in vague generalities ; and then too it becomes exceedingly
commonplace and cold. Why did not the Lord give us merely
the ten commandments and the ten beatitudes, and there leave us,
or why did he not draw up a creed for us to learn out, and so save
time and trouble ? Because we want not merely the command
ments, but we want inspiration and inward power, so that the
obedience be glad, swift and spontaneous; and because the great
doctrines of religion in their glory and amplitude cannot be put
into a creed. They must be learned by a waking up of the facul
ties of the soul to see them in their harmony and beauty, and so
fill us with their warmth and comfort. Hence we have a Bible
which can be studied through a life-time, and on which eight thou
sand years of history are a commentary. And plans of religious
reading well followed are a constant breaking of the seals.
They keep breaking with some as.long as they live, till communion
with God is a prayer without ceasing, and the immortal life is so
nearly realized in this, that the two worlds, the natural and the
spiritual, are only halves of one harmonious system, interlacing
�56
Reading
[Mar.
each other by fine golden threads of intercommunion. But such
faith does not come of itself. It. does not come by prayer merely,
It comes from- plans of reading, thinking, believing and doing,
which a whole life-time is filling up, and which make the truths
of religion and the whole scenery of the spirit-world lie on the land
scapes of the soul with increasing warmth and effulgence.
• Simplicity I The alphabet is very simple. But if you stop with
it, it never unlocks for you the wealth that lies in language. The
first truths of religion are very simple, but if you stop with them
you will never see their power and combination. And that
we may see these, the Lord gives us one-seventh part of our time
for religious reading and thinking, so that the alphabet of religion
may combine in a language that spells out to us more and more .of
the divine riches.
To read with a moral purpose ; to read our own book of life ; to
read with just perspective; to read with a controlling religious aim,
so that the God in history and in. the Bible shall be near us to-day,—
these fourfold conditions once observed, books would not be to us
a wilderness without order. We might carry with us the principles
by which the knowledge we need would form and crystalize and
enlarge forever. To read only what is interesting because it floats
us easily, takes us down stream and takes us nowhere. To read
only to excite the sensibilities over imaginary suffering, makes one
more insensible to the real sufferings that lie in his daily path.
Hence, novel reading as the staple food of the mind, leaves the
intellect barren and the heart colder than ice ; but under a moral
purpose for the enlargement of our horizdn and our knowledge of
men, it has the same end that all history has ; it interprets the
great book of our human life. And the more we read with right
aim and perspective, the more shall we see that all history is a
drama with its unities and catch visions of a divine plan running
through the whole from the beginning, interpreting Divine Reve
lation and showing how every act of the drama prepares the one
which follows and leads on to some glorious catastrophe. The
broad sweep of the Divine Providence across the theatre of this
world will be seen in clearer illumination. The crimes and local
tragedies that harrow and distress us will take their subordinate
places, overruled and utilized in the grand march of humanity
towards its goal.
�Rebecca Amory Lowell.
1871.]
57
Your own consciousness of being involved in this plan will be
come more vivid and more blissful, and your duties in it more im
perative and more delightful. “ I will hide you in a cleft of the
rock,” said Jehovah to his servant, “ and cover your face as I
pass.” That is, you shall not see my face, but you shall see my
train after I have passed along. You shall see me in all past
history if you will read it, though you shall not see me before you
so as to overwhelm and repress your own free and spontaneous
agency. Glorious faith ! that the whole past of the world, includ
ing our own little world of to-day, from the heights of the future
shall be revealed as the bright train where the Infinite Father has
passed along.
REBECCA AMORY LOWELL,
We can imagine that to many of that wide circle who have
associated some of the best memories of their ^es with this
venerated woman, just now taken from our midst, the first thought
as they read her name upon our pages will be that we are doing
. her a wrong "by so public a mention; for, perhaps', tjie most con
spicuous trait in her character w^ that peculiar delicacy and
modesty which made her shrink from publicity and almost refuse
the grateful deference which her rare gifts and graces irresistibly
commanded in the intercourse with society. But, on the other
hand, they will remember that her constant desire always was
how she might best serve others, and there is a power of service
in the record of such a life which she would hardly decline to
render. We feel that few things are more helpful, and more
appropriate to the purpose of this Review, thanihe memorials
• of those who have so adorned and illustrated our Christian faith.
Miss Lowell was born in Boston, Nov. 13, 1794. Iler father
was John Lowell, son of Judge John Lowell, appointed by
Washington Judge of the United States District Court. Her
mother was Rebecca Amory.
8
�58
Rebecca Amory Lowell.
[Mar.
At the age of nine years she accompanied her parents to Europe,
and, during their three-years residence abroad, was placed by
them in a school in Paris, where she surprised her schoolmates by
her intelligence and the rapidity of her acquisitions. She, of
course, acquired the French language and always spoke it with
facility. Even at that early age she read Racine and Fenelon
with delight. When a mere child she evinced a strong love of
letters,\ and soon developed an enthusiasm for the beautiful and
noble in literature, united to a delicate critical taste. But, along
with this fondness for study and this intellectual development, was
a no less remarkable development of character. Her sweet,
gentle disposition made her universally beloved.
She completed her school education in Boston, and at the age
of eighteen she undertook the education of her younger sister,
then four years old, and of a little cousin. To their education
she devoted the best portion of her time for twelve or thirteen
years. After that she taught several of her nephews and nieces,
as opportunity occurred, and a few other pupils. Her method of
teaching was most systematic and painstaking. She attended to
every branch of scholarship, writing for her pupils volumes of
abridged histories, philosophies, &c., in French and in English,
adding, by way of wholesome variety and stimulus, the reading
aloud of poetry and romance and the best selections of light
literatui-e. There was a charm in her voice and in her enthusiasm
which could not fail to inspire the young minds with a desire
for culture and knowledge.
At a later period she was in the habit of receiving classes of
young ladies at her home for the study of history and literature,
and it was her delight besides to lend to young people from her
rich store of books on every subject, and foster in them the love
of useful learning.
Her care for the religious culture of her pupils was as constant
as for their intellectual culture, and-her influence in this direction
was very great. In 1832 she began to teach in the Sundayschool, first at King’s Chapel and then at Dr. Putnam’s, in Rox
bury, and continued this service without interruption till she had
completed her seventieth year. She kept her classes five or six,
and sometimes eight years, till the minds of her pupils became
�1874.]
Rebecca Amory Lowell.
59
mature, adopting, as in her secular instructions, thorough and
systematic methods, bringing in illustrations from every depart
ment of literature and life, and seeking to train them to habits of
accurate and conscientious thought on moral and religious questions
and to stimulate their higher spiritual sentiments and desires.
Very often young men continued in her class till they left for
college or for business life, and some men now in the ministry can
refer to her as one of those to whom they owe the most.
Since the death of her parents, in 1842, Miss Lowell has lived
with her sister in Roxbury, and it is in connection with this portion
of her life that she is chiefly known by the large portion of those
who will read this notice. It was an attractive New 'England
home, furnished without ostentation, but on a generous scale, and
with tokens everywhere of culture and refinement, and the visitor
was sure, not only of hospitable welcome! but of instructive and
profitable occupation. She was ready to be interested^ in every
subject. On all the topics of the day, political or social or literary,
she had clear and decided opinions, and was ready to support them
by argument or by illustration. Her memory was very remarkable,
and her references to history and literature were accurate and full •
of value.
In questions of politics and moral reform she was very liberal.
She was an early opponent of the system of slavery when such a
course was unpopular with many with whom she was associated;
but along with the intensity of her feelings and convictions there
was such sweetness of temper and such tender sensibility that in
her discussions she never wounded another’s feelings, and she won
by the contagion of her sympathy as much as by the force of her
argument.
Her active benevolence was manifested by her generous par
ticipation in all the charitable and philanthropic and religious move
ments of the day. During these many years there have been
few benevolent undertakings in this community to whichrshe has
not contributed, of counsel or money or of actual service, and
she was ready to give her aid to causes or to individuals of what
ever name or nation, with a sympathy as wide as humanity. One
who knew it well fitly describes hers as “ a life shared in just pro
portion between good deeds and gopd books, between the activity
�60
•
Rebecca Amory LoiveTl.
[Mar.
of kindness and the repose of culture,” “ such a life as does not
go out in darkness, but leaves a long trail of blessed influences
behind.” If we could summon the many men and women, now
adorning society, who could testify that they have been indebted
to her or to that home for much of what is most valuable in the r
character, we should realize how great and abiding the influence
has been.
i
It remains only to speak of her religious character. She was a
devoted Unitarian. Her interest in this form of faith began in
the days of Dr. Freeman, for whom she had a great veneration.
Afterwards she enjoyed, greatly Dr. Channing, and shared in his
opinions, and she was always earnestly watchful of everything that
pertained to the interests of this denomination. She was liberal
and open to every ne r phase of thought, and her convictions
were all grounded in reason; but nothing could disturb
the clearness and serenity of her faith. God was indeed her
Father, and Jesus was her Master and her guide and her most
loved Friend. She had a humble, childlike piety, and she culti- *
vated it by daily devout reading and meditation, and it pervaded
her whole being. In her activities and in her studies and in her
conversation she seemed to carry with her the air of this communion
with the unseen. It shone in her countenance and it gave her a
1
peculiar sweetness and charm. She retained to the very day of
her death perfect vigor of mind and freshness of feeling, with her
last words testifying to the glad assurance of her Christian faith.
We have tried only to give in simplest outlines a sketch of her
character, striving not to offend that sense of delicacy which would
forbid words of eulogy, and all the while, as we have remembered
how all this rare excellence kept itself from observation, we have j
rejoiced to think that there is much of this highest-type of Chris
tian living, nestled, fair and perfect, beneath the showy life of our
time — as the lily of the valley, of which she was always peculiarly •
fond, hides its fragrance and beauty under its broad, green leaves.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Reading: a sermon
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sears, Edmund Hamilton [1810-1876]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Boston
Collation: 50-57 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: Edmund Hamilton Sears was an American Unitarian parish minister and author who wrote a number of theological works influencing 19th century liberal Protestants. Sears is known today primarily as the man who penned the words to "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" in 1849. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From the Unitarian Review and Religious Magazine. Vol. 1 (March 1874). For content of complete issue see: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.8906965 (accessed 11/2017).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[Unitarian Review and Religious Magazine]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1874]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5435
Subject
The topic of the resource
Sermons
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<p class="western"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (Reading: a sermon), identified by <span style="color:#0000ff;"><span lang="zxx"><u>Humanist Library and Archives</u></span></span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Reading
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/a79de8a3e000ad75132b36a048070753.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Id9%7EmAYM251Re5YkwQmoU8W1EmrPKTTbXnxOmVUYLgKHWo1%7EuzhDjf-fFhPGHboeLYMGJyxmpi5f71EByaRqbBSfFtxzjnJW-8eUx02ZdkTcilmfVDdtgm7LzbQuzupK1EV1ERWbtnnRPhuiGIzxQHMaCQ6VeAijbmU5qXxPpY9rLkE1xnH%7EfhxsD4KBweBfcXx9809d7si10rjGaAGfduivsio%7EE7OskX0bqtdVS88Rzdwu732zCNz9l6y5LHDQxkgMqxJ%7EhmKsM6vsaJuCJyM6PKZ4k3-hY7cGQsghSuHvP1vODB7zZIlYRCnzCN2WB92siio76UX4ds9sh5Iaiw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
06a93aeef1990e72b80816a07219bda5
PDF Text
Text
ROBERT COLLYER AND HIS CHURCH
'* " ’'
'
A
DISCOURSE
DELIVERED IN THE
FIRST CONGREGATIONAL UNITARIAN CHURCH
IN PHILADELPHIA
if 0 V E M B ER 12 1 8 71
BY
■wliHI. ZFTTZRzJSTZESS
MINISTER
King & Baird,
[printed
not published.]
Printers.
��DISCOURSE
I take for my text what thJ3|g|.h elders said to
Jesus when they went, to him in behalf of the Roman
centurion.
He
is worthy for, whom thou shouldst do this.
.
Luke vii. 4.
My Friends:
The religious societies of our denomination have all »
been invited tel aid flniBBflwQBv Church in
Chicago for our dearly ^»veMm?iend and brother?
Robert Collyer, whose' ^^utiSlOlle^ of worship was
burned down in the grS^o^i^gBOH
It is proposed to
fifty thousand dollars for the
purpose. I have no doubt this sum will be raised.
Apart from Robert Collyer’s peculiar personal claims,
there is in the Unitarian E»omirH®n as in all reli
gious denominations, as irf :all»EM^gociated for com
mon objects, what the French call, a spirit of the body,
which prompts the members of the body to liberal
giving, and causes every proposal n^e in its name to
be greeted with favor for the mere |pme’s|sake, letting
alone the intrinsic merit^jof the proposal.
Political
parties as well as religious sects illustrate this spirit.
�4
Even the greatest outrages upon liberty and common
honesty are more than pardoned—they are accounted
honorable and sacred, when perpetrated in the name
of the party or the church.
But, thank Heaven ! we have as striking instances,
and most cheewig instances are they, of the same
spirit in the interest of good 'objects. Witness the
great Rebellion, when, in the name of Our Country,
which makes this multitudinous and diversified popu
lation one body, acts of the noblest heroism were
done, and self-sacrifice became a luxury. Witness
also the generoutftutpOuring >f effective sympathy in
behalf of thejiffering hosts of the West, in the name
of the common humility which makes all mankind
one.
Seeing that this spirit is so strong, I have no doubt,
I say, that attachment to the name, loyalty to the
denomination, will be powerful enough among liberal
Christians to rebuild Robert Collyer’s church in Chi
cago.
I am very ^BrnlSBi desirous, friends and brothers,
that we of this church should take a prompt and
generous share in thi^mgost worthy enterprise. But
for the fulfilment of my ardent desire, I do not rely
upon your zeal for the denomination.
If there is any one Church in our denomination in
which there is less of a denominational spirit than in
�5
others, it is this Church. I do not believe there is
any associated numb® of Unitarian Christians less
disposed than we are (to use a vulgar but expressive
phrase), toBgdJm a? merely denominational
object. I ha^^^H attempted—I should most cer
tainly have wle|H||Oj^Epo use the Unitarian name
to conjure money out of your pockets. I regard it as
a very good thing that it is st^na^tn^^ ^among you
so little of
IWm onoBteMSRnil^^MII whatever
solicits youriw^^^^Mw must stand or fall upon its
merits.
For thB state of things amongst us of this Church,
there are* tb< best of reasons. For a feflg^ime we
were, and we are still, gecBaph^m^fpe|jkihg, on the
outskirtsW^ifffwitfe’^Uni^^^a coSSmrWB n nl in the
closest and most vital connection with it. When I first
became the pastor of this church, nearly half a century
ago, scarcely a si^^^^Orbassfed *ffiaB some one of my
brothers in the ministry from Boston or its vicinity—
the headquarters of the T^taWay
—did
not stand in this pulpit, and thus keep up a living con
nection with the Ka' ’lbfawners and
brothers have, one after aiWthe^ nearly all disap
peared. Their voices are heard B^WwrlM A new
generationJdfel sprung up. W:JWfcKfee^^bft more
and more alone.
Then again the advocacy of the caute of the slave,
�6
which I was “ driven of the spirit ” some thirty years
ago, in a humble way to undertake, tended still further
to isolate us. I was regarded as endangering the
interests of Unitarian Christianity, which it was
pleaded, had as much as it could do to bear the odium
of the Unitarian name without having the added bur
then of Abolitionism. It was impossible that this plea
should increase our zeal for nominal Unitarianism.
What churchlwhat religious wganization on earth
was not bound to go
members could not
feel and speak for the4 oppressed as oppressed with
them 1 What? doctrines,. howeve^pure and simple,
were of any galue if they could not Sustain the cause
of Humanity, howeveilobnoxious that cause might
be'?
Is it any twonder that we grew lukewarm in
the interest of .mere 3Jnitarian Christianity ? Dr.
Channing said a little while before his death that
he cared little for Unitarianism, and this it was that
gave occasion to a re^rt ^abat he had become a
Trinitarian. The’ truth was that he cared less and
less for a denomination, as he was growing to care
more and more for Justice and Humanity.
In addition to the subject once so dangerous and
hateful, the so-wled theological opinions in which I
have been interested, my views of the nature and
miracles of Jesus, have also helped, perhaps, to set our
little church here in Philadelphia apart by itself. We
�7
live to see' both of the great bugbears shorn of their
terrors.
Once more. We hav^feeifl 1S| to wsjtand by our
selves by the origin of ouSSoiwty and by the materials
of which it is composed. Almost all the Unitarian
churches out of New England, with the solitary excep
tion of ours, were, and, I suspect, still are, almost exclu
sively, madeiup of people of New England birth, New
England colonists. Long after two Unitarian churches
had been gathered a^icp^^ro'New York, I was told
by a leading member of one of them, that he did not
believe that they had had a- single accession from
among the nathW of that city. O ur ’ehurch, on the
other hand, had its beginning, gnl five and seventy
years ago, with ^rs@ns exclusively from Old England,
followers and admirers of Dr. Priesfcy, when the name
of that eminent man was regwddd with distrust by
some of the most advanced mS9 in New England.
In fact the autographed f Dr. Prwtley appears on the
records of ou^fcMurch, enaBWi with the names of our
earliest members.
And furthermore, while, from time to time, individ
uals and families from New England have joined us,
many of thos^whom we have had thl happiness of
welcoming to our commfion have come from the'
denomination of Friends|| and if dhey wereQiot here,
they would be, if any where, in Quaker Meeting.
�8
*
All their associations are with Quaker ways, and they
have been moulded by the influence of that eminently
Christian denomination. It is not any attraction of
Unitarian formularies; whether of doctrine or observ
ance, but the liberal spirit of our mode of faith that
has drawn them to us. The Friends are not a prose
lytizing people. According!yu those of you who have
come to us fromghem have no special interest in the
methods adopted for the diffusion of liberal views, in
spreading L»tarianisgfi popularly so termed. You
put faith rath® in the spirit than in collecting
money and building churches, Rooking for moral and
religious results, not to be manufactured by costly
machinery, but to flow from iwlivictual effort prompted
by the inner light, He spirit of Tteuth.
On all these account^* frien®, there is no strong
denominational feeling among us, no burning zeal for
what are termed Unitarian movements, such as, for
instance, the plan recegjly proposed by our Unitarian
brethren of building a so-styled Rational Unitarian
Church in Washington &
We are all learning, I trust, to put less and less faith
in mere organizational and the mechanism of sects, in
measures rather than in men, in making religion by
'the collection of money and the distribution of the
written word; not that money and tracts may not be
serviceable to the good cause, but the man-made letter
�9
is not the God-inspired spirit, although it is constantly
mistaken for it.
In soliciting, therefore, y^ur pecuniary aid to the
rebuilding of Robert Collyer’s churchjC am not dis
posed to lay any stress upofflthe^adwiitage it will be
to Unitarian Christianity. The object proposed stands
before you upon grourgl Inroad and strong of its own.
lie is most
we should do this, most ,
worthy of the specialmMmfi church. This was
the first liberal churcMI^^^B^^E Robert Collyer
ever entered. It was the first certainly in which he
preached. As a minister of a liberal faith, here was
where he first* drew breath. ’ Here was he born into
our sphere, our son, our brother.
Somewhere about fourteen years ago, I met one
evening at the house of a friend, some seven or eight
miles from the city, a young ^Englishman, W workman
in a neighboring hammotfactory, and a Methodist class
leader, accustomed to exhort in the HRigapus meetings
of his denomination. |^*was imprip^M b^hiljthought-
ful air and by his acquaintance with the litellectual
topics of the day. "He- was - evidently a man who was subsisting on food which his fellow-workmen knew
not of, constantly growing, taking into his blood what
ever nourishment books afforded him. He was a
reader, they said, of the Encyclopaedia Brittannica.
Through the influence of Lucretia Mott he had
•
�10
become interested in the Anti-slavery cause; and, as
was almost always the case with orthodox men in
those days, when they touched that great living Cause,
Robert Collyer’s orthodoxy began to slough off like
a dead skin, and he became interested in liberal
religious views.
It was not long after, that he came one evening to
, this church. The weather was .stormy, and there were
so few present that, contrary to my wont, for the first
and only tim% I spoke that evening entirely without
notes. I sujg)oseithis being in accordance with the
custom of the Methodist church may have increased
whatever of interest the services of that evening had
for him.
Shortly afte^fards I went to| Cincinnati to the
marriage of my brilliant friend, Moncure Conway, now
and for some year? settled in London. He too had
been a few yearlW^fore at,<ihe early age of nineteen a
Methodist preacher, in Virginia, his native State, and
although we were then personally strangers to each
other, he had at that time communicated to me the
story of the painful douhtl through which he was
gasping for a freer air. The letter which I received
from him then, -appealing to me for spiritual help,
breathed great distress of mind, and touched me very
deeply. When, after withdrawing from the Methodist
communion, he took charge of the Unitarian church
�11
in Cincinnati, I accepted his urgent invitation to go
thither, and take what part in marrying him the laws
of Ohio might permitti Of ^course this pulpit was to
be provide(|fcfo^g I invited Robert Collyer to take my
place for theh@®e Sunday I was to be absent. Upon
arriving in Cincinnati I desired to prolong my visit
another week. I telegraphed home in reference to a
supply for the second Sunday, and received for answer
that you weii^wellK.onjtwitlaiiilCT mml than satisfied
with my substitute. It is now more than. thirteen
years ago, and Iuloi|®rnot that many of you remem
ber with pleasui^Rqfc^^jOollyer’sfctr^^&ig at that
time. It wannd^gM^^o^mMblfeten.
Upon my return home^v^hing to sh^re in- your
pleasure, I iagited ot® friend to preach for me. He
came again from hisw|l>aG©,oh wm^|to give me a labor
of love. I wait takenjill, and sW'ar fom being able
to come to chuwh, I was^not ajfele todleay mv room.
I had a day or two before received a letter from
Chicago, where van^aitarian Church ^as already es
tablished (now uaafet the charge of Robert Laird
Collyer), inquiring about a remarkable blacksmith, of
whose rare gift^ m,yjE)rre*(|hdeighl understood that I
had had much to tell, and asking whether he would
not make, what they greatly needed in Chicago, a
good “ minister at large,’[/to go among the poor, and
preach to them.
i
The* letter, if I thought him the
�12
right man, invited him to that city, offering him
twelve hundred dollars a year. Of course there could
be but one answer. When Robert Collyer came up
into my room on that Sunday morning, before going
to Church, I handed him the letter, merely hinting at
its purport. He refused to read it then, and put it in
his pocket. In the afternoon he came up into my
room again to see me, and handed me back the letter.
I told him to take it home with him and let me know
his decision. He replied that he had already decided.
He should go to Chicago. He had mentioned to me in
the morning that he had received the evening before
his month’s wages, thirty-nine dollars and some cents.
In a few daysfhe quitted the hammer factory forever,
and moved with ^s little family to Chicago.
There he ministered to the poor, rising so rapidly in
the respect of the community that when the terrible
Iowa tornado occurred, Robert Collyer was chosen by
acclamation at a publid meeting of his fellow citizens
to go to the scene of that calamity and distribute their
benefactions there. He soon gathered so flourishing
a church in Chicago that a few years ago a large edifice
was built for him and his congregation. I suppose
it was quite impossible for our friends in Chicago
to resist the genius of the place which could tolerate
only the big and the costly. A city, whose growth
was hardly outdone by the most extravagant stories of
�13
California vegetation, expanding so rapidly to giant
dimensions, must have a Unitarian Church in propor
tion. Consequently; Robert Collyer’s Church, Unity
Church as it wajHBOTjfed, was buiB- at ancost of nearly
two hundred thoi&n^ OyLlars. including an organ
that cost ten thousand dollars.
Although o® the day of its Dedication,
members
of the Church subscribed with a graadtiliberality to
wards the payment offiHffif,|jgft.
perched, what
the flames could not consume, a debt of sixty-five
thousand dollars. So
was the at
traction of the pa^chwLi that people flocked to the
church, so lo^hpis
sioutlv bore the
burthen.
But the terrible Fire came. And ltrwhen,B writes
Robert Collyer, in his account of the burning of
his church we®!® fought rifefairly as it came on us
from below, and beaten the infernal beasifcso that it
could never burn^s^umbli^Bw^mdltliat it had set its
fiery teeth away up in the roof out of our reach, and
I knew that all was over, I crept up stairs alone to my
pulpit, where I had
K»igW before and spoken
to nearly a th^gfffiid men ancwvK^W^; I took one last
long look at iijphe church and the dea^ sweeji noble
organ, then Xstook the Bible as it lay when| I had left
it, got out at last and-flocked the door and put the
key in my pocket and went away, for by that time the
�I
14
roof was ablaze, and I thought my heart was broken.
That Unity has gone up, like Elijah, in a chariot of
fire, she is not dead to me,—she never will be dead,—
or to those who loved her as I did, my hope and joy and
crown of rejoicing, for I held her for God and Christ,
God knows.”
The church was insured. And it is expected that
the insurance will cover the whole or nearly the whole
debt. Whatever ofWthe debt shall remain, Robert
Collyer says muf t be paid, if they all have to go to
work and earn the money. Not a dollar of debt is to
rest upon the church that is to be built. Taught by
this most severe experience, our friends in Chicago
have no desire now but for “ a plain, simple build
ing,”—not a dollar for ornament, except, as Robert
Collyer writes, where use is ornament.
Now, dear friends, in praying l^ou, as T do most
earnestly, to unite with all the churches of our faith
in building a Church for our rarely gifted friend and
brother, I do not introduce him to you as a mendi
cant who must perish miserably if we do not give him
this assistance. Do I need to tell you of his rich gifts,
his winning graces ? Is not his praise in all our
churches, nay, is it not sounded everywhere at home
and abroad? Can he preach anywhere where the
English language is spoken, where people do not flock
�15
to hear him, whether he speak from the pulpit or
in the lecture room 1
How well, by the way, does he tffend the trial of
his great popularity ! It is no feeblejfest to be put to,
to be so suddenly raised from the anvil to the pulpit,
to pass from the MM®e drudgery of hard manual
labor to a position, commanding the admiring attention
of multitudes, and^Hong them
mostBnlightened in
the land. It has been finely said that, wrhile “ the
prospect of the applause of ^ostgri^ is like the sound
of the distant diSnl which elevates the mini present
applause, flung] <M^etly in one’s face, is W® the spray
of the same ocean wluppn th^^E^rand^geq uiring
a rock to bear it.” > jKat RoberWCollyeruhas been
animated, elatHM iBjVom will, by his great and well
merited success, I do not d®E| It would argue an
insensibility in him if he were not. He is no rock in
this respect.. But notwithstanding the seductive trial,
he stands like a rock by his flock and his work in
Chicago.
Shortly aftelf the great calamity, I wrote to him and
told him that, he, Roberlr Collar, could rebuild the
city, to say nothing of his church. And is it not by
“the Orpheus-like musa^of the wisdom” to which such
as he give utterance that cities are built end nations
led up the loftiest heights of humanity'll You have all
read the words which he spoke the Sunday after the
�16
fire, standing upon the ruins of his clear church. A
Chicago paper tells us that his voice had cheered not
only his own flock, but all the people of the city, thus
justifying my assurance to him.
He has not, he cannot have, any anxiety on his own
account. As he himself says—and I suppose he is
prouder of the fact than of any sermon he ever
preached—that, if the worst come to the worst, he can
make as good a horseshoe as any blacksmith in Chi
cago. I do not know about his horseshoes. I am
no judge of the article. But I do know what
good hammers the young blacksmith was wont to
make by scores every week. They sent the nail
home, even as their maker sends home the truth,
only he does not, like a hammer, break in pieces the
hard and stony heart; by his rare pathetic power he
melts it into smiles of hope, into tears of penitence,
and sympathy and aspiration. But the worst will not
come to the worst with him. There is no likelihood
that he will ever be reduced to the necessity of manual
labor,-although it is no wonder if amidst that wide
ruin he felt for a moment that it might come to that.
What church is there, what community, that would
not gladly welcome him'? He has not the slightest
concern for his bread.
This then must command for him our warmest ap
probation and respect, and insure our bountiful aid,
�37
*
that while he may choose his place, sure of a lucrative
position wherever he may go, the thought of leaving
his flock and the desolated city, heems never to have
occurred to him. After the death of Theodore Par
ker, he was invited^o be the successor of that able
man, and preach in the Music Hall in Boston. But,
while, for obvious reasons,the invitation was very
tempting, he chose <o remain in Chicago. And now
he has no though^utjbf devoting himself and all that
he is to the building up again of all good interests in
that most afflicted ciwl
Believe me, dear friends, I am not using the empty
language of eulogy, nor ong| giving utterance to the
promptings .of personal g'iendship. You all know
that Robert Collyer is a man of peculiar gifts. Cole
ridge seems to be describing just such a man as our
friend, when he says that “ to find no contradiction in
the union of old and new, to contemplate the Ancient
of Days with feelings as fresh as if they then sprung
forth at his own fiat—this characterizes the minds that
feel the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel
it. To carry on jhe feelings of childhood into the
powers of manhood, to combine the child’s sense of
wonder and novelty with the appearances which every
day, for perhaps forty years, has rendered familiar,
With Sun, and Moon, and Stars, throughout the year
And Man and Woman—
�this is the character and privilege of genius. And so
to present familiar objects as to awaken the minds of
others to a like freshness of sensation concerning
them—this is the prime merit of genius and its most
unequivocal mode of manifestation.”
When a man thus endowed with “ the vision and 1
the faculty divine ” gives’ all that he is with generous
ardor to the service of the highest truth, shall we not
give of what we have, and uphold him with our hearts
and hands ? Shall any loss befal him that we are not
eager to repair ? You are sending food and clothing
and money in boundless quantities to the devastated
West. But, believe me, you can render the people
there no more solid and enduring service than to do
and to give allfthat you are able, even to the stinting
of yourselves, for such a creaM^fl centre of beneficent
influence as our friend/ that* he may have a place
where he may stand, and, with the arm of the spirit
stronger than the arm of flesh, which made the
anvil ring again, lift the thoughts and aims of men
above the material interests to which they cling
as all in all—lift them up into communion with the
Invisible and Everlasting, and with the blessed spirit
of the Lord Jesus. For his oWn dear sake, for the
sake of the gracious influence which he has, and for
the sake of Religion, pure and undefiled, of which he is
so powerful an advocate, I pray you, dear friends, let
�19
us all help, and help generously this good object,—to
build him a church.
It has been proposed by the American Unitarian
Association, which has its centre in Boston, that col
lections be taken up in all our churches for this purpose
on this the second Sunday in November. I do not,
however, suggest a collection to-day. There is no
pressing need of haste. I wish to commend the mat
ter to your-most thoughtful Consideration. You may
think it advisable to take up a collection shortly. In
the meanwhile, I shall be happy and proud, as I
always am, to receive for my friend whatever you may
be prompted to give. The appeals, recently made to
you, first in behalf of our brother from Paris, and then
for the sufferers of the West, to whom there are few
who have not given more than once, have been so
cheerfully and liberally met that they create the faith
that, so far from accounting it a burthen, you regard
it as a privilege, as it assuredly is, to give for a good
purpose, and that you are grateful to the Bountiful
Giver for the means that he has blest you with, and
for every new opportunity. By giving, you receive
more and better things than you give, and thus become
rich before God.
In conclusion, let me say that I trust I have not
offended against propriety in speaking so freely in
�I
A.
.20
praise of our friend, as is customary to speak only of
the dead. But I have spoken thus not to flatter him,
but for the simple truth’s sake. And if I have failed
in regard to the truth, it is not in going beyond it, but
in falling short of it. If there is any alloy in the
sense of truth which moves me to speak of him as I
have done, it comes from the fact that he has, more
than once, as I have been told, allowed the kindness of
his heart and the warmth of his friendship to carry
him away and alluded in his pulpit to his old friend,
the pastor of this church, in such terms as have been, I
confess, not without weight among the reasons moving
me to decline his repeated and most urgent invitations
to visit him and preach for him in Chicago. I own to
the weakness of not caring that his people should find
out, as they surely would if I went there, how far
beyond the truth their minister had been carried in the
ardor of his personal regard. Let me confess to you,
dear friends, between ourselves, that I am not without
a feeling of satisfaction in having this opportunity of
speaking of him in a way that necessarily squares a
private account of mine with him.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Robert Collyer and his church: a discourse delivered at the First Congregational Unitarian Church in Philadelphia November 12, 1871
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Furness, W.H.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Collation: 20 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Text taken from Lukje Vii. 4 "He is worthy for whom thou shouldest do this".
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
King & Baird, printers
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1871]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5367
Subject
The topic of the resource
Unitarianism
Sermons
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Robert Collyer and his church: a discourse delivered at the First Congregational Unitarian Church in Philadelphia November 12, 1871), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Robert Collyer
Sermons
Unitarianism
United States-Religion
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/88d032db333efcd79d4697f29729d7d5.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=e-Lsl%7ENiAOda%7E%7ETGEQGJvh82yfxozCIwUo%7ElyJdrOzvXA2asCFlsUjKaJZpkn5Mi53UO2o2Pjt9jtPIyjg00cwFE8cneahQbaXfQPXdD%7E8ViXs8uXI-IKFYoZiWfQinh3uLpsL4P1UqDzzVyZpiz5Ht6dfeliGdZBeN7RbWADc-bq6yr0pe3P6s9eDiZBwOYIllmpRBmvkC%7EdvxTSlhMnS1E313mst2Se0VPwQzWEtzH1HnWHqsh0YxkMky2O7N06RGDMeOixItqjO3tGlGk5YV7zEnFxM0w6EQdyuZZOwj%7ENkLCNEboKViKMlGTUCRErkumP-NNEXx51xXQVvfV%7EQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
df5aba88fc549cf1b5def8a739235154
PDF Text
Text
THE< RESURRECTION.
