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DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS.
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES
AT
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL, FINSBURY,
February 22, 1874.
WITH
JA
DISCOUHSE
BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY.
11, SOUTH PLACE, FINSBURY.
1874.
PRICE THREEPENCE«
�I
�I.
I CANNOT plainly see the way,
So dark the grave is; but I know
If I do truly work my day
Some good will brighten out of woe.
For the same hand that doth unbind
The winter winds, sends sweetest showers,
And the poor rustic laughs to find
His April meadows full of flowers.
I said I could not see the way,
And yet what need is there to see,
More than to do what good I may,
And trust the great strength over me ?
Why should I vainly seek to solve
Free-will, necessity, the pall ?
I feel, I know that God is love,
And knowing this I know it all.
Alice Carey.
II.
READINGS.
Whoso seeketh wisdom shall have no great travail; for he
shall find her sitting at his door. She goeth about seeking such
as are worthy of her, showeth herself favourably to them in the
highways, and meeteth them in every thought. Love is the
keeping of her laws. The multitude of the wise is the welfare
of the world.
�4
Wisdom is the worker of all things: for in her is an under
standing spirit, holy, one only, manifold, subtile, lively, clear,
undefiled, simple, not subject to hurt, loving the thing that is
good, quick, which cannot be letted, ready to do good ; kind to
man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, overseeing
all things; and going through all understanding, pure and most
subtle spirits. Wisdom is more moving than any motion: she
passeth through all things by reason of her pureness. For she is
the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing
from the glory of the Almighty? therefore can no defiled thing
fall into her.
For she is the brightness of the everlasting
light, the unspotted mirror of the power ©f God, and the image
of his goodness. And being but one, she can do all things;
and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new: and in all
ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God
and prophets. She is more beautiful than the sun, and above all
the order of the stars: being compared with the light, she is
found before it; for after day cometh night, but vice shall not
prevail against wisdom.
Wisdom of Solomon.
The Duke Gae asked about the altars of the gods of the land.
Tsae-Wo replied, “The Hea sovereign used the pine-tree, the
man of the Yin used the cypress, and the man of the Chow used
the chestnut,—to cause the people to be in awe.”
Confucius, hearing this, said, “ Things that are done, it is
needless to speak about; things that have had their course, it is
needless to remonstrate with; things that are past, it is needless
to blame. ”
Kee-Loo asked about serving the gods. The Master said,
“While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve the
gods ?”
�5
Kee-Loo said, “ I venture to ask about death. ”
The Master said, “While you do not comprehend life, how
can you comprehend death ?
“ If a man in the morning hear of the right way, he may in
the evening die without regret
“Yew, shall I teach you what knowledge is ? When you know
a thing, consider that you know it; and when you do not know
a thing, understand that you do not know it This is knowledge.
“ For a man to worship a deity not his own is mere flattery.
“To give one’s-self earnestly to the duties due to men, and
while respecting the gods, to respect also their distance, may be
called Wisdom.”
Confucius.
Mahomet said, Instruct in knowledge ! He who instructs,
fears God ; he who speaks of knowledge, praises the Lord; who
disputes about it, engages in holy warfare ; who seeks it, adores
the Most High; who spreads it, dispenses alms to the ignorant;
and who possesses it, attains the veneration and goodwill of all.
Knowledge enables its possessor to distinguish what is forbidden
from what is not; it lights the way to heaven; it is our friend in
the desert, our society in solitude ; our companion when far away
from our homes ; it guides us to happiness ; it sustains us in
misery ; it raises us in the estimation of friends ; it serves as an
armour against our enemies. With knowledge, the servant of
God rises to the heights of excellence. The ink of the scholar is
more sacred than the blood of the martyr. God created Reason,
and it was the most beautiful being in his creation: and God
said to it, “I have not created anything better or more perfect or
more beautiful than thou: blessings will come down on mankind
on thy account, and they will be judged according to the use they
make of thee. ”
Mohammed.
�6
If Morality is the relation of man to the idea of his kind, which
in part he endeavours to realise in himself, in part recognises
and seeks to promote in others, Religion, on the other hand, is
his relation to the idea of the universe, the ultimate source of all
life and being. So far, it may be said that Religion is above
Morality; as it springs from a still profounder source, reaches
back into a still more primitive ground.
Ever remember that thou art human, not merely a natural
production ; ever remember that all others are human also, and,
with all individual differences, the same as thou, having the same
needs and claims as thyself: this is the sum and substance of
Morality.
Ever remember that thou, and everything thou beholdest
within and around thee, all that befals thee and others, is no dis
jointed fragment, no wild chaos of atoms or casualties, but that it
all springs, according to eternal laws, from the one primal source
of all life, all reason, all good : this is the essence of Religion.
Strauss : “ The Old Faith and the New."
III.
Fall, fall ye mighty temples to the ground !
Not in your sculptured rise
Is the real exercise
Of human nature’s brightest power found.
’Tis in the lofty hope, the daily toil,
’Tis in the gifted line,
In each far thought divine
That brings down heaven to light our common soil.
�7
’Tis in the great, the lovely, and the true,
’Tis in the generous thought
Of all that man has wrought,
Of all that yet remains for man, to do.
Fall, fall, ye ancient litanies and creeds :
Not prayers or curses deep'
The power can longer keep,
That once ye held by filling human needs.
The quickening worship of our God survives
In every noble grief,
In every high belief,
In each resolve and act that light our lives.
IV.
MEDITATION.
V.
The future hides in it
Gladness and sorrow ;
We press still thorow,
Nought that abides in it
Daunting us, —Onward.
And solemn before us,
Veiled the dark Portal ;
Goal of all mortal:—
Stars silent rest o’er us,
Graves under us silent.
�While earnest thou gazest,
Comes boding of terror,
Comes phantasm and error;
Perplexes the bravest
With doubt and misgiving.
But heard are the Voices,
Heard are the Sages,
The Worlds, and the Ages :
“ Choose well; your choice is
Brief, and yet endless.
“ Here eyes do regard you
In Eternity’s stillness;
Here is all fulness,
Ye brave, to reward you.
Work, and despair not! ”
(Gckthk, ir. Carlyl.
�DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS.
Towards the close of the last century a young
German student was climbing amid the Swiss
Alps—alpenstock in hand—gazing with wonder
on glaciers, scaling the dizziest peaks. His Alpine
wanderings were preliminary to the climbing of
nobler summits, commanding vaster prospects.
For this was Friedrich Hegel, destined to create
an epoch in the history of the human mind.
Amid those barren heights and weird chasms of
Switzerland there was born in his mind a doubt
which has influenced the world. Before those wild
desolations he asked himself whether it could
be possible that this chaos of rock and glacier
had been specially created for man’s enjoyment ?
It was a problem which required for its solution
not only his own long, laborious life, but many
lives ; yet, to the philosophical statement of that
one man we owe a new order of religious thought.
If I may borrow an expression from geology, it
may be said that we are all living in the Hegelian
formation; and this whether we understand that
philosophy or not, and even if we reject its terms.
�IO
For Hegel was as a great vitalising breath wafted
from afar, beneath which, as under a tropical
glow,’ latent seeds of thought were developed to
most various results. From afar; for really
Hegel’s philosophy was an Avatar for cultivated
.Europe of the most ancient faith of our race. Its
essence is the conception of an absolute Idea
which has represented itself in Nature, in order
that by a progressive development through Nature
it may gain consciousness in man, and return as
mind to a deeper union with itself. It is really
the ancient Hindu conception of a universal soul
of Nature, a vast spiritual sea in which each
animal instinct, each human intellect, is a wave.
Or, in another similitude, every organic form,
however great or small, represents some scattered
spark of a central fire of intelligence, on the way
back to its source, bearing thither. the accumu
lated knowledge gathered on its pilgrimage
through many forms in external Nature.
Briefly, the Hegelian philosophy means a soul
in Nature corresponding to the soul of Man. Of
■ course—I have already stated it—it did not
originate with Hegel. It maybe traced from the
Vedic Hymn to the cry of Kepler, when, looking
up to the stars, he said, “ Great God, I think thy
thought aftei' thee !” But with Hegel it gained
�II
an adaptation to the thought of Europe, and
passed into the various forms of belief and feeling.
It inspired all the poetry of Wordsworth. It is
reflected in the materialism no less than in the
idealism of our age, and may be felt in the
philosophy of Huxley no less than in that of its
best exponent, Emerson.
Among the many German thinkers who sat at
the feet of Hegel there was but one who compre
hended its tremendous bearings upon the theology
of Europe ; but one through whom it was able to
grow to logical fruitage ; and that one was the
great man whose life has just closed—David
Friedrich Strauss. Strauss proved himself the
truest pupil of Hegel by throwing off the mere
form of his forerunner’s doctrine, just as that
philosopher had thrown off the formulas of his
forerunners. The literal Hegelians, of course,
regarded Strauss as a renegade ; on the surface
it would so appear: Hegel called himself a
Christian, Strauss renounced Christianity; Hegel
was designated an idealist, Strauss a materialist.
But we must not be victims of the letter. Fruit
is different from blossom ; but it is, for all that,
blossom in another form.
I need, not dwell on the outward biography of
Friedrich Strauss. The greatest men live in
�12
their intellectual works. The sixty-five years of
this man were not marked by many salient or
picturesque incidents. As a student of theology
at Tübingen, and as a professor, he travelled an
old and beaten path,—poverty, hard study, hard
work. At the age of twenty-seven he publishes
his great work, the Leben Jesu ; is driven from
his professorship ; offered another at Zurich Uni
versity, he is prevented by persecution from
holding it; and finally settles himself down to a
life of plain living and high thinking. He is
elected by his native town Ludwigsburg to the
Wurtemburg Legislature, but surprises them by
his “ conservatism,” as it was called, and answers
their dissatisfaction by resigning. He marries, and,
alas ! unhappily. Agnes Schebert was an actress,
and she was also a clever authoress; but when she
was married to Strauss there was shown to be
an incompatibility of disposition which led to a
quiet separation without recriminations on either
side. The lady once wrote a parody on the
writing of Hegel, which is amusing, but suggests
that she could hardly have been fortunately
united with a philosopher who had sat at the
feet of Hegel. She left with him a daughter and
a son, who were devoted to their father through
life, and for whom he wrote a tender and touch-
�ing account of their mother that they might think
of her with affection.
He lived a busy life, and wrote a large number
of admirable works, the absence of most of
which from English libraries is a reproach to our
literature.