\
"4'’^
Jr (Sasier
. ,..
-«»
gtonxmg Snmwn;
AT THE
>
FREE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, CROYDON,
LONDON.
•-* '
*' v *
t.
•
'
.
’ \
BY THE
REV. ROBERT RODOLPH SUFFIELD.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
��THE RESURRECTION.
Did the Evangelists believe in the bodily resurrection
of Jesus ?
Undoubtedly. But they did not connect it,with
the immortality of the soul or with the conscious
ness of the soul after death; for they attribute to Jesus
the words to the dying thief, “ This day thou shalt be
with me in Paradise,” i.e., on Friday evening, on the day
of my death; and no one supposes the body of the
thief to have shared in the miraculous resurrection at
tributed to the body of Jesus. But as a miracle, un
doubtedly the first disciples believed it.
Did the Evangelists attach special importance to that
miracle 1
Obviously not: their transparent sincerity, their en
tire truthfulness surpassed even their credulity.
We have every reason for concluding the existing
Gospels to be compilations founded upon earlier records
which have perished. Biographies of uncertain author
ship, translated by unknown persons in a disputable
period—biographies not asserting either authorship, or
infallibility, or inspiration, handed down to us through
many varying MSS., cannot be allowed to settle ques
tions of fact, however precious they may justly be to us
as the earliest records of the origin of Christianity.
The very circumstances which exalt the truthful inten
tions of the authors, serve to weaken belief in the in
cidents recorded. The Evangelists agree in certain
general statements, though differing in important de
�4
The Resurrection.
tails j they agree in recording that the body of Jesus
was buried as soon as ever it had been taken down
from the Cross; that the body was privately interred
in a new grave erected in the secluded garden of a
friend ; that “before the break of day the body had dis
appeared ; that no one had witnessed the mode of its
disappearance, or could testify to anything but the fact
that, whereas the body had been laid in the cave serv- '
ing as a tomb, after a few hours it had disappeared,
nothing remaining excepting the winding sheets, folded
and placed on one side; Jesus was seen afterwards,
walking about the garden.
If the Disciples had anticipated the resurrection, and
attached importance to it, they would have taken some
means to secure knowledge of so interesting a prodigy,
whereas none of his apostles see the body of Jesus
buried, or appear at all at the tomb till it is empty.
Joseph of Arimathsea, Nicodemus, Mary Magdalene,
and Mary the mother of Joses, are alone cognisant of
any of the details as to his burial—alone present;
indeed, the gospel limits to the two women the behold
ing where the body of Jesus was laid. His mother
does not appear—only one female relative and one
female friend. But the gospel tells us that even they
left the tomb ; and from Friday evening until Sunday
morning no disciple is described as approaching the
grave. This was not the result of want of affection,
but in consequence of the strictness of the Judaic law
as to the Sabbath. The Paschal solemnities lasted
through an octave. On Thursday this octave had
commenced ; and, according to the first three Evan
gelists, Jesus celebrated the Paschal supper with his
disciples on Thursday evening, imitating the example
of all households. The author of the fourth gospel
contradicts their statements. He wrote many years
after, when a complicated theology had commenced,
and Jewish credulity wished to imagine that Jesus had
died on the day of the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb:
�The Resurrection.--
5
therefore he drops entirely all allusion to the last
supper, which has been called in later times the insti
tution of the Eucharist. The beauty and spirituality of
what is called John’s Gospel must not make us forget
that its lateness of date excuses its insuperable varia
tions as to facts ; and we must prefer the statement
of three books to that of one.
Thus Jesus followed the national custom and cele
brated the Paschal Supper on the usual evening with
his friends, using wine, according to the Rabbinical
practice; on Friday he was put to death—his burial
was hastened because the Saturday being the Sabbath
Day, the Jews, who had legally murdered Jesus, could
not be guilty of the greater crime of touching a dead
body on the Sabbath, and the Sabbath falling within
the octave of the passover was a great Sabbath. His
friends and relations dared not, therefore, offend the
popular prejudice or violate the sabbatical law by
walking on the Sabbath Day • and what would have
been worse, walking to visit a grave. But at the
earliest convenient hour after the close of the great
Sabbath • three women according to one Evangelist,
two according to another, Mary Magdalene alone ac
cording to another, went to visit the grave. The
Evangelists again disagree as to the details, whether two
angels or one appeared—whether the angelic vision
was within the tomb or outside ; whether the stone
was rolled away in presence of the women, or found
rolled away. But amidst these discrepancies, the
narratives agree in showing that no one whatsoever saw,
or professed to have seen, Jesus rise from the tomb.
If the disciples had anticipated the resurrection,
they would naturally have watched night and day
awaiting such a miracle; whereas the two women
came expecting to find the corpse of Jesus, and brought
sweet spices to anoint it, and their only anxiety was
how, on their arrival, they should open the stone gate
of the vault.
�6
The Resurrection.
So little importance had the Apostles attached to
certain figurative words attributed to Jesus, and sup
posed afterwards to have been prophetical of his
resurrection—that when the women go and tell them
that they met Jesus in the garden—that the tomb was
empty—they accuse the women of telling idle tales.
Peter hastening to the tomb, and finding it empty,
is at once satisfied. John follows and also sees the
sepulchre empty, and “he saw and he believed,”—
namely, he saw an empty grave and the winding sheet
lying folded up there. They saw nothing else—they
did not even see the angel or angels, but what they did
see they believed. Afterwards they and others are
described as having seen Jesus, and spoken and eaten
with him. The Evangelist tells us distinctly what
was the common opinion of the inhabitants up to the
time he wrote, viz., that the statement of the soldiers
was true, “ rhe disciples came by night and stole
away the body while we slept.”
Another rumour also existed, the origin of which we
recognise in the surprise of Pilate when Joseph of
Arimathsea asked for the body of Jesus; Pilate
“marvelled if he were already dead,” and sent and
asked the centurion whether he were really dead;
whereupon the governor, on his sole and friendly
testimony, permitted the Arimathaean to take the body.
A rumour spread that Jesus had not quite died on the
cross, but revived under the care of his mother, and
lingered on for some days amongst her friends, and
then sunk beneath his wounds and sufferings.
To meet that rumour, the author of the last Gospel
states that a soldier wounded the side of Jesus with
his lance, causing blood and water to flow, which the
writer unscientifically supposes to afford certain proof
of his death.
Generally when a criminal was crucified, the body
was fastened with ropes to the cross and allowed to
remain for weeks suspended till death ensued as the
�The Resurrection.
7
result of starvation and exposure. The Evangelists
tell us that an additional suffering was inflicted on
Jesus in the piercing his hands. The mental and
bodily torture thus endured by Jesus might be sup
posed likely to cause him at length to swoon away and
become insensible j but hanging thus on the cross for
a few hours would not in itself cause his death, al
though we know that sometimes men of fine organiza
tion and acute sensibility die under some sudden shock
of pain, of fear, or of grief.
As time advanced, belief in the bodily resurrection
of Jesus intensified, amongst Christians, though the
event obtained no credence amongst Jews, Romans, or
Greeks. But after all, the first witnesses can be alone
taken as the establishes of the fact. Some will deem
the evidence sufficient, and will feel a pleasure in
considering that an exceptional portent happened to
one so holy in his character, so exceptional in his
influence.
I appreciate and respect such a feeling, but I do not
share it. To my own mind, a strange portent needing,
to be worth anything, a juridical proof, would rather
confuse my mind, and cause me less to advert to the
simple human grandeur of the moral and spiritual
character of Jesus, as surrounded with myths it floats
down to us amidst the traditions, the love, and the
reverence of millions. If Jesus had not been what he
was, his resurrection would not have made him any
thing. There are many who believe that, as recorded
in 2 Kings xiii., a man was raised from the grave—
but no one reveres or loves him on that account.
We feel an interest in Lazarus because he and his
sisters were loved by Jesus, but those who only believe
in the moral resurrection of Lazarus, and think that
rumour materialised that into a miracle, would gain no
higher thought if they were induced to believe the
portent.
The Evangelist tells us that a great many persons
�8
The Resurrection.
were raised from the dead at the time of the death of
Jesus, and appeared to many in the streets of Jeru
salem. Those persons have never obtained from any
one either love or reverence, but only wonder what
became of them, and why they said nothing about the
death land they had left. The prodigies attributed to
the death of Moses and of Elias, only excite wonder in
the minds of those who believe them; and other
people recognise the resemblance existing between the
legendary mythology and hero worship of all nations
and of all religions. Cultured and reverent minds do
not despise or ridicule the portents which may seem
merely legendary, so long as they are interwoven with
great ideas, and represent in a material form some
lofty thought, some sublime virtue, some external
verity; they only direct attention to the fallacy of a
legend when it is being perverted to mischief.
Has the resurrection of the body of Jesus any
connection whatever with the doctrine of the im
mortality of the soul ? None. Lazarus might have
been miraculously restored to life, and then died and
come to naught, and the same as to Jesus.
Moreover, when Jesus thought he was dying and
said, “ This day thou shalt be with me in paradise,” he
testified his belief in the existence of the soul separate
from the earthly body. His coming from that future
abode to take up his body again would prove nothing,
especially as no word is attributed to him regarding
that state which he is supposed to have left.
If it were necessary for the action of the soul of
Jesus that he should resume his body, and if the
same necessity lies upon us ; Where are souls now 1
unconscious in the graves, or in non-consciousness
where ? and if Jesus thought that, how could he say
“ This day, &c.” If Paul thought that, how could he
say that he longed to depart that he might be with
Jesus.
If the author of the Revelations thought that, how
�The Resurrection.
9
could lie describe the white robed band of saints in
the spirit world.
Undoubtedly Paul attached great importance to the
dogma of the bodily resurrection ; and the unfortunate
adoption of the 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians into
the Church of England burial service has accustomed
thoughtless people, f.e., most people, to connect some
how the resurrection of the body with the immortality
of the soul. So sadly has that error possessed minds,
that we often meet with persons who have privately
come to doubt the immortality of the soul, because
they have doubted the resurrection of the body. Such
persons will quote, almost hopelessly, the words of
Paul, 11 If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching
vain, and your faith is also vain.” Your faith in
what ? In the immortality of the soul 1 No !—in the
speedy approach of the glorified reign of the Messiah
over the elect; i.e., faith in an event then universally
looked for by Christians, but which time has proved
erroneous. Before that generation had passed away
the world was to have been devastated with fire, the
Messiah to have come on the clouds of heaven to
gather and protect his chosen people ; i.e., those living
awaiting him and practising righteousness, and those
who had, to the surprise of the other Christians, died.
The death of any of the disciples amazed and dis
couraged all ; it seemed as if the Christian hope
of speedy redemption was failing. The fears of the
living were calmed by telling them that those who had
recently died should be restored to life, (just as Jesus
had been), and be numbered with the rest of the elect,
sharing with them the reign and triumph of the
Messiah. That hope enabled them to bear with pati
ence the miseries and insults to which they were
exposed.
The sublime spiritual teaching of Jesus had already
got lowered, Judaised, carnalised, materialised. His
simple-hearted disciples could not rise up to the
�IO
The Resurrection.
grandeur of his ideal. Their more sophistical suc
cessors adopted all their half-errors, and perpetuated
such by forming them into a theology, and gradually
petrifying it into creeds and formularies. It was
impossible for the Messiah and his saints to reign on
the earth, and to restore an Israel enlarged and
spiritualised, unless they possessed their bodies. ihe
saints who had died without witnessing the accom
plishment of the expectation which was to be realised
ere that generation had passed away must be placed on
an equality with the saints still in the flesh, and,
recovering their bodies, be caught up in the air to
meet the Lord at his second advent.
.
All that Pauline doctrine had nothing to do with
Christianity ; it was simply the Rabbinical fancy intro
duced and cultured for 150 years B.o. During that
period had arisen these ideas as to a Messiah, as also
the dogma of a bodily resurrection. Amidst those
dogmas Jesus had been reared—probably amongst the
ascetics of the Essenes ; possibly he accepted them ;
more probably he spiritualised them. The more we
advance in a critical study of the Gospels, the more are
we enabled to feel out our way, and to apprehend
what Jesus really said and really meant ; and the
further we advance in that reverent and cautious
criticism, the more do we discover the grandeur ot
his ideal.
,
The solemnity of to-day has borrowed and has ma
terialized that which was the. very essence of his
teaching—of a teaching so sublime, and yet so simp e,
we cannot surpass it, and yet it seems that every one
ought to have thought it. Turn from Jewish legends
about triumphant Messiahs—turn from Pauline and
Roman and Anglican legends about resurrections ot the
flesh, and let us contemplate e’er we part that resurrec
tion of the spirit which formed the essence ot the
teaching of Jesus. I speak not of the immortality ot
the soul—Jesus believed it but he did not expound 1,
�The Resurrection.
11
he added nothing to our knowledge or ideas concerning
it ; if he spoke of Hell, it was only in words like those
already used by Plato and by Rabbis ; if he spoke of
Heaven, it was only in the language of Ecclesiasticus
and Zoroaster, chastened by his love of humanity, but
he had his speciality, he had his revelation—to Jesus
the egotistic, self-seeking life was death—the earnest
loving thought and action was, life, the passing from
one to the other, resurrection. That was the essence of
his teaching, “ I am the Resurrection and the Life.”
Receive my great idea, and pass upwards from the
egotism of self, from the valley of the shadow of death,
into the light and the beauty of life, into the sweet
service of humanity. Arise from the grave of the past,
and walk in the light of great ideas, let the dead past
bury its dead, arise and live a life pure, noble, refined,
and gentle. It is only such as those, who live for ever,
borne upwards by the spirit of God. Thus the great
Master, only lowered when they surround him with
fables, stands in tears of charity by the grave of the
heart corrupt stinking amidst the rottenness of the
passions, and to the soul dead in egotism he says “Come
forth,” receive the inspiration of a noble desire : in the
name of God and of humanity arise and live. May that
thought, may that word, be to you and to me, my
brethren, a resurrection and a life—he who believeth
that word can never die.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The resurrection: an Easter morning sermon at the Free Christian Church, Croydon, London
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Suffield, Robert Rodolph
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 43 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Date of publication from KVK.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1873]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5490
Subject
The topic of the resource
Sermons
Jesus Christ
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The resurrection: an Easter morning sermon at the Free Christian Church, Croydon, London), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Jesus Christ- Resurrection
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/4476e79cd2ad9575744c7aa1bebca2b7.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=WCK5UPKN9GRU%7E%7EszY3g3e8JRFyglEzUkFGzwh-GAIXsjnC-qMID651PcAim4c2%7EKgSuSLmUo0cV4H8hk6tGOpc5ZnHIfosE6zQeXXShE0kHoPl14VrhVPpRlbzjIz%7El2FePcWM5EBkgpMZoW6MHLaVA6VagCRA6hSKZ59Gl-oyBTxx2MfNF0KAQmgmb76zBqfChsS3oM74k7YTXd1VNM3ktMD0nPp57UMUHLv4YWl5RP-mKr2x63Otkqjg8ue3XohSuRxaOMCMiAvm5ESDlEU6yly79MfQkHj8dj8UdB6XsW7D8DAYgf4DeHHQNYZVEkDwWVZa2V10SiE7S--5riFA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
5c232b391f2e87299c0682707ed10dc1
PDF Text
Text
ANNIVERSARY SUNDAY.
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
OCTOBER 5th, 1873, by the
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
[From the Eastern Post, October Wth, 1873.]
On Sunday (October 5 th) at St. George’s Hall, Langham-place,
the Rev. C. Voysey took his text from Nehemiah ii., 20, “ The
God of Heaven, he will prosper us; therefore we, his servants,
will arise and build.”
He said—Readers of the Bible must be familiar with the
interesting book from which my text is taken, which tells the
simple story of the re-building of the walls of Jerusalem after it
had been almost destroyed by the Babylonian armies. The hero
of this great event seems to have been singularly well fitted for his
patriotic work ; for he had three great gifts. He had rare tact,
very high moral principle, and what we might call a desperate
determination. With the first he conciliated the conquerors of his
nation; with the second he kept in order and elevated the half
trained fellow-countrymen on whose exertions he depended; and
with the third he fought hi# way over every obstacle and finished
the work which God had given him to do.
But although these great gifts were natural endowments and
might, have rendered their possessor eminently successful in any under
taking, I believe they were heightened and enlarged by his equally
remarkable faith. Though a captive in the Court of Artaxerxes, to
whom he was cup-bearer, he could not forget the God of his fathers;
while he was surrounded by the luxuries of a King’s palace, he
still remembered with shame and sorrow the daughter of Zion clad
in sackcloth and sitting in ashes. As long as Jerusalem lay in
ruins, there was no joy for him. As long as his countrymen were
captives in a foreign land, there could be no charm for him in
courtly dignity. Identifying Jerusalem with the honour of his God^
�knd regarding its temple as the witness of the Divine presence and
rule, it was a matter of religion with him to seek its restoration, and
to rebuild its ruined walls. Strong in mind and will though he was,
he was not ashamed to lay his cause at the footstool of the most
High, he scrupled not to pray for heavenly strength, for divine
wisdom and for the success of his undertaking, but went as a little
child to his Father’s knee, and besought His blessing and help :—
“ O Lord, I beseech thee, let now thine ear be attentive to the
prayer of thy servant, and to the prayer of thy servants, who desire
to fear thy name, and prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day.”
Having sought God’s blessing and favour upon his work, he
roused the enthusiasm of the Jews who still dwelt in the ruined
city, and they said, “ Let us rise up and build.” “ So they
strengthened their hands for this good work.” Nehemiah then
goes on to describe his first encounter with opposition and how he
met it. “ When Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah, the servant,
the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian, heard it, they laughed
us to scorn, and despised us, and said What is this thing that ye
do? Will ye rebel against the King? Then answered I and
said unto to them, ‘The God of heaven, he will prosper us, there
fore, we his servants will arise and build.’” We will not pursue
the narrative further into details. It is enough to see how this
brave and strong-minded man, who was the burning sun of
enthusiasm to the hundreds of colder spirits around him, drew
all his courage, and zeal, and hope, from his conscious dependence
upon God, from his intense desire to do His will, and above all,
from the aasurance that “God’s thoughts towards him were
thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give him an expected end.”
I cannot help feeling that this same spirit of dependence on God
is the secret of whatever courage and determination have been
manifested by those who are working in this age to build again the
walls of a mined Faith, and to combat the opponents on all sides
who would have us rather remain in the shackles of a spiritual
slavery or in the lonely wilderness of infidelity.
The gift of tact, which implies a quick discernment of other
men’s moods and wants, and a ready and versatile adaptation of our
conduct and speech in order to win rather than to repel the un
settled inquirer, is no doubt a most needful auxiliary to such work
�3
as ours. But tact is not everything; and this age shows, I think, a
tendency to exalt this happy facility into a virtue, and to prefer
its exercise to that of .the less polished but more serviceable weapon
of plain speech.
The high principle which was so conspicuous in Nehemiah is
the very alpha and omega of success in work like ours. Absolutely,
and before all things else, it is necessary to maintain an
unimpeachable honesty of word or deed, if we would hope to do
the slightest good in the way of emancipating the minds of others.
But this weapon of our warfare is wielded also by many of our
adversaries. Let us say it thankfully, we are well-matched in this
matter of integrity, and the battle would have to be drawn, if the
truer views were to be decided by the greater virtue. As yet,
the struggle cannot be finished on such terms alone, and our
enthusiasm would perish if it were not fed from other streams.
• Of all three, perhaps, a desperate determination is the most
powerful human aid to success in such an enterprise as ours.
Force of will we know can emove mountains, can defy and
dethrone the most ancient of dynasties, «an uproot the most wide
spread of traditions. All the great deeds for good or for evil have
been done by determination, by individual energy of purpose;
men once committed to a cause, holy or unholy, are rendered, by
their self-consecration, dangerous to those things which they oppose.
Half-hearted, luke-warm people are good for nothing but impedi
ment ; never succeed in anything but in getting in the way of the
earnest, and causing an obstruction.
The Nehemiahs of the world are none of these. To have simple
aims like his, to let neither himself nor friend, nor foe, ever come
between h’m and his duty; to win and defy by turns ; to slay
opponents who will take no other warning, and to rebuke and
chastise unfaithful or sleepy allies; to make every event, calculated
or unforeseen, further the sacred end in view; to live in the hottest
toil of the work, yet all a-glow with delight in it; and to be ready
to suffer and die for it when necessary, quite as willingly as to live
and to fight for it; this is to have power—power not easily defeated
not soon exhausted—power that grows by exercise and gathers
force, like the descending avalanche, from the irresistible attraction
which it exercises over surrounding souls.
�4
But not even this, mighty as it is, can always conquer. Some
times “ the weak things of the world confound the things that are
mighty, and things that are not will bring to naught things that
are.” All depends ultimately on the cause itself and not on the
brave men who fight for it. It must be a cause of light, or right,
or truth, or it will surely fail. It must be for the ultimate good
of mankind, or it will surely come to naught. In the language of
religion it must be the cause of God, and not merely a caprice of
man. If this thing be of man, i.e., of man’s ignorance or selfish
ness, it will surely come to naught; but if it be of God, i.e.,
accoding to His most holy and loving will; then who can overthrow
it 1 Nay, who would be so mad as to fight against God 1
Unman gifts, however well-fitted, then, will not by themselves
always accomplish the work on which they are expended. And
those who are wise enough to perceive this fact will not rush hastily
or wildly into any great undertaking relying solely on their own
powers and qualifications; but they will turn it about first in their
own minds to see whether it be a cause likely to benefit mankind
the increase of knowledge, of virtue, or of general happiness;
to discover through these enquiries whether the great will of
Heaven is for them or against them; whether, in the language of
Nehemiah, God will prosper the work of their hands. I feel sure
that it was with this manly deference to God’s Holy Will, and
reliance on His blessing, that we began our united work in this
place two years ago. Not one of ns would have put our hands to
it, had we thought it was against God’s will or to the detriment of
man. Not one of us would have had the heart to begin, as we
did, under such discouragements without the assurance that God
approved our undertaking, and would cause it to prosper. I
honestly say that I don’t know what would have become of me,
under the peculiar pressure of obligations upon most feeble powers,
but for this constant and refreshing comfort of believing that eur
work was a little portion of God’s wosk, and that He would make
good to me those words of peace, “ As thy day, so shall thy
strength be.”
As a society, necessarily compelled to raise funds, we have had
our dark days and gloomy anticipations —not that any one of us
feared for a moment that the cause of pure Theism even in this
�5
city, not to say in the wide world, depended upon the success of
this particular and comparatively insignificant movement—but we
naturally contemplated, with no little sorrow, the possibility of
our share in the great work passing away from us after all we had
gone through to maintain it. In such hours of anxiety, and they
are real though few, we know the blessedness of referring it all
back to God’s blessed will, and of knowing that it must prosper if
it be in harmony with the eternal laws; and if it be in discord with
them, well, the sooner it perish the better. Faith, then gives
fresh courage and determination, as well as keeps the mind in its
original integrity bent not on self-will, but supremely and entirely
given to the will of God.
And observe how entirely different this is from that spirit of
dogmatism which is merely faith in our own opinions. Of course
we must first believe that a thing is true before we can proclaim
it; and we must be persuaded of its essential value to mankind
before we can incur any suffering or odium as a penalty for its
proclamation. But we can feel' this perfect confidence in the
rectitude and value of our opinions, and yet consciously put God’s
will and wisdom above them all; and at the very bottom of our
hearts only wish to serve Him faithfully and to declare His truth,
whatever it be.
Skill, self-reliance, courage and determination are all to be
elevated by the inspiration of faith, and to be refreshed and
re-invigorated by it when wearied and discouraged.
Some, however, may say, How can you be sure that you are
right? In one sense we are not sure, i.e., we are not so arrogant as to
be sure that God has imparted all His truth to us, and to us only;
neither would we dare to say that even if God prospers our work
therefore, the work of other men is wrong and against His will.
But while we are thus decently modest, and confess further the
impossibility of proving that we are right, we feel very very sure
that we are right; so far from holding these opinions for gain, we
are in many cases going against all the predilections of the past,
aud flying in the face of an army of hostile and cruel prejudices.
Our convictions have been forced upon us. The soil of our minds
has been under the tillage of a husbandman mightier than ourselves.
Its rank foliage has been eleared and burnt, the roots of early
�6
culture have been dug up and the sweetly seasoned ground has
been sown with seeds of holy and life-giving fruit—not of our
choosing. The field with its golden harvest is our own, not so the
labour to which we owe its wealth. But once planted with this
precious seed, we cannot reap an alien grain; nor sow again the
tares which the great husbandman has burnt. Whatever grain we
have to give it must be our own or none; we will not lend a borrowed
word; or steal a neighbour’s thought, and say, “ The Lord hath
spoken it.” We speak only that that we do know or firmly believe,
and our surety is not of ourselves; it is the gift of God. Less than
this assurance will not work. Less than this degree of confidence
that we are right would disqualify us for the duties we have assumed.
For any one to speak of God as an hypothesis or probable theory may
be justifiable in itself; but it becomes absolutely misplaced on the
lips of any professed advocate of religion ; the rostrum of a place of
worship is not the suitable place from which to express grave
doubts as to the Being and character of God. Such doubts may,
of course, arise, and Ought not to be suppressed; nothing honest
ought to labour under disabilities of any kind ; but the office of a
religious teacher on religious subjects to an audience whose prayers
and praises to God are just silenced, demands some degree of
certainty and conviction as the raison d’etre of the function. But
there are two ways of doing everything ; and it is quite possible
to avoid dogmatic or dictatorial language while expressing to the
full one’s own earnest convictions.
It is my fervent hope that the truly religious spirit in which
this work of ours was begun may never cease to animate it; if
we are bearing witness in a world darkened by superstition, and
likely to be still more darkened by Atheism, bearing witness of
the love and friendliness of a perfect God, it becomes us both
individually and collectively to live and walk by that faith which
we profess, not to be ashamed of the core and kernel of those
principles which we all hold so dear, and for which so many are
suffering. We stand mid-way between those who have made the
very name of religion a by vord and a reproach by their fables and
dogmas, and those whose aversion to all religion is, therefore,
insurmounta’ le. We must neither fall into the old blunder of
dogmatism, nor timidly comply with the crude and bigoted denials
of a hasty Atheism. While God is to us the greatest reality of
our existence, let us honestly say so, in spite of the Church’s curses
on the one hand, and of the world’s ridicule on the other.
Finally, bear with me if I say a few words of more personal
reference to ourselves. To congratulate ourselves on beginning the
third year of our organization as a congregation, and to flatter one
another upon our success and oui- prospects would be an easy and
pleasant, but not very profitable occupation. To summon you and
�«W!IPW5’WW?'
.»-,•^4'vW^/i Aj’X/ 5 ■7<V
*^>.
T
all other friends to some heroic action which should excite the
public admiration—always ready enough to fall before the feet of
success—would be to go against the very roots of my nature, and
to wither up the beauty of an action only beautiful when spon
taneous. There are plenty of people agreeing with us who are
able to contribute £10,000 a piece, if the time were come for it.
But I have better things to say than that such a thing had been
done ; better thoughts of congratulation than any degree of personal
success.
We have lived and worshipped together long enough to prove
what is infinitely more cheering than our own permanence and
establishment. We have lived to learn that that pure Theism—that
pure natural religion which is so dear to our hearts—that Faith
which is the life of our souls, and the inspirer of our hope and
enthusiasm, is perfectly safe now from extinction and oblivion. I can
honestly say now that I don t care—speakingas your chosen minister
_ I don’t care now whether the Voysey Establishment Fund sinks
or swims. I do not, except as it would involve the inconvenience
of seeking a new source of maintenance, care one straw whether we
continue to prosper or not. Myself, aye, a hundred more like me,
■might go to the wall and be trodden down, as far greater men have
been ere now, by the tramp of adverse circumstances; but it is too
late to affect the growth and progress of that religion which was
safely planted in men’s hearts before I was born, and had been
loudly proclaimed in this generation—yes, by some under this
very roof, when I was but a boy. The little circle of workers
with which we are identified as a congregation and society, thank
God, is but a drop in a vast ocean of kindred souls. For every
one of us, there are a hundred thousand known, and myriads
unknown* who are on our side and against the falsehoods and
follies of Christianity. •
It is no figure of speech when I say that all over the world are
bn man beings to whom we telegraph, as it were, our loving thoughts
about God; our words fly hither and thither; are read in remotest
regions, far and near ; and wherever they go they do more, far
more, than convert—they awake the echoes of grateful and believing
hearts who have their own joyous tale to tell of God’s loving kind
ness, and of their birth into life. Nor is it only in distant lands,
but more strange still, in churches and sects most foreign to our
si m pip. creed; on one hand the Bomanist and members of all the
Orthodox churches and sects, and on the other, the Unitarian, are
leaving the territory of tradition, and opening their eyes to see ■
not what this, that, or the other man can shew them—but what
God Himself has to show them. Notmerely the Christian but the
Hindoo also is coming under the same leaven and heaving afresh
his quivering breast, always so sensitive to the Divine afflatus. Is
�I
hot tke same spirit stirring also the Jew—the Jew whose ancestor,
amid perils and difficulties a thousand times greater than our own,
looked in the face of God and left incomparable record of their
bliss 1 The Jew is fettered a little still, but the chains chafe his
limbs, and he, too, is pressing on “ into the glorious liberty of the
children of God.”
When I think of what was the state of things more than twenty one
years ago, when I began my clerical life, and glance at the successive
periods of eleven, five, three, and now two years, and contrast the
world’s state, and its rate of progress, to-day with what these were
when I first knew it, I am so abounding in hope and certainty as to the
ultimate conquest of the Church’s Creeds by Theism, that I could
lay down my life to-day, not murmuring that I had seen so little,
but thankful to overflowing that I had seen so much, of God’s
glorious work with the souls of men.
Once more, I say, if your hearts, like mine, are set upon this
noble work, you will surely do as much as you can, and work as
long as you can to help forward the little share which has been
entrusted to us; but for Heaven’s sake do not be afraid of the
consequences, were all of us to be swept into oblivion to-morrow.
Pure and natural religion has struck its roots into the hearts of
men, so that no rude axes can hew it down, nor fiercest storms can
root it up.
Young as I am, and dearly as I love life and its exquisit e
pleasures, one thought have I this day in looking back upon the
past. If God were to call me home or drive me by some mischance
into the wilderness once more; I should still say with old Simeon
in the temple, “ Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,
for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared
before the face of all people. A Light to lighten the Gentiles and
to be the glory of thy people Israel.”
EASTERN
Post
steam Printing Works, 89 Worship Street, Finsbury E.C,
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Anniversary Sunday: a sermon, preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, October 6th 1873
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Voysey, Charles [1828-1912.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Evening Post
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1873]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G4829
Subject
The topic of the resource
Sermons
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Anniversary Sunday: a sermon, preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, October 6th 1873), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Morris Tracts
Religion
Sermons
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/6986f5f5e5bd26c78aa13ba0b35faae6.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=ixq-DgyZxoRxqCIQsQVkX7qM2ESmwn2OqitQwHi4UqkjxPbUtS5trcqfKrW4ZKuk2NbB-16cdxcTgF97AwSlQu3SMbHFzGtwQHr3Vrjr1Y4U0u6Bi7A4-IjR5-NuidV6yxksFWDpCey6bN48ZWMMTiCMEm5dMa-zYzrKITBtewkKtaw2qI4BzbuwPrkQj8sIabeQDdQrVDOVxpmR%7E47-ttkRAsMu3irfS4VyzbolycMKDV01841xuudQ0H%7EK2HHyxJbRNIXqPRQqsfbYfOTfyRivUs-AnZ9FDofvvn0fuRKY-Js6AWRjP8DhxMEGB7euh%7E4Q1LqaNmZtczpeOP%7EOSA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
8058501fc74cf62702d00cfca2e7af55
PDF Text
Text
“ Wit
f urbibme
of
(to.”
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
JANUARY 11TH, 1873, BY
the
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
[From the Eastern Post, January Ylth, 1874.]
On Sunday (January 11,) at St. George’s Hall, the Rev. C.
Voysey took his text from Acts xv., 18, “ Known unto God are
all his works, from the beginning of the world.”
He sai(i—I wish to set you thinking upon a subject that has
occupied my own mind a great deal, but upon which I find it
very difficult to come to a conclusion.. It is the Providence of
God. The question is often put, “Do you believe in Providence?”
when more correctly it should be asked, “ Do you believe in a
special and peculiar Providence watching over yourself different to
the general and universal order of Nature ?” To the question put
in this form, I confess myself ready to give a prompt denial. I
in no way believe myself, or any other person, to be a favourite
of Heaven, or the object of God’s peculiar care.
It is much more congenial to think and speak in the spirit of
those words of Jesus, “Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without
the will of our Father.” One of the most striking changes we
have witnessed in this age is the abandonment of those views
which flatter individual vanity—of that mode’of thought which
cherishes personal conceit in dwelling upon our relation to God.
We no longer take any pleasure in the thought that God’s loving
kindness is our peculiar inheritance; we should be loth to accept,
even at the Divine hands, gifts and privileges which all our
brethren might not share.
It would make us miserable to believe that God loved us more
than others, or was preparing for us mansions in the sky from
■which any of our fellow-men were to be shut out. It has.become
�2
a cardinal assumption with us that it must be all or cone. That
whatever the favour of God may consist in, and whatever be the
happiness of Heaven hereafter, they belong by right to all mankind
or to none. If thedifferencesin human lot, and in human culture,
on earth, present any difficulty we soon waive it out of our path
by remembering that there everyone will be made perfectly holy,
perfectly happy; and that even now these differences are no tokens
of the favour or disfavour of God, no measures of a varying love.
Just as we are assured of God’s love to ourselves whether we are.
in prosperity or adversity, in health or in sickness; so we are
assured of His love to all, whatever their lot may be. Hence we
discard entirely the notion of Special Providence, in so far as it
implies partiality or favouritism on God’s part, or any special
worthiness on our own.
But the difficulty still remains to determine what is Providence
and what is not—to settle whether every minutest event in our
lives is, as it were, ordained and regulated by a conscious
determining will, or that the events of our life are for the most
part fortiutous, or brought about by ourselves.
For some, it may be natural to say “Our lives are regulated in
great measure by our own wills and by the native qualities we
possess acted upon by the people and circumstances by which we
are surrounded. We see no need for the interposition of Providence,
things have taken their natural course, and we cannot admit the
necessity for any theory of Providence, special or otherwise.”
But forothers it is quite as natural to say, ‘‘Our lives have been
so eventful, so full of rare perils, of hair-breadth escapes; of trials
in mind body and estate so deep, and of deliverances so unexpected,
so timely, so independent of ourselves, that it looks as though an
eye of Love had been watching over us, and an unseen hand had
been leading us and supplying our wants, forestalling our griefs
and necessities. We do not say or dream that this protection has
been peculiar to ourselves, but we believe that everyone is guarded
and helped in the same way; but it has been brought home to us
in such a manner that we should be blind and ungrateful not to
acknowledge it. Moreover, we should feel the same to the end of
our days, if instead of mercies and deliverances, the cause of
�events should be reversed and bitter misfortunes be henceforward
our lot.”
This is no fancy picture, this is the real history of many and
many a happy and unhappy life. It is the history of nations as
well as of men.
For the whole Jewish people whether in
prosperity or adversity have persistently acknowledged the good
providence of God through their chequered career. Of course
they were wrong, like the Puritan Christians, and the Roman
Catholics, in claiming the divine favour exclusively for themselves,
but this narrowness has been to a great extent broken down.
The point to observe, however, is that great numbers of men and
women have been impressed with the idea tnat they were under
the care and guidance of a most loving will, and have been forced
to own it after their greatest sorrows had led them to doubt it.
The great question before us is then, are our lives over-ruled
and ordered by a divine will, or not ? If not, how can we account
for certain events too manifestly the result of forethought to be
attributed to chance 1 If there is no Providence, no will above
us which controls and arranges the course of human lot, we are
brought face to face with difficulties infinitely greater still, with
footprints on the sands of time which must have made themselves,
with marks of evident design and order which would have to be
attributed to unreflecting, unreasoning, chance.
If we attribute everything to Nature, and spell it with a capital
“ N,” admitting skill, or wisdom, or any quality of mind to be
manifest in any of its operations, we simply give up the contest;
and “Nature” so regarded becomes so far synonymous with God or
Providence. But call it what we will, we cannot deny that the
intelligent action of something underlies certain indisputable facts
of human life.
I am as far as possible from assuming the airs of a philosopher,
or wishing to tread the unfamiliar ground of metaphysics; but from
the stand-point of common-sense, I am led to believe inthe sequence
of cause and effect. We are what we are through an inconceivably
long chain of antecedents, which, if followed out far enough, would
lead us to trace our origin to the sun, or what was once the sun
when it occupied the whole space now bounded by the orbit of the
�most distant planet. I am forced to admit that this is at least true op
everything within the solar system which is visible, or which can
be apprehended by chemical, electrical and kindred science. I do
not know what my mind is or how it originated, but it must be
quite safe to say that the mind, like the bcdy, is the product of
something else, the effect of some preceding causes. We are,
therefore, entirely the results of causation, and we in turn must
affect the condition of posterity; nay, they and their entire lives
must be only and completely what they will be, in consequence of
what we are.
But of one thing I am yet doubtful. What is the extent of the
disturbing element called man’s free will? We know for certain
that there is some measure of choice allotted to each individual;
but we are equally certain that the limits within which choice can
be exercised are very narrow. A bird must have a bird’s will,
and not the will of a beast; the beast cannot have
the will of the insect or the will of the fish.
In like
manner man can only have the will belonging to his nature. That
is the first and most obvious limit to freedom of choice. And
when we come to individuals, we find the will again limited by the
personal characteristics, the inherited tendencies, the surrounding
influencies of circumstance and association. So easy does it seem
for us to choose that we quite forget that our choice is almost
forced upon us, and that we have little left of freedom of will but
the empty name. Still if we have any freedom at all, it is enough
to become what I called a disturbing element in the course of
event?. And this is exhibited in action when we find to our
surprise someone turning out in character or in conduct the direct
opposite to what we should have expected from the ordinary rule
of nature. We do, now and then, take each other by surprise and
present striking exceptions to universal law.
The effect of these considerations has been to make me not
metely question, but entirely deny, the interference of God by
what is often called “ Providence ” in the course of human or any
other destiny.
(1.)
Because it is manifestly unnecessary.
(2.) Because it would be an admission on His part that His fore
thought had been deficient, or His materials inadequate.
�(3.) Because it would have a disastrous effect upon men’s minds
to imagine that God would so interfere; for they would claim that
interference in every difficulty instead of putting their own
shoulders to the wheel, and those who had no such favour might
reasonably accuse God of partiality, and
therefore of
injustice.
If then by “ Providence ” be understood in the least degree, a
patching up, or mending, or supplementing a defect in, any part
of the universe by an act of divine interference, then, I for one,
declare mj utter disbelief in it, as unnecessary, derogatory to our
idea of God, and injurious to mankind.
But just as we discarded the old conception of God, because we
had found and embraced one inconceivably more exalted, so we
discard the common action o± Proridence for an idea infinitely
higher. Taking as a motto, “ Known unto Him are all things
from the beginning,” we conceive of Providence as the action of
an intelligent and loving Being who, whether or not he be the
cause of the universe, is one for whom it exists, and by whom
all its issues are controlled.
Not like a great mechanician making an engine for use, nor a
giant carpenter fitting pieces of clumsy material together, nor a
builder fashioning a house, nor an artificer inventing a toy. We
.know nothing whatever of God’s relation to the visible world, and
would not venture on the folly of even speculating as to how it
was originated, or whether it was ever originated at all. But we
are guided by our intuitions, and permitted by our reason, to
attribute the course of the universe to some intelligent and
beneficent guide, who, having cognisance of all that would happen
in it, or be evolved out of it; having cognisance of, and special
regard to, the various natures of the living creatures which would
occupy it, was responsible for—not their mere pleasure—but their
welfare, their truest and most lasting good.
Is not Providence—to use a figure of speech—the fiat of such
a Being. The word once spoken, “ Let all things be very good ?”
And they are good. Is not Providence simply the eternal and
unchangeable will of Him who “ is loving unto every man, and
whose tender mercy is over all His works ?” Is it not our
�6
guarantee that nothing shall ever happen by chance, or without
the prevision of His far-seeing wisdom and love ?
When we receive tokens of a watchful Providence—such as I
alluded to just now—tokens which seem to bring God down into
our very homes and families, and remind us that ‘in Him we live
and move, and have our being,” and “ The very hairs of our head
are numbered,” which is the grander thought? That He, watching
over us like an anxious parent, was attracted by our distress, and
busied himself to find means for our deliverance, while next door
to us, perhaps, distress worse than our own was being left to
remedy itself, or work its bitter way through the aching hearts of
our neighbours; or, to think of Him as one to whom every
possible contingency that might arise in the life of every creature
in all time was well known, its effects for pain or pleasure all
carefully measured, every possible consequence provided for—only
not by calculation and skilful arrangement which are our only
conceptions of forethought—but by stamping on the whole from
the beginning the one eternal law, that “ all things should work
together for good,” that the universe should be so evolved that
nothing really evil should abide therein, and for every passing
sorrow there should be everlasting joy ?
Such a view of God's providence, however, does greater things
than these. In our childish state we were wont to look only upon
God’s deliverances as marks of His love, and our misfortunes as
due only to the course of nature. Now we take the clouds and
storm, as well as the blessed sunshine, as the gifts of His bounty;
the night not less the day bears witness of His regard. Our tears
and sorrows, and sad partings— all, all are His precious memorial**
of a loving care quite as much as the joys and pleasures and blessed
meetings which make life so glad.
In that kind of Providence, let me ever believe, then no sorrow
can overwhelm my soul, no joy or deliverance can make me forge-fc
my God.
But what, if after all, this has a tendency to a kind of fatalism
which in all ages has been found detrimental to virtue, and
paralysing to the moral powers ? Here is uncertainty again. If all
has been planned from the beginning, every event in life known and
�provided for, an unworthy soul might say ‘det thingstake their course
we will just do what we must, it is sure to come right.” There
would be dangei' in this, indeed, were it not for one element which
no theories can destroy. Still we feel our responsibility, still we
have our undying sense of duty, still we hear our brothers’ cry
for help and pity, and the heart of man as God has made i t, is
by nature neither base nor ungrateful. We shall not love God
the less for knowing His good purposes towards us ; we shall not
be less kind to one another when we know their glorious destiny ;
we shall not be less diligent in duty when we perceive that
the very ends which God has in view can on'y be accomplished
with the consent of our free will. To make earth all that is fair
and lovely, and pure, and happy, each moral denizen thereof must
first become so. To make eternal bliss in heaven, each soul must
first be made eternally holy.
There is no more miracle, no more special providenee, no more
Divine interference. We have been launched on the wide ocean
of human lot, and we must bring our bark safe to land. The
breezes may blow, now for us, now against us, and angry waves
may rise and threaten us with their foaming jaws; but over the
billows we must rise and conquer even adverse winds, keeping our
eye stedfastly on the compass at our feet, or on the stars above our
heads, bound for that haven which God has promised to the brave
and the true.
If indeed it be true that
“A Providence doth shape our ends
Rough hew them how we will.”
it only means that we have not absolute control over the small
or even the great, events of life; but it never was written to dis
courage manly independent action of an honest heart aiming only
at what is right and good. Depend upon it, until we work out
our path into holy life and liberty God will not interfere to
help us to find it, or give us one moment’s rest until it is
found.
The Providence which has made man the author of his own
destinies—every one of which destinies is to be eternally good_ will not abandon such a glorious scheme of salvation, or defraud
�8
one human being of the painful and costly honour of being his
own Saviour.
Finally, as we cannot be always in the clouds of the orizing and
controversy about fate and freewill, let us give free play to our
religious emotions, and day by day learn better to recognize the
Providence of God as it is working before us in every event of life.
If we begin by lifting grateful hearts to God for every thing we
deem a joy and a blessing, we shall soon learn to welcome with a
calm and reasonable thankfulness those events which under another
light, or fn the darkness of unbelief, we deem to be evils and
curses.
Let each one of us sing in the words of the poet,
“May £ remember that to Thee
Whate’ei I have I owe
And back in gratitude from me
May all thy bounties flow.
And though thy wisdom takes away
Shall I arraign thy will ?
No 1 let me bless thy name and say
The Lord is gracious still.”
..
■‘
j<> oho
y
-
nof'-Hcdji
.1 lb>-
EASTERN Tost Steam Printing Works, 89 Worship Street, Finsbury, E.C.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The providence of God: a sermon, preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, January 11th, 1873
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 17 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6. Printed by Eastern Post, January 17th 1874.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[Eastern Post]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1874]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G3413
Subject
The topic of the resource
God
Sermons
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The providence of God: a sermon, preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, January 11th, 1873), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
God
Morris Tracts
Press
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/dd9924c59b29c37e3c04dd2778840c29.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=sx39DVNTjBt2uIfy9pOd3qHsQC4RsK5GH4rjzztr5uMdQtEQ68I%7EAUcQ6eNapMXGNV7ctwtmPHdld-rOjyhite6LizNOqF5CC%7EvZV4wwuOKv2K59jWNyt8TY6eACXJJz8WPDhxI0CSjCaqtpdJX3D44r8VfqFLY4l5s%7EBK4ikZnT2KJP9BbXyqnQ7M0bInapTuHz8X7lff7eB0H3cZb0cJM3iJ8xluSi7YoceB9Vtfvzuj55m7uflEx7z-ZDvXNYQBCnIU-37uZMFaf7PGd9QChu7bZL0-jOnVU9oSkoacPEvJ8JSafufa9HZ3OYOyOtoLSqKF7npcy6RfLIofrZlw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
aed74863bc1cf484c1b27ea5ee2f6c71
PDF Text
Text
imple Meligion
♦
♦
A SERMON
PREACHED BY
Baboo Pro tap Chunder Mozoomdar,
(Missionary of
Etal)tno Sontaj of Jntria)
IN THE-
FREE TRADE HALL, MANCHESTER,
On Sunday Afternoon, the iith October, 1874.
M TRANSCRIPT FROM NOTES.]
MANCHESTER :
JOHNSON AND RAWSON, MARKET STREET.
JOHN HEYWOOD, DEANSGATE.
PRICE ONE PENNY.
�LESSONS.
Nanak lay on the ground, absorbed in devotion, with his
feet towards Mecca. A Moslem priest seeing him cried:
“Base infidel! how darest thou turn thy feet towards the
house of Allah ?” Nanak answered, “And thou—turn
them if thou canst towards any spot where the awful house
of God is not ?”
The height and depth of all the world is centred in
thee, Lord. I know not what thou art; thou art what
thou alone canst be.
Once upon a time the fishes of a certain river took
counsel together, and said : “ They tell us that our life and
being is from the water, but we have never seen water, and
know not what it is.” Then some among them wiser than
the rest said, “ We have learned that there dwelleth in the
sea a very wise and learned fish, who knoweth all things;
let us journey to him and ask him to show us water, or
explain to us what it is.” So several of their number set
out upon their travels, and at last came to the sea wherein
this sage fish resided. On hearing their request he an
swered them thus :
“ O ye who seek to solve the knot,
Ye live in God, yet know him not.
Ye sit upon the river’s brink,
Yet crave in vain a drop to drink.
Ye dwell beside a countless store,
7
Yet perish hungry at the door.”
I
�SERMON.
HERE is a deep and lingering sadness in the mind of
the religious man when he contemplates how men
have made things easy and important most difficult.
our usual worldly life this is painful enough, but it becomes
much more painful when we find it repeated in our reli
gious life. Religion has been made the most difficult of all
things, though nothing in the world is simpler. My object
in addressing you will be to elucidate some of its simplest
principles. The first of these is Faith in God. Faith in
God ! The words call into our remembrance how many
conflicts—how much ignorance and superstition—how much
bitterness and disagreement! Faith in God ! They call into
our remembrance how much life and light and love ! What
power, what sweetness of joy!
Strange recollections and
feelings, the most opposite and inconsistent, are called up in
the mind by that simple phrase, Faith in God. The old
religious world would still hold by its Pharisaism, and what
is worse, would ascribe to God the Pharisaism which be
longs to itself. The God of that world would not accept
the worship of the uncircumcised, would not accept the
sacrifice of love and of trust which is not consecrated by
T
In
�4
authorized ceremonies, forms, and phrases. The God of
that world would exclude more than half the human
race—would consecrate ignorance, darkness, and the do
mination of the few over the many. Yes, He would stand
up against the spirit of the age, and hurl anathemas upon
the divine utterances of Nature and Knowledge. He is only
to be found in the sanctuary or nowhere. The universe
is not His abode, He is too small for it. He is only to be
found in the Sacred Book, or nowhere. The soul and the
universe cannot teach about Him. The Moslem sage went
and rebuked Nanak, saying, “ Base Infidel! what! wouldst
thou dishonour the House of God 1” The misfortune is that
many of us are not so strong in faith, or so powerful in
mind as Nanak was, and cannot return that glorious retort
that came readily to his lips—“ Then show me the place
which is not the House of God! ” We silently, meekly,
weakly accept the Pharisaism which is placed before us,
bend before it, or rebel against it, and in rebelling against
it, rebel against our God and our own soul. Nanak saw
God in His sanctuary. He saw God sitting on the throne of
the whole universe, with the sun and moon for His altar
lights, with the canopy of the stars over His head ; but we,
we would follow our priest into the narrow precincts of our
temple, and there or nowhere should we worship Him!
No one respects Pharisaism more than I do. There is a
strictness in it without which religion is often false liberalism.
There is a fidelity in it which I admire, and which I court, but
there is also in it much I cannot and dare not accept. I dare
not accept that unnatural bondage of the intellect and con
science which theology would often impose. The greatest
mischief which Pharisaism has produced has been to render
servile the minds of those that rebelled against it. If one was
a follower of the old religion, and if one conformed to all its
dictates, it would not matter; but the misfortune is that
�5
when one rebels against it, then is one most enslaved.
The exclusive theology of the world would not recognise
God in the world of His laws, and in the world of His
nature ; therefore a scientific man, whose mind is unpreju
diced and liberal, seems forced to reject the entire notion
of a God. Because there is the one extreme of superstition
and orthodoxy, therefore he must go to the other extreme of
scepticism and unbelief. Yes, this has been the greatest
misfortune of the world. This unbelief is to my mind the
direct effect of the slavery which a narrow theology imposes,
the effect of a necessary reaction, a servile sedition.
, The two evils I deplore most in connection with exclu
sive theology are, in the first place, the evil of exclusiveness
and superstition ; in the second place the evil of false libe
rality and scepticism. The true man of science, when he
contemplates the world, traces and understands its laws—
ascends from fact to fact, from the deep bottom of the sea
to the ethereal regions of the sky, and sees that outside
and beyond the domain of intellectual investigation there is
a mystery which Science cannot solve and Reason cannot
explain—the great problem of problems—the great mystery
of mysteries—which has hung over the creation since the
day of its birth. And then within the inner world, where
the laws of mind are acting, as the laws of matter are acting
outside, the man of science beholds certain wants, cravings,
and instincts which reason cannot satisfy, which philosophy
cannot remove. If I am not mistaken, this is the conclu
sion recognised by the most advanced scientific men
of your country. I call this a faithful admission. I call
this a great truth, which has to be owned by science and
placed before the religious world. The scientific man has
done what he can do. He has discovered all that he could;
at least, he has defined the region of his discoveries. He
has solved and explained all within his own sphere, and
�6
the problems which he cannot solve he places before you
honestly and faithfully. Now it is for the man of Religion to
come forward, and, in the name of God, to try, if he is able,
to solve the mystery which science recognises but cannot
explain. Here, to my mind, begins the world of true
religion. If theology is able, let it come forward and
establish its position here. If it is not able, let it retire
to its own place in the arena of human speculation. Let
the solitary soul, seeking God and Truth, winged with In
spiration, look up towards heaven and answer the great
question that the universe asks.
Yes, there is a mystery, in the darkness of which the
world has sat and worshipped for many centuries. There
are wants which have inspired the profoundest worship and
the grandest faith of which human nature is capable—that
noblest self-sacrifice which makes up the manhood of the
world. Religion deals with that mystery. Religion deals with
those wants. Yet does the mystery always remain a mystery ?
Is there no light in God’s heaven that dispels this darkness
of the soul ? There is. Let us look at the mystery in the
face. What is it 1 Why to my mind, and I proceed upon
the admission of the scientific man, this mystery is the great
grand mystery of Life. Over the face of all things, in
heaven and earth, and the soul of man, there is a lurking,
indwelling Life which I am awe-struck to behold, and which
I cannot explain. My profound spiritual forefathers, who
sat on the ice-crowned mountains of my fatherland and
worshipped there in solitude and silence—beheld this mys
tery of Life, and bent before it and adored it. They called
this mystery the Life of Life—the Life of the Creation—the
Spirit which enters into everything, but is different from all,
which gives brightness for darkness—life for death—design
for disorder, and harmony for discord. Go down bravely
into the depths of this mystery and you shall find a Life
�7
in it, a Spirit/ a Soul. It is nothing more than that all
pervading, that throbbing, glorious Life which makes the
universe what it is—a grand, growing, living thing. It is
the Spirit, the Soul, that makes us what we all are, and
within which we live and rest. It is the ocean, within
which the whole universe floats away. It is the Presence
of God.
This great mystery, then, is a great Life, a great Presence,
which the soul recognises, reverences, and calls the supreme
Soul, the supreme Spirit, nay God ! The prophet craves
to understand it more and more, because to him it is a Life
which illumines all the mysteries of the world. It is a Spirit,
a Personality, that can satisfy the deep insatiable wants of
one’s own profoundest spirit and personality. The soul
appeals to, and is appealed to by, its kindred relations, and
in matter beholds a Spirit, and in spirit a Life, Presence,
and Personality that answers its questionings, and bids it
rest, and doubt not. The great spiritual poet finds this
Life and Spirit symbolised and embodied in his heart,
in all that is beautiful, lovely, and sublime in the world.
It furnishes him with the grandest and the most profound
inspiration of poetry of which his soul is capable. The
power of this Life surrounds the mind with that awe and utter
sense of dependence, under which the fatalist crouches down
trembling with fear. This is the All-Dispensing and super
intending power. It is this Life, which is at the bottom
of all things—of all the beauty, and of all harmony with
which the world is full. This is the presence of God. To
the philosopher it is a great mysterious Mind ; to the poet
it is a great mysterious Beauty and Love; to the supersti
tious and the fatalist it is a great mysterious all-crushing
Power; to the humble man of faith it is the fulness and
presence of the Spirit of God. But it is perceived by all.
Yes, I should not conceal from myself or from you the fact
�that, had we but the right mind, we would perceive God—
we would have the perception of His spirit within our spirit.
What is faith in God, if it is not a direct perception ? I
honour the indirect and the second-hand belief in God
which is prevalent amongst most men, but to my mind
belief in God is never perfect unless it is realised as an act
of perception. Do you take objection to that word ? What
is it that produces within my mind an impression of a deeper,
higher, and more glorious wisdom than that which I myself
possess 1 How is it that the fact of a strange wisdom and
knowledge enters into my being, if it is nowhere? Can the
darkness of ignorance create wisdom out of itself? Can that
wisdom which the mind beholds exist, without a mind which
contains it? How is it, that strange beauty comes and makes
its impression within my soul, when I myself possess it not,
and, that goodness which I am awe-struck to behold,
lightens all around me? Where does it all come from? What
is beauty without the Beautiful, and goodness without the
Good ? What is perception ? The recognition of impres
sions which outward objects make upon our minds. It is
from the impressions that we conclude the existence of the
outward objects which produce them. And exactly the same
argument holds good in relation to faith in God. If I am
faithful enough to find that a mighty encircling wisdom
strikes up within me a divine fire of knowledge and insight
that was not in my soul before—and 4. beauty and a tran
quillity in which creation is steeped, and a love which
enlivens everything, and a power which commands the
universe—(if all this happens) I immediately conclude that
there is within me and around me a Spirit which has touched
me! Not to believe in that Spirit is as impossible as not
to believe that the world exists. Faith in God is a percep
tion, the strongest of all perceptions. To God then belongs
the wisdom, the life, the beauty, the harmony, the love,
�9
power, and purity that stand out before us within and with
out. Everyone—at one time or at another—doth behold
the Spirit of God. Yes, He doth pass the door of my
house, but I know Him not. He comes and goes within
and without the soul, but the soul says it hath not seen
Him, and cries and cries again : “ Lord reveal Thyself to
me.” He doth reveal Himself, He hath revealed Him
self, will always reveal Himself to those men and women
who really seek Him, and for them faith grows perfect into
surest and profoundest knowledge.
When the spirit of God is thus recognised in the soul as
the Life and the Truth, the soul cannot but assume a peculiar
attitude, standing face to face before Him. How can we
stand before wisdom, power, love, and purity like His?
How can we stand before His spirit, as we often do, listless
and unabashed, without reverence and without life ? Ah !
when the spirit of God is recognised, the soul stands trans
formed before Him; the breath of His presence and power
calls into bloom all its powers of love and faith, all its aspi
rations after purity and salvation, and the pious soul bends
before its Lord as the tree bends down under the load of its
own fruits. This is the attitude of true and spiritual worship.
It is too painful to notice how worship, with men, often
means only forms and empty words. We cannot dis
pense with forms and with words, I know, but what are they without the natural and earnest feelings which the Father’s
presence evokes in the soul ? Alas, these vain ceremonies
and forms have, on the one hand, driven men to utter
prayerlessness; and, on the other hand, degraded them into
offering selfish appeals for material benefit. There is only one
prayer which I know, which I preach and practise, the infinite
repetition of which fills the hearts of all good men, “ Lord,
pour into my heart Thy spirit!” That is the one prayer
which man can make, infinitely, endlessly, ever growing upon
�IO
the soul; still the same great unsatisfied craving, longing
the more the more it is answered, always seeking, asking,
hungering, thirsting, praying here and hereafter, and receiv
ing through all eternity. When the wisdom of God is seen,
and the ignorance of the soul is owned; when the mercy
and love and goodness of God are beheld, and the dryness
of the soul is felt; when the power and the purity of the
Lord are understood, and the true humility of man’s heart
presents itself in all its nakedness—no other prayer arises
except this prayer: “ Lord pour Thy spirit within me.” What
wealth can be greater than the possession of the spirit of
God? What happiness is more precious than the happi
ness—the unspeakable blissfulness—which proceeds from a
consciousness of God’s love. Aye, and what treasure can
we covet more than that treasure of righteousness, the purity
of will which exists in Him in fulness ? If you are afflicted in
the world, go and tell Him your afflictions. I have nothing
to say to it; but, remember, that what you call affliction
may be happiness disguised. In this world the arrange
ments of life are so strange, that good is often thought
to be evil, and evil good. That which ought to make
us anxious and sorrowful fills us with joy, and when
we ought to laugh and rejoice we sit weeping and brood
ing in melancholy. Do not therefore stand before the
Throne of God and ask deliverance from that which you do
not understand; lest in praying for fancied prosperity, you
pray for evil and misery, but ask from Him that of which
you are sure, that which your soul ought to prize above all
things, ask from the Lord the wealth of His spirit. Let
the physical world act according to physical laws. Let rain
and sunshine, riches and poverty, health and disease, life
and death, come and go according to the laws that regulate
them. Keep those laws and break them not. But, when
you pray to God, pray for nothing except for His love, and
�the sweetness of communion, of salvation. Prayer is the way
to get them. Ask the Lord for what He alone can give. Ask
when you are bent down by the weight of your faith and
love; ask in the light and mystery of His presence; ask
Him in this attitude, in the silent language of the soul, or
in the impassioned words that spontaneously come to the
tongue, in the tears and throbs of the spirit, which the
Lord can count, but no human being can, yea, that only is
the attitude of worship—that only is the language of prayer.
It is a sad thing to find out how often we are all satisfied
merely with the husk of worship, throwing out of sight
altogether the real bread and life for which the soul is dying.
Men and women, be not deceived by mere glaring, glittering
toys of words and forms wherein the wealth of the spirit is not
to be found. It is Love that is worth having. Behold the
Love of God, who stands face to face with the depths of the
faith of your spirit. It is Wisdom that is worth having. Be
hold the infinite ocean of the Wisdom of God, who sits
enthroned on the awful splendour of all the worlds. It is
purity, righteousness, tranquillity, that is worth having.
These exist in their fulness in His spirit. Therefore, in the
presence of Him, let us bend down in the attitude which
best befits the soul, and let us ask from Him, the overflow
ing fruitfulness of that piety, which is love and wisdom, and
righteousness and peace, passing understanding !
And when there is faith in Him, and when there is true
worship, there must be true life also. True life to me is
nothing more than self-sacrifice. The word sacrifice is
much more often misunderstood than any other word in
the dictionary. Sacrifice often merely means self-abnega
tion, suffering, and death. To my mind this meaning is
sad. Sacrifice means true life, consecrated to the service
of God. Sacrifice means, on the one hand, an all-powerful
passion of the spirit; and it means, on the other hand, that
�labour, that unceasing, disinterested work which the faithful
servant of God renders unto Him and unto the world.
True love is known by its devotedness and its intensity;
and what is our love to God, if it is not an intense, devoted
love—if it is not a passion—if it is not a flame of enthusiasm
which consumes all other passions in the depths of the soul 1
That half-hearted, sentimental, unreal devotion which men
commonly call piety is very distressing. How can I be
free from the carnal passions of my own nature unless
there is a more powerful passion to hold them down, and
to turn them from evil unto good ? It is a passion only
that can check another passion; and if the foul desires
and wrong feelings of our nature are to be checked, they
can only be checked by that powerful, intense enthusiasm
of love with which God’s servant ever looks to Him.
When there is this passion of piety, it cannot fail to manifest
itself in the real acts and conduct of life. What is that love
which would not serve ? What is that passion which would
not bear evidence to itself in life ? So, therefore, the true
lover of God devotes his existence to labour, and to ser
vice, and to those deeds which are acceptable before
Him. It is often found that in loving God, and in trying
to serve Him, we are avoided by men, and even persecuted.
Those whom we are trying to serve often rise up against
us, and cruelly stab us in the heart. This is suffering
which often marks the life of the most religious men.
Ah! it is very great suffering indeed. When my love is
frustrated and trampled upon, I feel an agony which finds its
parallel nowhere. The persecution of which I speak may
take the form of physical outrage, or moral cruelty. And
thus the idea of suffering enters into that of true sacrifice.
But then if there is agony in this service of love, is there
not also a reward beyond all comparison 1 What reward
do you want for your love which you give unto God,
�*3
"xcept that you love Him and He accepts your love? If
we offer ourselves—if we suffer—that suffering is trans
formed into joy, is turned into heavenliness, when God’s
love touches it, and it proceeds from our own love. There
is a glory in the suffering of the good man which the world
often deifies. There is an internal glory in the suffering of
the faithful servant of God which more than recompenses
the amount of its pain. The price of life is a very heavy
price to pay, to us who love our lives so much ; the price
of life finds its equivalent nowhere; but what is there
in the giving away of life, when there is a deeper, more
joyful, and beautiful life to be found ? Let those men and
women who do not know that life weep, if they will,
but let them weep for themselves, and not for him who
prepareth to go to his Father’s mansions of everlasting
blessedness. To the man of service and faith, death,
terrible as it is, is a gain, because it is an earnest of
that final triumph with which love must in the end be
crowned even on earth. True sacrifice, then, is God
loving, brother-serving, self-forgetting enthusiasm; true
piety, endless uncalculating self-surrender unto God, and
to His very Own work. How can we serve Him ? How
can we frail mortal beings serve the perfect One, the God
of infinite wisdom and power? That service which we
want to give unto Him is to be given to His world. He does
not on His own account want our service, but when we
can serve His children, when we will simply and absolutely
work with Him, He counts that as the best service to
Himself. True service, therefore, is devotion to the good
of the world. And thus the pious man gives his life as
sacrifice of service for the good of the world because of
the depth of the love which he fosters for God.
Thus, true sacrifice, true worship, and true faith, these
three form, to my mind, the essential principles of religion.
�14
These are the three principles taught by the church to which
I belong. No theology have we got, all our theology is our
earnest, intense faith in the presence of the spirit of God
within us. No ceremonial, no ritual have we got, except
the grand formless ritual of love and of worship, which the
soul spontaneously offers before the Throne of Infinite
Love and Wisdom ; no other sacrifice, no other atonement
do we recognise, except that sacrifice which proceeds from
the intense enthusiasm of piety in the soul, giving evidence
of its power and truth in unchangeable devotedness, in life,
and in death. What name is capacious enough for these
principles 1 If the name Brahmo Somaj appears to you
too narrow, I will not hesitate, for a moment, to advise you
to disown and discard it. Take the spirit, and let not the
name be any stumbling block to you. Has God any name ?
No, we call Him God, because we know no other word.
What word would measure the depth, the height, and the
breadth of that Spirit, who includes in Himself all that is good,
beautiful, and true, who is in everything we know, who is
more than anything we can conceive, or can express ? What
name shall fully express and embody that grand and glorious
worship of love, which humanity in all its forms and stages
has ever offered to its Father, always until now? What
name would measure that sacred offering of self-sacrifice,
that service and labour, that fidelity and trust, that sorrow
and agony through which God’s servants have tried to do
their duty to Him and by the world ? There is one great
nameless Brotherhood over-spreading the whole world, of
which I claim to be a member, of which I call upon
you to be members.
I know no other creed, than
that there is only one Father, and here, in your pre
sence, I recognise Him to be your Father as He
is mine; I recognise Him in every sanctuary, in every
temple, in every philosophy, in every science, in every
�i5
& faith, in every nation, and in every soul. I bow down
honouring every sacrifice that is offered to Him by men
who are in the midst of error, or by those who are partially
free from error.
All over the world there is ignorance
and darkness j all over the world there is true faith and
love. He that loves darkness is enslaved by it in the
midst of night, and would not see the sun that hides its face
behind a transient cloud; he that loves light and truth
beholds sunlight behind the darkness that for a moment
seems to sit upon the face of the earth. Light always
triumphs over darkness. He that has no love in him, de
spairs before the bitterness and evil that have raged, and
still rage, around us; but he that hath true life in his soul,
beholds humanity and truth united in one bond of love
with the Father, who is infinite love. Let ours be that name
less and formless Faith, that which is the perception of
the continued Presence of the One True God; ours be
that Worship without language and without ritual, which is
more real and more beautiful than any other sentiment of
which human nature is capable, and let ours be the Sacrifice
of daily labour, and never-ending service in the cause of
humanity, which is the cause of God. And God’s Spirit
which watches in silence, and in the solitude of every
■ heart, and God’s Truth which dispenses its light, like His
sun, upon the righteous and unrighteous, and God’s Love,
that encircles and embraces the entire universe, be with
us all. May He make the future more glorious than the
past, and, in the present, give the earnest of the future.