His biographies are among the
most felicitous that have been written, and have
brought before Germans noble figures which are
for most English readers mere names,—Ulrich
von Hutten, the brilliant radical of the Refor
mation ; the discoverer of lost books of Livy,
Quintilian, and other classic authors ; the fellow
fugitive of Erasmus before the wrath of the
Pope ; the lonely scholar who has made classic
the islet of Lake Zurich where he died :—the
Biography of Hermann Reimarus, who one hun
dred years ago was the leading prophet of
Natural Religion : —the Life of Friedrich Daniel
*
Schubart, poet and publicist, who, beginning as
an organist in Ludwigsburg, lost his place for
writing a parody on the Litany; who in later life
was invited by the Duke of Wurtemburg to
dinner, on his arrival seized and imprisoned in
Asberg Castle for ten years, because of an epi
* His chief works are “ The Wolfenbuttel Fragments,” edited
by Lessing; “The Principles of Natural Religion,” and “The
Instincts of Animals. ”
�14
gram written by the poet,—who, for the rest, has
left songs which the Germans still love to sing.
*
The work of Strauss on Voltaire consists of a
series of lectures prepared by request of the
Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt (daughter of Queen
Victoria), who listened to them ; and the work
is written in a spirit of high admiration of the
great French heretic. If, as I doubt not, the two
biographies which he has left—“ Lessing ” and
“ Beethoven ”—are of equal value to those I have
mentioned, Strauss will have left six works at
least, apart from his contributions to theology,
of a character which must write his name very
high among the literary workers of this century.
When the life of Strauss is written, no doubt
the details of it will be found of great interest ;
but nothing relating to his private and personal
history will ever be so impressive as the unfold
ing of his intellectual and religious nature. Fully
told, even as traceable in his works, this repre
sents the pilgrimage of a Soul from the crumbling
shrines of Superstition across long deserts of
doubt, and the rugged passes of adversity, even
* The principal is one entitled “Caplied” (Cape Song), sup
posed to be sung by soldiers, sold to the Dutch, on their way to
the Cape of Good Hope. Another celebrated poem of his is,
“Die Fiirstengruft ” (The Tomb of Princes).
�to the beautiful temple of Truth, where his last
hymn of joy ended in the gentle sigh of death.
Of this, his mental biography, I can give here
but a slight outline. I have already taken up
the thread of his life at the point where he was
learning the secret of Hegel. That implied a
foreground with which many of us are familiar;
for he was born to orthodoxy, and. had to'flee
that City of Destruction. So much he had accom
plished in his youth, and was ready to set him
self to the real task of his life. The philosophy
of Hegel left room for mysticism, but none for
miracle. Paulus, Schelling, Schleiermacher, and
others, each endeavoured in their several ways tobridge over the gulf between supernaturalism
and reason ; they wanted reason, they must
have Christianity, and so held on to the miracles
without believing them miraculous. But Strauss
had already placed before his mind Truth as the
one attainable thing worthy of worship ; and he
set himself to the task of studying the life of
Christ, with all its investiture of fable, as a
historical phenomenon. The fables he knew were
not true, but he would know how they arose, and
he would know what form they would leave were
they detached from the New Testament narra
tives. In reaching his sure result he was aided
�i6
by the veracity of his mind no less than by his
learning. He had but to apply to a miracle
found in the Bible the same test which everyone
applied to a miracle when found in Livy or Ovid.
He had but to take the method which Christians
used when dealing with the wonders of Buddhism,
and apply it honestly to the marvels of
Christianity. The result was that he tracked all
the New Testament marvels back to their pagan
or Judaic origin; he found that they were the
same stories that had been told about Moses,
Elijah, David, about Isis and Osiris, Apollo, and
Bacchus. In a word he proved that they were
myths, such as in unscientific ages—when the laws
of Nature and the nature of laws were unknown—
had arisen and gathered about every teacher who
had become an object of popular reverence.
In denying the value of miracles as historical
events in the life of a particular man, Strauss
was impressed by the perception that these
myths which had come from every human race to
invest Christ represented something more im
portant than the career of any individual; they
represented humanity. They were born out of
the human heart in every part of the world, and
were types of its aspirations, hopes, and spiritual
experiences. That which could not be respected
�¡7
as history could be reverenced as a reflection of
the religious sentiment. He would place an
idea where the church set an individual.
“ Humanity,” he wrote, “ is the union of the
two natures—God become man, the infinite
manifesting itself in the finite, and the finite
spirit remembering its infinitude; it is the child
of the visible Mother and the invisible Father,
Nature and Spirit; it is the worker of miracles,
in so far as in the course of human history, the
spirit more and more completely subjugates nature,
both within and around man, until it lies before
him as the inert matter on which he exercises his
active power; it is the sinless existence, for the
course of its development is a blameless one,
pollution cleaves to the individual only, and does
not touch the race and its history. It is
Humanity that dies, rises, and ascends to heaven,
for from the negation of its phenomenal life
there ever proceeds a higher spiritual life.”
When this lofty faith in Humanity as the true
Christ, which had unconsciously symbolized itself
as the life of one man, shone out upon the mind
of Strauss, all interest in the individual Jesus
paled under it. Since his great work was pub
lished—near forty years ago—we have, by stand
ing on the shoulders of such men as he, been
�iS
able, no doubt/ to see somewhat further. The
rational study of the New Testament has disclosed
certain fragments of real history, and by piecing
these together we can shape out the figure of a
great man,—great enough to show why it was
that the human heart brought all its finest dreams
and marvels to entwine them around that single
brow. But the grand generalization of this
scientific thinker, who pierced the veil of fable
and recognised beyond it the face of humanity
transfigured with divine light, is one which can
hardly be parallelled by any utterance since the
brave words of Paul: “ We henceforth know no
one according to the flesh ; and if we have ever
known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we
no longer know him.” “ The Lord is a Spirit 1”
Having disposed of the old Christology,
Strauss proceeded to apply his method—the
method of Science—to all the theories of Nature
and of human life which were intertwined with
it What the results of his inquiries were are
summed up in his last work, “ The Old Faith
and the New.” And at the outset I must say
that the whole purport of that book has been
falsely interpreted for English readers by the
blundering exposition of it given by Mr. Glad
stone in a speech delivered in Liverpool. The
�late Prime Minister, it will be remembered, held
up Dr. Strauss before the school-children as an
awful example of what they would come to if
they once began exercising their own faculties.
He admitted his own incompetence to answer the
arguments of Strauss ; it would have been well
if he had also acknowledged his inability to trans
late his words correctly. In describing that
“Universum” wdiich Strauss had declared to be
the highest and divinest conception of human in
telligence, the Cosmos which man should adore in
place of the old deity of dogma, Mr. Gladstone
said that the author represented it—the adorable
Universe—as without reason. The word which
Strauss really uses is “ Vernunftvoll ”—full of
reason ! This inexcusable error makes all the
difference between Theism and Atheism. “ Our
highest idea,” says Strauss, “ is the law-governed
Cosmos, full of life and reason and he censures
Schopenhauer, who declares Nature to be hope
lessly evil. “We consider it,” he says, “ arrogant
and profane on the part of a single individual to
oppose himself with such audacious levity to the
Cosmos whence he springs, from which, also, he
derives that spark of reason which he misuses.
We recognise in this a repudiation of the senti
ment of dependence which we expect from every
�20
man. We demand the same piety for our Cosmos
that the devout of old demanded for his God.”
In this his last work, “ The Old Faith and the
New ”—the translation of which we owe to a
woman as we do that of his first work—Strauss
embraces with enthusiasm the theory of Evo
lution. Thereby his old Hegelian idealism is
transmuted to Darwinian Materialism. Of course,
many people fancy that Materialism is something
which is inconsistent with belief in a deity or
even in religion.
But really, with regard to
divine existence and religion there is no differ
ence between Idealism and Materialism. Strauss
justly pronounces the religious issue between the
two a quarrel about words. They both and alike
“ endeavour to derive the totality of phenomena
from a single principle—to construct the universe
and life from the same blockin this equally
opposing the Christian dualism which divides
man into body and soul, and severs God from
Nature. In their common endeavour after unity
Idealism starts from above, Materialism starts
from below ; “ the latter constructs the universe
from atoms and atomic forces, the former from
ideas and idealistic forces. But if they would
fulfil their tasks, the one must lead from its
heights down to the very lowest circles of
�21
1 Nature, and to this end place itself under the
I control of careful observation ; while the other
i must take into account the higher intellectual
I and ethical problems.” In short, all that the
j Idealist says of soul the Materialist says of
I brain; all that any worshipper can say of his
| God, Strauss says of Nature.
I What the creed of this thinker was may be
I found in this last work, wherein it is expressed with
an exaltation which becomes more impressive
f now that we know that even while he was so
! uttering his perfect faith in the fair universe, the
i terrible cancer was destroying him. These are
his words: “We perceive in Nature tremendous
I contrasts, awful struggles; but we discover that
i these do not disturb the stability and harmony
of the whole,—that they, on the contrary, pre
serve it. We further perceive a gradation, a
development of the higher from the lower, of the
refined from the coarse, of the gentle from the
rude. And in ourselves we make the experience
that we are advanced in our personal as well as
our social life ; the more we succeed in regula
ting the element of capricious change within and
around us, and in developing the higher from the
lower, the delicate from the rugged. This, when
we meet with it within the circle of human life,
�22
we call good and reasonable. What is analogous
to it in the world around us, we cannot avoid
calling so likewise. The Cosmos is simulta
neously both cause and effect, the outward and
the inward together. We stand here at the
limits of our knowledge ; we gaze into an abyss
we can fathom no' farther. But this much at
least is certain,—that the personal image which
meets our gaze there is but the reflection of the
wondering spectator himself. At any rate, that
on which we feel ourselves entirely dependent, is
by no means merely a rude power to which we
bow in mute resignation, but is at the same time
both order and law, reason and goodness, to
which we surrender ourselves in loving trust.”
In one very important matter many of the
admirers of Strauss have felt distress at his
position and influence. Politically, he has the
reputation of being a reactionist and conserva
tive. This reputation—obtained when he resigned
his seat in the legislature because of disagree
ment with his radical constituency—has been
confirmed by his treatment of political subjects
in his latest work. My own belief is that the
views of Strauss on these matters are very
seriously misunderstood by reason of the fact
that they are altogether conceived from the
�ft
o%
Hegelian standpoint. Those who study Hegeln know that his apparent conservatism was the
IE crust outside a fiery radicalism.