Let our religion be simple, our faith be simple, our worship
be simple, and our service be simple, and then our prayer
to God and our sacrifice for brotherhood shall be accepted
by God now and for ever 1
A. Ireland & Co., Printers, Pall Mall, Manchester.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Simple religion: a sermon
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mozoomdar, Protap Chunder
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Manchester
Collation: 15 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Sermon delivered in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester on Sunday afternoon, 11th October 1874. Printed by A. Ireland and Co., Manchester. "A transcript from notes".
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Johnson and Rawson; John Heywood
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1874?]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5528
Subject
The topic of the resource
Sermons
Religion
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Simple religion: a sermon), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Religion
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/23a48899c20db9ab4d6edb1a3b4d68fe.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=hFAReDrneAXQs88sauF3m22T7gDgOsyBbM3J0iyYolsEJSjz8fKsnAT5NSU9v93u7HqabHGQmWr2-jvRUbvzTP%7E8kj7QOAhUqN9VoKL5pMpy%7E4FvS0pGRoEZW84Xbqlim78nD5G5VsLny8yJJGsDnOfOxJjgWA7USrOMcVaFxTErBSKZNAO2ReXeXLCIb-vysU2i1OL%7Endv59zmPOYWwaYgHFNYT1j%7E8gc-OmHKwT6OphPOVlswSuR8TuZjapT2rxSUE2JlIjl7Pf%7EA3gu9DjdAZz2K3vfQNSmebqoYrFxFbYTLFRDlKSPda9EVnlTike6LJzzbKtsBBLDJTBxggUA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
46a252cad85424d729f29996afd47c1c
PDF Text
Text
^nnibrmrg <Simbag, 1874.
I
-A- szeie^zveozlst;
PREACHED
AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM
PLACE, OCTOBER 11, 1874,
REV.
CHARLES
BY THE
VOYSEY.
The text was taken from Psalm cxxiv., 7, “ Our help
standeth in the Name of the Lord.”
He said—With these hopeful words we concluded our
three years ago. We began, as all good
and great works must begin, in the face of many obstacles and
discouragements. Beyond the earnestness and zeal of the
little band of men and women who had pledged themselves
to the work, there was not much ground for the hope of per
manence or success. The whole thing was an experiment;
the country, as it were, was unexplored, the invaders were
unfamiliar with its aspects, their weapons of attack and
Het). C. Voysey’s sermons are to be obtained at St. George’s
Hall, every Sunday morning, or from the Author (by post), Camden
Hottse^ Dulwich^ S.H Price one penny, postage a halfpenny.
�2
defence as yet untried. Among the earliest recruits were
some who did not quite know their own minds, who hardlyrecognized in these eccentric efforts the real object in view.
Some joined our forces for the mere pleasure of witnessing
assaults on orthodox belief, and were disappointed to find
that these assaults were only preliminary to the building up
of a rational faith. Others helped us in the hope of seeing
established a new church, or a new sect, with banners of new
dogma around which they might rally, and thus form a
society which would replace the social losses they had for
their heresy incurred. There were, too, those who came
armed to the teeth with their own peculiar prejudices, who
Jiad built up an adamantine barrier beyond which they would
not advance, and who resented our refusal of their shibboleths
with quite orthodox indignation.
Custom, also, had its obstacles to throw in our path. Some
could not endure a religious worship held in a j/wasz-theatre,
nor patiently bear the necessary discomforts of a building
not our own. Others objected to the form of prayer which
had been adopted; others to the minister continuing to use
the raiment to which all his life he had been accustomed;
others found fault with the music that it was not congrega
tional, while nearly all were found to be unwilling to repeat
responses in an audible voice, thus rendering a choral service
an absolute necessity.
Well do I remember the anxiety and misery of those early
days in our undertaking, and hdw much patience and perse
verance and kindly feeling were requisite from every member
of our congregation in order to tide-over the period of
unsettlement.
To-day I have no thoughts but those of satisfaction and
�3
gratitude in the retrospect. It is almost marvellous how
these difficulties were one by one cleared away, how members
one after another laid aside or smothered their prejudices in
order to promote good-will, and to secure the final triumph
of our endeavours. Compared with the large number oftliose
who worship here whenever they can, the seceders are com
paratively few. Not more than a score do I know of, who
having given these services a fair trial have deserted them
from dislike or on principle.
I see some before me now, and I know of many more who
are only temporarily absent from us to-day, who, at the sacri
fice of their own prejudices and tastes, have held on to our
society for the sake of those aims which in importance are ’
far above the trifling details of our worship or the
idiosyncrasies of the preacher with which they have no
sympathy. I honour them, and I thank them publicly with
my whole heart, not only for their manly and faithful support
of an unpopular cause, but also for setting before us all the
beautiful example of self-denial and devotion in not permitting
any private sentiments to interfere with their well-chosen
duty. Believe me, they will discover that they have lost
nothing by their generous concessions, which would beget
on my part, were it ever wanting, a desire to adapt both
service and discourse to their tastes, so far as can be
done consistently with honour and with the common good.
There remain with us to this day, some who look upon
our prayers and praises as idle words, some who dislike our
music, some who prefer a methodistical to an ecclesiastical
form and accessories, some who never can feel contented with
our present place of worship. More gratifying still is the
fact that some are still with us, rendering most valuable aid
�4
with a regularity that passes praise, who object to the dis
courses, some alleging that not enough is made of Christ
and Christianity, others saying that there is too much
religious sentiment and not enough of polemic. Many, too,
are here with patient constancy, who are far better fitted than
I to occupy this part.
Now all this is to us a source of comfort and encourage
ment beyond that which we find even in closer agreement and
sympathy. It leads us to ask once more, what is it that binds
us together? What is that noble aim which acts like a
spell upon such apparently incongruous and unruly
elements ?
My friends, I believe I shall speak only your own thoughts
when I say that the bond of union between us is our common
aim—to endeavour to solve what Professor Tyndall has
called “ that problem of problems, the reasonable satisfaction
of the religious emotions.” It is for this we have in various
ways and degrees sacrificed earthly comfort and advantage,
have stifled our own petty and private crotchets, have been
willing to put up with this, that, or the other thing which has
been distasteful. You are as sure of my loyalty to this grand
aim, as I am of yours; and it is to this loyalty alone that we
owe our assembling here to day, keeping our anniversary and
inaugurating the fourth year of our history as one of the
most remarkable religious movements in this century. This
is also why, in distant parts of Great Britain, and in north,
south, east, and west of the whole earth, thoughts of joyous
sympathy with us are throbbing, hands of generous help are
being held out to us, blessings are invoked, and prayers are
being uttered for the success of our enterprise.
With all its faults, and not one of them incurable, our
�5
service is as yet as reasonable as any service in existence, if
not the most reasonable of all; and whatever be the faults
and short-comings of the discourses added to it, the principle
on which they are delivered, and on which it is known they
are received, is that of perfect reasonableness;—the right on
the one hand of the absolutely unfettered speech of honest
thought, and the equal right, on the other, of accepting or
rejecting what is said, at will.
We have a great deal of faith, but we have no formu
lated creed; we have very strong opinions, and tena
ciously cling to certain doctrines; but we have not a
syllable of dogma; not an opinion which may not be chal
lenged, nor a doctrine not open to question. We are tied to
no Scripture, ancient or modern ; we are beholden to no
prophet, old or new, that we should obey his voice as Divine;
we lean on no Christ, Galileean or British, that we must bend
our thoughts to his thoughts, or take him for our master or
guide.
The best and the worst, the truest and the most false must
bring their doctrines to the same test in each of us. The
Reason, the Conscience, and the Affections.
Whatever
harmonizes with these we will accept, because of the harmony,
and not for the speaker’s renown. Whatever jars upon them,
we reject, for its intrinsic falsehood, regardless of the speaker’s
authority.
And still we leave ourselves open to correction. We are
not going to deify, and to worship as infallible, our Reason,
our Conscience, or our Affections, We expect our reason to
err sometimes; but we listen to it because it is better than
the authority of another man’s reason. We expect our con
sciences to be warped or stunted sometimes; but we do better
�6
in walking by our own conscience than by that of the priest.
We expect even our affections to err through deficiency
sometimes, perhaps even through excess, but it is better to be
guided through them to the light of love Divine than to
search for it in external nature or metaphysics, and worse
still to stifle our affections as unholy.
Moreover, we aim at the proper and harmonious action of
all the three, that none may be unduly exalted at the expense
of the other two. Were a man all reason, he would only
think rightly without right action. Were he to be all'con
science, he could nut perceive the reasonableness or the beauty
of right conduct. Were he all love, he would be foolish and
extravagant, though, perhaps, more likely to go right by
instinct than in the other two cases.
As religious enquirers, and even as religious believers, the
chief field of our enquiry, and the chief ground of our belief
is man. By the study and cultivation of our best human
faculties we are on the road to the discovery of Him to whom
our common human instinct points as the Ruler and Friend
of the universe.
But in doing this we absolutely forswear that very certainty
and infallibility, which at present are the life of all dogmatic
churches. We have such unbounded confidence in man, and
in Natural Religion, that we will not encumber ourselves with
those expedients which have hitherto proved so successful
in the machinations of priestcraft. We prefer our uncer
tainty and consciousness of the possibility of error, to a
certainty which has no solid foundation, to the claims of an
infallibility, which we can prove to be false. We are quite
as much in earnest to be right as the Christians are; but we
are not so much afraid to be mistaken. As believers, we
�■{
w ffg> o*d
'■:'
7
trust God’s entire justice to visit upon us no calamity which,
we do not deserve, to punish us with no penalty for what we
could not help, still less to inflict permanent misery and
disappointment in returu for our most loyal endeavours to
gain the truth. We are not afraid to be mistaken, in the
old sense of that awful fear of Hell-fire which is the
threatened doom of the Churches against any intellectual
error.
We are afraid of error only so far as we
may do mischief to other people, or fail of our own
proper improvement; and our worst errors, we believe,
will one day be thoroughly corrected, and we shall know
all the truth. A dear friend of mine, a convert to Roman
ism, confessed that he could not possibly understand this
perfect calm in a mind wide-awake to the possibility, and
even probability, of being in error. My reply was “ It is
because I believe in a God as good as myself—not to say
better ; that is enough to make me sure that, so long as I
honestly desire to go right, I shall be certain to know the
truth at last. He will not damn me for rejecting what seems
to me unreasonable and even blasphemous.
This, my friends, is where we stand; and more unfettered
than this, no man, or body of men can be; this is the secret
of our firm bond of union, and let me add the secret of our
past and future success. All will depend on keeping clear of
dogmatism, or the attempt to tie down each other, or the
future generation, to special modes of thought which may
suit ourselves.
In the Inaugural Discourse to which I have referred, I
took pains to shew what lines our several efforts ought to
take. 1st. That we should do all we could to expose the
falseness and absurdity and impiety of the orthodox doctrines..
i
I
�8
'2nd. That we should let the world know what religious
beliefs and hopes we had to put in their place. 3rd. That,
-at all events, we might hope in this generation to wean the
people from their insane dread of damnation for opinion. 4th.
That we should help those who had no faith at all towards
a reasonable trust in the goodness of G-od. And 5th. I dwelt
upon the necessity, on every ground, of the cultivation of
personal beauty of character and conduct, as the only condi
tion in which religious emotions could thrive.
From careful observation, I have come to the conclusion
that we are not held together by a common hatred and
rejection of orthodox Creeds, so much as by our mutual
agreement in the main on the subjects of G-od and immor
tality. I mean that there is far more sympathy between us
as to what we believe than as to what we deny. This sympathy
is not only deeper than the other but more general. It is but
a small minority who only enjoy discourses of attack upon
prevailing beliefs. With very few exceptions, we all like
best those subjects which help to clear our own insight and
to add to the foundation of a reasonable faith. To me this
fact is more than any other significant of progress and
^endurance. Had it been the reverse we could not have lasted
long. People not only weary in time of polemics, but the
function of polemics dies with the perishing superstition at
which they are aimed, and then the controversialist has
nothing more to do ; his mission is soon done and over. But
when people are united in the pursuit of that knowledge or
belief, which by its very nature cannot be exhausted, the
interest in it cannot die, its investigators become more eager
-and fascinated the longer they search. I am inclined to
think not only with Theodore Parker but with Tyndall, that
�9
the interest in religious enquiry is inexhaustible, and of such
a nature as to engage and engross the highest faculties of
the best of our race. And therefore if, as is the case, we are
linked together in sympathy, not merely to uproot hoary and
decaying superstitions, but above all things to find out all
that is true about the vast mystery of Grod and man, and to
strengthen each other in our faith and hope whenever they
rest on reasonable foundations, then indeed my heart leaps
up with renewed courage to feel sure that this our work will
prosper, that in time it will leaven the whole world, that what
is true and sound in our principles will prevail, and that in
ages to come we shall have made it an easier task for
posterity to correct our errors, than it has been for us to
uproot the errors of our forefathers.
Fifteen years ago, Francis William Newman said these
words, or words of the same meaning, “For the truly religious
in this age, there is no Temple.” We cannot yet ask that
this most just and severe sentence be withdrawn; but we may
ask the venerable professor, and the world of lofty minds and
souls like his who sigh for such a temple, to recognize, at all
events, our most earnest endeavours to erect such a Temple,
to mould such a form of worship. Ours at least has the
germs of self-improvement, ours is designed to be severely
subject to the dictates of reason and yet open to the embellish
ments which poetry and the highest aesthetic taste can provide.
To be worship at all, it must be emotional, and emotion is a
subtle thing very variable and transitory, soon satisfied
and soon repelled. The whole of the Service cannot then in
the nature of things be equally tasteful to every worshipper
alike. But we have entire liberty to make it what we please;
as the changes in, and additions to, it during the past three
�10
years will shew. We know it to be the envy of many clergy
men and others who are tied to old forms; and it has been
adopted in whole or in part by some who are free.
Is it not then somewhat of a reproach to us—or rather to
those who are one at heart with us, but who are afraid or un
willing to confess it—is it not a reproach, I ask, that such a
service should have as yet no local habitation, should be
relegated to a Music Hall, and be performed with all the
drawbacks of a small- theatre ? Is it not a reproach that
while Mr. Spurgeon (whom I personally greatly respect)
could get a Tabernacle built to hold 6,000 persons on purpose
to hear the Gospel of Hell Fire, the Religious Free-thinkers
of this Country cannot raise enough money even to buy a
bit of land for such a building as our Service and our
cause deserve ?
While his sermons are circulated by the million, we are
thankful to get ours sold by the thousand. While a little
book which in all good-nature I call a “wicked book” by a
Scotch Minister, entitled Grace and Truth, but which ought
to be entitled Disgrace and Falsehood, has been sold to the
amount of 70,000 copies since November last, we have still
on hand volumes which have never passed into a second
edition.
A Ritualistic Church in the suburbs which can scarcely
scrape together £20 for the London Hospitals, can raise
£300 at any time for a new set of vestments.
Again, as an instance of hearty earnestness, a handful of
Jews agree to build a new synagogue, and they raise
amongst themselves the sum of £80,000 for its erection.
For once I must reproach my countrymen, and say that,
although considering the agency at work, to have held on for
�three years is more than one could have expected : yet con
sidering the cause in question and its bearing on the interests
of humanity all over the world, such neglect is a discredit.
And it is a reproach to this wealthy country that we have
not in possession, this day, the finest Temple that could
be built in all London.
We are quite sure that there are at least 50 persons in this
country (probably ten times as many) who are in entire sym
pathy with our work and who could afford to put down
£1,000 each, as easily as we shall contribute our sovereigns
to the offertory to-day. We are bound to ask them why they
any longer hesitate to give the world such a pledge and
token of their honest belief? The moral value of their con
tribution will be lost, if it be.delayed till the cause becomes
a fashion. On the other hand, it is earnestness which wins
men’s confidence and does more to make converts than years
of talking and preaching.
While, however, this main ultimate object be kept in view,
the current expenses must not be forgotten; nor must it be
imagined that the sum of £100 a month can be defrayed out
of the ordinary receipts. Our weekly collection, as is well
known, is to enable non seat-holders and visitors to contribute
what they please towards the expenses ; and we need there
fore two or three special offertories in the course of the year
to make up deficiencies.
This is the first time in three years that I have made any
appeal to yourselves or to our country friends for greater
exertion. I am the worst pleader for money that ever spoke,
but I can refrain no longer from asking everyone, who at heart
wishes us well, to do his or her utmost to carry those kind
wishes promptly into effect. Let us endeavour to earn what
�12
Dr. Davies said of us in the Daily Telegraphy “ These people
are terribly in earnest.”
Still we must be patient; for we have even greater cause
for rejoicing and hope than if we had at command the wealth
of the country. The leaven is working more rapidly than we
could have expected. On every side, in every church and sect,
our denials and our beliefs are spreading with a speed that
must strike dismay into the very hearts of the champions of
orthodoxy. Truly this is all we want, a fruition more welcome
than any amount of worldly success. With the most modest
and truthful estimate of our own small powers to work so
mighty a change, we yet thankfully recognize that we have
had some share in it, and that it is the truth and the reason
ableness of what we proclaim, and not the mode of its
proclamation, which is working so mightily upon this
generation.
To conclude in the key-note with which we began, while
doing our best to ensure progress let us remember Him whose
truth we are patiently and honestly seeking to discover and
to declare ; whose Divine call first awakened our souls to this
holy service and has all along fortified'us . to encounter the
perils and to.conquer the obstacles which opposed our march;
whose assurances of final enlightenment and whose words of
Heavenly peace have led us on calm and unflinching in our
darkest hours ; and whose Love, bountifully shed over all his
creatures, has set us on the Rock of Haith and Trust, and
filled our hearts with songs of Praise.
“ Our help standeth in the Name of the Lord.”
CABTEB&WnllAMS, General Steam Printers, 14, Bishopsgate Avenue, Camomile-street,E.O
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Anniversary Sunday, 1874: a sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, October 11, 1874
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Voysey, Charles [1828-1912.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 13 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[Carter & Williams]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1874]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G4828
Subject
The topic of the resource
Sermons
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Anniversary Sunday, 1874: a sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, October 11, 1874), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Morris Tracts
Religion
Sermons
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/ba717514708438544e2ae82accc94728.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=L7WO09R6Lz4ORm2a1QYrJedJWjlsVag3zyKlr7cP6njnWtGUPK54ugSUF-rDvLLsrcRQbNtgocAYK%7EoeP0JA2tFJTDGfz9-m8R%7EHUJAhDFhuHZv-YYlC5%7Ee0uqh9yqsZLKsZYMU8rLNu4ET1u5ZLUIabfkEJr0FH7MzH9%7EsfPnn4yTKrcUGYqoriSm-msl7FTJFAaXeuMsen98qsOsEtptRi4ts5gwhIy3fImKad9n2DL4A7A%7EId8Yv94Pb1R1hqmLk5fvekGvQjgiMrUNLsQdrMyNCwizadwiDNxXw8QnE5Wdlsuu6hbY%7E7Zbu6%7ER1-CSFCINCT1LZhvNv2VVdlQw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
5b5c82759aa35b08320aaefe0acef540
PDF Text
Text
��M !■ ETI N Ci; O F
■ JoCRETY
"’’ .
Cz
January 12, 1876,
1E
F'MlRTHSft VfSM VMM BISCOVRstt DKLITKRKI) fJY
REV
W. IL EURNES^ D.D
Sunday, Jan. 1O, 1876,
i*M the ^tension el %
! /•>'
nOrbinaihm.
-•>
January 12, 1823.
it Pi XHELPHIA:
■^■i ' 4<J
A 0O„ PRINTERS.
£
��AT THE
MEETING
OF
THE
CoDgregat/w
(Unitarian Society,
January 12, 1875,
TOGETHER WITH THE DISCOURSE DELIVERED BY
REV. W. H. FURNESS, B.D.,
Sunday, Jan. IO, 1875,
©n I Ije ©tension of fIje ^iftieflj ^rniifrersnrg of |jis ©rbinntion,
January 12, 1825.
PHILADELPHIA:
SHERMAN & CO., PRINTERS.
1875.
��On November 3d, 1874, the Trusted of the First Congiegational Unitarian Church of Philadelphia issued the
following notice to the members of the parish :
First Congregational Society of Unitarian Christians.
Philadelphia, November 3d, 1874.
A meeting of the members of this Society will be held at the
Church on Monday, the 9th inst., at 8 p. m., to devise an appro
priate plan for celebrating the completion of the fiftieth year of
Dr. Furness’ pastorate.
As his half century of faithful and distinguished service calls
for fitting commemoration, and as the members of this Church
must rejoice at an opportunity of giving expression to their
love, admiration, and respect for him, a meeting that concerns
such an object will commend itself, and prove of interest to
every one, so that the bare announcement of it, it is deemed,
will be sufficient to insure a full attendance of the parishioners.
By direction of the Trustees,
, Charles H. Coxe,
'
Secretary.
�4
In pursuance of this notice, the members of the Societyheld a meeting in the Church on the evening of Novem
ber 9th, 1874, to consider the subject proposed.
The meeting was organized with Mr. B. H. Bartol as
Chairman, and Mr. Charles H. Coxe as Secretary.
After stating the object of the meeting, the Chairman
called for the opinion of the Society. It was voted that
a committee of nine be appointed, who should, together
with the Trustees of the Church, constitute a committee
to take entire charge of the celebration of Dr. Furness’
Fiftieth Anniversary as Pastor of the Church; should
have full power to add to their number, and make such
arrangements as might seem to them suitable to the
occasion.
The Chair appointed on this Committee,
Mrs. R. S. Sturgis,
Mrs. J. E. Raymond.
Miss Clark,
Miss Roberts,
Miss Duhring,
Mr. John Sartain,
Mr. B. H. Moore,
Mr. David Brewer,
And at the request of the meeting, Mr. B. H. Bartol, the
Chairman, was added.
On November 14th, 1874, at 8 o’clock p. m., the Com
mittee appointed by the Society held a meeting at the
residence of Mr. B. H. Bartol, to make arrangements for
the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Furness’ pastorate.
The Committee consisted of the following persons :
Trustees.
Mr. Henry Winsor,
Mr. John Sellers, Jr.,
Mr. Enoch Lewis,
Mr. Charles
Mr. Lucius H. Warren,
Mr. Joseph E. Raymond,
Mr. D. E. Eurness,
H. Coxe.
/
�5
Appointed by the Society.
Mbs.
Mrs.
Miss
Miss
R. S. Sturgis,
J. E. Raymond,
Miss Duhring,
Mr. John Sartain,
Clark,
Mr. B. H. Moore,
Roberts,
Mr. David Brewer,
Mr. B. H. Bartol.
Mr. Winsor was chosen Chairman, and Mr. Charles
H. Coxe, Secretary.
It was voted, that on the evening of January 12th,
1875, there should be a commemorative service in the
Church, and ministers from other cities should be invited
to be present.
The Chair appointed as the Committee on Invitations,
Mr. L. H. Warren,
Mr. Enoch Lewis,
Mr. B. H. Bartol,
Mr. David Brewer,
Mr. B. H. Moore,
And at the request of the Committee
Mr. Henry Winsor.
It was also voted, that the Church should be hand
somely and appropriately decorated on that occasion.
The Chair appointed as the Committee on Decora
tions,
Mr. Joseph E. Raymond,
Mr. L. H. Warren,
Miss Roberts,
Mrs. R. S. Sturgis,
Miss Clark,
Miss Duhring.
It was also voted, that the Choir on that occasion
should be increased, if it should be deemed expedient
by the Musical Committee of the Church.
It was further voted, that a marble bust of Dr. Furness
should be obtained, and placed in the Church.
�6
Also, that gold and bronze medals should be struck
off, commemorative of the fiftieth anniversary of the
pastorate of Dr. Furness,
And also, that a suitable and handsome present should
be given to Dr. Furness, in the name of the Society, as
a token of their affection and gratitude.
Also, that photographs of the Church should be taken
as it appeared on the day of the anniversary.
The Chair appointed as the Committee on Fine Arts,
Mr. John Sartain,
Mr. B. H. Moore,
Mr. Henry Winsor.
It was also voted, that the exercises at the ordination
of Dr. Furness should be reprinted, and that the anni
versary sermon and the exercises at the commemorative
service should be printed in pamphlet form.
The Chair appointed as the Committee on Publication,
Mr. Dawes E. Furness.
And as the Committee on Finance,
Mr. B. H. Bartol,
Mr. Enoch Lewis,
Mr. Charles H. Coxe.
�7
On Sunday, January 10th„ 1875, Rev. Dr. Furness
preached his fiftieth anniversary sermon.
The following account is taken from the Christian
Register of that week:
“Yesterday was as perfect a winter day as can he
imagined, cool, clear, and bright. The Unitarian church
was filled before the hour of worship with an eager and
deeply interested throng. All the pews were occupied,
and the aisles and the space around the pulpit were filled
with chairs. The church was beautifully decorated with
laurel wreaths, and in front of the pulpit the floral array
was very rich yet very chaste. On the wall in the rear
of the pulpit was an exquisite ivy cross. Among the
festoons which overhung the pulpit were the figures
‘ 1825 ’ and ‘ 1875 ’ in white and red flowers.
“ Dr. Furness seemed to be in excellent health, and
took his part in the rare and touching semi-centennial
service without any apparent ^jh^mSoiM After a brief
recital and paraph rase^^tpprtWiate passages of Scrip
ture, he read with great beauty and tenderness the hymn
beginning, ‘While Thee I seek, protecting Power,’ and
after a prayer full of love, trust, and gratitude, he read
from the twentieth chapter of the Book of Acts, begin
ning at the seventeenth verse. Then the congregation
sang Lyte’s beautiful hymn, ‘Abide with me! fast falls
the eventide,’ etc. The discourse had no text, excepting
the impressive occasion itself. There was less of narra
tion of interesting incidents than in previous anniversary
sermons, yet the half century was reviewed in a simple
and masterly way. The preacheil mannfi was quite
subdued until he reached his studies of the life of Jesus,
�8
when his face became radiant, his tones fuller and
firmer, and his gestures frequent. The allusions to
other denominations and to the anti-slavery struggle
were exceedingly fair and magnanimous. The people
gave rapt attention, and there was evident regret when
the sermon closed.
“ The singing by a double quartette choir was highly
creditable. Mr. Ames’ church at Germantown was closed,
and pastor and people came to express their sympathy
with Dr. Furness’ society, and to enjoy the uplifting
service. Dr. Martineau’s new hymn-book was used, Dr.
Furness having presented his parishioners with a suffi
cient number of copies to supply all the pews.”
�4
e
j
;»
--------
w
�S'
- H-
b*e*«ne
•
t*nes fbiifl* *HI
ari Wte plan* fw'‘’
The ahofc^dM W
Wwsmi'Mww IM < *W •^-.^-«i*veyv
.. . 4w«'y
m»
•
wm Th*
-jm
k.W.
,■•*» w
«wt
m.«*Mh*t w* ■
eii*dL
T
" tk *»«»•• by * ♦ b
b-'« ¥M highly
■»■-.•
M- *•
jno-'h wt*< -•v.v>-<aww* closed,
. . ’ ><. > ;> f • ■^■o-v*'-- heir sympathy
»*
t. i
, .
•
Ffl*6^f<mm
«
<.
.
••*<! to u,hc th* uplifting
■. ,;
> t • ‘-.i ■.- was used, Dr.
<■•■'■ ' M shmM/ww With a suffi-
«*« pews.”
�J
��DISCOURSE
DELIVERED
SUNDAY JANUARY io, ^875,
ON THE OCCASION OF THE
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
OF HIS
ORDINATION, JANUARY 12, 1825, AS THE PASTOR
OF THE
-frirst Congregational Mnitarian Cljnrct)
BY
W. H. FURNESS D.D.
��DISCOURSE
It is in vain, dear friends, that I have tried to set in
order the thoughts that come crowding upon me as the
fiftieth year of my service in this place draws to a close.
I cannot tell what direction they will take. But for the
uncertainty of life, I might have reserved for this occa
sion the Recollections in which I indulged on the last two
anniversaries of my Ordination. All I told you then and
countless other memories come vividly to mind and heart
now. They almost hush me into silence, so hopeless is
the endeavor to give them utterance. I must needs talk
about myself. How can it be avoided on an occasion like
this ? I trust in the kind indulgence on your part which
has never failed me in all these years. If I should prove
only garrulous, you will not forget that I have passed the
allotted boundary and am now one of the borrowers from
eternity; although it hardly becomes me to make claim
to the privileges of age in a community where dwells
one, known and revered of all, who has entered his ninety
sixth year, and is not yet old.
First of all, most humbly and heartily do I acknowledge
and adore the good Providence that, for no deserving of
mine, has blest me so bountifully and so long, and given
me such a dear home among you. What friends, kith
and kin to me, have always surrounded me! At the first
here were my fathers—I have followed them all to the
grave. And now, behold! my brothers, my sisters, my
�12
children. What a gift of God the filial, the fraternal,
the parental trust which I have been encouraged to
cherish! It has been my chiefest treasure, the dearest
sign of Heaven’s grace, my support, my well-spring of life.
During my ministry I have received from you, from
time to time, not a few unlooked-for, substantial tokens
of your kind thoughts for me. They shall never be for
gotten. But it is not the remembrance of any special
proofs of your regard that now moves me, but the hearty
faith in your good-will upon which you have always given
me reason to rely. This has been my crowning privilege.
Even when differences have arisen between us, my trust
in your personal regard has never been allowed to be
shaken. Were there exceptions, they are as good as for
gotten now. Even those who have taken such offence at
my words that they withdrew from the church, still gave
me assurance of their friendship. There used to be times
of painful excitement among us, you remember, when I
was helpless to resist the impulse to plead for the op
pressed. I can never forget how cheered I was by one
friend, still living, but not now dwelling in this city, who
came to me and said that he had at the first disapproved
of my course, but that he was then in full sympathy with
me, and that, as to the church’s being broken up, as was
predicted, if I persisted in speaking for the slave, that
should not be, if a contribution to its support from him
(and he named a most liberal sum), could prevent it. Of
course I never thought of availing myself of his generous
aid, or of permitting the contingency to occur that would
make it needful. If it had come to that pass I should
have felt myself bound to withdraw.
You will not think that I offend against propriety in
mentioning such a private experience when you consider
what an encouragement it was, what a joy to know that
I had such friends.
�13
Indeed, I would not refer now to those painful times at
all, could I not in all honesty say that I look back upon
them with pride, not on my own account, oh no! but on
yours, dear friends, on yours. How I feared and trembled,
and with what a faltering voice did I deliver the mes
sages of truth that came to me! You resisted them too.
I tried to hold my tongue and you to shut your ears. I
would fain have run away and hid myself from the sum
mons of Humanity* But I could not do that. I could
not resign my position without putting you in a false one,
in a position which I did not believe you were willing to
take. And you were not willing. This church, I say it
proudly, never committed itself to the WrongB You never
took any action on Sat side. On the contrary, when, in
the midst of that agitation, I was honored with an invi
tation elsewhere, and you had the opportunity of relief
by my being transferred to another church, you asserted,
at a very full meeting, wW decisive unanimity, your
fidelity to the freedom of the pulpit. And now it may
be written in the annals of this Church that in that try
ing time, it stood fast on the ground of Christian Liberty,
and its minister had the honor of being its representative.
While I gratefullS^.cknowledge the friendship which
has been my special blessing for half a century, I gladly
repeat what I have said on former anniversaries of my
ministry, that the kindness I have received has not come
from you alone. How little has there been in all this
time to remind me that we of this Church bear an obnox
ious name! How many are there who are not of this
little fold, but of other denominations, who have made
me feel that they belonged to me! O friends, it is not all
bearing the same religious name, but all bearing different
religious names and yet each respecting in others the
right of every one to think for himself,—this it is that
�14
illustrates most impressively the broad spirit of our com
mon Christianity. I had rather see this fact manifest
than a hundred churches agreeing exactly with me in
opinion.
I preached my first sermon in the fall of 1823, in Water
town, Massachusetts. And then, for a few months, I
preached as a candidate for settlement in Churches in
Boston and its vicinity needing pastors. Kind and flat
tering things were said to me of my ministrations, but I
put little faith in them, as they came from the many rela
tives and friends that I and mine had in that quarter, and
their judgment was biased by regard for me and mine.
I was strengthened in my distrust when friends, fellow
students, and fellow-candidates, were preferred before me.
I never envied them their success. I felt not the slightest
mortification, such a hearty dread had I of being settled
in Boston, whose church-goers had in those days the repu
tation of being terribly critical, and rhetoric then and
there was almost a religion. I felt myself utterly unequal
to that position. All my day-dreams had been of the
country, of some village church.
In May, 1824, I gladly availed myself of the oppor
tunity that was offered me of spending three months in
Baltimore as an assistant of Mr Greenwood, afterwards
pastor of the Stone Chapel, Boston. Before I left Bal
timore, the last of July of that year, I received a letter
from this city, inviting me to stop on my way home
and preach a few Sundays in the little church here. I
accepted the invitation as in duty bound, but rather re
luctantly, as I had never before been so long and so far
away from home, and I was homesick. I spent the
month of August here. I do not recollect that I had any
thought of being a candidate for this pulpit. Such had
been my experience, my ill success,—I do not wonder at
�15
it now,—that I was surprised and gratified when, upon the
eve of my departure, I was waited upon by a committee of
four or five,—I have had a suspicion since, so few were
the members of this Church then, that this committee
comprised nearly the whole Church meeting from which
they came,—and they cordially invited me to return and
become their pastor. As I had come here a perfect
stranger, and there were no prepossessions in my favor, I
could not but have at the very first a gratifying confi
dence in this invitation. Although I asked time for con
sideration, I responded at once in my heart to the kind
ness shown to me. Thus the aspirant to a country parish
was led to this great city.
The three hundred miles and more that separate Phila
delphia from my native Boston were a great deal longer
then than they are now. It took then at least two days
and a half to go from one to the other. A minister of our
denomination in Boston and its neighborhood had then a
great help in the custom then and there prevalent of a
frequent exchange of pulpits. One seldom occupied his
own pulpit more than half of the time. But this church
in Philadelphia was an outpost, and the lightening of
the labor by exchanges was not to be looked for. There
was no one to exchange with nearer than William Ware,
pastor of the church in New York. The place to be
filled here looked lonely and formidable. I accepted,
however, the lead of circumstances, moved by the confi
dence with which the hospitable members of this church
inspired me. I was drawn to this part of the vineyard
by their readiness to welcome me.
My ordination was delayed some months by the diffi
culty of obtaining ministers to come and take part in it.
It was a journey then. The days had only just gone by
when our pious New England fathers who made it had
prayers offered up in their churches for the protection of
�16
Heaven (or rather in their meeting-houses, as all places
of worship except the Catholic and Episcopal were called;
we never talked of going to church, we went to meeting).
Ordinations have ceased to be the solemn occasions they
were then. Then they were sacramental in their signifi
cation, like marriage. As our liberal faith was then
everywhere spoken against, it was thought necessary that
my ordination should be conducted as impressively as
possible. It is pleasant now to remember that with the
two Wares, Henry Ware, Jr, and William, and Dr
Gannett, came one of the fathers, far advanced in years,
the venerable Dr Bancroft, of Worcester, Mass., the
honored father of a distinguished son, to partake in the
exercises of the occasion. They are all gone now.
This Church had its beginning in 1796, when seven
persons, nearly all from the old country, shortly increased
to fourteen, with their families, agreed, at the suggestion
of Dr Priestley, who came to this country in 1794, to
meet every Sunday and take turns as readers of printed
sermons and prayers of the Liberal Faith. These meet
ings were occasionally interrupted by the yellow fever,
by which Philadelphia was then visited almost every
year, but they were never wholly given up.
In 1813 the small brick building was built in which I
first preached, and which stood on the southwest corner
of the present lot? directly on the street. A charter was
then obtained under the title of “ The First Society of
Unitarian Christians.” So obnoxious then was the Uni
tarian name that the most advanced men of our faith in
Boston, the fountain-head of American Unitarianism,
remonstrated with the fathers of this church, and coun
selled them to abstain from the use of so unpopular a des
ignation. But our founders, being Unitarians from Old
England and not from New, and consequently warm ad
�17
mirers, and some of them personal friends, of Dr Priestley,
whose autograph was on their records as one of their
members, felt themselves only honored in bearing with
him the opprobrium of the Unitarian name. The title
of our Church was afterwards changed to its present de
nomination, to bring it nominally into accord with our
brethren in New England. In 1828 this building took
the place of the first.
It was about ten years before I came here that the
Trinitarian and Unitarian controversy began. One of its
earliest forms appeared in published letters in 1815 be
tween Dr Channing, the pastor of the Federal Street
Church in Boston,- and Dr Samuel Worcester,! An able
orthodox minister of Salem, Mass. In 1819 Dr Chan
ning preached a sermon at the ordination of Mr Sparks
in Baltimore, which was then and ever will be regarded
as an eloquent and felicitous statemenwof the views of
the liberally disposed of that day. It commanded great
attention far and wide, and gave occasion ma very able,
learned, and courteous controversy between Dr Woods
and Mr Stuart, professors in the Orthodox Theological
School in Andover, Mass., on the one side, and Pro
fessors Henry Ware, Sr, and Andrews Norton, of the Cam
bridge Theological School on the other. The controversy
spread mostly in Massachusetts. In the^mall towns
where there had been only one church, there speedily ap
peared two. Families were divided, not without heats
and coolnesses, to the hurt of Christian fellowship. As
a general rule, fathers took the liberal side, mothers the
orthodox.
When I came here in 1825, the first excitement of the
controversy had somewhat subsided. It had lost its first
keen interest. It was growing rather wearisome. It had
snowed tracts, Trinitarian and Unitarian, over the land.
Accordingly, although I was a warm partisan, full of con3
�18
fidence in the rational and scriptural superiority of the
Unitarian faith, I did not feel moved to preach doctrinal
sermons. And, furthermore, as I was on my way hither
in the mail coach, in company with my friends, ministers
and delegates from Boston and New York, I was greatly
impressed by a remark made by one of my elders to the
effect that people were bound to their several churches,
not by the force of reason and the results of religious in
quiry, but by mere use and wont and affection.
Of the truth of this remark, by the way, I had a
striking instance some years ago. One of our fellow
citizens, now deceased, an intelligent, respectable man, a
devoted member of one of our Presbyterian churches,
used to come to me to borrow Theodore Parker’s writings,
in which he took great pleasure. But he said he never
dreamed of withdrawing from his Church. As Richter
says, his Church was his mother. You could not have
weaned him from her by telling him how many better
mothers there were in the world. This truth impressed
me greatly, and was a comfort to me in my younger days.
Although I have rarely preached an outright doctrinal
discourse, yet I had many interesting experiences in ref
erence to the spread of liberal ideas. I regret that I
have not done in my small way what that eminent man,
John Quincy Adams, as his Memoirs now in course of
publication show he did in his wonderfully thorough way,
—kept a diary. Very frequently has it occurred that per
sons have come to me who had chanced to hear a Unita
rian sermon, or read a Unitarian book for the first time,
and they declared that it expressed their views precisely,
and they did not know before that there was anybody in
the world of that way of thinking.
Once, many years ago, I received a letter from a
stranger in Virginia, bearing a well-known Virginia
name. She wrote to tell me that a year before, she was
�19
in Philadelphia, and, much against her conscience, had
been induced by her husband to enter this church. Although there was nothing of a doctrinal character in the
sermon, the effect was to move her when she returned
home to study the Scriptures for herself with new care.
The result was that she now believed upon their au
thority that there was only one God, the Father, and
that Jesus Christ was a dependent being. There were
some texts, however, that she wished to have explained,
and therefore she wrote to me. The texts she specified
showed that she could not have met with any of our
publications, for, had she done so, she would certainly
have found the explanations she desired. Of course I
did what I could to supply her wants.
I think this incident would have passed away from
my mind or been only dimly remembered if, twenty-five
years afterwards, and after the war of the Rebellion, I
had not received another letter from the same person.
In it she referred to our Correspondence of five-andtwenty years before, and said that she wrote now in be
half of some suffering people, formerly her servants
(slaves, I presume). Through the kindness of Mr John
Welsh, chairman of a committee that had been chosen
by our fellow-citizens for the relief of the Southern people,
I was enabled to send her a sum of money. A quantity
of clothing was also procured for her from the Freed
men’s Relief Association. My Southern friend returned,
with her thanks, a very minute account of the disposi
tion she had made of the supplies sent to her. She ap
peared to have accepted with a Christian grace the
changed condition of things in the South. May we not
give something of the credit of this gracious behavior to
the liberal faith which she had learned to cherish?
It was cases like this that caused me to feel less and
less interest in doctrines and religious controversies. I
�20
have been learning every day that, much as men differ
in religion and numberless other things, they are, after
all, more alike than different, and that in our intercourse
with our fellow-men it is best to ignore those differences
as much as possible, and take for granted that we and
they are all of one kind.
And furthermore, in free conversation with educated
and intelligent persons of this city, with whom I have
become acquainted, I long ago found out that it was not
orthodoxy that prevailed; it was not the doctrines of
Calvin and the Thirty-nine Articles that were rampant,
but that there was a wide-spread scepticism as to the
simplest facts of historical Christianity. To persons of
this class, numerous, years ago, and not less numerous
now, it mattered little whether the Bible taught the
Trinity or the Unity of the Divine Nature. The ques
tion with them is, whether it be not all a fable.
It was this state of mind that I was continually meet
ing with that qarly gave to my humble studies a very
definite and positive direction. It was high time, I
thought, to look to the very foundations of Christianity,
and see to it, not whether the Christian Records, upon
which we are all resting^, favor the Trinitarian or the
Unitarian interpretation of their contents, but whether
they have any basis in Fact, and to what that basis
amounts. As this feemed to be the fundamental inquiry,
so, of all inquiries, it became to me the most interesting.
In studying this question I could not satisfy myself
that any external, historical argument, however power
ful, in favor of the genuineness and authenticity of the
Christian Records, could prove decisive. For even if it
were thus proved to demonstration that we have in the
Four Gospels the very works, word for word, of the
writers whose names they bear, there would still remain
untouched the question: How, after all, do we know
�21
that these writers, honest and intelligent as they may
have been, were not mistaken?
There was only one thing to be done: To examine these
writings themselves, and to find out what they really are.
With the one single desire to ascertain their true char
acter, that is, whether they be narratives of facts or of
fables, or a mingle of both, they were to be studied, and
the principles of reason, truth, and probability were to be
applied to them just as if they were anonymous frag
ments recently discovered in some monaster^ of the East,
or dug up from under some ancient ruins.
On the face of them, they are very artlessly constructed.
Here was one good reason for believing that, though it
might be difficult, it could not be impossible to determine
what they are. Since Science can discoveife^T^inv com
pound the simples of which it is composed, although
present in infinitesimal quantities, surely then it can be
ascertained of what these artless works of human hands
are made: whether they be the creations of fancy or the
productions of truth.
Then, again, as obviously, these primitive Records
abound in allusions to times, places, and persons. Here
was another ground of hope that the inquiry into their
real character would not be in vain. When one is tell
ing a story not founded in fact, he takes good care how
he refers to times, and persons, and places, since every
such reference is virtually summoning a witness to testify
to his credibility.
Encouraged by these considerations, I have now, for
forty years and^wre, given myselr to this fundamental
inquiry. It has been said that only scholars, far more
learned men than I pretend to be, can settle the his
torical claims of the Four Gospels. But the fact is, the
theologians in Germany and elsewhere, profound as their
learning is, have busied themselves about the external
�22
historical arguments for the truth of the Gospels. They
have been given, it has seemed to me, to a quibbling
sort of criticism about jots and tittles. But it is not
microscopes, but an eye to see with, that is the one thing
needed for the elucidation of these Writings.
When we first occupied this building, I read courses
of Expository Lectures every Tuesday evening, in a
room which was fitted up as a vestry, under the church,
for some four or five months in the year, for five seasons.
The attendance was never large; some thirty persons
perhaps gave me their presence. But my interest in the
study came not from my hearers, but from the subject,
in which, from that time to this, I have found an in
creasing delight. Continually new and inimitable marks
of truth have been disclosed. Unable to keep to myself
what I found so convincing, I have from time to time
published the discoveries, or what appeared to me dis
coveries, that I made. The editions of my little pub
lished volumes have never been large. Many persons
tell me they have read them. I can reconcile the fact
that they have been so much read with their very limited
sale only by supposing that the few copies sold have been
loaned very extensively s Do not think, friends, that I
am making any complaint. As I have just said, my in
terest in the subject has not depended upon others, either
hearers or readers. The subject itself has been my abun
dant compensation.
To many of my brothers in the ministry I have ap
peared, I suppose,*4o be the dupe of my own fancies.
What I have offered as sparkling gems of fact have been
regarded as made, not found. Some time ago I came
across an old letter from my venerated friend, the late
Henry Ware, Jr, in which he expostulated with me for
wasting myself upon such a barren study as he appears to
have regarded the endeavor to ascertain whether this
�23
great Christendom be founded on a fable or on the ada
mant of Fact.
So dependent are we all upon the sympathy of others,
that I believe my interest in this pursuit would have
abated long ago had it not been that the subject had an
overpowering charm in itself, and that one great result
of the inquiry, becoming more and more significant at
every step, was to bring out in ever clearer light the
Godlike Character of the Man of Nazareth. As he
has gradually emerged from the thick mists of super
stition and theological speculation in which he had so
long been hidden from my sight, his Person, as profoundly
natural as it was profoundly original, has broken upon
me at times as “ the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God.” Not in any alleged miracle, not in any nor
in all His works, wonderful and unprecedented as some
of them were, not in His words, immortal as is the wis
dom that he uttered, but in that reserved fulness of per
sonal power of which His works and words,—His whole
overt life gives only a hint, significant, indeed, but only
a hint—there, in himself, in what He was, in the native,
original power of the Man, the secret of His mighty in
fluence has been laid bare to me. That it is that ex
plains the existence of the wondrous stories of His life.
They had to be, and to be just what they are, with all
their discrepancies, mistakes, and somewhat of the fabu
lous that is found in them, born as they were of the irre
sistible force of His personal truth. And that it is, also,
which is the inexhaustible fountain of Inspiration, of
Faith, and Love, and Hope, which the Infinite Mercy has
opened in the world, and of which men, fainting and per
ishing in their sins, shall drink, and from within them
shall flow rivers of healing and of health.
As I have intimated, friends, there have been times
when I have felt somewhat lonely in this study. But
�24
some ten years ago a marked change came over the
course of religious thought occasioned by the appearance
of a Life of Jesus, by an eloquent and learned man in
France, who, belonging to the sceptical school, scarcely
believing that such a person as Jesus ever had an exist
ence, went to Syria upon a scientific errand, and when
there was struck by the evidences that he beheld of the
geographical truth of the New Testament. So strong a
conviction was born in him of the reality of Jesus that
he was moved to write his life. It is true there is little
else in the book of Ernest Renan recognized as fact, be
yond the actual existence and the great sayings of Jesus.
This was something, coming from the quarter it did.
And, moreover, with all the doubts which it suggests as
to particular incidents in the Gospel histories, its publi
cation has been justified by the effect it had in turning
attention to the human side of that great life. It has
created a new interest in the Man.
And further, Science, becoming popular, is impressing
the general mind so deeply with the idea of the inviolable
order of Nature, that it is not to be believed that men
will look much longer for the credentials of any person,
or of any fact, in his or its departure from that order.
Nothing can be recognized as truth that violates the laws
of Nature, or rather that does not harmonize with them
fully. Deeply impressed with the entire naturalness of
Jesus, I believe that the time is at hand when the evi
dences of His truth, of His divinity, will be sought, not
in any preternatural events or theories, but in His full
accord with the natural truth of things. As the one Fact,
or Person, in whom the highest or deepest in Nature is
revealed, He is the central fact, harmonizing all nature.
Never, never, from the first, has it been more important
that the personality of Jesus should be appreciated than
at the present time. The Darwinian law of Natural
�25
Selection and the Survival of the Fittest is in all men’s
minds, and in the material, organized world of plants and
animals, we are all coming to consider it demonstrated.
As an animal, man must be concluded under that law.
In the physical world, as Professor Tyndall tells us, “ the
weakest must go to the wall.”
But man is something, a great deal more than an ani
mal. He has an immaterial, moral, intellectual being,
for which he has the irresistible testimony of his own
consciousness; and as an immaterial being, it is not at
the cost of the weak, but it is by helping the weak to
live that any individual becomes strong. This, this is
the great law of our spiritual nature^ The highest, the
elect, they whom Nature selects, the fittest to live, are
those who are ready to die for others, sacrificing their
mortal existence, if need be, to lift up the weakest to
their immortal fellowship. In the unchangeable order
of things, not only is it not possible for a moral and in
tellectual being to become great by sacrificing others to
his own advancement, his greatness can be secured only
by giving himself for them.
Let Science, then, go on pouring light upon the laws
and order of the material Universe. But let it stand by
its admission that the connection between that and the
immaterial world, however intimate, is not only inscru
table, but unthinkable; and reverently recognize, stand
ing there on the threshold of the immaterial world, one
Godlike Figure, surrounded by the patriots and martyrs,
the great and good of every age and country, holy angels,
but high above them all in the perfectness of his Selfabnegation. No one took His life from him; He gave it
up freely of himself. And thus is He a special revelation
of the law that reigns in the moral world, as surely as
the law of natural selection reigns in the physical.
4
�26
What renders the character of Jesus of still greater
interest at this present time is the fact that there are
thoughtful and enlightened men who aver that they
would fain be rid of Him, since He has been and still is
the occasion of so much enslaving error. They might
as well, for the same reason, join with Porson and “damn
the nature of things,” for what has occasioned greater
error than the nature of things? It can be got rid of
as easily as the Person of Jesus.
For some twenty years or more before the war of the
Rebellion, the question which that war settled interested
me deeply. But on the last anniversary of my ministry
I dwelt chiefly upon the experiences of that period. I
need not repeat what I said then. It was a season of
severe discipline to us all, to the whole people of our
country.
I will only say here, that so far from diverting my
interest from the great subject of which I have been
speaking, it harmonized with it and increased it. As I
read the events and signs of that trying time, they be
came to me a living commentary upon the words of the
Lord Jesus. Precepts of His, that had before seemed
trite, began glowing and burning like revelations fresh
from the Invisible. The parable of the Good Samaritan
seemed to be made expressly for that hour. That scene
in the synagogue at Nazareth, when all there were filled
with wrath at what Jesus said,—how real was it, read by
the light of the flames that consumed Pennsylvania Hall I
As the truths of the New Testament, simple and divine,
rose like suns and poured their light upon that long
conflict, so did those days in return disclose a new and
pointed significance in those simple pages, giving life to
our Christian faith.
�27
What a time, friends, has this been, the latter half of
our first national century! It was a great day in history
which gave the world the Printing-Press and the Protest
ant Reformation. But does not the last half century
rival it? The railroad and the telegraph, mountains
levelled, oceans and continents united, time and space
vanishing, the huge sun made our submissive artist,
the establishment of universal liberty over this broad
land,—are not these things responding with literal obedi
ence to the command of the ancient prophet: “ Prepare
ye the way of the Lord; make his path straight?”
It is a wonderful day, a great day of the Lord. We
are stocks and stones if we do not catch the spirit, the
generous spirit, of the Almighty breathif^and brooding
in countless unacknowledged ways over this mysterious
human race. All things, like a host of prophets, are point
ing us to an unimaginable destiny. The authority of the
human soul over the visible Universe is becoming every
hour more assured. We are not here to walk in a vain
show, to live only for the lust of the eye, so soon to be
quenched in dust, or for the pride which feeds on what
withers almost at the touch. Our nature bears the in
eradicable likeness of the Highest. The mystery of it is
hidden in the mystery of
being, and the laws of oui’
minds are revealed in the laws which hold the whole Cre
ation together. We are not servants, we are sons, heirs
of God; joint heirs with Jesus and all the good and
great. And all is ours, ours to raise and enlarge our
thoughts, to set us free from the corrupting bondage of the
senses, to deepen our hunger and thirst for the only Liv
ing and the True, for the beauty of Holiness, the im
mortal life of God. And all our private experience; all
our conflicts, our victories and our defeats; all the joys
and sorrows which we have shared together,—the sacred
�28
memories that come to us to-day of parents, sons, daugh
ters, and dear ones departed,—do they not throng around
us now, and kindle our hearts with unutterable prayers
for ourselves, for our children, and for one another ?
NOTE
On the last anniversary of my ordination (the forty
ninth) I was led to dwell upon the Anti-slavery period
of thirty years before the war of the rebellion. It was a
period of intense interest, a great chapter in the history
of our country.
There was one incident of those times to which I par
ticularly referred a year ago, which I wish to recoid here,
not on account of any great part that I had in it, but for
the interesting character of the whole affair; and be
cause, thinking it of some historical value, I am not
aware that it has ever been recorded save in the daily
press of the time. From a MS. record made some time
ago of “ Reminiscences,” the following extract is tran
scribed :
�29
“ The most memorable occasion in my Anti-slavery ex
perience was the annual meeting of the American Anti
slavery Society held in the ‘ Tabernacle,’ as it was called,
in New York, in May, 1850,1 believe it was. I accepted
an invitation to speak on that occasion, holding myself
greatly honored thereby.
Having no gift of extemporaneous speech, I prepared
myself with the utmost pains. I went to New York
the day before the meeting; saw Mr Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Mr Garrison said there would be a riot,
as the Press had been doing its utmost to inflame the
public mind against the Abolitionists.
“ When the meeting was opened, the large hall, said
to be the largest then in New York, capable of holding
some thousands, was apparently full. The vast majority
of the audience were doubtless friendly to the object of
the meeting.
“Mr Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy,
Isaac Hopper, Francis Jackson, Frederick Douglass, and
other faithful servants of the cause, were present on the
platform.
“ I saw friends here and there among the audience. I
was surprised to recognize there a son of Judge Kane of
this city (afterwards Col. T. Kane). I had some previous
acquaintance with him, and knew him to be a young man
of ardent temperament, open to generous ideas. I sup
posed then, and still suppose, that he was drawn there
accidentally by curiosity. After a prayer by the Bev.
Henry Grew, Mr Garrison made the opening speech,
strong, bold, and characteristic.
“ He had spoken only a few moments when he was in
terrupted by what sounded like a burst of applause; but
as there was nothing special to call it forth, and as it
proceeded from one little portion of the audience, I asked
Wendell Phillips, who sat next to me, what it meant.
�30
1 It means/ he said, ‘ that there is to he a row.’ The
interruption was repeated again and again. A voice
shouted some rude questions to Mr Garrison.
“Mr Garrison bore himself with the serenity of a
summer’s evening, answering: ‘ My friend, if you will
wait till I get through, I will give you the information
you ask for.’ He succeeded in finishing his speech. I
was to speak next. But the instant Mr Garrison ended,
there came down upon the platform from the gallery
which was connected with it, an individual, with a com
pany of roughs at his back, who proved to be no less a
person than the then well-known Isaiah Rynders. He
began shouting and raving.
“ I was not aware of being under any apprehension of
personal violence. We were all like General Jackson’s
cotton-bales at New Orleans. Our demeanor made it
impossible for the rioters to use any physical force against
us. Young Kane, however, leaped upon the platform,
and, pressing through to me, in a tone of great excite
ment, exclaimed » ‘ They shall not touch a hair of your
head!’ Mr Garrison said to Rynders in the quietest
manner conceivable, | You ought not to interrupt us. We
go upon th^principle of hearing everybody. If you wish
to speak, I will keep ordei|and you shall be heard.’ But
Rynders was not in a state of mind to listen to reason. He
had not come there for that, but to break up the meeting.
“ The Hutchinsons, who were wont to sing at the Anti
slavery meetings, were in the gallery, and they attempted
to raise a song, to soothe the savages with music. But it
was of no avail. Rynders drowned their fine voices with
noise and shouting. The chief of the police came upon
the platform, and asked Mr Garrison whether he desired
him to arrest and remove Rynders & Co. Mr Garrison
answered: ‘We desire nothing of you. We can take
care of ourselves. You probably know your duty.’ The
�31
officer did' nothing. In this scene of confusion, young
Kane became intensely excited. He rushed up to
Rynders, and shook his fist in his face. He said to me
with the deepest emphasis : f If he touches Mr Garrison,
I’ll kill him!’ But Mr Garrison’s composure was more
than a coat of mail. Rynders, indisposed to speak him
self, brought forward a man to speak for him and. his
party. Mr Francis Jacksonjiand I were, the while, hold
ing young Kane down in his seat to keep him from
breaking out into some act of violence. He was the most
dangerous element on our side. Rynders’s substitute
professed a willingness that I should speak first (I was
down on the placards to follow Mr Garrison), provided
I did not make a long speech.
“ Accordingly, I spoke iM little, anxiously prepared
word. I never recall that hour without blessing myself
that I was called to speak precisely at that moment. At
any other stage of the proceedings, it would have been
wretchedly out of place.
“ As it was, my speech fitted in almost ttWell as if it
had been impromptu, although a shamm^e might easily
have discovered that I was speaking mewm’ier. Rynders
interrupted me again and again, exclaiming that I lied,
that I was personal, but he ended with applauding me!
Rynders’s man then came forward, rath® dull and tire
some in speech. It was his own friends who interrupted
him occasionally, Mr Garrison calling them to order.
“ His argument was^hat the blacks are not human
beings. Mr Garrison whispered to me while he was
speaking, that the speaker had formerly been a com
positor in the office of the Liberator.
“ He ended at last, and then Frederick Douglass was
loudly called for. Mr Douglass came forward, exqui
sitely neat in his dress.
“ ‘ The gentleman who has just spoken,’ he began, ‘ has
�32
undertaken to prove that the blacks are n'ot human
beings. He has examined our whole conformation, from
top to toe. I cannot follow him in his argument. I will
assist him in it, however. I offer myself for your exami
nation. Am I a man ? ’ To this interrogatory instantly
there came from the audience a thunderous affirma
tive. Rynders was standing right by the side of Mr
Douglass, and when the response died away, he exclaimed
in a hesitating way: ‘But you’re not a black man!’
‘ Then,’ retorted Douglass, ‘ I’m your brother.’ ‘ Ah,—
ah,’ said Rynders, hesitatingly, ‘ only half brother.’ The
effect upon the audience need not be described; it may
readily be imagined. Mr Douglass then went on, com
plaining of Horace Greeley, who had recently said in his
paper that the blacks did nothing for themselves. ‘ When
I first came North,’ said Mr Douglass, ‘ I went to the
most decided Anti-slavery merchant in the North, and
sought employment on a ship he was building, and he told
me that if he were to give me work, every white opera
tive would quit, and yet Mr Greeley finds fault with us
that we do not help ourselves!’ This criticism of Greeley
pleased Rynders, who bore that gentleman no good will,
and he added a word to Douglass’s against Greeley. ‘ I
am happy,’ said Douglass, ‘ to have the assent of my half
brother here,’ pointing to Rynders, and convulsing the
audience with laughter. After this, Rynders, finding how
he was played with, took care to hold his peace; but some
one of Rynders’s company in the gallery undertook to in
terrupt the speaker. ‘ It’s of no use,’ said Mr Douglass ;
‘ I’ve Captain Rynders here to back me.’ ‘ We were born
here,’ he went on to say, ‘ we have made the clothes that
you wear, and the sugar that you put into your tea, and we
mean to stay here and do all we can for you.’ ‘ Yes!’ cried
a voice from the gallery, ‘ and you’ll cut our throats!’
‘ No,’ said the speaker, ‘ we’ll only cut your hair.’ When
�33
the laughter ceased, Mr Douglass proceeded to say:
‘ We mean to stay here, and do all we can for every one,
be he a man, or be he a monkey,’ accompanying these
last words with a wave of his hand towards the quarter
whence the interruption had come. He concluded with
saying that he saw his friend, Samuel Ward, present, and
he would ask him to step forward. All eyes were instantly
turned to the back of the platform, or stage rather, so
dramatic was the scene, and there, amidst a group, stood
a large man, so black that, as Wendell Phillips said,
when he shut his eyes, you could not see him. Had I
observed him before, I should have wondered what
brought him there, accounting him as fresh from Africa.
He belonged to the political wing of the Abolition party
(Gerritt Smith’s), * and had wandered into the meeting,
never expecting to be called upon to speak. At the call
of Frederick Douglass, he came to the front, and, as he
approached, Rynders exclaimed: ‘ Well, this is the origi
nal nigger!’ ‘ I’ve heard of the magnanimity of Captain
Rynders,’ said Ward, ‘ but the half has not been told me I’
And then he went on with a noble voice, and his speech
was such a strain of eloquence as I never heard excelled
before or since.
“‘There are more than fifty people here,’ said he,
‘ who may remember me as a little black boy running
about the streets of New York. I have always been
called nigger, and the only consolation that has been
offered me for being called nigger was, that, when I die
and go to heaven, I shall be white. If’—and here, with
an earnestness of tone and manner that thrilled one to
the very marrow, he continued—‘ If I cannot go to heav
en as black as God made me, let me go down to hell, and
dwell with the devils forever!’
“ The effect was beyond description.
“ ‘ This gentleman,’ he said, ‘ who denies our humanity,
5
�34
has examined us scientifically, but I know something of
anatomy. I have kept school, and I have had pupils,
from the jet black up to the soft dissolving views, and
I’ve seen white boys with retreating foreheads and pro
jecting jaws, and, as Dickens says, in Nicholas Nickleby,
of Smike, you might knock here all day,’ tapping his
forehead, ‘ and find nobody at home.’ In this strain, he
went on, ruling the large audience with Napoleonic power.
Coal-black as he was, he was an emperor, pro tempore.
“ When he ceased speaking, the time had expired for
which the Tabernacle was engaged, and we had to ad
journ. Never was there a grander triumph of intelli
gence, of mind, over brute force. Two colored men, whose
claim to be considered human was denied, had, by mere
force of intellect, overwhelmed their maligners with con
fusion. As the audience was thinning out, I went down
on the floor to see some friends there. Rynders came
by. I could not help saying to him, ‘How shall we
thank you for what you have done for us to-day ? ’ ‘ Well,’
said he, ‘ I do not like to hear my country abused, but
that last thing that you said, that’s the truth.’ That last
thing was, I believe, a simple assertion of the right of the
people to think and speak freely.
“Judging by his physiognomy and his scriptural name
Isaiah, I took Captain Rynders to be of Yankee descent.
Notwithstanding his violent behavior, he yet seemed to
be a man accessible to the force of truth. I found that
Lucretia Mott had the same impressions of him. She
saw him a day or two afterwards in a restaurant on
Broadway, and she sat down at his table, and entered
into conversation with him. As he passed out of the
restaurant, h^ asked Mr McKim, who was standing there,
waiting for Mrs Mott, whether Mrs Mott were his mother.
Mr McKim replied in the negative. ‘ She’s a good sen
sible woman,’ said Rynders.
�35
“Never before or since have I been so deeply moved
as on that occasion. Depths were stirred in me never
before reached. For days afterwards, when I under
took to tell the story, my head instantly began to ache.
Mr Garrison said, if the papers would only faithfully
report the scene, it would revolutionize public senti
ment. As it was, they heaped all sorts of ridicule upon
us. I cheerfully accepted my share, entirely willing to
pass for a fool in the eyes of the world. It was a cheap
price to pay for the privilege of witnessing such a triumph.
I was taken quite out of myself. I came home, stepping
like Malvolio. I had shared in the smile of Freedom,
the belle and beauty of the world.
“ A day or two after my return home, I met one of my
parishioners in the street, and stopped and told him all
about my New York visitJ He listened to me with a
forced smile, and told me that there had been some
thought of calling an indignation meeting of the church
to express the mortification felt at my going and mixing
myself up with such people. I had hardly given a
thought to the effect at home, so full was I of the interest
and glory of the occasion. I ought to have preached on
the Sunday following from the words: ‘ He has gone to be
a guest with a man who is a sinner !’ ”
����I
‘ A »« **<***■
fl ;Jt ' Jkfll
'•? *
W r t i r •; s
■-'-.a
|
«> *.»■•■>'♦ •>« ”
»••
■
**<feM»*'
�-’"■1JMTZ , i SMO
t y^-M ? ■**
«■<. ;
< > 'a
>K
■ . ?> ',..r: - V ' ■;<;,-••• :i.^-»' ■?&/< ’
gjF
Sfe ’
�MEETING
OF THE
Staig M fflmtmn CJ^nstians,
IN PHILADELPHIA,
HELD IN THE CHURCH, TENTH AND LOCUST STREETS,
JANUARY 1 2, 187 5,
IN commemoration' on the
FIFTIETH
ANNIVERSARY
OF
Rev. W. H. FURNESS, D.D.,
AS PASTOR OF THEIR CHURCH.
��39
On the evening of January 12th, 1875, the meeting
of the First Unitarian Society, in commemoration of the
fiftieth anniversary of the pastorate of the Rev. Dr. Fur
ness, was held in the church.
The following ministers were present:
Rev. Dr. John H. Morison,
Rev. R. R. Shippen,
Rev. Dr. S. K. Lothrop,
Rev. Wm. O. White,
Rev Dr. James Freeman Clarke,Rev. J. F. W. Ware,
Rev. Dr. James T. Thompson,
Rev. Wm. C. Gannett,
Rev. Dr. C. A. Bartol,
Rev. E. H. Hall,
Rev. Dr. H. W. Bellows,
Rev. J. W. Chadwick,
Rev. Dr. A. P. Putnam,
Rev. Thos. J. Mumford,
Rev. F. Israel,
RevMBS G. Ames.
The church was profusely but tastefully hung with
festoons of evergreen; on the wall, behind the pulpit,
was a large cross; among the festoons which overhung it
were the figures “ 1825 ” and ‘L{1875” in white and green
flowers; while in front of the pulpit, covering the com
munion table and all the approaches to it, were growing
tropical plants, amid which was a profusion of vases,
baskets, and bouquets of natural flowers, with smilax
distributed here and there in delicate fringes or festoons.
�40
The regular quartette choir of the church, consisting
of
Mrs. W. D. Dutton,
Mrs. Isaac Ashmead,
Mr. E. Dillingham,
Mr. F. G-. Caupeman,
....
Jr., .
.
.
....
....
Soprano,
Contralto,
Tenor,
Bass,
was on this occasion assisted by
Miss Cassidy,
Miss Cooper,
Mr. A. H. Eosewig,
Miss Jennie Cassidy,
Mrs. Roberts,
Mr. W. W. Gilchrist.
under the direction of Mr. W. D. Dutton, organist of the
church.
�PROCEEDINGS.
At half-past seven o’clock the exercises of the evening
commenced, as follows:
Music.
Tenor solo and chorus, ....
. Mendelssohn.
“ Oh, come, let us worship,” from 95th Psalm.