The political
philosophy of Hegel is contained in the followfi| ing extract from his writings :—“ Moral liberation and political freedom must advance
together. The process must demand some vast
J space of time for its full realisation; but it is the
d law of the world’s progress, and the Teutonic
9 nations are destined to carry it into effect. The
■i Reformation was an indispensable preparation
J
¡4 for this great work. The history of the world
* is a record of the endeavours made to realise the
idea of freedom and of a progress surely made,
but not without many intervals of apparent
failure and retrogression. Among all modern
failures the French revolution of the eighteenth
century is the most remarkable. It was an
! endeavour to realise a boundless external liberaj tion without the indispensable condition of moral
] freedom. Abstract notions based merely on the
understanding, and having no power to control
wills of men, assumed the functions of morality
and religion, and so led to the dissolution of
society, and to the social and political difficulties
under which we are now labouring. The proI gress of freedom can never be aided by a
�24
revolution which has not been preceded by a
religious reformation.”*
That a similar conviction was rooted in the
mind of Strauss I became aware by personal,
intercourse with him. Some years ago, as I
walked with him on the banks of the Neckar, he
declared to me that the motives he had in pub
lishing his “ Life of Christ ” were hardly less
political than religious. “ I felt oppressed,” he
said, “ at seeing nearly every nation in Europe
chained down by allied despotism of prince and
priest. I studied long the nature of this oppres
sion, and came to the conclusion that the chain
which fettered mankind was rather inward than
outward, and that without the inward thraldom
the outward would soon rust away. The inward
chain I perceived to be superstition, and the
form in which it binds the people of Europe is
Christian Supernaturalism. So long as men
accept religious control not based on reason they
will accept political control not based on reason.
The man who gives up the whole of his moral
nature to an unquestioned authority has suffered
a paralysis of his mind, and all the changes of
*SeeGostwick and Harrison’s “Outlines of German Litera
ture,” p. 481.
�25
f® outward circumstances in the world cannot make
iiihim a free man. For this reason our European
revolutions have been, even when successful,
merely transfers from one tyranny to another.
I believed when I wrote that book that, in striking
•J at supernaturalism, I was striking at the root of
tj the whole evil tree of political and social degrada
ci tion.”
1 At another time, when speaking of Renan,
whose portrait was the most prominent in his
a study, he said : “ Renan has done for France
d what I had hoped to do for Germany. He has
vj written a book which the common people read ;
r > the influence of my ‘ Life of Christ ’ has been
21 confined to scholars more than I like, and I mean
to put it into a more popular shape. Germany
i| must be made to realise that the decay of
it Christianity means the growth of national life,
J and the progress of humanity.”
J
After this it was very plain to me what
1 Strauss’s conversatism amounted to. It means
» only that he had no faith in the abolition of an
; abuse here and there when the conditions which
i produce every abuse remain unaltered,—no faith
in sweeping away a few snow-drifts when winter
is still in the air, the whole sky charged with
snow. We may wish that he had felt more
—
�26
sympathy with some of the popular movements
around him ; but we must remember that as a
philosophical radical he regarded the ever
recurring enthusiasms of the people,—believing
that they would reach the millennium by abolish
ing capital punishment, or abolishing a throne,—
as so much waste energy. He saw hopes born in
revolutions only to perish in disaster and reac
tion. He came to rest his hope for Humanity,
which he loved, on his faith in the omnipotence of
that Truth which he sought to enthrone above it.
Such was the faith, such the work, of the great
man, to whose memory we pay this day our
heartfelt homage. In his writings- I have met
with but one allusion to himself. It is in the
last pages that he ever wrote, and is as follows :
—“ It is now close upon forty years that as a
man of letters I have laboured, that I have
fought on and on for that which appeared to me
as truth, and still more perhaps against that
1 which has appeared to me as untruth ; and in th‘e
pursuit of this object I have attained, nay, over
stepped the threshold of old age.” Then it is
that every earnest-minded man hears the whisper
' of an inner voice: “ Give an account of thy
stewardship, for thou may’st be no longer
steward.” Now, I am not conscious of having
�27
been an uujust steward. An unskilful one at
times, too probably also a negligent one, I may,
heaven knows, have been; but on the whole I
have done what the strength and impulse within
prompted me to do, and have done it without
looking to the right or the left, without seeking
the favour or shunning the displeasure of any.”
These few words represent the benediction of
Conscience upon a faithful man, felt by him as
life was ebbing away, and the dark portal grow
ing more distinct before him. His bitterest
enemy need not impugn that approving smile of
his own heart. It was all the wage of his work.
Others have toiled in full view of heavenly
reward. He laboured on with hope of no recom
pense for devotion and self-sacrifice beyond the
consciousness of having made his life an unfalter
ing testimony to truth. Even those who believe
that they see gleams of light irradiating the dark
valley may count his honour not less but more
that he gave his service uncheered by such
visions.
In Heilbronn, where he was residing, he onct
pointed out to me, near an ancient church, the
trace of the old and sacred fountain which gave
the town its name, which signifies “ healing foun
tain.” He said, with his gentle smile : “ The
�28
theory of the priests is that the fountain ceased
to flow when I came here to reside.” When I
looked up to his magnificent eyes, and the grand
dome of his forehead, I could but marvel at the
depth of that superstition which could permit this
man to live as a hermit in communities which will
one day cherish each place of his dwelling as a
shrine. Holy wells may dry up, and the churches
beside them crumble, but men will repair to the
spots where the lonely scholar sat at his task,
and tell their children—here it was that in the
wildernesses of superstition living waters broke
out, and streams in the desert.
�29
V.
Everlasting ! changing never!
Of one strength, no more, no less ;
Thine almightiness for ever,
Ever one thy holiness :
Thee eternal,
Thee all glorious we possess.
Shall things withered, fashions olden,
Keep us from life’s flowing spring ?
Waits for us the promise golden,
Waits each new diviner thing.
Onward ! onward !
Why this hopeless tarrying ?
Nearer to thee would we venture,
Of thy truth more largely take,
Upon life diviner enter,
Into day more glorious break ;
To the ages
Fair bequests and costly make.
By the old aspirants glorious ;
By each soul heroical;
By the strivers, half victorious ;
By thy Jesus and thy Paul,
Truth’s own martyrs,—
We are summoned, one and alL
By each saving word unspoken ;
By thy truth as yet half won ;
By each idol still unbroken ;
By thy will yet poorly done ;
O Almighty !
We are borne resistless on.
Adaptedfrom Gill,
�M
�
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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>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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David Friedrich Strauss: commemorative services at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, February 22,1874, with a discourse by Moncure D. Conway
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 29, [1] p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1. Includes bibliographical references. A list of the author's works available from South Place Chapel on unnumbered back page.
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (David Friedrich Strauss: commemorative services at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, February 22,1874, with a discourse by Moncure D. Conway), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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David Friedrich Strauss
Memorial Addresses
Morris Tracts
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Text
DEDICATORY SERVICES
OF THE
, PARKER MEMORIAL 2
E ETING
HOUS
BY THE
TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGREGATIONAL SOCIETY,
OF BOSTON,
Sunday, Sept. 81, 187’3.
BOSTON:
COCHRANE & SAMPSON, PRINTERS,
—
9 BROMFIELD STREET.
1873.
��SERVICES.
I. DEDICATION HYMN.
BY SAMUEL JOHNSON.
(SungMuiChoir^
To Light, that shines in stars and souls ;
To Law, that round* the world with calm ;
To Love, whose equal triumph rolls
Through martyr’s prayer and angel’s psalm, —
We wed these walls with unseen bands,
In holier shrines not built with hands.
May purer sacrament be here
Than ever dwelt in rite or creed, —
Hallowed the hour with vow sincere
To serve the time’s all-pressing need,
And rear, its heaving sea&above,
Strongholds of Freedom, folds of Love.
Here be the wanderer homeward led ;
Here living streams in fullness "flow;
And every hungering soul be fed,
That yearns the Eternal Will to know;
Here conscience hurl her stern reply
To mammon’s lust and slavery’s lie.
Speak, Living God, thy full command
Through prayer of faith and word of power,
That we with girded loins may stand
To do thy work and wait thine hour,
And sow, ’mid patient toils and tears,
For harvests in serener years.
�4
II. REMARKS OF JOHN C. HAYNES,
CHAIRMAN OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH CON
GREGATIONAL SOCIETY, OF BOSTON.
As your representative here to-day in the dedicatory services
of this Memorial to Theodore Parker, the first minister and
founder of our Society, what I have to say will consist mainly
of a brief review of the history of the Society.
On January 22d, 1845, a meeting was held at Marlboro’ Chapel
by several friends of free thought, at which the following reso
lution was passed: —
'•'•Resolved, That the Rev. Theodore Parker shall have a chance to be
heard in Boston.”
At that time he was preaching at West Roxbury. The
Melodeon was hired for Sunday mornings, and Mr. Parker
preached his first sermon there February 16th, 1845, on “The
Importance of Religion.” In November of that year the Society
was regularly organized as a “ body for religious worship ” under
the laws of Massachusetts, the name “Twenty-eighth Congre
gational Society of Boston ” was adopted, and Mr Parker, on
January 4th, 1846, was regularly installed as its minister. The
Society remained at the Melodeon until the fall of 1852, when,
for the sake of a larger audience-room for the great number
who flocked to hear Mr. Parker, it removed to the Music Hall,
then recently erected. There Mr. Parker preached from Sun
day to Sunday until his illness on January 9th, 1859. His last
discourse was on the Sunday previous. He continued, however,
to be the minister of the Society untill his death, which oc
curred May 10th, i860. From the time of the illness of Mr.
Parker to bis death, the Society continued its meetings, in the
hope at least of his partial recovery. After his death, the
Society, seeing the continued need of an unfettered platform
for free thought, and for the maintenance and diffusion of just
ideas in regard to theology, morality and religion, and whatever
else concerns the public welfare, of course maintained its organ
ization and continued its meetings, engaging as preachers the
best expounders of religious thought and feeling within its
reach, laymen as well as clergymen, women as well as men..
�The meetings have been held, without any interruptions except
those of the usual summer vacations, up to the present time,
a period of more than thirteen years since Mr. Parker’s death.
We have had financial and other discouragements, but the
enthusiasm of the Society for the cause of “ absolute religion,”
— the feeling that a pulpit like ours was needed, in which earnest
men'and women could freely express their views upon religious,
social and political questions, — have kept us united and in
action.
Our first serious misfortune, after the death of Mr. Parker,
occurred in April, 1863, when, in consequence of the several
months needful for the putting up of the Great Organ, we were
obliged to vacate the Music Hall and go back to the Melodeon.
Our second principal misfortune took plpce in September,
1866, when, in consequence of the Melodeon being required for
business purposes, we were compelled to remove to the Parker
Fraternity Rooms, No 5 54/Washington Street.
In each case, the removal from a larger to a smaller hall re
duced our numbers.
In May, 1865, ’Rev. David A. Wasson was settled as the
minister of the Society, which position he held until his resigna
tion in July, 1866. Previous to Mr. Wasson’s settlement, Rev.
Samuel R. Calthrop, now of Syracuse, N.Y., occupied the pul
pit continuously for several months.
During 1867 and 1868, for more than a year, Rev. Samuel
Longfellow preached for the Society on successive Sundays.
Mr. Longfellow has continued to preach for us occasionally
ever since.
On December 13th, 1868, Rev. James Vila Blake was installed
by the Society as its minister, and remained our pastor nearly
three years, until his resignation in November, 1871.
Aside from these, we have had the occasional pulpit service of
many men and women, noble in character, and eminent in abil
ity. Among them are Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, William R. Alger, John Weiss,
Samuel Johnson, O. B. Frothingham, John W. Chadwick,
Francis E. Abbot, Ednah D. Cheney, William J. Potter, Celia
Burleigh, William H. Spencer, and W. C. Gannett.
�6
The Parker Fraternity, which is an offshoot of the Twenty
eight Congregational Society, representing particularly its social
element, was organized in 1858, and has been a valuable adjunct
to the Society. Through its public lectures it has largely in
fluenced public opinion, particularly in the days of the anti
slavery reform and the momentous years of the rebellion. It
naturally recognized the rights of woman, and year after year
placed women among its lecturers.
The Twenty-eighth Congregational Society has always, from
the start, had its seats free. All who chose to come to its meet
ings have been welcome. The contributions for payment of
expenses have always been voluntary. The Society has never
had a creed, and has never used those observances with water,
bread and wine which the sects call “ sacraments.” Through
the twenty-eight years of its existence, the feeling against these
has been constant and universal, so that no question in regard
to them has ever arisen.
Now, for the first time, we have a building we can call our
own. We have erected it as a memorial to our first great
teacher and standard-bearer, Theodore Parker. We dedicate it
to the ideas he represented: namely, to truth, to humanity, to
the free expression of free thought, to duty, to mental, moral
and social progress, and to the diffusion of-religion without
superstition.
III.
SCRIPTURE READING.
[A part of the following selection from the Scriptures of different nations was read.]
Let us meditate on the adorable light of the Divine Creator; may He
quicken our minds.
What .1 may now utter, longing for Thee, do Thou accept it: make me
possessed of God !
Preserver, Refuge 1 leave us not in the power of the evil: be with us when
afar, be with us when near; so sustained, we shall not fear. We have no
other Friend but Thee, no other blessedness, no other Father. There is
none like Thee in heaven or earth, O Mighty One: give us understanding
as a father his sons. Thine we are ; we go on our way upheld by Thee.
Day after day we approach Thee with reverence : take us into Thy pro- l
tection as a father his sons. Thou art as water in the desert to him who I
longs for Thee.
�f
7
. •
Presence us by knowledge from sin, and lift us up, for our work and for
' oumife. Deliver us from evil!
Spirit alone is this All. Him know ye as the One Soul alone; dismiss
all other words.
The Eternal One is without form, without beginning, self-existent Spirit.
The Supreme Spirit, whose creation is the universe, always dwelling in
the heart of all beings, is revealed by the heart. They who know Him
become immortal. With the eye can no man see Him. They who know
him as dwelling within become immortal.
He is the Soul in all beings, the best in each, the inmost nature of
all; their beginning, middle, end: the all-watching Preserver, Father and
Mother of the universe; Supporter, Witness, Habitation, Refuge, Friend:
the knowledge of the wise, the silence of mystery, the splendor of light.
He, the One, moveth not, yet is swifter than thought. He is far, he is
near. He is within all, he is beyond all. He it is who giveth to his crea
tures according to their needs. He is the Eternal among things transitory,
the Life of all that lives, and being One fumlleth we desires of many. The
wise who see Him within themselves, theirs is everlasting peace.
Dearer than son, dearer than wealth, dearer than all* other beings, is He
who dwelleth deepest within.
. They who worship me, He saith, dwell in me and I in them. They who
worship me shall never die. By him who seeks me, I am easily found. To
such as seek me with constant love, I give the power to come to me. I will
deliver thee from all thy transgressions.
He who seeth all in God, and God in all, despiseth not any.
Hear the secret of the wise. Be not anxious ’ for Subsistence : it is pro
vided by the Maker. He who hath clothed the birds with their bright plu
mage will also feed thee. How should riches bring thee joy. He has all
good things whose soul is constant.
If one considers the whole universe as' existing in the Supreme Spirit,
how can he give his soul to sin ?
He leadeth men to righteousness that they may find unsullied peace.
. Who can be glorious without virtue ?
He who lives'pure in thought, free from malice, holy in life, feeling ten
derness toward all creatures, humble and sincere, has God ever in his heart.
The Eternal makes not his abode within the heart of that man who covets
another’s wealth, who injures any living thing, who speaks harshness or
untruth.
. The good have mercy on all as on themselves. He who is kind to those
who are kind to him does nothing great. To be good to the evil-doer is
what the wise call good. It is the duty of the good man, even in the mo
ment of his destruction, not only to forgive, but to seek to bless his de
stroyer.
By truth is the universe upheld.
Speak the truth : he drieth to the very roots who speaketh falsehood.
�8
Do righteousness : than righteousness there is nothing greater.
Honor thy father and thy mother. Live in peace with others. Speak ill
of none. Deceive not even thy enemy. Forgiveness is sweeter than
revenge. Speak kindly to the poor.
Whatever thou.dost, do as offering to the Supreme.
Lead me forth, O God, from unrighteousness into righteousness; from
darkness into light; from death into immortality 1
There is an invisible, eternal existence beyond this visible, which does
not perish when all things perish, even when all that exists in form returns
unto God from whom it came.
—Hindu {Brahminic) Scriptures*
O Thou in whom all creatures trust, perfect amidst the revolutions of
worlds, compassionate toward all, and their eternal salvation, bend down
into this our sphere, with all thy society of perfected ones. Thou Law of
all creatures, brighter than the sun, in faith we humble ourselves before
Thee. Thou, who dwellest in the world of rest, before whom all is but tran
sient, descend by thine almighty power and bless us !
Forsake ail evil, bring forth goo4, rule thy own thought: such is the path
to end all .pain.
My law is a law of mercy for all.
As a mother, so long as she lives, watches over her child, so among all
beings let boundless good-will prevail.
Overcome the evil with good, the avaricious with generosity, the false with
truth.
Earnestness is the way of immortality.
Be true and thou ahalt be free*. Ta be true belongs to thee, thy success,
to the Creator.
Not by meditation can the truth be reached, though I keep up continual
devotion. The. wall of error, is. broken by walking in the commandments of
God.
—Buddhist Scriptures.
In the name of God, the Giver, the Forgiver, the Rich in Love 1 Praise
be to the God, whose name is He who always was, always is, always shall be.
He is the Ruler, the Mighty, the Wise : Creator, Sustainer, Refuge, De
fender.
May Thy kingdom, come, O'Lord, wherein Thou makest good to the right
eous poor.
He through whose deed the world increaseth in purity shall come into Thy
kingdom.
This I ask of Thee, tell me the right, O Lord, teach me : Thou Ruler over
all, the Heavenly, the Friend for both worlds!
I pray Thee, the Best, for the best.
1 Teach Thou me out of Thyself.
The Lord has the decision: may it happen to us as He wills.
�9
“Which is the one prayer,” asked Zarathrusta, “that in greatness, good
ness and beauty is worth all that is between heaven and earth ? ” And the
Lord answered him, That one wherein one renounces all evil thoughts, evil
words, and evil works.
Praise to the Lord, who rewards those who perform good deeds accord
ing to His wijl, who purifies the obedient at last, and redeems even the
wicked out of hell.
—- Parsee Scriptures.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one.
What doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to reverence the Lord
thy God, to walk in all his ways: to love him and to serve him with all thy
heart and with all thy soul 1
For the Lord your God is a great God, a mighty and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, neither taketh gifts. He executeth justice for the
fatherless and the widow and loveth the stranger.* Love ye therefore the
stranger. Ye are the children of the Lord your God.
Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another. Neither
shall thou profane the name of thy God. Thou shalt no,t defraud thy neigh
bor, but in righteousness shalt thou judge him,
Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart.
But thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
If thine enemy hunger feed him, iMie thirst give him drink. So shalt
thou heap coals of fire upon his head.
Bring no more vain oblations. Wash you, make you clean; cease to do
evil, learn to do good ; seek justice, relieve the oppressed.
Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow, though they
be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
Justice will I lay to the line and righteousness to the plummet.
When Thy justice is in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn
righteousness.
The Lord will teach us his ways and we will walk in his paths. And he
shall judge the nations. And they shall beat their swords into plough
shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks : nation shall not lift up sword
against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
For behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth. The wilderness and
the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall blossom as the rose.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down
in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my
life, He leadeth me in the right paths. Yea, though I walkthrough the val
ley of the deadly shadow, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me: Thy
rod and thy staff they comfort me. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow
me all the days of my life.
—Jewish ^Canonical) Scriptures.
2
�IO
Wisdom is glorious, and never fadeth away. And love is the keeping of
her laws : and the giving heed unto her laws is the assurance of incorruptionj
And incorruption maketh us near unto God.
For wisdom, which is the worker of all things, taught me. In her is an
understanding spirit: holy, one only, yet manifold ; subtle, living, undefiled,
loving the thing that is good, ready to do good; kind to man, steadfast,
sure, having all power ; overseeing all things, and going through all mind ;
pure and most subtle spirit. For wisdom is more moving than any motion,
She passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness. For
she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the
glory of the Almighty. She is the brightness of the everlasting light, the. un
spotted mirror of the power of God and the image of his goodness. And be
ing one, she can do all things: and remaining in herself, she maketh all
things new; and in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends
of God and prophets.
Thou lovest all things that are ; thou savest all: for they are Thine, O
Lord, thou lover of souls. For Thine incorruptible spirit is in all things.
To know Thee is perfect righteousness ; yea, to know Thy power is the
root of immortality.
For righteousness is immortal.