Mr. Henry Winsor, Chairman of the Committee of
Arrangements, in opening the meeting made the follow
ing remarks:
The occasion of our meeting here this evening is so
well known to all present that there is no need of any
formal announcement of it. We thought some time ago
that this anniversary of our pastor’s ordination, when
the half century of his ministration here is complete,
ought to be in some way marked and commemorated;
and as one of the things for that purpose,—as the best
means perhaps to that end, we invited friends in New
England and elsewhere to be with us here, to-night^ and
I am glad to say that some of them have come; as many
perhaps as we had reason to expect at this inclement
season.
6
�42
And now, speaking for this Society, I want to say to
them that their presence is a special joy to us ; a greater
joy than it could be on a similar occasion to any society
in New England; for there Unitarians are at home, and
each society has many neighbors with whom it can com
mune, and to whom it can look for sympathy, and, if
need be, for assistance. But this Society of Unitarian
Christians has long been alone in this great city, having
no connection with any religious society here and com
muning with none. And so, as I said, your presence on
this occasion is a real joy to us, and, on behalf of the
Society, I heartily thank you for it. But we are here—
we of the congregation are here—not to speak but to
listen; and I will now ask Dr. Morison, of Massachusetts,
to pray for us.
Prayer by Rev. Dr. John H. Morison.
Almighty and most merciful Father, we beseech Thee
to open our hearts to all the gracious and hallowed asso
ciations of this hour. Help us so to enter into the spirit
of this hour, that all holy influences may be around us, that
our hearts may be touched anew, that we may be brought
together more tenderly, and lifted up, with a deeper grati
tude and reverence, to Thee, the Fountain of all good, the
Giver of every good and perfect gift. We thank Thee,
most merciful Father; for the ministry which has been mod
estly carrying on its beneficent work here through these
fifty years. We thank Thee for all the lives which have
been helped by it to see and to do Thy will, and which
have been made more beautiful and holy by being brought
into quicker sympathies with whatever is beautiful in the
world without, and whatever is lovely in the world within.
We thank Thee for the inspiring words which have been
here spoken, brought home to the consciences of this con
�43
gregation by the life which stood behind them, to make
men more earnest to search after what is true and to do
what is right. We thank Thee, our Father in heaven, for
all the sweet and tender and far-reaching hopes, too vast
for this world, which have been opening here, begun upon
the earth and fulfilled in other worlds, in more imme
diate union with the spirits of the just made perfect; and
we thank Thee for all the solemn memories here, through
which the dear and honored forms of those to whom we
who are aged now looked up once as to our fathers and
teachers rise again transfigured and alive before us. We
thank Thee for all those who have been with us in the
ministry of Christ, and under the ministry of Christ,
gracious souls, rejoicing with us in the work which they
and we have been permitted to do, and now, as our trust
is, numbered among Thy saints in glory gverlasting. And
while we here render thanks to Thee for the ministry so
long and so faithfully fulfilled in this place, so allying
itself to all that is sweet in our human affections, to all
that is beautiful in the world of nature and of art, to all
that is holy in the domestic relations, to all that is strong
and true in the defence of human rights, to the deepest
human interests and to thy love, uniting in grateful rev
erence for the past, we would also ask Thy holy Spirit to
dwell with Thy servant, to inspire him still with thoughts
which shall keep his soul always young, his spirit always
fresh, for long years yet to come, with increasing ripe
ness and increasing devotedness; and that he may long
continue to walk in and out here amid the silent benedic
tions of those who have learned to love and honor him.
Our Father in heaven, help us that whatever may be
said at this time may be in harmony with the occasion.
While we here rise up in prayer and thanksgiving to
Thee, grant that Thy heavenly benediction may rest on
pastor and people, that Thy loving spirit may turn our
�44
human wishes into heavenly blessings, and that the words
and example of Him who came into the world, not to
do his own will but the will of Him that sent him, may
comfort and strengthen us; and that the life which has
been such an inspiration and joy and quickening power
to our friend may be to all of us still an incentive to
holiness, and an inspiration to all pure and heavenly
thoughts.
And now, most merciful Father, grant to us all, that
it may be good for us to be here—so gracious and so
hallowed is the time—and Thine, through Jesus Christ
our Lord, be the kingdom and the power and the glory
forever and ever. Amen.’":
Music.
Soprano solo and chorus, .... Spohk.
“ How lovely are thy dwellings fair !”
Mr. Winsor then spoke as follows:
At the ordination of Dr. Furness, fifty years ago, the
sermon was delivered by one eminent among Unitarian
Christians, ^^gtom&is memory will be long cherished
and honored, Henry Ware, Jr., and for this reason I ask
to speak first of all here to-night his son, Rev. John F.
W. Ware, of Boston, Mass.
Address of Rev. John F. W. Ware.
Friends of this Christian Society: I have no
other claim to be standing here to-night and participating
in your service than the one just mentioned—that I am
the son of the man who, fifty years ago this day, preached
the sermon at the ordination of his friend, William
�45
Henry Furness, and what may seem to you my fitness is
indeed my unfitness. Proud as I am in being the son of
a man so much honored, loved, and remembered, I never
feel it quite right in any way to try to represent him, and
had I known that this was to be a part of the conse
quences of my journey I think I should have stayed at
home.
But during the hours that I have been on the way my
thoughts have been busy with that fifty yea® ago, think
ing of the goodly company who, “in the winter wild,”
came down here from New England that they might
plant this vine in the vineyard of the Lord. And none
of them who came at that time to plant are permitted
to be here to-night to help us gather the rich and Opened
clusters. It showed, I thinaMwe love that these men
had for, and the confidence that they had in, their young
friend, that they should have come, in that inclement
time, this long journey by stage, taking them days and
nights of discomfort as it did. IBSik that there was
no sweeter household word in that dear old home of mine
than “ Brother Furness ”—the old-fashioned way in which
ministers used to talk of one anotheAwhich we of to
day have forgotten. In those times it meant something;
to-day we don’t feel as if it did, so we have dropped it.
I think there was no‘name so sweet outside of the closest
family ties as that name, and we children grew—my sis
ter and myself—to have always the deepest love for the
man that our father loved; and as time went by, and
young manhood came, I looked forward to the hearing
of the tones of that voice, and the seeing of that smile,
and the touching of that hand, as among the bright and
pleasant things—a sort of condescending, it always seemed
to me to be, of one who was in a sphere higher up than I
ever hoped to climb to. Then, as I grew older, I re
member the audacity with which I offered him “a labor
�46
of love ” in this church, and I remember I trembled after
I had done it; and I remember how he thanked me, and
how he criticized me, and the criticizing was a great deal
better than the thanking. It was very deep; it meant a
good deal, and it has not been forgotten.
Fortunate man! he who came into this city fifty years
ago; fortunate in the place, and the time of his birth :
fortunate in the education he had had and the faith he had
imbibed; fortunate in the place he had gone to, not to be
coddled among friends, emasculated by being surrounded
by those who thought just as he did, but thrown out by
God’s will into this outpost, where he could grow, as we
cannot where we are surrounded by those of our own
preference and method of thinking; fortunate in the
bent of his study, iii the opportunity to unfold the beau
tiful life of Jesus; fortunate in being of those who
stood up for the slave; fortunate in having lived to see
the issue of the work that his heart was engaged in; for
tunate in being now crowned by the love and benediction
of his people, and retiring calmly and sweetly from the
work of life, still to dwell among those who have loved
him these years long. Oh, fortunate man! God bless
him, and continue him here many years yet, your joy,
your companion, your guide, and your friend.
Not many of us shall see our fiftieth anniversary, for
more and more this profession of ours becomes a thing
of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow alone. Very few oc
casions there will be again to meet together to celebrate
the fiftieth anniversary of a minister’s settlement.
Let us treasure the memory of this occasion. Let it
go with us who are here to our homes and our works,
and may it remain here with you a thought and memory
and a help; and as, in the beginning, this church drew
its life and its first impulse through a little band of
sturdy and steady and upright laymen, so in the time
�4
47
that lies before you, lay friends of this Society, remem
ber that it is not the past upon which you can lean—the
work that has been done by the servant who retires. It
is the future in which you are to hope, and the charac
ter of that future must be largely your work. With
this simple word, knowing that there are many gentle
men here who are to speak, and will speak more wisely
and properly than I, I ask Mr. Gannett to follow me.
Rev. Dr. Furness then came forward, and said:
My dear Friends : I am very doubtful about the
propriety of my being present on this occasion, not be
cause any deserts of mine would call forth any extrava
gant eulogium, but because I know the kind hearts of my
friends. They would say things which would make me
very uncomfortable! But just before I came from home
I got a letter from our friend, Mr. Weld, minister of the
church in Baltimore. He has sent us from the church in
Baltimore two communion cups—silver cups—as a token
of kind fellowship and recognition of this anniversary
from the church in Baltimore. They wished to have an
inscription placed on them, but they had no time; in
dicating that they were gifts from the church in Balti
more. So I thought I would bring them down without
delay, and put them upon the table, if there was any room
for them.
In all the kind words which my brethren say about
me, I think there is a good deal put in. Just like the old
man who took notes of his minister’s sermons, and when
he read them over to the minister, the ministei said,
“ Stop ! stop ! I did not say that.” “ I know you didn’t,”
he said; “ but I put it in to make sense of it.
So, I
think, on this occasion, there will be a good deal put
�1
48
in. If you will allow me, I will go and sit down at
the other end of the room, and if they get a little too
strong I can run out. I was entreated to come here
and show myself. I am very grateful to you for your
kind attention.
Address
of
William C. Gannett.
Like Mr. Ware, I only speak as the son of the right
man. The right man stood by Dr. Furness’ side fifty
years ago, and gave him the right hand of fellowship. I
know not whether there are any here that saw the sight
or heard the words; perhaps of all he only. The air
seems full, to me, at least, of the memories of the other
one. And to you who sit and listen, the air must seem
full of the very spirit of communion that these cups just
given symbolize. There ought to have been a white head
here; there ought to have been dark eyes; there ought
to have been a ringing voice; there ought to have been
a voice that would have been full of tenderness as he
stood at this side of the fifty years,—as he then stood at
the other side,—and said the words of an old man’s fel
lowship. He would to-day, as then, have been just six
months Dr. Furness’ senior in the work. I suppose
one can imagine anybody, any old person, as young,
easier than he can his own father or his own mother. I
cannot conceive the one whom I call father standing here,
or in the place which this church represents, as a young
man of twenty-four speaking to a young man of twentythree, and bidding him welcome into the work which he
called partaking in the work of heaven; bidding him
welcome into its pleasures; bidding him welcome into
its pains,—for he had been six months a minister, and
in those first six months of a minister’s life he knows a
<
�49
great deal of the pains that accompany it. It so hap
pened that just after I got your kind invitation to come,
I happened to lay my hand upon the manuscript of that
right hand of fellowship, and not having time to read it
then, I brought it with me in the cars; and only three or
four hours ago I was reading the very words, and read
ing from the very paper which, fifty years ago, was held
and read from, and to which Dr. Furness listened. It
does seem to me as if the reader were here now to say,
“ God bless you, old friend, for having stood ever faithful
to the end.” I almost think he is saying it; and if he
is, I know it comes with just that feeling: “God bless
you, old friend, for having stood faithful to the end ; for
having fulfilled all and more than all the words that then
I said to you.” And that is all I have to say. I was
asked to pass the word along to another boy of the old
men. Your father and my father and Dr. Hall were
classmates. Will Edward Hall speak for his father ?
Address of Rev. Edward H. Hall, of
Worcester, Mass.
I hardly know to what I owe this pleasure, for it is a
great one to me, of joining my thoughts with others to
night, at so early a point of our gathering. I believe
my claim is a double one, and I am willing and anxious
to make it as large as possible, both as the successor of
one who, fifty years ago, was present to give the charge
to the people, and, still tenderer to me, the claim which
has just been presented by the friend who preceded me.
In that class, which I suppose stands eminent among the
graduating classes of Cambridge for the number of men
it has sent into our ministry, to say nothing of their
quality, were the three whose names have just been
7
�50
brought together, who had no greater pride, I believe,
than to have their names in common. And it is for me
one of the pleasantest memories which this hour brings
that they were not only classmates—my father and our
father to-night—but that for so long a time, through their
college course, they were in closest intimacy as room
mates. And yet I should be sorry to think that this was
my only connection with this occasion. It was said, I
remember, of one of the finest and noblest of our officers
killed in the war, that of the many who had met him,
each one seemed to feel that he had made a special dis
covery of that man’s noble character and fine traits, so
did the discovery overpower him, and so sure was he that
to no one else had it come as it did to him; and I am in
clined to think that there is no one of these ministers
here to-night who does not feel as if his connection with
him whom we meet to-night to honor was something
special, as if the inspiration which he had drawn from
that source was one which no one but himself had got.
No qualification for our profession, I suppose, is higher
than the power of historic intuition; the power of seeing
things as they were; of reading the words and seeing be
hind them; the power that reproduces the past. Our
great historians are those who read the past in that way;
our great theologians are those who read the past as if
it were present, and feel a personal intercourse with those
who walked and fspoke in those early days. They are
the holy men and apostles of to-day; they will always
be the apostles to the end of time, and I am glad to feel
that out of our numbers has come one whose power of
divining the past has shown itself so fine and true.
I can hardly help speaking about another feeling.
I am impressed to-night by the difference, the vast dif
ference, between our fathers of a generation ago and
us who are upon the stage to-day. We look back rev
�51
erently to them; perhaps children always do to their
fathers. It is barely possible that our children may look
upon us in the same way. We look upon them as a
group of men set apart by themselves—a kind of priest
hood, conscious of the sanctity of their work. A sort of
moral halo encircles their heads as we think of them, and
we group them in just that affectionate way to which our
friend before me has alluded, as a band of brothers. Will
this generation of ministers ever look to their successors
as they appear to us ? I cannot believe it. That will not
be our claim upon their honor or their regard. Happy
for us if we can have any claim upon it; if men shall
see that the second generation of ministers took bravely
up the work that was half done, uttered the words that
were still unspoken, continued in the path which the
fathers cannot longer tread, and proved that it takes
more than one generation to do the work which Unitarianism is born to accomplish.
But I have no more claim upon your time, and close
by introducing to you, as I have been asked, the Rev.
Dr. Lothrop, of Boston.
• .
Rev. Dr. S. K. Lothrop spoke as follows:
My Christian Friends : I have but a few words to
say, and I rise to say these simply that I may more
fully express what my presence here implies, my deep
sympathy and interest in this occasion.
There are scenes and events in life which, from their
simplicity and beauty, and the moral grandeur which
always mingles more or less with everything simple and
beautiful, can gain nothing from human lips. Eloquence
can coin no words that shall impress them upon the heart
and conscience more deeply than they impress themselves.
This occasion is one of these events. We meet here to-
*
�52
5
night—this company, the members of this church, these
brethren from distant and different parts of the country
—to commemorate fifty years of faithful and devoted ser
vice in the Christian ministry, and rhetoric can add
nothing to the moral dignity and grandeur of this fact,
that is not contained in the simplest statement or expres
sion of it. We meet to do honor and reverence to one,
who, from the earliest aspirations of his youth to the later
aspirations and ever enlarging service of his manhood,
has known no object but truth, no law but duty, no
master but conscience, and who, under the inspiration and
guidance of these has wrought a noble work in this city,
made full proof of his ministry, and given a glorious
illustration of the power of that faith, “ which is the vic
tory that overcometh the world.”
The Unitarian Congregationalists recognize a large
personal freedom and individuality. Among the brethren
present and all called by our name who are absent, there
are wide differences of theological thought and opinion;
and some of us may not entirely concur in all the con
clusions—the result of Christian thought and study—
which our honored brother, the pastor of this church, in
his fifty years of noble service, may have presented in
this pulpit or given to the public through the press. But
however he may differ from him on some points, no one
who has read what he has published, can fail to perceive
or refuse to acknowledge the spirit of devout reverence,
love, faith, the large and glorious humanity that every
where breathe in his words; while every one familiar
with his long life-work in this city, every one who has
known him intimately, had opportunity to study and ob
serve his character, to mark its mingled firmness and
gentleness, sweetness and strength, its martyr spirit ad
hering to conscientious convictions and carrying them
out at whatever cost or sacrifice, its loyal spirit, faithful
�53
to Christ and truth according to honest and sincere con
viction, every one who knows and has witnessed how
these things have pervaded and animated his life, char
acter, work, cannot fail to cherish toward him a senti
ment of reverence and honor; and amid all differences of
opinion there may be between us, I yield to no one in
the strength and sincerity with which I cherish this sen
timent in my own heart. When I visited him at his
house to-day, I could not but feel that while years had
not abated one jot of the vigor of his intellect or the
warmth of his heart, they had added largely to that
something, I know not what to call it, that indescribable
charm, which has given him a place in every heart that
has ever known him, and made us his brethren (I am
only uttering what they will all acknowledge) always
disposed to sit at his feet in love and admiration.
I am oue of the oldest, probably the oldest of our min
isters present. Dr. Furness’ ordination antedates mine,
which occurred in February, 1829, only by four years
and a month. As regards term of service my name is
close to his on our list of living clergymen, and I remem
ber, as if it were but yesterday, his ordination fifty years
ago to-day, and can distinctly recall the deep interest
with which it was spoken of that evening in the family
circle of the late Dr. Kirkland at Cambridge, of which I
was then a member. I had but slight personal acquaint
ance with Dr. Furness, however, till thirteen years after
this, in 1838, when suffering from ill health he was unable
for several months to discharge his duties. His pulpit
was supplied by clergymen from Boston and the neigh
borhood, and as he had many loving friends and warm
admirers in Brattle Square Society, they were very will
ing to release me for six weeks, that I might come to
Philadelphia and preach for him. This visit and service
brought me into more intimate acquaintance with him and
�54
this Society. The pleasant memories of that period, fresh
in my heart to this day, were prominent among the mani
fold recollections that prompted, nay, constrained me to
come and unite my sympathies with yours on this occasion.
It is a glad occasion, yet there is something solemn and
sad about it. Like all anniversaries, it has a double
meaning, makes a double appeal to us. It gives a tongue
to memory, calls up the shadows of the past, brings be
fore us the forms of those we have loved and lost; we see
their smiles; we hear their voices; and as I stand here
to-night, and look back upon those fifty years, and call
to mind the venerable fathers of our faith, whom I knew
and loved and honored in the early days of my profes
sional life, Drs. Bancroft, Ripley, Thayer, Harris, Pierce,
Nichols of Portland, Parker of Portsmouth, Flint of
Salem, and bring before me the Boston Association when
it numbered among its members Channing, Lowell, Parkman, Ware, Greenwood, Frothingham, Pierpont, Young,
and last, though not least, that great apostle who has
just departed, Dr. Walker, I feel as if I had lived a
century, and was a very old man. I feel, however, that
life is not to be measured by years, and I hope, mean al
ways to try to keep as young, bright, joyous, and buoyant
as Dr. Furness seemed this morning when I greeted him
in his own house.
I sympathize in all that has been said here this even
ing, especially in all that has been said in relation to the
future of this Society and its honored and beloved pas
tor. It is no longer a secret, I believe, that he intends
to ask a release from further service. I am sure, my
friends, that all the brethren present will leave with you
their loving benediction, and the hope that something of
his mantle may fall upon whoever comes to try to fill his
place. The whole of that mantle, in all its beauty,
grandeur, and simplicity, you cannot expect any man to
�55
have or wear; if you find a successor wearing a goodly
portion of it you will have great reason to rejoice, to
thank God and be of good courage. As for Dr. Furness
himself, we leave with him our gratitude and reverence,
and our devout wish that the sweetest serenity and peace
and moral glory may mark his remaining years; and for
ourselves, who have come from far and near to hold this
jubilee with him, we all hope to gather here to-night
and carry away with us on the morrow memories, in
spirations, influences that shall quicken us to fresh zeal
and effort in our several spheres of work, determined to
be faithful and persevere unto the end, whether that end
cover twenty, thirty or forty, or, as may be the case with
some of us, fifty years of professional service.
Rev. Dr. James Freeman Clarke, of Boston, being
called upon to read a poem written for the occasion,
spoke as follows:
A great many years ago I was journeying from Ken
tucky to Boston, and passing through Philadelphia, I
could not deny myself the pleasure of going to see our
dear friend, Mr. Furness, and he was then full of the
thoughts which were afterward published in his first
book, concerning Jesus of Nazareth. I spent the whole
morning talking with him, and when the morning was
through, said he, “ Stay a little longerand I said, “ I
will wait till night before I go;” and I spent the after
noon talking with him, and when the night came, he had
not finished speaking, and I had not finished listening.
So I spent another day. We talked in the morning, we
talked in the afternoon, and we talked in the evening. I
still had not heard all I wanted to, and so I stayed the
third day, and, of course, Brother Furness is very much
associated in my mind with his studies on this subject,
�56
which has led me to take the tone which you will find in
these lines:
Where is the man to comprehend the Master,
The living human Jesus—He who came
To follow truth through triumph or disaster,
And glorify the gallows and its shame?
No passive Christ, yielding and soft as water ;
Sweet, but not strong; with languid lip and eye ;
A patient lamb, led silent to the slaughter;
A monkish Saviour, only sent to die.
Nor that result of Metaphysic Ages;
Christ claiming to be God, yet man indeed—
Christ dried to dust in theologic pages;
Our human brother frozen in a creed !
But that all-loving one, whose heart befriended
The humblest sufferer under God’s great throne ;
While, in his life, humanity ascended
To loftier heights than earth had ever known.
All whose great gifts were natural and human ;
Loving and helping all; the great, the mean ;
The friend of rich and poor, of man and woman ;
And calling no one common or unclean.
Most lofty truth in household stories telling,
Which to the souls of wise and simple go ;
Forever in the Father’s bosom dwelling—
Forever one with human hearts below.
Not in the cloister, or professor’s study
God sets the teacher for this work apart,—
But where the life-drops, vigorous and ruddy,
Flow from the heart to hand, from hand to heart.
�57
He only rightly understands this Saviour,
Who walks himself the same highway of truth ;
Unfolding, with like frank and bold behavior,
Such earnest manhood from such spotless youth.
■ ' -«
Whose widening sympathy avoids extremes,
Who loves all lovely things, afar, anear—
Who still respects in age his youthful dreams,
Untouched by skeptic-doubt or cynic-sneer.
Who, growing older, yet grows young again,
Keeping his youth of heart;—whose spirit brave
Follows with Jesus, breaking every chain,
And bringing liberty to every slave.
To him, to-night, who, during fifty years,
For truths unrecognized has dared the strife,
In spite of fashion’s law or wisdom’s fears,
We come to thank him for a noble life.
He needs no thanks, but will accept that love,
The grateful love, inevitably given
To those who waken faith in things above,
And mingle with our days a light from heaven.
And most of all, who shows us how to find
The Great Physician for all earthly ill—
The true Reformer, calm and bold and kind,
Who came not to destroy but to fulfil.
And thus this church grows into holy ground
So full of Jesus that our souls infer
That we, like Bunyan’s Pilgrim, must have found
At last “ The House of the Interpreter.”
Dr. Clarke called upon Rev. Dr. Bartol to speak, who
said:
My Friends : I certainly ought in all sincerity, and I
certainly do in all humility, thank the committee for in8
�58
viting one, so devoid of all conventional virtue, with no
place in any conference, standing for the desert—yet not
quite, I think, belonging to the tribe of Ishmael, for my
hand is against no man, and no man’s hand, I think, is
against me,—to say even one word. But let me tell you
there is good ecclesiastical blood in the family. I throw
myself on one who is worthy, I am sure, and popular in
this church, a cousin by blood. I think there is a good
deal of vicarious atonement in him; and I hope his
righteousness will be imputed to me, though I do not
mean to make him a scapegoat for my sins.
Notwithstanding what my brother has said, I shall call
him not only brother but John Ware; and because of what
he said we shall all be convinced that this is a real
brotherhood in spirit as in name after all. I call it a
very goodly fellowship, not only of the prophets but of
the people to-night. And that is the thought that comes
into my mind in regard to it. Here our brother and
father Furness, your minister, has brought all these
brethren together who stand in thought so wide apart.
Is it not a real fellowship? I need not mention the
names to show you how wide a space of thought they
measure, and the beauty and power of a man’s fellow
ship. It is not to be determined by the number of his
disciples or followers, by the largeness of the congrega
tion he can gather, or the crowds that hang on his lips;
but by the measure which all those men, be they more or
fewer, make in the world of ideas, which is also the world
of love; for a man’s parallax, that twenty friends may
make for him, is a larger parallax than a million friends
may make. And I think it is, in spite of our dear friend’s
utter modesty, an occasion of joy with him. It should
be an occasion of joy that he reaches so far out on either
hand, and gathers such a company together. It is a real
fellowship, a real brotherhood, a real fatherhood; and while
�59
these young men have been speaking—and we have not
begun with the eldest, even to the last, but have begun
the other way—it seemed to me as if the almond blossoms
from the old heads which we remember, as well as see,
have been dropping upon some of our heads, and that
they have shed them upon us. We are glad for that fel
lowship. It is rich beyond measure.
I had a letter from our dear Brother Dewey. He says
in this letter, speaking of the death of Dr. Walker, “ He
seems to say to me, ‘ Your turn next.’ ” Ah, “ sad !” Did
I hear that word? No, not sadtj Death is not sad;
departure is not sad; ascending is not sad. Death is
nothing. But what is meant by our thought? I said to
my dear friend, Dr. Bellows, last night as we were talking,
“ How strange it would be, when we came each one of us
to die, to find that death, which we have thought so much
of, is nothing to think of! Death at last and for the
first time takes everlasting leave of us. Death will just
so surely depart from us as we come to die. And in the
article of dying, it will depart.”
It is well that I should close with this single thought
of fellowship. Providence has been working very won
derfully and very mightily, with all these great causes
which have had great sway in the modern world, through
this gospel of free thought. I call it a gospel,—a gospel
of humanity, this loving gospel to bring people together.
I do not like the word fellowship as an active verb. I
never could speak of fellowshipping one. Fellowship is
the result of being true to our own conviction one to
another; coming and sitting in the circle that takes in
the heaven as well as the earth,—and I will finish my
little talk with what perhaps is as yet an unedited fact
or story, of one of those other elders, not so very old, who
have gone to the majority. Samuel Joseph May illus
trated this bond of fellowship ; how God will have it, that
�60
we must be brethren and fellows, whether we will or not.
He told me that one day, a great many years ago, it must
now be between thirty or forty years, he was returning
from an anti-slavery meeting, on a steamer, when a theo
logical conversation arose between some parties, and one
man was pleased to denounce Unitarians very severely;
and perhaps some of you remember what that denuncia
tion was of the Unitarian Doctrine. It was infidel, it
was atheistic, it was all that was bad. Mr. May listened
quietly until the man got through, who had the sym
pathy of others, and then frankly, like himself, said, “ I
must tell you, sir, that I am myself one of those dreadful
Unitarians.” “ Indeed, indeed,” said the man. “ I have
listened to you with great pleasure at the anti-slavery
meeting; would you allow me to have a little conversa
tion with you at the other end of the boat, privately?”
“ With the utmost pleasure,” said Mr. May. They took
their departure from the little circle to the bow of the
boat. As the man was about to open his converting
speech, Mr. May said : “ Now before we proceed to our
little controversygl wish to ask you one question. Do
you believe it is possible in this matter of theology, I
after all may be right and you may be wrong ?” “ No,
I don’t believe it^s possible,^* said the man. “Then,
then,” said Mr. May, “ I think there is no advantage in
our having any further conversation.” Mr. May had
his place nevertheless in that man’s heart: for we do not
choose our fellows. God chooses our fellows for us. A
man said one day: “ I heard that transcendental lecturer
speak. He got his thought into my mind, and the worst
of it is, I can’t get it out.” Be true to your conviction;
for that is the charm, the beauty, the holiness! And
then—I must say it, yes, I must say it in spite of Dr.
Furness’ presence—not your thought alone, but you will
get into the heart of every man or woman who has the
�61
slightest knowledge of you. And the man and the woman
will love you, and the time will come when they will
not want to get you out of their mind.
Rev. Dr. Thompson, of Jamaica Plain, Mass., then
addressed the meeting as follows:
My Friends : I feel a good deal of embarrassment in
taking my place on the platform, having received no
hint that any word would be expected of me.
If I were as old and gray as some of the brethren who
have preceded me, I might perhaps follow in their
severely sober strain, but you will have to take me as I
am. Before touching on what more immediately con
cerns the occasion, let me frankly confess to having
brought with me a slight pique againsttithe venerated
pastor of this church, and you shall know how it hap
pened. About ten years ago—it will be ten in April—the
Sunday after the first National Conference in New York,
I was seated in this church. Three or four of us ministers
had come on to attend the worship ; by what attraction
you can well imagine. Robert Collyer preached the
sermon, one of the best he ever preached, that on “Hurting
and Healing Shadows.” Now you all know Dr. Furness’
great fondness for conferences and such like, only he
never goes to them ! Well, I think he must have been
a little uneasy while Collyer was preaching from having
heard of the great enthusiasm which prevailed in the
recent conference, and from regretting, though he did
not say so, that circumstances, or something, had pre
vented his being there to share it. While he sat in the
pulpit under this “hurting shadow” he was thinking very
likely—but I do not assert it as a fact—how he could
extemporize something here that would bear a resemblance
to what we had been doing and enjoying in New York;
and he hit on a plan. So, immediately after Brother
�62
Collyer had finished, our excellent friend arose, looking
exactly as he does to-night, and, with that peculiar
twinkle under his spectacles and expression about the
mouth which none of you will ever forget, said, that it
had occurred to him that, as a number of ministers were
present who had attended the New York conference, it
might be interesting to the congregation to hear an ac
count of it from their lips ; and without further ceremony
he would call upon them. When it came my turn he
introduced me in this fashion; (and here comes in the
pique of which I am going to free my mind). “ This
gentleman,” said he (giving my name), “some of the
older members of the society may perhaps remember to
have heard preach here, I will not undertake to say
precisely when, but it was some time within the present
centuryI” Do you wonder that I have had a feeling
about this insinuation ? It was true that I had preached
for him while yet a young man, and he about as old to
my appreciation as he is now. It is also true that in the
abundance of his kindness he wanted to say a pleasant
thing about the sermon ; and he did say it. And what
do you think it was ? I hope it is not too flattering for
me to repeat after having carried it so long in my memory.
He said : “ Thompson, there was one capital word in your
sermon, a capital word.” “ What was it ?” I asked,
surprised. “ It was the word intenerated; where did
you get it ?” “ From the dictionary,” I meekly replied ;
“ and you will find it there.” And now I wish to say
that if at any time within the last forty years you have
heard that word “intenerated” from the lips of your
minister you may know where it came from.
Dr. Furness: I have never used it once. (Laughter.)
What delightful reminiscences of my connection with
this church!
And now let me come to the matter of the jubilee.
�63
It happened to me less than a week ago to walk into the
sanctum of our Brother Mumford, the accomplished
editor of the Christian Register. I entered expecting to
see my welcome in the generous smile with which he
usually meets his friends. But instead of this, his face
wore a most solemn expression, and he seemed to find it
hard even to look at me. “ What now ?” thought I;
“ what have I been doing ?” After a minute or two of
suspense, I was relieved by his lifting his eyes pleas
antly and saying: “ I am doing up Dr. Furness,” or
words to that effect. I instantly remonstrated, say
ing it would spoil every man’s speech who goes to
Philadelphia, for they are all doing just what you are.
They are all searching the volumes of the Christian
Register and Christian Examiner, and other newspapers
and periodicals to find out all they can in relation to the
man and the ordination fifty years ago. But he was in
flexible, saying that - he didn’t mean that the Christian
Register should be behind any of them.” So he went on,
and the result was the excellent notice of our friend which
appeared last Saturday.
However, he did not give quite all the facts that link
themselves in my mind with the ordination of Dr. Fur
ness. It was a very remarkable year of ordinations in
our Unitarian body, remarkable as to the number of
them, and as to the character and future eminence of the
men ordained, and the reputation of the ministers who
ordained them. Let me refer to a few of them. Six
months before the ordination here, June 30th, 1824, our
beloved Brother Gannett had been ordained as the col
league of Dr. Channing; and, on the same day, his lifelong
friend in the closest intimacy, the Rev. Calvin Lincoln,
was ordained at Fitchburg. Then came this ordination ;
and in just a week after, January 19th, followed that of
the Rev. Alexander Young, over the New South Church
�64
in Boston. Such highly distinguished ministers as Pier
pont, Palfrey, Ware Sr., Channing, Upham, and Harris,
took the several parts. Of these, two only survive, Dr.
Palfrey, whom several of us here remember as our teacher
in the Theological School, and, remembering, have be
fore us the image of a man as remarkable for method,
industry, learning, and accuracy as a teacher, as he was
for a conscientious fidelity in the discharge of every duty,
the least as well as the greatest; and Charles W. Upham,
who had been ordained but a month before, over the First
Church in Salem. Mr. Upham, after twenty years in the
ministry, retired and became for a time a servant of the
country in the National House of Representatives. In
his advanced age he has pursued his favorite historical
studies, and has, as you know, recently published a Life
of Timothy Pickering in four volumes, which has been
received with great favor by the public.
The week following the ordination of Dr. Young, came
that of the Rev. Edmund Q. Sewall, at Amherst, New
Hampshire, a man of rare abilities and virtues; no longer
living. At this ordination we find our friend Palfrey
taking part with Pierpont, Lowell, and Thayer of
Lancaster. This was followed the next week, February
2d, by the ordination of Rev. John Flagg, of West
Roxbury, in the exercises of which we find the names of
Palfrey again, the lately deceased Dr. Walker, and Drs.