— Jewish (Apocryphal} Scriptures.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed
are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for
they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst af
ter righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they
shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven.
Love your enemies ; bless them who curse you; pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your
Father who is in heaven. Be ye therefore perfect as your Father in heaven
is perfect.
God is Spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit.
The Father who dwelleth in me doeth the works. My Father worketh
hitherto and I work.
God is Love ; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in
him.
If we love one another, God dwelleth in us. And he that keepeth his
commandments dwelleth in Him, and He in him.
Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we
should be called the sons of God.
And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself as He is pure.
As many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
�11
Unto us there is but one God, the Father.
One God, and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you
all.
He hath made us ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter, but of
the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
Now the Lord is that spirit: and where the spirit of the Lord is there is
liberty.
For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty. Only use not your liberty
as an occasion for the flesh, but that by love ye may serve one another.
And now abide faith, hope, love : but the greatest of these is love.
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are
honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever
things are lovely: if there be any virtue *and any praise, think on these
things. The things which ye have learned and received and heard, do :
and the God of peace shall be with you.
— Christian Scriptures.
IV.
PRAYER.
BY SAMUEL LONGFELLOW.
V.
DEDICATION HYMN.
WRITTEN FOR THE OCCASION BY W. C. GANNETT.
(Sung by Choir and Congregation?)
O Heart-of all the shining day,
The green earth’s still Delight,
Thou Freshness in the morning wind,
Thou Silence of the night;
Thou Beauty of our temple-walls,
Thou Strength within the stone, —
What is it we can offer thee
Save what is first thine own ?
Old memories throng: we think of one —
Awhile with us he trod —
Whose gospel words yet bloom and burn;
We called him, — Gift of God.
Thy gift again; we bring thine own,
This memory, this hope;
This faith that still one Temple holds
Him, us, within its cope.
-•
�12
Not that we see, but sureness comes
When such as he have passed ;
The freshness thrills, the silence fills,
Life lives then in the vast;
They pour their goodness into it,
It reaches to the star;
The Gift of God becomes himself,
More real, more near, so far !
VI. DISCOURSE.
BY SAMUEL LONGFELLOW.
I greet you upon your gathering in this new and fair home.
It is but a change of place, — not of mind or purpose. You lay
no new foundations of the .spirit. What foundation can any man
lay deeper, broader, more eternal than those you have always
had, — faith in man and faith in God, whom man reveals ? You
build no new walls of spiritual shelter: what other can you ever
need than you have always had, — the sense of the encompass
ing, protecting, and perfect laws, the encircling God ? What
better roof could overarch your souls than the reverential, trust
ful sense of the Heavenly Power and Love; the Truth, Justice,
and Beauty that are above us all; the Perfect which lifts us to
heaven, and opens heaven to us and in us, even as in Rome’s
Pantheon — temple of all the Gods, or of the All-God — the
arching dome leaves in its centre an open circle, through
which the infinite depths of sky are seen that tempt the spirit
to soar and soar, without a bound, farther than any bird hath
ever lifted wing or floating air-ship of man’s building can ever
rise! What spires and pinnacles could you raise that would
point upward better than that ideal within us, that haunting
sense of Perfection which forever calls us to a better manhood,
and toward which in all our best moments we long and aspire ?
What breadth of enlarged space could you open, with hospita
ble welcome of free place for all who would come, beyond that
entire freedom of thinking, of speaking, of hearing, which have
been yours, and your offering to others, for so many years ?
Eyer since, indeed, you gathered together, resolved that “ Theo-
�13
dore Parker should have a chance to be heard in Boston,” and
forrwsd the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society. Founded
in the ecclesiastical independence of that name, you, in coming
here, have not to break away from any ecclesiastical organization. Nor do you need now or ever to ask leave of bishop, or
approbation of consistory or council, — or fear the censure of
either, — for anything that you may do here, for any one whom
Bou may invite here, for anything that may be said here, for any
rite or form or ceremonial that you here may establish or may
omit. Springing from such root of sympathy with fair play and
freedom of speech, — and especially of thought and speech that
were under some ban. of heresy, — you have not in coming here
had to break away from any traditions of orthodoxy or spiritual
constraint. The traditions you bring here, are all the other way.
It is to no experiment of liberty that you \bpen this place of
meeting; to no untried ideas and principles, but to well-tested
ones, which you see no ground to give up or to abate. For
ideas and principles you have, — though you are bound by no
Breed. Bound by no creed, I. say, — refusing to proclaim any.
Not, however, without individual beliefs, and doubtless with
Substantial agreement amid your varieties of opinion ; but not
imposing your beliefs upon each other, as conditions of fellow
ship, still less upon any as condition® of salvation. You do not
impose them upon yourselves as fiscal; but hope that they will
grow out into something larger, fuller, deeper. You may be
afloat; but you are not adrift. You may not know what new
worlds of Truth lie before you ; but you know where you are,
and in what direction you are going. Beneath you is the deep
of God; over you, his eternal stars; within you, the magnet
which, with all its variations, is yet a trustworthy guide. Your
hand is on the helm. The sacred forces and laws of nature
encompass you. While you obey them you will not be lost.
“If your bark sink, ’tis to another sea.” You cannot go beyond
God.
This great principle of Freedom of Inquiry, Liberty of
^Thought, you bring with you. And may I not say for you
that you re-affirm it here ? In using it, it has not failed you or
betrayed you or harmed you. You have not found it fatal or
�14
'
dangerous. It has not led you into indifference, or into license
or moral delinquency. It may have led you to deny some old
beliefs, but it has not left you in denial or unbelief. Its free
atmosphere has been a tonic to your faith. It has brought you
to convictions, —the more trustworthy and precious because
freely reached by your own thought,, and tested by your own
experience, and fitted to your own state of mind. No longer a
report, but something you have seen for yourselves. The story
is told of a well-known hater of shams, that, a new minister
coming into his neighborhood, he sought an opportunity of talk
with him : he wanted to learn, he said, whether this man knew]
himself, anything of God, or only believed that eighteen hunj
dred years ago there lived one who knew something of him. Is
not our faith that in which we have settled confidence, — what
we trust our wills to in action ? It is that to which we gravi
tate, and in which we rest when all disturbing influences are
withdrawn. It is that to which we find ourselves recurring
from all aberrations of questioning and doubt, as to a practical
certainty. We may not be able to answer all arguments against
it, but nevertheless it commends itself to us as true. There is
to us more reason for holding to it than there are reasons for
rejecting it. So, while belief may be called an act of the
understanding, faith is rather a consent of the whole natureJ
It is, therefore, more instinctive than argumentative, though
reasoning forms an element in it. And it is the mighty power
which it is, removing mountains, and the secret of victory,
because it is this consensus of thought, feeling, and will, —• a
deposit of their long experiences, an act of the whole man. It
is structural and organic. But it need not be blind or irrational.
If we must differentiate it from knowledge, I would say that,
while we may define knowledge to be assurance upon outward
grounds, faith is assurance upon real but interior grounds. I
repeat this because many people seem to think that faith is
assurance without any ground. Now that our faith may be
really such as I have described, it must be a personal convic
tion, from our own thought and experience. And that it may
be this, we must have liberty of thinking without external con
straint.
�You do not find that this liberty of yours isolates you. Others,
who count it dangerous, or who dislike the use you make of it,
may cut you off from their fellowship. But the liberty which
frees you from artificial restraints leaves you open to the natural
attractions, and over and through all walls and lines you find a
large fellowship of sympathy in thought and feeling. The elec
tric instincts of spiritual brotherhood overleap all barriers of
-,creed and organization, even of excommunication. Above all
are you bound by such invisible, deep ties with all the noble
company of the heretics and pioneers of thought: and a noble
company it is. For the line of so-called heresy is nearly as
ancient, and quite as honorable, i J that of orthodoxy. Think
of the names that belong to it!
Let me say further thatfthis liberty of yours — your birth
right and sacred charge — is not lawlessn<Ss. You have never
felt it to be so. In a universe of law no true liberty can be
that. It is not that which has made the soul of man thrill as
when a trumpet sounds ; not that to which the noblest men and
women have sacrificed popularity, fortuneBand life. How fool
ishly Mr. Ruskin talks about liberty, misusing his eloquent pen ;
saying that we need none of it; and taking for its symbol the
capricious vagaries of a house-fly ! Is it a Bouse-fl^baprice that
has made the hearts of true menOleap high and willingly bleed
into stillness ; which has been dearer than friend or lover, than
ease or life ? Your liberty, I say, is not lawlessness, — it is not
whim and caprice. It is simply thelthrowing off all bondage of
tradition and conformity and prescription and ecclesiasticism,—
every external compulsion and imposition in behalf of the free,
natural action of the mind and heart. It rejects outward rule
in behalf of inward law. It refuses obedience to outward dicta
tion in behalf of its allegiance to the Truth which is within.
Thus it rejects bonds, but accepts bounds ; for all law is force
acting within bounds, — that is, under fixed and orderly condi
tions. Your liberty is order, not disorder.
Your liberty, again, is not rude or defiant. You do not flout
authority: you give due weight to the natural authority of supe
rior knowledge, wisdom, conscientiousness, holiness. But you
acknowledge no human authority which claims to be infallible, or
�i6
to impose itself upon you as absolute; none which would deny to
you the right — or seek to release you from the duty — of thinking
for yourself what is true to you, of judging for yourself what is
right for you. The opinion of the wisest you will not accept,
in any matter that interests you, unless it commends itself to
your thought, to your conscience, is justified by your experi
ence. You will not take your religious opinions ready made
from pope or synod or apostle. God has given you power—•
and therefore laid upon you the duty — of forming your own.
In that work you will gladly accept all help, willingly listen to
the words of the wise and good ; but their real authority is in
their power to convince your mind ; and the final appeal is to
your own soul. Is inspiration claimed for any, its proof must
be in its power to inspire you. Till it does it is no word of God
to you.
Yet once more, this liberty — won by pain of those gone
before, and by your own fidelity—-is yours not for its own sake
chiefly, not as an end. It is yours as opportunity. It will be a
barren liberty if it be not used. What good will the right of
free inquiry do to a man who never inquires ? Of what advan
tage freedom of thought to one who never thinks ? Of what
value the right of private judgment to. one who never exercises
it ? Freedom, I say, is but opportunity. It is an atmosphere in
which the 'mind should expand unhindered in its inbreathing of
Truth; in which all virtues should grow in strength, all sweet
and loving and devout feelings flower into beauty and fra
grance ; in which the character, unconstrained by artificial
bondages, should grow into the full statue of manhood, the full
possession and free play of faculty. It is in vain that you have
put away infallible church and infallible Bible and official media
tor, and priesthood and ritual, from between you and God, if
you never avail yourself of that immediate access ; if your soul
never springs into the arms of the Eternal Love, nor rests itself
trustfully on the Eternal Strength, nor listens reverently to the
whispers of the Eternal Word, nor enters into the peace of
communion with the Immutable.
Our freedom is founded in faith, not in denial. It springs from
faith in man. The popular theology is founded upon the idea
�i7
of human incapacity : ours upon faith in human capacity. We
believe, not in the Fall of Man, but in the Rise of Man. We
believe, not in a chasm between man and God to be bridged
over only by the atoning death of a God, but in a chasm
between man’s attainment and his possibility, between his
lower and his higher nature, to be bridged over by growth,
government, and culture. We believe that there is more good
in man generally than evil. And the evil we believe to be, not
a native disability, but an imperfection or a misuse, an excess
or perversion, of faculties and instincts whose natural or right
use is good. We believe sin is not an infinite evil, but a finite
one, — incidental, not structural. Man is not helpless in its
toils ; but every man has the fiements of good in him which
may overcome it, and all 'fidefled helps. It is a disease, — some
times a dreadful one, — but notfebsolutely fatal, since there is a
healing power in his nature, and in the universe around and
above him; and the excess or ‘mlsmrection may be overcome by
the inward effort and outward influences which shall strengthen
into supremacy the higher faculties which rightfully control and
direct the lower. We believe iff! the existence of these higher
faculties as original in man’s constitution, — reason, conscience,
ideality, unselfish love. These are as much a part of his nature
as the senses and the animal mind. When rightly used they
are as valid, — not infallible, but trustworthy. They will not
necessarily lead, astray, as the popular theology teaches, but
probably lead aright. That theology, not having faith in human
nature, cannot believe that freedom of thinking is safe for men.
Protestantism proclaims indeed the “ right of private judgment,”
but it is merely the right to read the Jewish and Christian
Bible, and to accept unquestioning its declarations, bowing nat
ural reason, heart, and conscience to its texts, believed to be the
miraculously inspired and infallible Word of God, the “ perfect
rule of faith and practice.” The Roman Catholic Church, far
more logical, seeing that private judgment gets such a variety
of meaning out of this “ perfect rule,” declares that an infallible
Bible, to be such a rule, needs an infallible interpreter,—namely,
the church, or, latterly, the Pope speaking for the church. It,
therefore, logically denies freedom of individual thinking as
�18
dangerous. Father Newman, indeed, with amusing simplicity,
declares that nowhere is liberty of thought more encouraged
than in the Roman Church, since, he says, she allows a long
discussion of every tenet and dogma before it is definitely
defined and proclaimed. Yes: but after? We can only smile
at such a pretension. In London, a friend said to me, “ I do
not see but these Broad Churchmen have freedom to say every
thing that they want to say in their pulpits.” I answered, “ Per
haps so, but then they do not want to say all that you and I
should want to say.” But of what they wish to say or think
much must require an immense stretching of the articles to
which they have subscribed : I do not speak of conscience, for I
will not judge another’s. But what a trap to conscience, what
a temptation to at least mental dishonesty, must such subscrip
tion be! And the Liturgy, from which no word may be omitted,
though many a priest must say officially what he does not indi
vidually believe, — can that be good for a man ? I know what
may be said on the other side, but to us it will seem that all
advantages are dearly purchased at such cost. The Unitarians,
the Protestants of Protestants, in their revolt from Calvinism,
proclaimed the right of free inquiry. And, let it be remembered
to their credit, they have refused to announce an authoritative
creed. But they have not had full faith in their own principles
and ideas. They have hesitated and been timid in their appli
cation. They have been suspicious and unfriendly toward those
who went farther than they in the use of their freedom of think
ing. They have written up, “No Thoroughfare” and “Danger
ous Passing” on their own road. They have now organized
round the dogma of the Lordship and Leadership of Jesus ; and
invite to their fellowship, not all who would be “ followers of
God, as dear children,” but only those who “ wish to be follow
ers of Christ.”
I do not forget that in all churches, Romanist and Protestant,
there is a spirit of liberty, a leaven of free thought, which is
creating a movement in them all,—■ an inner fire which is break
ing the crust of tradition and creed and ecclesiasticism. It
shows itself in the Old Catholic movement in Romanism ; the
Broad Church in Anglicanism ; the Liberal wing in Orthodoxy ;
the Radicalism in “ Liberal Christianity.”
�19
But the freedom which in these is inconsistent, imperfect, or
rmwelcome, with you is organic and thorough. Our faith in it,
I said, springs out of our faith in man and God, to which indeed
our freedom has led us. We think that man can be trusted to
search for the truth without constraint or hindrance, because
we think that his mind was made for truth, as his eye for light;
and that to his mind, fairly used, the truth will reveal itself as
the light does to his eye. And we believe that in his sincere
search he is never unassisted by the Spirit of Truth. We do
not say that he will make no mistakes, or that he will know all
truth all at once. But if a man be earnest and sincere, his mis
takes will be his teachers : his errors wilHbi but his imperfect
apprehension of some truth. We believe that all truth that has
ever come to man, including religious truth, has come through
the use of his native faculties'^ that this is the condition of all
revelation, and ample to account for all revelations. We, therefore, utterly discard all distinction between natural and revealed
religion. We should as soon speak of natural and revealed
astronomy, or establish separate professorships for teaching
them. Newton revealed to men the facnfof the universe which
his natural faculties discovered, and which thequniverse revealed
to him using his faculties. Some of these facts were Unknown
before to the wisest men ; some were only dimly guessed. Did
that prove his knowledge superhuman ? Would it be a sensi
ble question to ask, Why, if human reason were Capable of dis
covering them, were they not 'known before ? Yet such ques
tions are asked in religion, as if unanswerable I We .believe
that the human faculties are adequate for their end. Among
them we recognize spiritual faculties, framed for the perception
of spiritual truths, — a religious capacity adequate to its end.
We find religion — a sense of deity — as universal and as natu
ral to man as society, government, language, science. You
know how the latest and completest investigations into the
ancient religions of the world confirm this belief. They show
that the great religious ideas and sentiments — of God, of Vir
tue, of Love, of Immortality — have been taught with remarka
ble unanimity in all these religions. These are mingled in all
with much that is mythological, unscientific, local, personal,
�20
temporary. But they have all contained that which elevated,
consoled, and redeemed the souls of men. Under all of them,
men have lived the truth they professed, and have suffered and
died in its behalf. Most of them have had their prophet, be
lieved to have been the chosen friend of God, sent to communi
cate His word to the world. He has been worshiped by his
followers, glorified with miracle, deified. In view of these facts,
it is impossible to regard any one of them as the only, the uni
versal, or the perfect religion. Christianity, therefore, cannot
any longer be regarded as other than one of the religions of the
world, sharing the qualities of them all. It has its bright cen
tral truths, eternal as the soul of man, elevating, comforting,
redeeming. It has its elements of mythology, its personal and
local traits, peculiar to itself. What is peculiar in it can never
become universal: what is universal in it cannot be claimed as
its peculiar property. The Christianity of the New Testament
centres in the idea that Jesus was the miraculously attested
Messiah, the King, long expected, of the Jews. “If ye believe
not that I am he ye shall perish in your sins.” “ Every spirit
that confesseth that Jesus, the Messiah, is come in the flesh, is
of God ; every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus is the Mes
siah come in the flesh, is not of God.” “ Whosoever shall con
fess that Jesus is the Son of God [that is, the Messiah], God
dwelleth in him.” “Whosoever believes that Jesus is the Mes
siah, is born of God.” This was the primitive Christian confes
sion,— the test of belief or unbelief, the test of discipleship,
the condition of salvation. Paul enlargecl the domain of the
Messiah’s kingdom to include all of the Gentiles who would
acknowledge him; declared that in his own life-time he should
see Jesus returning to take the Messianic throne, and looked to
see the time when “ every knee should bow, and every tongue
confess that Jesus was the Christ;” “whom God had raised
from the dead, and set at his own right hand, far above all prin
cipality and might and dominion and every name that is named.”
This was the primitive Christian confession. Seeing that it has
never come to pass, that it was a mistaken idea, some modern
Christians idealize the thought, and say that Jesus is morally
and. spiritually King among men. But that is not the New
/
�21
Testament idea, which is literal, not figurative. This Messianic
idea, in its most literal sense, colors the Christian scriptures
BRfrough and through. And with it, its correlative idea of an
immediately impending destruction and renovation of the wor Id,
vThich was to accompany the Messianic appearance. A great
many of the precepts of the New Testament have their ground
in this erroneous notion of the writers, and have no significance
or application apart from it. It is such things as these that
make it impossible for Christianity,- as it stands in the records,
to be the universal or absolute religion. Just as like things in
Brahminism, Buddhism, Judaism, prevent any one of these, as
it stands in its scriptures, from becoming the Religion of the
World. What is local, personal, peculiar, special in each, is of
its nature transient, — the temporary environment and wrappage
of the truth. What is universal in each, — the central spiritual
and moral ideas which re-appear in them all, — these cannot be
■called by the name of any one of them. These, it seems me,
are neither Judaism, Buddhism, nor Christianity,— they are
Religion.
Religion, — a name how often taken in vain, how often perKrerted ! but in its . true essence what a joy, what an emancipation, what a consolation, what an inspiration ! What a life it
has been in the world! Corrupted and betrayed, made the
cloak of iniquity, ambition, selfishness, uncharitableness, and
tyranny, it has never perished out of the human soul. A prod
uct of that soul, an original and ineradicable impulse, percep
tion, and sentiment, it has shared the fate of that soul in its
upward progress out of ignorance into knowledge, out of super
stition into rational faith, out of selfishness into humanity, out
of all imperfection on toward perfection. In every age, and in
every soul, it has been the saving salt. For by Religion, I need
not say, I do not mean any form or ceremonial whatever, any
organization or ecclesiasticism. I mean the Ideal in man, and
devotion to that Ideal. The sense of a Perfect above him, yet
akin to him, forever drawing him upward to union with itself.
The Moral Ideal, —or sense of a perfect Righteousness,— how
it has summoned men away from injustice and wrong-doing,
awakened them to a contest with evil within them, and led
�22
them on to victory of the conscience over passion and greed !