Pierce, Lowell, Gray, and Lamson, all well known by
those of us who are far advanced in the journey of life,
and all, but the first, now gone on out of sight but not
beyond the reach of our affections. The week following
Mr. Flagg’s, came the ordination of that true man and
faithful servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Rev.
Samuel Barrett over the Chambers Street Church in
Boston; a man of clear, strong mind, devoted to his
work, exercising his ministry in great patience, in great
I
�65
cheerfulness, with great joy in God and great love for the
brotherhood. Then followed in the very next week,
February 16th, the installation of the Rev. Henry Cole
man in the Barton Square Church, of Salem, at which,
among others, Messrs. Frothingham, Pierpont, and Brazer
officiated. I ought to mention that at the beginning of
the same year, 1825, if not a little earlier, our eminent
brother, the Rev. E. B. Hall, a particular friend of Dr.
Furness, received a call to the then new parish in North
hampton, which the state of his health did not permit
him at once to accept. But tima parish would not give
him up; and in the August ensuing, his health being
partially restored, he became their minister; the venerable
Dr. Ware preaching the sermon, and Pierpont! Willard,
Lincoln, and Brazer, assisting in otl^P exercises.
Said I not truly that the year which gave Dr. Fur
ness to Philadelphia, was memorablafor its*rdinations
in our denomination ? Certainly no other has been so
fruitful. And all these eminent brothers ordained, with
two or three exceptions, were the coevals and intimate
personal friends of him whom we have come here to
night to honor with the outpourings of our respect,
gratitude, and affection.
Now there is one other event relating to our good
friend, which I hope it will not seem improper for me to
refer to, having been for twenty-seven years of my life a
minister in the city where it occurred ; a very important
event in the history of his singularly happy life. It
occurred in the year following his ordination; and it has
probably had quite as much to do with his comfort and
happiness here as your unfailing kindness and sympathy.
The event was of so much importance that it was chron
icled in the Salem Gazette in this wise:
“ In Salem, August 29th, 1825, by Rev. Mr. Emerson,
Rev. William Henry Furness, Philadelphia, to Miss
9
�66
Annis Pulling Jenks, daughter of the late Mr. John
Jenks.”
I don’t dare to tell all I have heard about the bride,
though I think from what you now see, you would find
no difficulty in believing it. I refer to the event because
of its influence and its long-continued charm ; and I hope
the few lines from Rogers’ “ Human Life,” with which I
close, if I can join them to what I have been saying, will
not inappropriately relieve your attention.
“ Across the threshold led,
And every tear kissed off as soon as shed,
His house she enters there to he a light
Shining within when all without is night;
A guardian angel o’er his life presiding,
Doubling his pleasures and his cares dividing;
Winning him back when mingling with the throng,
Back from a world we love, alas, too long,
To fireside happiness, to hours of ease,
Blest with that charm—the certainty to please.”
I am requested to introduce our Brother Chadwick, of
Brooklyn.
Rev. John W. Chadwick, of Brooklyn, N. Y., spoke
as follows:
Dear Friends : It seems to be the order of the
evening for each speaker to justify in some way his
presence on this sacred and beautiful occasion, and I,
knowing that my turn was coming, have been not a little
troubled as to what I should say for myself. But Dr.
Thompson has helped me out. In the accounts of
various ordinations which he has read to you, you
must have noticed how few old men had anything to do
with them, from which it would appear that, whether
there is or is not less respect for age now than formerly,
there was formerly much more respect for young men
than at present. Nowadays we never take up with any
�67
young men at ordinations and such times, till there are
no more old men to be had. I suspect, therefore, that I
have been invited to speak here this evening as a sign
that respect for young men has not entirely died out.
Dear friends, I saw this occasion while it was yet a
great way off. When Robert Collyer said to me up at
Saratoga last September, “John, we must all go to
Philadelphia next January,” I answered, I have been
meaning to this three years.” After your invitation
came, thinking it might possibly mean that I should say
something, I began to think what I would say, and all at
once I found my thought was going to a sort of tune. I
couldn’t account for it except by the fancy that my
thought was sympathizing with the music of Dr. Furness’
life, which has been a sort of symphony—a “Pastoral
Symphony ”—for has not the thought of the Good Shep
herd been the central thought and inspiration of it all
from the beginning until now ?
Here is what came to me.
W. H. F.
January 12th, 1825. January \2th, 1875.
Standing upon the summit of thy years,
Dear elder brother, what dost thou behold,
Along the way thy tireless feet have come
From that far day, when young and fresh and bold,
Hearing a voice that called thee from on high,
Thou answeredst, quickly, “ Father, here am I.”
Fain would we see all that thine eyes behold,
And yet not all, for there is secret store
Of joy and sorrow in each private heart,
To which no stranger openeth the door.
But thou can st speak of many things beside,
While we a little space with thee abide.
�68
Tell us of those who fifty years ago
Started thee forth upon thy sacred quest,
Who all have gone before thee, each alone,
To seek and find the Islands of the Blest.
To-day, methinks that there as well as here
Is kept all-tenderly thy golden year.
Tell us, for thou didst know and love him well,
Of Channing’s face,—of those dilating eyes
That seemed to^eatch, while he was with us here,
Glimpses of things beyond the upper skies.
Tell us of th®t weak voice, which was so strong
To cleave asunder every form of wrong.
Thou hast had good companions on thy way ;
Gannett was ®rith thee in his ardent prime,
And with thee still when outward feebleness
But made his spirit seem the more sublime,
Till, like another prophetj&mmoned higher,
He found, like him, a chariot of fire.
And that beloved disciple was thy friend,
Whose heart was blither than the name he bore,
Who yet could hide the tenderness of May,
And bleaker than December, downward pour
The tempest of his’Wrath on slavery’s lie,
And all that takes from man’s humanity.
And thou hast walked with our Saint Theodore,
Our warrior-saint, well-named the gift of God,
Whose manful hate of every hateful thing,
Blossomed with pity, e’en as Aaron’s rod,
And lips that cursed the priest and Pharisee
Gathered more honey than the wilding bee.
All these are gone, and Sumner’s heart beneath
Should make more pure the yet untainted snow ;
Our one great statesman of these latter days,
Happy wert thou his other side to know,
To call him friend, whom ages yet unborn
Shall love tenfold for every breath of scorn.
�69
All these are gone, but one is with us still,
So frail that half we deem she will not die,
But slow exhale her earthly part away,
And wear e’en here the vesture of the sky.
Lucretia, blessed among women she,
Dear friend of Truth, and Peace, and Liberty.
And one, whose form is as the Son of man,
Has been with thee through all these busy years,
Holden our eyes, and He to us has seemed
As one seen dimly through a mist of tears Bl
But thou hast seen him clearly face to face,
And told us of his sweetness and his grace.
Standing upon the summit of thy years,
Dear elder brother, tbou canst see the day
When slavery’s curse had sway in all the land,
And thou art here, and that has passed away.
We give thee joy that in its hour of pride,
Thy voice and hand were on the weak® side.
But from thy clear and lofty eminence
Let not thine eyes be ever backward turned,
For thou canst see before as cannot we
Who have'^ot yet thy point of ’vantage earned.
Tell us of what thou seest in the years
That look so strange, seen through our hopes and fears.
Nothing we know to shake thy steadfast mind
Nothing to quench thy heart with doubt or fear ;
But higher truth and holier love revealed,
And justice growing to man’s heart more dear.
And everywhere beneath high heaven’®3ope,
A deeper trust, a larger, better hope.
There are some here that shall not taste of death
Till they have seen the kingdom come, with power.
O brave forerunner, wheresoe’®| thou art,
Thou wilt be glad with us in that glad hour.
Farewell! Until we somewhere meet again.
We know in whom we have believed. Amen.
�70
Rev. Mr. Chadwick, in turn, introduced the Rev.
R. R. Shippen, of Boston, Mass., who said:
My dear Friends : Amid these memorials of your
Christmas rejoicing, and these fresh flowers and ever
greens of tropical luxuriance with which you would
symbolize the fragrance of the memories that cluster
round this aniversary, and your desire to keep them
green, it is my pleasant privilege to speak for the
Unitarian Association a word of greeting, giving you
congratulations on this your golden wedding, with best
wishes for the coming years. Yet as I speak for the
Association, I remember that some of our noblest and
best, from Channing through the list, have been some
what fearful of ecclesiastical entanglements, and of
hard, dry machinery, and have deemed the truest and
best work in life that wrought by character and personal
influence; even as Jesus himself did his work, not by
organizations, but by his own personality. Permit me
then to touch two or three lines of personal influence
flowing forth from this pulpit, that are but representatives
of many more. Let me speak for one in your city, now
in her ninety-third year, kept from this meeting only by
the feebleness of old age, who this afternoon told me of
her fresh remembrance of the occasion of fifty years ago,
vivid as if but yesterday, who has been a lifelong friend
of our cause, a generous worker in this church and bene
factor of the Meadville Church and. Theological School,
who recognizes this pulpit as the source of some of the
choicest inspirations of her life. Shall I speak for one
who in a large home-circle of many brothers has been a
loving, sisterly influence of sweetness and light ? who in
her youth was here a worshiper, and caught the inspira
tion of this place, and in her greeting sent me to-day
writes that she is with us here in spirit to-night; that no
one present can join in these services with a more deep
�71
and tender gratitude, and no human thought can fully
know what her life owes to the ministry we now com
memorate ? Shall I speak for another, a younger
brother, the brightest of the seven, whose youth and
early manhood were spent in this city in study and
practice of law ? who Sunday by Sunday learned here
that blessed faith that, when in the full promise of his
manly prime his last hour came, enabled him to go
bravely to death full of a cheerful hope of immortality ?
As to-night he makes heaven more real and more attrac
tive to my thought, in his name I-pay the tribute of
thanks for the inspirations of this pulpit. Shall I speak
for myself ? In my early home I remember your pastor’s
familiar volume of “Family Prayer” as a household
word. At the outset of my ministryf at the Portland
Convention, just twenty-five years ago, I first heard the
genial, charming, gracious word of your minister in his
prime. And as in Boston one may, day by day, correct
his own timepiece by Cambridge observations of the sky,
whose electric communications give us every passing hour
the celestial time true to the second, so in my young
ministry at Chicago,—a lonelier frontier post then than
now,—when the barbarous Fugitive Slave Law passed
through Congress, and the Northwest Territories were
opened for slavery, and the dark days came upon the
nation, if, as I tried, I bore any worthy testimony for
freedom, I rejoice that I was aided in setting my con
science true to the celestial time by this observatory in
Philadelphia. The blessed influences of your pulpit have
run their lines through our land and through the world.
And, friends, what does our Association seek but to
extend and multiply these lines of personal influence, to
enable Boston and Philadelphia to join hands in the
same noble work ? When I asked your pastor for the
last book of Whittier, that I might quote a forgotten
�72
line, he replied, “ All good books have feet and wings
and will find their way at last.” But our Association
only desires to quicken their speed, and by the people’s
generosity to enlarge their wings; that as we are now
sending Channing through the land, we should gladly
send the noble words of Dewey and Furness flying on
the wings of the wind.
And what do our Association and Conferences stand
for but for fellowship ? for the good-will and helpfulness
of brotherly greetings ? Pennsylvanian as I am by birth
and ancestry, with you I rejoice that these Boston
brethren have been brought to Philadelphia. It will do
us all good to know more of each other. This meeting
to-night is just like our Conferences, where our hearts
are warmed by words of brotherly kindness. As I recall
your minister’s inspiring word at the Portland Conven
tion, it has been one of the regrets of my life that we have
not heard him oftener among us. But it is never too late
to mend. On behalf of the Association and the Confer
ence I invite our Brother Furness and all of you to at
tend our meetings henceforth every time.
And now, my friends, when Brother Mumford wrote
that editorial last week, I said, “You are a generous
fellow; why didn’tl^ou keep that to make a speech
from ?” I am sure I don’t know what he is going to say.
I am requested to ask him to speak.
Rev. Thomas J. Mumford. Dear Friends: On account
of the lateness of the hour I will only say that that was
my speech. The next speaker will be Brother White,
and when I say Brother White, I mean brother just as
much as they did in the days of Henry Ware.
Rev. William O. White, of Keene, N. H., then ad
dressed the meeting as follows:
�73
There is one comfort, dear friends, as I thank you at
this late hour, for giving me the pleasure of being with
you, and that is, that Philadelphia time is a little more
generous than the time which I carry in my pocket; but
I will not abuse even Philadelphia time. The word that
Brother Mumford just mentioned brings up very dear
and tender associations with men so closely united in my
memory with our friend and brother, Dr. Furness. But
I will not carry out the thought that comes to me. I
would gladly help along one or two strains that vibrate
in our hearts, as the words are spoken, that “the time
will come when we shall take a last farewell of death,”
and that other word of a younger speaker who almost
felt, and almost knew that one of the long-departed
friends of our Brother Furness was here./'
I am glad to feel that I am here, just as some of my
younger friends were, because I am the son of a friend
of Dr. Furness, a layman whose tastes led him to the
study of theology, and who, I think, was more attached
to the studies of the ministry than many of us ministers
are. I say this, because as soon as I saw Dr. Furness
this morning I was greeted as my father’s son.
And I would not hava spoken here at all at this late
hour, but to try to fasten to those one Im two sweet
thoughts that have been uttered to-night, to which I
have alluded, a line of the poet-sculptor “Michael
Angelo.’^ He is contemplating theyvasting block of
marble upon which he is working; the block lessens ;
lessens, lessens, continually in size; and so the years of
our friend’s sweet, earnest ministry here, are fast pass
ing away before our eyes. But the great lesson that I
have found, as I go back to the time when I remember
to have heard Dr. Furness’ voice in my father’s house,
and in the old pulpit in Salem, and as I remember the
week that I spent with him more than a score of years
10
�74
ago, and as I recall the tenderness of his voice, in his
supplications and his preaching, only last October, the
great lesson I have taken with me about him fastens
itself to the line which I am now to quote of “ Michael
Angelo.” As the poet and sculptor contemplated the
wasting marble, he said:
“ The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows.”
So, with our friend, the years are passing away ; pass
ing away, soon they must be gone; but the statue grows
with tenderness of heart deeper than ever; that sweet
voice, rich with varied experience of the joys and sorrows
of those friends of his in his flock, year after year, has
acquired an added tenderness; and we feel
“The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows,”
and we can welcome the time when he, or any of us, who
try to live in a like spirit of devotion to the Master, shall
“take an everlasting farewell of death.”
I am requested to call on our friend Brother Putnam,
of Brooklyn, New York.
Rev. Dr. A. P. Putnam made the following address:
My dear Friends : I think it must have been for a
larger number of years than Brother Chadwick said for
himself, that I have been looking forward to this occasion,
meaning to be here not with a set speech, as you will very
soon see, but because I wished to come and to say from
my heart, I thank you, Dr. Furness.
I remember when I was a bookkeeper in Boston, how
my elder brother, who was in the divinity school at that
time, used to bring me the volumes of Channing, Buck
minster, and Ware, and also various pamphlet sermons of
Dr. Furness. I recollect well the delight with which I read
Dr. Furness’ pages, and the gospel of liberty they taught
me, and the new revelation they seemed to give me of
�75
the Christ. I have been a disciple following far off. Yet
I know I have not lost during all these years the strong
conviction I had then. It has deepened and deepened
from that time until now. I have gathered his pamphlets
wherever I could find them, and with not a little zeal
I have searched for all his books, many of which are out
of print and are not easily to be found, until, some years
ago, I completed the whole list, and I cherish them as
among the most precious treasures in my library. The
argument which he draws from the naturalness, the
simplicity and artlessness of the gospel records for their
truth, and the uplifting of the curtain so that the Christ
may be seen in his higher spiritual beauty! what a
debt do we owe him for that. Does he know ? can he
know ? can we tell him how much the members of our
churches feel of gratitude and love to him for all that
he has done for us in this way ? Perhaps in some far off
time he may know it more fully; but it is right, dear
friends, that we should come together thus and say these
words which are uttered here to-night, and before he
has gone away tell him how much we do love and
honor him, and why it is we do love and honor him, and
why it is that yve shall always revere and bless him.
When I have thought what words have gone forth from
that desk in behalf of liberty and right in this land, I
have wished that the church might remain just as it is
to-night, and that pulpit just as it is for years and
generations to come. It speaks a lesson for all; those
words abide with us still; they have come home to our
hearts, and kindled in our souls new zeal for the truth
as it is in Jesus. How many chains they have broken,
and oh ! what a welcome, in comparison with which these
congratulations of the hour are small indeed, is reserved
for our venerable father and friend, from the spirits of
�76
the ransomed freedmen who have ascended to heaven,
and who will greet him there.
Let me say that forty years ago it was, that Dr.
Furness preached the installation sermon of the first
minister of the church which I represent here ; the first
society of our faith in Brooklyn. It seems a long, long
while indeed. I have been over ten years there myself.
Dr. Farley preceded me, and he was there twenty years
or more. Mr. Holland was there several years before
him; Mr. Barlow several years before Mr. Holland. Dr.
Furness preached the installation sermon of Rev. Mr.
Barlow, who was the first minister of our faith in
Brooklyn, forty years ago the 17th of last September.
Of the ministersjwho took part in the services of that
occasion, all except your pastor and my immediate pre
decessor, who was then of Providence, R. I., have passed
away,—William Ware, John Pierpont, Caleb Stetson,
E. B. Hall, and others^ Nearly ten years later, Dr.
Furness was present at a| convention held there at the
time of the dedication of our church, and preached the
closing communion sermon. His is a familiar name with
my people, who are all with you here in the spirit, and
would join me, I know, in heartily saying, “God bless
him and you, and the cause of humanity and righteous
ness, which is so dear to you.”
I am requested to call upon Rev. Mr. Ames to address
you.
Rev. C. G. Ames, of Germantown, Pa., said:
As I am one of the younger brethren, and very much
at home, I feel that I should deny myself, and take up
my cross, and introduce a brother from a distance, espe
cially as you have met to hear from these patriarchal
ministers who can offer things which I cannot. But I
may boast one advantage; they cannot see Dr. Furness
�77
every day. Nor can I speak freely of what I feel; it is
too much like being one of the family. I live too near,
and can easily be excused. My voice is very frequently
heard in this house. With a heart brimming full, I
have the painful pleasure, therefore, of holding it down,
knowing it will keep.
I will introduce Rev. Dr. Bellows, of New York.
Rev. Dr. Bellows made the following remarks:
I am sure both modesty and discretion would suggest
the wisdom of my being taught by my junior and friend,
and in releasing you from any further attendance on this
interesting service. As for myself, I feel tired as a child
with the pleasures of the evening; and I can conceive that
you all must be so tired that you would welcome as your best
friend him who would permit you to go home and think
over all the kind things you have heard here. And yet
I think it is a kind of duty to say 1 word in behalf of my
own people and city, and all that great community which
I am privileged to represent here. New York speaks
to Philadelphia; and to a good many of us in New York,
Brother Furness is more than half of Philadelphia.
When we think of Philadelphia we think rather of him
than of anything else, and it is not for anything he has done
either; not for all that great service to freedom, not for
all that valuable contribution to theological speculation
or criticism, but for being what he cannot possibly help,
and that is, himself. It is so much more to be than to
say, or even to do, that I have not always a great deal
of praise for the bright things he does, or the bright
things he says,—only because he is what he is and can’t
help it, and deserves very little thanks for it; for God is
the being we must thank, not him. It is, therefore, that
I am by force compelled to thank God for him, and not
thank him.
�78
Good fellow! he has had it all himself. God gave
him all his precious gifts; he gave him his broad and
generous humanity; made him a harp for all the winds
of heaven and earth to play on, not a fife, to be stopped ;
gave him that benignant smile which he doesn’t know
anything about himself; and gave him that delicious
voice which is in itself a harmony of all his sweetest
powers, an expression of the depth and clearness of his
spirit.
Poor fellow! he cannot help it; he has carried it with
him all these seventy-two years. And, surely, the first
time I ever saw him his voice was the thing that spoke
to me. I didn’t care what it said; there it was, and I
have often thought if a soft voice be an excellent thing
in woman, such a voice as his is, is one of the most
magnificent and significant gifts that God ever gives to
man. Well, let us thank God for him, and then let us
thank him for using those talents so well. Now let me
thank you in behalf of the denomination, dear brethren,
for not being able to be otherwise than so generous, so
kind and faithful to a man who, for all I know, never
used one particle of machinery to keep you together, has
taken no particular pains to keep you together, but just
stood like a kind of magnet, and drawn you to his
heart. We don’t understand it all, but God does; and
we see how with a witchery he has done more than most
of us are able to do by getting every sort of instru
mentality at work that we can possibly use to supple
ment the defects of our natural constitution. I wish I
could work just as Dr. Furness does, and have that same
influence and power, without seeking any. If I could
stand up in naked simplicity and majesty, and then win
the people without using all this painful labor, this
fatiguing desperately drudging machinery, I should be
very glad indeed ; but for most of us poor fellows, it is a
�79
necessity to resort to these matters, to supplement the
defects of our natural constitution and faculties; but I
think Brother Furness can do without it. One thing
further I will say of Dr. Furness. It is a subject of
special congratulation that he has been always himself;
that no theological or critical studies have given an
ecclesiastical tinge or twist to his character, or prevented
the people from seeing him in his native outline. He
has been a preacher and minister, but still more, a man,
and although no man less deserves, in the depreciating
sense, the name of a man of the world, yet in a noble
sense he has been a man of the world; for he has made
the world tributary to his growth; drawn in its widest
culture, enjoyed its largest freedom, entered into its every
day feelings and joys, and made it his own by his great
enjoyment of it, and insight into its meaning. Neither
ecclesiasticism nor dogmatism has been able to quench
his native originality, and that is one of his chief charms
to-day.
Dear brethren, let me congratulate you at the close of
this half century of your minister’s labors, upon what we
n ow behold in the magnificent development of th e theologi
cal ideas and religious temper for which our branch of the
church has meanwhile stood. We expected great things,
but we have seen larger ones, although of a different
kind. We looked for a multiplication of our churches,
which we have not seen, but how vast has been the spread
of our ideas and principles? We expected to be the
chief instruments in the work of liberalizing Christian
thought and feeling, but Divine providence took up the
work with larger methods and new agencies, and made
us rather sharers than leaders in theological reform. We
happened to be the first wave of what turned out to be
an incoming tide, which has swept the whole church on.
I think Luther did not see in his day a greater, a more
�80
important reformation in theological ideas than we have
realized in the last half century.
Whether there be one Unitarian church in Phila
delphia or more, or whether our churches in New York
and Brooklyn, Baltimore and Washington, New Eng
land and the West have multiplied as fast as we hoped or
not, there is more liberal Christianity preached in this
country to-day, than the boldest prophets could have
foreseen when our enterprise started. It has advanced,
and it has triumphed, by whatever way. God has taken
it up, and brought the aid of a broad science, a broad
philosophy, a broad reformatory influence in society,
during all these last years, to bear powerfully upon it.
We have seen results which may cause many of us to
say, “Mine eyes have seen thy salvation; let now thy
servant depart in peace.” I feel no further anxiety
about the spread of liberal Christianity. It now spreads
by a necessity. It is a glorious privilege to work in it
and for it. But the business is essentially done. The
leaven is at work, and it is working everywhere, just as
much in the orthodox churches, so-called, as in our own.
And very little free thinking is done in our denomination
which is not just as fully represented in the old ortho
doxy. We are no longer the sole officers in that great
army. I thank God that the business of fighting is
pretty much over’, and that we are now beginning to
think more of cultivating religiously the area which has
been left for us specially to take care of. Let us now
look to it, as churches and ministers and parishes, and
see that we produce workmen, and, finally, spiritual
fruit, in the particular area over which we are set as
husbandmen and gardeners. That you may succeed
in cultivating your own soil, and in making the vine
yard a nobler and grander one, and in bringing forth
more clusters of grapes of the particular vine from which
�81
you are set, is my earnest prayer. And that we may all
return from these services bearing your blessings and
Brother Furness’ blessing with us into our own several
fields of labor, and that we may be abler and nobler and
more careful shepherds, and more faithful husbandmen,
is the best thing I can ask, that we may be permitted to
carry away from this hour and this blessed assembly of
Unitarian Christians and friends.
Music.
Duet for Two Sopranos and Chorus,
.
. Mendelssohn.
“I waited for the Lord,” from “Hymn of Praise.”
Chorus, .
..........................................................Spohr.
“ Happy who in Thy House Reside.”
Dr. Furness then addressed the meeting.
Dear Friends : While I am very glad to meet here
my brothers in the ministry, and am not at all insensible
to their kind words, I call you all to witness that they
are not here by my invitation. I never invited them
to come here and talk about me. But as long as they
have done so, I congratulate you all, and all who are in
terested in the success of the good cause. It is, you see,
in the hands of young men. Although some of your
guests here show gray on their heads, they are very
young men evidently, fond, especially brother Bellows,
of romancing. I use the words that Dr. Bancroft used
at my ordination: “ It was a comfort to him to feel that
as he was going away the cause would be left in hands
that would carry it on a great deal better than he could.”
Some of my friends told me I had better not come here
to-night; but brother Bellows intimated to me that by
staying away I might seem to be bidding for praise. So
I thought I would come and see whether some restraint
11
�82
could not be put upon the speakers by my presence. But
I don’t think I have availed much.
The day that I was ordained—but I am not going to
tire you with old time stories,—when an old minister
begins telling his experiences we never know when he
will stop—we were all invited,—the gentlemen of the
clergy, and the delegates from Boston and New York,—
to dine at Mr. Thomas Astley’s, who lived at the corner
of Ninth and Walnut Streets, a wealthy Englishman of
our persuasion. While we were sitting waiting for dinnoy,
the report came that the kitchen chimney was on fire!
One of the gentlemen suggested that the fire could be
put out very readily by putting a blanket before the
chimney, and throwing some sulphur into the fire-place.
After dinner, when the wine was passed around and the
toasts were given, one of the gentlemen proposed “ the
Furnace that had been kindled in Philadelphia.” And
another added, “May it never be put out with brim
stone.”
The meeting was closed by a benediction pronounced
by Dr. FurnessJfc
�*
LETTERS.
�THE FOLLOWING LETTERS WERE RECEIVED BY
THE COMMITTEE FROM PERSONS WHO
WERE UNABLE TO BE PRESENT.
�Sheffield, January 4th, 1875.
To the Committee of the First Congregational Society
of Unitarians.
Gentlemen : I am obliged and gratified by the invitation.
I wish that I could comply with it. It would have been a
great pleasure to me, to join the friends of your honored pastor,
in commemorating a ministry, not only so long, but otherwise
equally remarkable. I should like to be in your church on
that interesting evening of the 12th, to hear the pleasant things
that will be said, and to say some, perhaps, myself.
But I cannot, that is, I cannot take so long a winter journey.
I am not sure enough of my health and strength to venture
upon it. Will you give my love to Dr. Furness and his family,
and accept for yourselves and the society, the congratulations
with which I am,
Very truly yours,
Orville Dewey.
Hazelwood, Cambridge, January 6th, 1875.
Gentlemen : I feel very much honored and gratified by
your invitation to be present at the commemoration of Dr.
Furness’ settlement in the ministry in Philadelphia, but the
state of my health forbids me to accept the invitation. My
interest in your society dates from a still earlier period.
I have listened in your old Octagon Church to the preaching
of Mr. Taylor, and I believe of Mr. Vaughan, as well as
preached there repeatedly myself. For more than fifty years
I have been your pastor’s admirer and warm friend.
I heartily wish him future happy years of earthly life, and I
pray God that after his retirement from your service another
pastor may serve you with an ability and zeal not too inferior
to his.
I am, gentlemen,
Very respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
John G. Palfrey.
�86
Cambridge, January 1st, 1875.
Gentlemen : I regret very sincerely that college duties
render it impossible for me to accept your invitation. Regard
ing your pastor with equal reverence and affection, I should
deem it a great privilege to he present at the commemorative
services, from which imperative necessity alone would detain
me.
I am, gentlemen,
Very truly yours,
A. P. Peabody.
Hingham, January 4th, 1875.
Gentlemen : I thank my dear friend, Dr. Furness, and the
committee for thinking of me at this time. I should he so very
happy to be with you, and join in all the expressions of respect
and love for one whose long and faithful ministry has earned
the esteem and confidence of all who know him. Beside this,
Dr. Furness and I alone continue in the ministry, of those who
were classmates in th® Divinity School and, I think, in College.
Give my love to your pastor. I need not wish him a happy
old age. That blessing is assured to him by his fidelity to his
convictions of truth and duty through life.
Very respectfully,
Calvin Lincoln.
Cambridge, January 5th, 1875.
Gentlemen : I received your invitation to be present at the
observance of •the fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of your
pastor, Dr. Furness* It would give me great pleasure to attend.
But I do not feel at liberty to be absent from my regular duty
so long as would be required.
No occasion of the kind so significant has occurred for many
years. For fifty years Dr. Furness has stood at his post, and
manfully defended the cause of what he deemed Divine Truth
and Divine Right. He has never failed to hold up the highest
standard of private and public duty. He has made no abate
ment from the truth in his utterance of it, nor deformed it by
an immoral spirit. For fifty years he has been an untiring
student of the life of Jesus Christ in the four gospels, seeking
�87
to bring to light the reality of that life, the internal evidence
of the truthfulness of the original record of it, and the moral
grandeur and spiritual beauty of the life itself. He has followed
in no servile spirit, but with original force of thought, his great
teacher, Mr. Norton, from whom, differing in many things, he
caught the impulse to this line of inquiry, this work of love, in
which his merit has been unique, his service one never to be
forgotten. To this it may be added, with Bini versal consent,
that his living example has been in harmony with the great
subject of his studies, and has done as much as that of any
minister to show the worth of the officwaf spiritual instructor
to a generation too ready to distrust those whoMbxercise it.
Though not many years younger, I have the habit of looking
up to him, and he is one of tho^ntjrgn whom inspiration and
strength have flowed into my soul
needed.
I am, brethren, yours in Christian fellowships with thanks
for your kind invitation, and MilEannatMbwith you in all
that belongs to a most memorable occasion.
Oliver Stearns.
Roxbur^j Mass., January 7th, 1875.
Dear Sirs : I very much regret that the state of my health
forbids my being pres e® at the commemoration, not of the
close, thank God! but of the close of the first fifty years of the
ministry of Dr. Durness. I regret it not only on account of my
personal affection for the minister, but because it has been a
ministry eminently after my own heart, one th®I admire ex
ceedingly. What I know of it is derived onlv from glimpses
and intuitions, and will be filled out and corrected by the fuller
face-to-face knowledge of the
It has looked to me
at this distance as a ministry of a mild and quiet type, as of one
that doth not strive nor cry, neither doth any man hear his
voice in the streets. Other ministries have been more effective
as the multitude measures efficiency, dealing with larger crowds,
using more complex agencies, and touching society at more
numerous points of interest and with intenser action; but within
its own sphere St has dealt with a profoundness, and fidelity not
elsewhere surpassed with the soul’s greatest interests, uncom
promising in its absolute loyalty to truth and right, always
taking the highest ground, always elevated and elevating,
�88
always searching, quickening, soothing, sanctifying to heart
and conscience, a lifelong dispensary of Sermons from the
Mount.
The specialty of this ministry, it seems to me, has been the
unfolding of the personality and character of Jesus of Nazareth.
I do not believe there is a pulpit in Christendom that has done
so much to penetrate the heart and life of the Master to its
inmost depths, and open its riches to the sympathies and ac
ceptance of men, as that Philadelphia pulpit for the last fifty'
years. Every shade and turn of thought, every gleam of
emotion heavenward and earthward, all the sweet humanity
and grand divinity of that wonderful soul, have been discerned
and delineated there as never elsewhere, I think, and dwelt on
with all the earnest zeal and affectionate faith of a disciple, and
all the enthusiastic appreciation of an artist—dwelt on almost
too exclusively one might think, were it not done by one who
knew how to draw all living waters from that one well, and
bring up all the gold and gems of the moral and spiritual uni
verse from that one mine. I have no doubt this has been done
in this case, so far as any single mind can be comprehensive
and all-sided enough to do it.
The ministry which you commemorate has been singularly
self-conta^ed, that is, has been carried on apart from all official
and organic connection with other ministries, without denomina
tional bonds, with no outside ties except those of a fraternal and
genial spirit. I sympathize with the characteristics of Dr.
Furness’ ministry; my own has been conducted on a similar
plan, though I fear with less fixedness of principle, and less
consistency»©f action. Most of our brethren will call this our
fault, our limitation. Well, they are the majority, and must
decide that point; only I am sure they will have the charity to
own that we, being such as we are, could do no otherwise.
You of Philadelphia do not need reminding; but I want to
express my own appreciation of the manner in which the ministry
you celebrate has all along been adorned, refined, deepened, and
broadened by literary studies and artistic taste and culture,
bringing to that ministry contributions, or rather an aroma
and innumerable subtle and sweet influences from all realms of
spiritual beauty and fragrance and sunshine.
Shall I dare in such a letter as this to make allusion to the
way that looks to me so felicitous, in which the church in the
�89
sanctuary has been supplemented by “the church in the house?”
To my eye and my remembrance the home in Pine Street, and
the church on Locust and Tenth, in the hospitable, genial, cheer
ful, affectionate, and ever gracious spirit that pervaded them
both, were always the counterparts and archetypes of one an
other, each reflecting what was best and brightest and holiest
in the other.