How it has nerved them to do battle with injustice in the
world, and kept them true to some cause of righting wrong,
patient and brave through indifference, opposition, suffering!
And it has always been a sense of a power and a law of right
eousness above themselves, which they did not create and dared
not disobey, and which, while it seemed to compel them, yet
exalted and freed them. The Intellectual Ideal, — the sense of
a Supreme Truth, a Reality in things, with the thirst to know it,
— how it has led men to “scorn delights and live laborious
days,” to outwatch the night, to traverse land and sea, in its
study and pursuit, to sacrifice for it fortune and society; this
al^o felt to be something above them, yet belonging to them ;
something worth living and dying for, and giving to its sharers
a sense of endless life! And the Ideal of Beauty, haunting,
quickening, exalting the imagination to feel, to see, to create, in
marble, on canvass, in tones, in words : itself its own great
reward. The Ideal of Use, leading to the creation and perfect
ing of the arts and instruments of human need and comfort and
luxury: every one of them at first only a. dream in the brain of
the inventor, a vision of a something better than existed haunt
ing his toilsome days and years of self-denial and poverty. The
Ideal of Patriotism or of Loyalty, the sense of social order, of a
rightful sovereignty, or of popular freedom, — how has it made
men into heroes and martyrs, giving up ease and facing death
with exulting hearts. The Ideal of Love or Benevolence, that
makes men devote themselves and consecrate their possessions
to the relieving of human suffering, and discovering and remov
ing its sources. The Ideal of Sanctity, of Holiness, the vision
and the consecration of the saint, the aspiration after goodness,
that by its inspiration gives power to overcome passion and con
trol desire and purify every thought of the mind and every feel
ing of the heart, and mold the spirit into the likeness of the
All-Holy.
All these ideals, differing so much in their manifestation and
direction, are alike in this, — that they all look to an unseen
Better, a Best, a Perfect; that this seems always above the
man who seeks it, yet at the same time within him, not of
�23
his own creation, but governing him by a law superior to his
own will, while attracting and invigorating it; that they all
demand a self-surrender and self-devotion, and sacrifice of
lower to higher, and give the power to make that sacrifice;
and that they are their own reward.
All these ideals — and if there be any others — I include in
the idea of Religion. Is my definition too broad ? I cannot
make it narrower. It will not seem too broad to you who are
accustomed to regard religion as covering all human life. What
ever in that life is an expression of^deal aspiration, is done in
unselfish devotion, and in obedience to the highest law we
know, is a religious act, is a worship and a prayer. It is a ser
vice of God ; for.it is a use of our faculties to their highest end,
which must be His will for us. It is a ^onitact «®fith things in
visible and eternal. For these ideals are of the mind, not of the
body : they are of the soulfland must go with it into all worlds.
They are thus an element, and a puoof, of immortality.
O friends, is there anything the world needs, is there any
thing every one of us needs, more than some high ideal, to be
kept bright and clear within
by sincere devotion ? Is there
anything we need more than a high standardKn character, in
aim, in spirit, in work ? We have it in our bestJwnoments. But
.How easily we let it get clouded in the press of cares. How
easily we yield to the temptation to lower it for immediate
Results I Is there anything we need more than the elevation
of spirit such an ideal gives, the power to rise above annoyance
and fret, above low and selfish thought, above unworthy deeds ?
How ashamed we stand before that, ideal when, because we have
not bee« obedient to its celestial vision, but have too easily let
it go, we are betrayed into the temp#?, the word, the act we had
Resolved should never betray us again ! What is needed in our
politics, in our business — do not daily events teach it to us
most impressively ? — but a higher ideal; a higher standard of
integrity; a high-minded sense of right, which would take no
Questionable dollar from the public purse ; a sensitive con
science, scrupulous of the rights of others given to its trust ?
[Then the haste to be rich would cease to be the root of evil
that it is, and embezzlements, defalcations, political jobs, and
�24
mercantile frauds no longer shock and grieve us with every
paper we take up. Oh, the anguish and self-reproach of the
man who has involved himself, little by little, in the toils and
excitements of temptation, and, accepting a lowering standard
of honesty, sinks, till he is startled to find himself fallen into
the pit!
What is more needed in all our work than a higher ideal of
excellence, a higher standard of truth and conscientiousness ?
How hard to get anything done thoroughly well, — precisely as
agreed upon, and at the time promised ! Most earnestly would
I insist that every right which the “ working-man ” can justly
claim should be secured to him ; his full share of the product
he helps create, and every opportunity for health, recreation,
and culture which he will use. But he should remember that
faithful performance of ditties on his part will be the best ground
for any claim of rights: he must be careful of the right of oth
ers to honest work and honest time in return for fair pay.
How great is our indebtedness to those great and true souls
who have kindled or kept alive within us a loftier ideal! What
an influence in that way has the image of Jesus been in the
Christian world! Many have not seen that what they wor
shiped or looked up to in him was often simply their own ideal
of human excellence, — really not so much derived from him as
projected upon him, with little regard to historic fact. But this
shows us, still, the power of a lofty ideal within us to lift up,
sustain, and redeem. Many, if they were willing to speak
frankly, would say that the human excellence of some noble,
pure-hearted, spiritually-winded friend, with whom they had
walked in the flesh, has been more to them than thenmage of
Jesus. And when we remember that these high ideals have
inspired millions who never heard his name, it is plain that he
cannot be regarded as their origin. There is one Supreme Ideal
of Goodness. “ Likeness to God ” was the aim of the Pythago
rean teaching. “ Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is per
fect.”
All these ideals of Truth, Righteousness, Beauty, Use, Love,
Holiness, of which I have spoken as constituting, in our devo
tion to them, true Religion, unite in the Idea of God. For He
�25
is the Perfect of them all, the Spirit or Essence of them all,—•
the Perfect Truth, the Perfect Righteousness, the Perfect Beau
ty, the Perfect Love, the Perfect Power, the Perfect Holiness.
That is what we mean by saying “ God,” — surely nothing less
than that. This sublime idea has always, in some shape, haunt
ed and possessed the mind of man. The moment the spiritual
faculties begin to germinate in a man or a race, at that moment
the thought of God springs up. From our far-off Aryan ances
tor, who, on those high plains of Central Asia, looked up to
the clear, transparent sky, and said thankfully and reverently,
“ Dyaus-pitar,” Heaven-father, — for he knew that the blessing
of sunshine and rain came thenc^to him, and must have felt a
mysterious sense of some being invisible in that visible, — down
to the child who to-day makes his prayer, “ Our Father, who art
in heaven,” all over the world the reverence of men’s hearts,
/and their sense of blessing and dependence, have uttered the
name of God, and joined with ^t the thought of Father. The
1 conceptions in which men’s thought and language have clothed
that idea have varied with knowledge and culture. But the
central idea of a Power and Beneficence superior to man, in
Nature and above Nature, has been ever present. Delusions
may have gathered about it: but is it a delusion ? Supersti
tions may have distorted it: but can you count it a supersti
tion ? I count it the greatest of realities. I accept the
well-nigh universal verdict of the soul of man. I accept the
experiences of my own soul. I accept the faith which, whether
it be original or an inheritance of accumulated thought, is now
an instinct and intuition within me. I accept the confirmation
of science to the divination of the soul, in its more and more
clear affirmation of a unity and perpetuity of Force in Nature,
and an omnipresence of Law. I accept the testimony of saints
who, through purity of heart, have seen God and felt him near,
— and more than near. Their highest statement is, “ God is
Spirit.” A distinguished preacher has said,— justifying his
declaration that Jesus Christ is his God, — that he believes
it impossible to form the conception of pure spirit. Of course
we cannot form any image or picture of it. But we ’can think
it, surely. For we know thought and feeling and will in our
4
�26
selves, and these have no shape, nor do we confound them with
the bodies in which they are manifested. Thought, feeling,
will, — these are our spirit, our essential life. God is the infi
nite Thought, Feeling, Will, — the infinite Spirit or essential
Life of the universe of matter and of soul. Our conception of
him must depend,’ I .said, upon our spiritual condition. But I
think with every advance in spiritual life and perception, we put
off more and more of physical and human limitation. Said one
to me, the other day, “ I think it will be no service* to men to
undermine their belief in a personal God.” Now, thought, feel
ing, and will are qualities of person, and not of thing, and there
fore we may speak of God as the infinite Person. But he
meant, as is usually meant, by personality, individuality. For
myself, I think it a great-gain to give up the conception of God
as an individual being, however majestic, sitting apart from the
universe, overseeing and governing it, and from time to time
intervening by special act. I count it a great gain to have
reached a conception of him as pure Spirit, the all-pervading
Life of the Universe, the present Power and present Love and
present Justice at every point of that universe, — perpetually
creating it by his present Energy of good. Present perpetually
in the affairs of men, invisibly, restraining evil, righting wrong,
leading on to the perfect society. Present really in the hearts
and minds and consciences and wills of men, not displacing
them, but re-enforcing them. “ If we love one another, God
dwelleth in us,” said the inspired writer of old, — surely inspired
when he said that. “If a man is at heart just,” said the inspired
modern, “ by so much he is God. The power of God and the
eternity of God do enter into that man with Justice.” How
could this be if God be a separate, individual being ? But con
ceive of him as Being, and the difficulty vanishes. It is no fig
ure of speech, but literally true, that He dwells in holy souls,
inspiring and working through him. “The Father who dwell
eth in me,” said Jesus. Yes, but in no special or miraculous
way: in the way of the universal law of spiritual action ; as he
dwells in all souls that aspire and obey. “Above all and
through all and in us all.”
Does this conception of God as Essential Life seem to any
�27
vague and unreal ? Oh, think again, how substantial are
thought, feeling, and will! The moving powers of the human
world setting all the material into action ! How many perplexi
ties of thought, which beset the common view of God as an in
dividual being, disappear under this conception of him as spirit!
How does it make possible the thought of his omniscience and
omnipresence and providence ! No longer the all-seeing eye,
watching us from afar, but the present spirit, knowing us from
within, involved in our thought and our thinking, — the law or
order by which we think and feel, the present power by which
we act. Spirit can thus encompass us, and flow through us,
without oppressing us, or hindering our freedom. Do the forces
of nature — of attraction, of gravitation, of chemical affinity —
oppress us ? We cannot get away from them, but do we not
move freely among them ? The air is around us and within us,
a mighty pressure, — do we feel the weight of it? In such
sweet, familiar, unconscious ways does God, the Spirit, encom
pass and dwell within our spirits. How can we flee from that
Spirit, or go where it will not uphold and keep us ? Our God
besets us behind and before. Our Father never leaves us alone.