Though this long ministry has been characteristically so quiet
and even and suave, it has had epochs and aspects, or one at
least, of the kind, in presence of which the earth is shaken, and
principalities and powers are prostrated. We may have doubted
the wisdom and necessity of the course taken by our brother;
but we cannot fail to recognize the sublime moral grandeur of
clear and strong conviction® adhered to and acted on, with im
movable persistence, at all risks and at all cost, and though the
heavens fall. We should be blind B>t to discern there the stuff
of which martyrs were made, and the spirit that bore the meek
and gentle Jesus to his cross.
Perhaps my mind has dwelt more on the jubilee from the
fact that if all had gone well with me, I should have been the
next among the liberal ministers, so far as I know, to have been
entitled to such an occasion for myself. I have had my nine
lustra, and if the tenth fail why should I complain ? I can still
rejoice with all my heart in the well-earned honors and happi
ness of my well-beloved friend and brother in Philadelphia.
Very truly yours,
George Putnam.
106 Marlborough Street,
Boston, January 4th, 1875.
Dear Sirs : I am deeply indebted to you for the very kind
invitation to be present at the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Fur
ness’ settlement. I regret to say that I cannot leave my work
at that time.
I am sure that you have reason to thank God and take courage
as you look back upon the half century. Dr. Furness has served
nobly both in Church and State, and has done much to show
that the two are indeed one.^ My warmest wishes accompany
him as he enters upon his green old age, which surely lacks
nothing that should go along with it. May he have the out12
�90
ward strength, as he is sure to have the inward desire, to speak
to you and for you these many years.
Gratefully and sincerely yours,
Rufus Ellis.
Portland, Maine, January 4th, 1875.
It is with great regret that I find myself unable to accept
your kind invitation to be present at the fiftieth anniversary of
the settlement of the Rev. Dr. Furness.
During the whole of that fifty years, and it embraces all my
life excepting the seven years of infancy, I have had near rela
tions and friends among the parishioners and lovers of Dr. Fur
ness, so that my interest in the occasion is almost personal.
But I am obliged to be in Philadelphia a fortnight later, and
cannot possibly spare the time for both journeys.
With the most cordial congratulations for both pastor and
people, and the hope of many happy returns of the season, I
remain,
Very respectfully and truly yours,
Thomas Hill.
Cambridge, Mass., January 2d, 1875.
Gentlemen : I am very sorry that I cannot accept your kind
invitation to be present at the fiftieth anniversary of the settle
ment of Dr. Furness as your minister.
The fact of so long a pastorship is itself noteworthy in these
days of change; but, in this case, we have all a special right to
be sharers in your joy, since we have received our part in the
fruit of your minister’s labors during these fifty years. Dr.
Furness has set an example, rare in these days of divided and
superficial work, not only by his devotion to a single parish
during so long a period, but also by his consecration to one
chosen line of thought. He selected the noblest theme and
gave his life to it, and made us all his debtors. With thanks
for your kind invitation, and congratulations for minister and
people,
I am, yours very truly,
C. C. Everett.
�91
Boston, January 9th, 1875.
Gentlemen : Since I heard that your jubilee was proposed I
have hoped to be able to be present, but I am, at the last moment,
disappointed. I think our friends in Philadelphia must under
stand that they are only a very small part of the multitude of
people who are grateful to Dr. Furness for the labors and the
love of his wonderful life. So soon as we who were then
youngsters found out how he preached, we used to say we would
walk fifty miles barefoot to hear him, if there were no other
way to enjoy that privilege. But even more than the preaching,
it was the reading of the books, and the living picture which
they gave us of the Saviour’s life, that set us on a track of
preaching and of thought wholly new.
Let me congratulate the congregation on his health and
strength, and pray express for a multitude of us our love and
gratitude to him.
' Truly yours,
Edward E. Hale.
Dorchester, Mass., January 10th, 1875.
Gentlemen : I have delayed replying to your letter of in
vitation to be present with you on the 12th instant, because,
while my very earnest desire was to accept it, and my heart
spontaneously said “yes,” there were circumstances making it
questionable whether I could. Those circumstances, I am sorry
to have now to say, have decided for me that I must deny my
self the hoped-for pleasure.
I can do no less, gentlemen, than express to you, and those
for whom you act, my sincere thanks for this thought of me in
such connection, and for including me among the friends of
your minister who were considered worthy to be gathered
around him on such an occasion.
Though I can hardly believe that my presence would add
anything to the enjoyment of it, I think no one will enter more
heartily than I should into all that belongs to it for memory
and sentiment and affection and benediction.
Your minister seems very near to me as he is very dear. My
acquaintance with him dates back to his boyhood. He is most
intimately associated in memory, as he was in fact, with those
nearest to me of my early home, whose love for him I shared;
�92
a love joined with admiration for his dispositions and gifts.
They are all gone to whom I allude; and the more tenderly for
that does my heart, as if hearing their love with its own, em
brace him and this occasion.
And the feelings inspired by those earlier memories towards
him whom in this occasion you so deservedly honor have been,
I hardly need say, continually deepening, as I have followed
him through his life since, and seen the promise our hearts
cherished in him unfold towards a-fulfilment so beautiful and
rich.
Most heartily do I congratulate the members of his society in
the privilege they have enjoyed in him whose very presence has
been a benediction, and whose life, in its simplicity and sanctity
and humble heroism and self-devoting fidelity, has given such
empowerment to his words, and won for them such place in
many hearts beyond those who have been the immediate re
cipients of them.
Much more is in my heart to say; less I could not, in justice
to myself, and as a fitting response (the most so in my power to
make) to your very kind invitation.
If I may be allowed to add what is so wholly personal to my
self, I would say that the memories which connect myself with
your church as being the first I ever preached in, forty-one
years ago, and the memories of those of it who so kindly re
ceived me (so many of whom have passed away), have deepened
my desire towards an occasion of such varied and touching
interest. With the prayer that heaven’s blessing may rest upon
minister and people,
I am, respectfully yours,
Nathaniel Hall.
Baltimore, Md., January 5th, 1875.
Very many thanks for your kind invitation. I havea wedding
on the night of January 12th, which I fear, as I have not, so far,
been able to postpone or advance, will prevent my going to Phila
delphia. I have not given up all hope yet. I wish to assure
you of the great pleasure I would take in witnessing the celebra
tion of an event, so marked in our common history, and so full
of inspiration to a young man like myself, and I hope that
beautiful life which has so blessed you through these years,
�93
may be spared to repeat, in your midst, that old story, which
he has made so living, of God’s great mercy and love made real
in the divine life on earth. With greetings and congratulations,
I am most truly,
C. R. Weld.
St. Louis, January 4th, 1875.
Dear Sirs : Your kind invitation to be present at the com
memoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Furness’ settle
ment in Philadelphia was to-day received, and I wish for my
own sake that I could accept it. But my engagements here
are such as to make it impossible for me to leave St. Louis, and
I must be content to stay at home. Dr. Furness was one of my
earliest friends and guides, to whom I have always looked up
with sincere affection and respect. He officiated at my mar
riage with the best woman that ever lived, and I associate him
with all the purest happiness and success of my own life.
William Henry Furness : For fifty years of faithful service,
the brave and consistent advocate, in good report and evil re
port, of Freedom, Truth, and Righteousness : May his last days
still be his best days.
I remain, very truly yours,
W. G. Eliot.
Chicago, January 26th, 1875.
Gentlemen : When you sent me an invitation to be present
at the fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of my dear friend
and yours, I felt sure I should be able to come. My youngest
boy had been sick then for some weeks, so that I could only
leave him a few hours at a time, and for the most imperious
reasons. But on the Saturday he was so much worse that I
had to telegraph I feared I could not leave him at that time.
There can be but few reasons in a man’s whole lifetime so
strong as mine was then for coming to Philadelphia, but the
poor little fellow begged I would be with him through a very
dangerous operation the surgeons had to perform on the day I
should have been with you, from which we were not sure he
could rally.
Pardon me for touching with this private sorrow your ex
�94
ceeding joy, and accept this for my reason why I have not
written sooner.
I did not want to intrude these things at all even into the
blessed after-taste of your festival. But as it seems to me no
man on the earth could be so strongly drawn to that festival as
I was, from any distance, I cannot say another word until you
know the whole reason why I was not with you.
For my debt of gratitude to Dr. Furness takes precedence of
my love for him asone of the truest friends a man ever had,
and as my peerless preacher of “ the truth as it is in Jesus,”
some years before I emigrated to America, my soul clove to
him as I sat one day in a little thatched cottage in the heart of
Yorkshire and read “ The Journal of a Poor Vicar.”
I never expected to see him in the flesh then, but I remember
how I cherished that exquisite little thing among my choicest
treasures ; read it over and over again; spoke of it to other lads
of a like mind with my own, and got a worth out of it I had
not then begun to get out of sermons.
I knew also, when I got to Philadelphia, that I could hear
my man preach if I wanted to, and made out where the church
was; but I had been taught from my childhood to give such
churches a wide berth, and had not the sense to see that the
well, out of which I had drawn such sweet waters in England,
must still be flowing with some such blessing in America. So
that mighty movement that ended in breaking the fetters from
the slave, had to break mine, and then it was not very long before
I stole into theltdjhurch one dismal Sunday night, when being
good Unitarians, all but about a dozen of you, you had your
feet in slippers on the fender.
It was not a sermon, but a talk about Jesus; and how he
washed their feet, and what they saw, and what he said, and
how it all came home to the preacher; but as I went home I
thought, as so many have done time and time again, if that is
Unitarianism I am a Unitarian.
When again I met my author and preacher at the house of my
friend, Edward M. Davis, it did not take long for my gratitude
to grow into love. He was positively the first minister of the
sort we call “ ministers in good standing,” except Mrs. Lu
cretia Mott, who had not tried to patronize me, and put up the
bars of a superior social station.
If I had been his younger brother, he could not have been
�95
more frank and tender and free of heart and hand. I suppose
he never thought of it for an instant, and that was where he
had me, or I should have put up my bars. For, in those days,
I guess I was about as proud as Lucifer. So, it was a great
pride and joy in 1857, to be invited to preach in his pulpit,
while he went off to marry another son in the faith, Moncure
D. Conway, to be the guest, for that day, of your minister’s
family, to have Mrs. Furness and the children treat me like
a prince and a preacher all in one, and to have a glorious good
time altogether, as any man ever had in this world.
Being good Unitarians again in those days, at least half of
you ran off to hear Brother Chapin in the morning, who was
preaching somewhere round the corner, just as my people run
now to hear Brother Swing when I am away, and have to sup
ply with some man they never heard of. I have never quite
forgiven Chapin for preaching there that Sunday.
But Annie Morrison was there, and the very elect, who are
always there, and on the next Sunday, when I preached again,
the rest were there, and the glory of the Lord seemed to me to
fill the house, and so your church is to me one of the most
precious places on earth. I came to it as the men of Israel
went to Zion, and all these years have but deepened and purified
my love for the good old place. Where I first heard the truth
which met at once my reason and my faith, and where, within
a church, for the first time I felt I was perfectly free.
And so it is, that I dare not write down the sum of my love
for my friend and his family, as 1 could not have told it if I
had come down. I feel I am under bonds not to do it; I can
only hint at it.
He got used to blame in the old sad days, when he could not
count such hosts of lovers and friends outside his own church
as he can now, but he will never get used to praise. Some men
don’t. I must say, however, that I do not see how I should
ever have made my way into our blessed faith, had he not opened
the door for me; or found my way to Chicago but for his faith
that I was the man they wanted here ; or done anything I have
ever been able to do half so well, but for his generous encour
agement, or found my life at all so full of sunshine, as it has
been so many years, had he not given me of his store.
Now and then, the ways of God do visibly strike great har
monies in life and history, and this perfecting of the circle of
�96
fifty years in the ministry of my dear friend, is one of the har
monies of life. He has seen the travail of his soul for the slave,
and is satisfied.
He has lived through the days when the majority of Uni
tarians were content with being not very unlike the Orthodox,
into the days when the Orthodox are not content, if they are
not very like Unitarians, and he has done one of the heaviest
strokes of work in bringing this resolution about.
And he has lived to prove to those of us who may wonder
sometimes, what is coming when we have preached to our
people a few more years; and it gets to be an old story, how a
man may preach right along, just as long as he can stand, and
then sit down to it as Jesus did on the Mount; grow better all
the time; win a wider and truer hearing at the end of fifty
years than he has at the end of twenty-five ; and then, when he
is “ quite worn out with age,” may cry, “ Lord, now lettest thy
servant depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes
have seen thy salvation.”
Surely yours,
Robert Collyer.
�97
The following extracts are taken from the Liberal
Christian and Christian Register :
“ On Tuesday of next week, January 12th, there will be a
very simple celebration of a deeply interesting occasion. It
will then be fifty years since Rev. Dr. Furness was installed as
pastor of the First Congregational Unitarian Church in Phila
delphia. Next Sunday the venerable pastor will deliver an
appropriate discourse. Tuesday he will receive callers at his
house, and in the evening therecwill be a meeting at the church.
Brief addresses are expected from friends, whose homes are in
Missouri, Illinois, Maryland, NeiB, Yor^j, and New England.
“ At the installation^^; the 12th of January, 1825, Rev. Wil
liam Ware, of New Yo^, aged tflfent^fevayyears, offered the
introductory prayer and read from the Scriptures ; Rev. Henry
Ware, Jr., of Boston, aged thirty years, prfegghed the sermon,
mostofwhich we intend torepringpext week; Rev. Dr. Bancroft,
of Worcester, in his seventieth year, offered the ordaining prayer
and gave the charge ; and Rev^Ezra’jj'. Gannett, aged twentythree years, gave the fellowship of the chUBches and offered the
concluding prayer. Dr. Furness himself wasBisiffigaty-two years
old, having been graduated at Harvard College when he was
only eighteen. None of those who took the prominent parts in
the service are now living pH^Kirth. Dr. Gannett and the
Wares, though then in all the strength and promise of their
early manhood, have followed good old Dr. Bancroft to the
heavenly home.
“ Dr. Furness was installed a few weeks before the ordinations
of Rev. Drs. Alexander Young and Samuel Barrett. Th<aservices were reported in the first numb^ of thdjpecond volume of
the Christian Examiner, and in the fourth volume of the Chris
tian Register. It was four months before the organization of
the American Unitarian Association. James Monroe was Pres
ident of the United States. Boston had been a city only three
years, and had about fifty thousand inhabitants ; New York had
about a hundred and sixty thousand, and Philadelphia about a
hundred and forty thousand. It was the same year in which
the first public railway in England was opened, the passengers
being drawn by horse-power, although locomotives were soon
introduced. It was five years before Dr. Putnam’s settlement
13
�98
in Roxbury, nine years before Dr. Lothropwas called to Brattle
Square, ten years before Rev. N. Hall became junior pastor of
the Dorchester First Parish, and twelve years before Dr. Bartol
became Dr. Lowell’s colleague. Dr. Bellows, aged ten years,
and James Beeman Clarke, fourteen, were school-boys. Rev.
E. E. Hale was scarcely old enough to go to school, and Prof.
C. C. Everett had not been born. It was less than half a century
since the battles Lexington and Concord, and Thomas Jeffer
son and John Adams did not die until eighteen months after
wards. President Grant was then two years old.
“ During the whole of the last half century Dr. Furness has
remained faithfully at his lonely post. He has had no colleague
and no very long vacation, we believe. In addition to his pul
pit work he has written some admirable books, besides trans
lating others. Great changes have occurred in public opinion.
Eight years after the beginning of his ministry in Philadelphia
the American Antislavery Society was formed in that city.
He did not join it immediately, but before long he enlisted in
the ranks of the abolitionists, and neither blandishments nor
threats ever caused him to desert from the forlorn hope of free
dom. For many years, when almost every other pulpit of that
great town., so near the borders of Slave States, was dumb
concerning the national sin, Dr. Furness’ silver trumpet gave
no uncertain sound. Whoever might come, and whoever might
go, he was resolved to be |aithful to the slave. The despised
and rejected champion®of liberty were always sure of his sup
port. When Charles Sumner, struck down by the bludgeon of
the slave power, needed rest and healing, he sought them in the
neighborhood and society of Dr. Furness. Together they visited
the hill country, and mingled their congenial spirits in high
discourse of truth and righteousness. We are glad that at last,
with grateful ears, our venerated brother heard liberty pro
claimed throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof.
To know that he contributed to this blessed result must be the
grand satisfaction of his life, more precious than any pride of
authorship or professional success. His whole soul must respond
to Whittier’s declaration that he set a higher value to his name
as appended to an early antislavery declaration than on the
title-page of any book. ‘ I cannot be sufficiently thankful to
the Divine Providence which turned me so early away from
�99
what Roger Williams calls “ the world’s great trinity, pleasure,
profit and honor,” to take side with the poor and oppressed.
Looking over a life marked by many errors and shortcomings,
I rejoice that
“ ‘ My voice, though not the loudest, has been heard
Wherever Freedom raised her cry of pain?
“ But while Dr. Furness must look back with profoundest
gratitude upon the great triumph of justice which he helped to
secure, he cannot be indifferent to the theological progress which
has led to wide and cordial acceptance of many of his dearest
opinions. Once he was one of a small number of Humanitarians
associated with a great majority of Arians. Now the Arians
are nearly extinct, and the divine humanity of Jesus is almost
orthodox Unitarianism. No other individual has done more
to bring this about than the Philadelphia pastor who has made
it the study of his life to understand the spirit and to portray,
in glowing yet truthful tints, the matchless character of the Son
of man. He has been well entitled ‘the Fifth Evangelist.’
None of the ancient narrators ever lingered so fondly over
every trait of him who was touched with a feeling of our in
firmities, and made perfect through suffering. He has rendered
the sympathy of Christ so actual and available that it is a
familiar help to thousands of tried and lonely human souls, to
whom traditional dogmas could give no comfort or strength.
“ We have heard that Dr. Furness is about to retire from the
professional responsibilities which he has borne so long and so
well. It will be a richly earned repose, and yet we cannot
endure the thought that he is to desist wholly from preaching
while his eye is undimmed and his natural vigor scarcely
abated. We heard him last summer with rare satisfaction and
delight, and we wish he could be induced to speak oftener at
our general gatherings. We have thought a great many times,
and perhaps we have said so before, in these columns, that,
owing largely to force of circumstances, Dr. Furness has borne
too close a resemblance to Wordsworth’s Milton whose ‘soul
was like a star, and dwelt apart.’ It is too late now for him
to be in the slightest danger of becoming too social or gregarious.
We wish, most heartily, that he would sometimes meet with
the thousands of our laymen and the hundreds of our ministers
�100
to whom he is personally a stranger, never seen, and never
heard, and yet they regard him with affectionate gratitude and
veneration which it would do them good to express, and not
harm him in the least to receive. Let us fondly hope, then, that
at the semi-centennial celebration of the American Unitarian
Association, or at the next National Conference, we may hear
from this beloved father in our Israel some of those words of
wisdom, truth, and beauty which it is still his mission to speak.”
—Christian Register.
'
“ Philadelphia, January 12th, 1875.
“ It is safe to predict that not even the powerful attractions
of the National Centennial Exposition will call to this city as
many of our UnitaSwn clergy as gathered here to-night to cele
brate the semi-centennial of the settlement of Dr. William H.
Furness. It is an went to which for some time past many of
his absent friends have looked eagerly forward in anticipation
of its peculiar interestA«gnifi<^nce. Pastorates of fifty years
can never be common, and have rarely furnished the necessary materials for the heartiest and sincerest sort of congratulation.
But here was an occasion of which the anticipations were all of
the pleasantest and most unclouded kind, where everybody felt
that it would be a personal privilege to say a congratulatory
Amen with everybody else, and to say it heartily and sincerely.
Dr. Furness' quiet but intensely individual ministry in
this city of Brotherly Love is too widely known among Uni
tarians to m®ke any merq mention of the fact at all necessary,
but to speak of
and justly would be to write a vol
ume; ample materials Hr which, however, are, we are glad to
say, not wanting. But our word must be only of the event of
to-day.
“ The celebration began, we hear, early in the morning at the
pastor’s house, where he^g® delightwlly surprised by the sweet
carols of children’s voices. In the afternoon a large concourse
of friends went to greet him at his home, where beautiful flow
ers scented the air and smiling faces vied with each other in the
expression of sincere respect and love.
“ This evening the old church is beautifully and richly dressed
with evergreens. Below the pulpit is a solid mass of rare trop
ical plants most tastefully arranged, the whole surmounted by
�101
baskets of the choicest flowers. The most conspicuous features
of the decorations are the significant numbers 1825-1875, worked
in small white flowers on either side of the pulpit.
“The old church is full of the Doctor’s parishioners and
friends, the front seats beingpccupied by the invited guests from
abroad. Among the clergy present we Noticed Drs. Lothrop,
Morison, Clarke, Bartol, Bellows, Thompson, A. P. Putnam,
and Rev. Messrs. White, E. H. Hall, Shippen, Ware, Ames,
Israel, Mumford, Gannett, Chadwick, a®t’.®®s®ral others.
“ Dr. Furness had protested against hispersfljnal participation
in this elaborate and deliberate feasit of Prai,s^,. bisfrl the timely
suggestion that his absence might be^|nterprS$ed as a quiet ‘ bid ’
for unlimited adulation proved too atiMSging lferthe equanimity
of even his modesty, so he came and occupied a retired seat near
the door.
“The proceedings were of the^^^^>lesit'^ttd most informal
kind—a genuine love-feast, with more fullness of heart than of
utterance. Yet there was nrf ladfflaf pleasant, hearty words.
After an anthem, with soloi by the accomplished ^hoir, which
seemed to have been augmented and specially drilled for the
occasion, the Chairman of the C®amittee of Arrangements wel
comed the guests and assembled company, and asked Dr. Mor
ison to offer prayer. After a sopfafto solo, the first speech of
the evening was made by Rev. J. F. W. Ware|(whose father,
Henry Ware, had preached Dr. Fu3FBessM®rdination Sermon.
Dr. Furness then came forward^ bearing two communion cups
which had just been recededasa token .^•'remembrance from
our church in Baltimore. He expressed his pleasure at this
expression of affectionate sym|fet'hy, psfetring, incidentally, to
the peculiar method of celebrating the communioffifin his church,
bread and wine not being partaken of, but being placed on the
table only as symbols of the preci«0&things they stand for.
“ William Gannett, whose father gave the right hand of fel
lowship at Dr. Furness’ ordination, said that this was the
principal reason for his presence here to-night. His modest,
cordial words were followed by others, from Rev. E. H. Hall
and Dr. Lothrop. Dr. J. F. Clarfe thqnWead an original
poem, in which, in strong and eloquent words, he commended
Dr. Furness’ earnest and persistent efforts to present more
clearly to the world the living Jesus as distinguished from the
�102
theological or sentimental Christ. Dr. Bartol and Dr. Thomp
son then added their cordial testimony of appreciation. Mr.
Chadwick read a lovely original poem, full of appreciative
references to some of Dr. Durness’ more distinguished cotem
poraries. Messrs. Shippen, Mumford, White, and Ames, each
said a few words, and Dr. Bellows finished the sweet symphony
of praise with a genial portraiture of Dr. Furness, thanking
the Lord that no amount of culture had in any respect weak
ened the vigorous manhood of his friend, and that God made
him just what he is.
“ After music, and a benediction by Dr. Furness, the large
company separated, evidently deeply pleased by the many
hearty testimonies of the evening.”—Liberal Christian.
“Yesterday morning, at seven o’clock, the pupils of Madame
Seiler, an accomplished teacher of music, and author of several
excellent text-books '(gave a serenade to Dr. Furness and his
household. It must have been a delightful surprise to the
awakened family when the sweet sounds began to ascend from
the hall below, where the singers, according to the RwWe&n,
stood 1 candle in hand,’ and paid this delicate and welcome
complimenMin the good old German style. Between the hours
of twelve and six, hundreds of parishioners and friends called
to congratulate the honored pastor upon the successful comple
tion of his half century of service. Most of the time the rooms
were thronged, and such an array of bright and happy faces is
seldom seen. Anfc®fi?he guests who were present during our
brief stay we noticed the Doctor’s children and grandchildren,
Prof. Goodwin, of Harvard University, and Mrs. Eustis,
daughter of Rev. Dr. W. E. Channing.
“ Last evening there was a driving storm of sleet and rain, hut
the church was packed again. The floral display was equal to
that of Sunday. Among the changes we observed that the
large figures ‘1825’ and ‘1875,’ above the pulpit, were made
of pure white flowers instead of white and red as before. After
prayer by Rev. Dr. Morison, Mr. Henry Winsor, Chairman of
the Committee of Arrangements, made a felicitous welcoming
and introductory speech.
“The first clerical speaker was Rev. J. F. W. Ware, son and
nephew of the young Wares who, fifty years before, had taken
�103
prominent parts at the installation service. His remarks were
full of the warmest affection for Dr. Furness, and the tenderest
allusions to the love cherished for his Philadelphia ‘ brother ’
by Henry Ware, Jr. Agreeably to the request of the com
mittee, Mr. Ware asked Rev. W. C. Gannett to follow him.
Mr. Gannett’s father gave Dr. Furness the right hand of fellow
ship, and Mr. Gannett had just been reading the manuscript
copy of that earnest address, on his way to Philadelphia in the
'cars. His speech was eminently appropriate and impressive.
He was followed by Rev. E. H. Hallflof Worcester, suc
cessor of Rev. Dr. Bancroft, who gave the charge at the in
stallation half a century before, and son of Rev. Dr. E. B. Hall,
who was Dr. Furness’ townsman friend, classmate, and room
mate. After most appreciative mention of the noble labors of
our fathers, Mr. Hall spoke eloquently*<of the peculiar work
which each generation has to do for ’jtSelf and the world. Rev.
Drs. Lothrop, Clarke, Bartolj Thompson, A. P. Putnam, and
Bellows, and Messrs. ChaAwick, ShippenMWhite, Mumford,
and Ames were called upon, and the most of them responded;
but we have no space w*tl®H remarks this week. Next week
wTe hope to find rooni for a report, but now we must content
ourselves with copying from the Bulletin the poems which
were read.
“ Before quoting them, however, we must not forget to say
that Dr. Furness spoke twice in the course of the evening, the
first time acknowledging the gift ®f some communion cups
from the church in Baltimore to the church in Philadelphia.
It was hard to believe that thif graceful and happy speaker,
with as fresh a voice as that of the youngest man heard that
evening, and saying the brightest and merriest things of the
hour, could be the venerMfflpastog whose semi-centennial we
were celebrating ; but we presume that there is not the slightest
doubt of the fact. And we must also remember to state that
among the gifts from parishioners and friends were some elegant
mantel ornaments, and the complete and original manuscript
of Charles Lamb’s 1 Dissertation on Roast Pig.* The Bulletin
says that this unique and interesting present was ‘ secured as a
Christmas gift at a recent sale in London, and handsomely
mounted and bound in large folio form.’
Christian Register.
�104
W. H. F.
“ THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY.”
BY WM. C. GANNETT.
Fifty times the years have turned
Since the heart within him burned,
With its wistfulness to be
An apostle sent of Thee.
Closely in his Master’s tread
Still to follow, till he read,
Tone of voice and look of face,
Print of wound and sign of grace.
Beading there for fifty years,
Pressing after, till the tears
And the smiles would come and go
At the self-same joy and woe-^
Sharing with him shouts of Mad ! ”
When the bold front to the bad
Bent to pluck the “ little ones ”
From the feet of fellow-sons—
Sharing in his inner peace,
But not sharing the release,
He is with us while thglchimes
Ring his “ Well done” fifty times.
Listening boys across the field
Pledge a hope they may not yield :
Are they listening from the air —
Boys who started with him there ?
�REV. DR. FURNESS’ RESIGNATION.
14
�On Thursday, January. 14th, 1875, Dr. Furness sent the fol
lowing letter/<to the Society, resigning the charge of the pulpit
into their hands—
�107
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE FIRST CONGREGA
TIONAL CHURCH.
My very dear Friends : While the measure of health and
strength still granted me demands my most thankful acknowl
edgments, and while I ^jgaMinexpressib wwat.efnl for the re
cent manifestations of your affectionate regMkll
admon
ished by the ending of fifty years of service as your minister,
and by the time of life that I have
only a little
while remains to me at the longest. I am moved, therefore,
to resign the charge of the pulpit into your hands. How could
I have borne it Mog bwM|r your fetjj^^^ManidBsteadfast
friendship ? I recogniz® a salutary discipline in the necessity
which I have been^nde® al 1 EgSaSpars of ^^MjmBIpsaat.ion
for the Sunday sHg|age. It is good, as I have learned, for a
man to bear the yoJke in
and even in middle age ;
but now, when only a fragment of lim^remafes.^jte^^pyould
fain be released from thl^fe Jwhwi neither timp^or custom
has rendered any ligMbdpnan Mm v
With the surrender of the pulpit you will understand of
course that I decline all farther pecuniary support. I beg leave
respectfully to suggest thatjiMsome time«ome the pulpit be
supplied by settled ministers, so that nothing shall be done
hastily in the matter of deciding upon my successor. More
over, for all other pastoral offices, I shall be at your service,
remaining always your devoted friend, and in undying affec
tion,
Your pastor, :
W. H. ^Furness.
January 14th, 1875.
�108
At a meeting of the Society held in the church Saturday
evening®January 23dSjl871Wt was voted that the following
letter should be sent to Dr. Furness, accepting his resignation,
andiffigBthe Trustees should sign the same oh behalf of the
Society.
�109
FIRST CONGREGATIONAL UNITARIAN CHURCH.
Philadelphia, January 25th, 1875.
Dear Dr. Furness : The members of this Society have re
ceived with sorrow your letter of the 14th inst., in which you
resign the charge of the pulpit which you have filled so long,
with so much ability and so much to their satisfaction.
Although we deeply regret the existence of the circumstances,
which in your opinion have made the step necessary, we ac
knowledge the justice of permitting you to judge freely of the
force of the reasons in its favor, which have governed you in
coming to your decision; and though we feel it would be a
great privilege to us to have the pastoral relation continued
through the coming years, during which we fondly hope you
may be spared to us, yet we acquiesce in the propriety of promptly
acceding to the wish for relief which you have so decidedly ex
pressed both in your letter and verbally to the committee ap
pointed at our meeting on the 19th inst., to ask you to recon
sider your action and to withdraw your resignation. It would
he ungrateful for us to do otherwise, and would show on our
part a want of proper appreciation of the value of your longcontinued labors thus to make what must be to you in itself a
painful act still more painful.
We cannot fully express in words our thankfulness that the
relation between us has remained unbroken through so many
years, and that, though the formal tie may now be severed,
we are yet permitted to see you face to face, to hear your voice,
to press your hand, and to know that you are among us.
For the reasons which you have presented, and because you
so earnestly desire it, because it is our wish to do, at whatever
loss to ourselves, that which will bo most grateful to you, and
thus to manifest in the strongest way wo can our appreciation
of our privileges in the past, and with the hope that for years
�110
to come you may be with us and of us, we regretfully accept
your resignation, and remain, on behalf of the Society,
Your affectionate friends,
Henry Winsor,
Lucius H. Warren,
Dawes E. Furness,
Joseph E. Raymond,
John Sellers, Jr.,
Enoch Lewis,
Charles H. Coxe,
Trustees.
This letter was read at the meeting of the congregation, held
on Saturday evening, January 23d, 1875, was approved, and
the Trustees were instructed to sign it on behalf of the Society
and forward it to Dr. Furness.
Charles H. Coxe,
Secretary.
�INDEX.
PAGE
Preliminary Meetings, .
Dr. Furness’ Fiftieth Anniversary Discourse,
Extract from Forty-ninth Anniversary Discourse,
Commemorative Meeting,....................................... .
Prayer of Rev. John H. Morison, D.D.,
Remarks of Rev. J. F. W. WarM
“
“ Rev. W. C. Gannett,
.
“ Rev. E. H. Hall, flHH
“
“ Rev. S. K. Lothrop, D.D.,
“
“ Rev. J. F. Charlie, D.D.,
“
“ Rev. C. A. Bartol, D.D.,
“
“ Rev. J. F. Thompson, D.D.,
“
“ Rev. J. W. Chadwick, .
“
“ Rev. R. R. Shippen,
.
“
“ Rev. T. J. Mumfor^^JI
“
“ Rev. W. O. Whitey .
“
11 Rev. A. P. Putnam, D.D.,
“ Rev. C. G. Ames, .
.
“
“ Rev. H. W. Bellows, D.D.I
“
“ Rev. W. H. Furness, D.D.,
Letters,
Extracts from the “ Liberal Christian ”
“ Christian Register,” .
.
Poem, by W. C. Gannett,
Resignation of Rev. W. H. Furness, D.D.,
Letter of the Trustees,
,
3
9
28
41
42
44
48
49
51
55
57
61
66
70
72
72
74
76
77
81
83
AND
97
104
105
109
�I
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Exercises at the meeting of the First Congregational Unitarian Society, January 12,1875, together with the discourse delivered by Rev. W.H. Furness, Sunday, Jan. 10, 1875 on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination, January 12, 1825
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Furness, W.H.
First Congregational Society of Unitarian Christians in the City of Philadelphia
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Collation: 110, [1] p. : ill. (with tissue guards) ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Contains index. Includes poem by W.C. Gannett and resignation of Rev. W.H. Furness.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Sherman & Co., printers
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1875
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5366
Subject
The topic of the resource
Unitarianism
Sermons
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Exercises at the meeting of the First Congregational Unitarian Society, January 12,1875, together with the discourse delivered by Rev. W.H. Furness, Sunday, Jan. 10, 1875 on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination, January 12, 1825), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
First Congregational Society of Unitarian Christians in the City of Philadelphia
Sermons