Modern science, we are told, is rejecting all notion of volition
from the material world. The conception of God as Spirit has
already done that. For God’s will, in that conception, is no
separate jets of choice, but an all-filling, steadfast Energy, a Power living at every point. His will is no series of finite
volitions, but an infinite purpose in the constitution of things, —
the unchanging element in them which we call their law. God’s
will, therefore, is not in any sense 'arbitrary. A permanent
force, with its permanent laws, from constant conditions it pro
duces constant results. Wrought into the constitution of things
arid beings, it is there to be studied, known, and obeyed.
Friends of the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society: Com
ing at your call to speak to you on this occasion of the dedica
tion of your new house, I have not thought it unfitting to the
occasion, instead of trying to open to you some new topic,
rather to offer you this outline and review of principles and
ideas already somewhat familiar to you. We glance over what
�28
has been gained before beginning anew our quest. You build
here no House of God, but a house for men. A “ meeting
house” you call it,—.the good old New England name, — not a
church : for is not the church the men and women, not the
walls? You have most fittingly made it a memorial of your
first minister. And this in no slavish adulation, and in no slav
ish following of him. You are not bound to his thoughts. But
you can never forget or cease to be grateful to him, many of
you, for the emancipation of thought you owe to him ; for the
moral invigoration, for the quickening of devout feeling, always
to him so precious.
He was a thorough believer in the Liberty of which I have
spoken. He believed that it should have no bounds save such
as love of truth and good sense and feeling might set to it.
And he used the freedom he believed in. And when, in the use
of it, he was led to judge and reject some things around which
the reverence of the denomination to which he belonged clung,
they who had taught him the liberty which he used, with some
noble exceptions,— I am sorry to recall it,— to save their credit,
proved false to their principle. They lost a noble opportunity.
They had always insisted that the essential in Christianity was not
belief, but character and life : now they turned round, and asserted
that it was not a spirit and a life, but a belief in supernatural his
tory. He did not spare them, and hurled at them the arrows of
his wit and the smooth stones of his keen logic. He did battle for
the freedom which was denied. Men mistook his wit for malig
nity, and his moral indignation.for bitterness. But, though he
was capable of sarcasm, his heart was sweet and kind, and full
of genial sympathies, as those who knew him best best knew.
His services to Theology in this country were very great.
His work was partly destructive, clearing away errors and
superstitions, but mainly constructive. He built up a complete
system of theology, founded upon the native spiritual instincts
in man and the infinite perfection of God. Though a vigorous
practical understanding was the characteristic of his mind, he
accepted this ideal or transcendental theory of religion, and,
with his clear common sense and terse sentences, interpreted it
to the general mind. Though no mystic, he had much devout.
�2^
feeling, and loved to speak of Piety, and the soul’s normal de
light in God. You will never forget the deeply reverential tone
of his public prayers to the “Father and Mother of us all.” But
even more than in Piety he believed in and loved and enforced
Righteousness in every form ; and his great power was ethical.
.How clear and sure was his sense of right; .a conscience for the
nation : its guidance sought by how many, in public and private
duty ! Before its keen glance how many an idol fell! He liked
to be called a Teacher of Religion: and he made it cover all of
life. He applied its ideal to the nation, and, finding human slav
ery there, he threw all his energies into rousing the conscience
of the country to feel its falseness and ?ts iniquity, and to work
for its removal. In this cause he rendered you know what noble
and devoted service, gaining the sympathies of many who least
liked his theology. He gave the weight of his advocacy to every
cause of humane reform, pleading for the poor and the perishing
classes, for the rights of woman, for temperance and purity and
peace.
He has left you a powerful influence, and a heritage of prin
ciples and ideas, to whose charge you show yourselves faithful
in building this house, that the work he begun may be carried
on and fulfilled. The men and the women whom you call tospeak to you know that they will have full freedom of speech
and hospitable hearing to their most advanced thought. You
will expect them to speak to you,wot upon theological questions
alone, or on the experiences of devout feeling, or personal du-’
ties, but on all that deeply concerns the welfare of the commu
nity ; upon the vital questions of the da/, and its present needs ;
upon political and social topics; upon questions of moral reform
and humane effort, and rights of man and woman ; upon all the
practical applications of ideal thought. All these you will wish
discussed, in the utmost freedom, and from the highest point of
view.
But not for speech alone is this house to be used. I cannot
but hope that your enlarged space will be used as opportunity
for work .in various directions of help and good will. Why
should not this be a headquarters of action as well as thought ?
�30
And now, may I say for you, that you devote and dedicate
this house to Freedom and to Religion ; to Truth and to Vir
tue ; to Piety, to Righteousness, and to Humanity; to Knowl»
edge and to Culture ; to Duty, to Beauty, and to Joy ; to Faith
and Hope and Charity; to the memory of Saints, Reformers,
Heretics, and Martyrs ; to the Love and Service of God, in the
Love and Service of Man.
VII.
GOD IN HUMANITY.
BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.
{Sung by Choir and Congregation?)
O Beauty, old yet ever new,
Eternal Voice and Inward Word,
The Wisdom of the Greek and Jew,
Sphere-music which the Samian heard I
Truth which the sage and prophet saw,
Long sou®t without, but found within:
The Law of Love, beyond all law,
The Life o’erflooding death and sin !
O Love Divine, whose constant beam
Shines on the eyes that will not see,
And waits to bless us, while we dream
Thou leav’st us when we turn from thee !
All souls that struggle and aspire,
All hearts of prayer, by Thee are lit;
And, dim or clear, Thy tongues of fire
On dusky tribes and centuries sit.
Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed Thou know’st,
Wide as our need Thy favors fall;
The white wings of the Holy Ghost
Stoop, unseen, o’er the heads of all.
�31
VIII. ADDRESS BY EDNAH D. CHENEY.
In looking over the congregation here assembled, and seeing some
of the old faces which greeted Mr. Parker on those first stormy Sun
days at the Melodeon, I have asked myself what it is which has kept
this society together through so many changes when friends advised
its dissolution, and enemies hoped for its failure. It seems to me it
was no doctrine of Mr. Parker’s, not even a sentiment; but, if I may
so call it, his method of trust in the truth. He never feared to utter
the whole truth, and never doubted that what was good food to his
soul was fit nourishment for others who hungered for it. This has
made the pulpit truly free, so that those who spoke here, and those who
listened, felt that they could speak and hear honest convictions. While
this society is true to this tradition, it will have a place to fill, and, I
trust, this new building is to give it a fresh lease of life, and greater
opportunity of usefulness.
This still seems to me the great need of the time, — loyalty to truth,
not attachment to a dogma. If we feel thftf any truth is dangerous to
our well-being as a society, it is time that Age disbanded, but as long as
we dare to trust the truth, we need not fear that any blast of a trumpet
can blow down our walls.
In a country town, where an independent society met in a hall, when
it was asked of what religion is such a man, it was answered, His is
the Hall Religion. I think there is some value in the phrase, and I
rejoice that this society has not builded a church to be open only on
Sunday, but a hall which on every day of the week may be consecrated
Blithe psalm of life, and dedicated to use or beauty. The echo of the
dancing feet of the children who gather at the festivals will not disturb our devotion, nor the remembrance of the good words of the lecturer mar our enjoyment of prayer or sermon. It is an emblem of the
Religion of Life, no longer divorced from every-day work and pleasure,
bw elevating and sanctifying it. It is said that the great Church of
St. Peter’s at Rome has never been ventilated since Michael Angelo
reared its lofty dome, Snd that the worshipers now breathe the foul and
lifeless air which has not been renewed for nearly four centuries. But
as I hope the physical ventilation of this hall will never be neglected,
but the pure air of heaven will be freely brought in, so we can never live
a true and vigorous spiritual life unless we keep our souls ever open to
the broad, free air and light of heaven, not confined by any creed or
dogma, but perpetually renewing itself by fresh inspiration.
�32
Such seems to me the great principle' of this society, which it is
bound to cherish and carry out, and to which in the worship of God
and the service of humanity we would dedicate this hall to-day.
IX.
ADDRESS BY JOHN WEISS.
Whenever a liberal thinker expresses his belief that the popular the
ologies are honeycombed by the climate of science and information,
and are falling apart beneath the surface, he is asked to observe that
there never was such a time for the laying of corner-stones for church
extension; never such an enthusiasm of temple-building; never before
so many seats filled by worshipers. It is undoubtedly a fact. The
competition between the sects is so great, and the national temper of
extravagance so confirmed, that church extension has become another
vice of the times; and people will run hopelessly in debt rather than
be without their sumptuous building, thus setting an example, to a
country which does not need it, of speculative immorality. For I can
see no difference between extending a railroad over illusory capital and
watering its stock, and watering a congregation with a meeting-house
too large and fine, watering it with a large per cent of empty pews,
which require in the pulpit a man with some of the virtues of an auc
tioneer.
But there is a real decay of the popular theology in spite of these
costly elegancies which seem to announce a revival of religion. Before
every dissolution a period of renaissance, or superficial revival, has
always set in, substituting sentiment for the old impetuous earnestness,
imitating faith by pretty form. We may safely predict extensive decay
when it has become such an important object to secure paying sitters
for the various sects. The old sincerity will be soon crushed beneath
their ornamental expenses.
Then let us have a new sincerity, to be nursed in humbler places,
and supported by honester means. Here let it be, for one place. Wel
come the plainness and freedom of these walls, sb solidly built, so sim
ply colored in their warm, brown tints. Here a real memorial to
Parker is yet to be erected by successive Sundays of free speech, and
week-days of fraternity. To-day you are only laying the corner-stone
of a structure of thought and feeling which will throw its door wide
open to the common, people, to every wayfaring fact and cause against
which so many churches shut their gates.
�33
It pleases my fancy to notice that you have put up this building next
to a grain elevator, for it constantly reminds me of Parker, of his frame,
even, of his manner and his mental style. Solidly laid, robustly built,
not excessively addicted to beauty; but framed for the sole purpose of
receiving aud distributing, with convenience and the least of waste, the
cereals of a thousand fields for which millions of hungers are waiting.
Such was the abundance and nutrition of his genius. He explored
many fields to collect his staples and the simple corn-flowers of his
fancy-: his keel furrowed many seas, but not to gather and bring home
luxuries, nor to hunt up a place where he might enjoy intellectual seclu
sion. .The delights of scholarship were subordinate to his humanity.
He was constantly tearing himself away from those books, the darlings
of his spirit, as if they imposed upon him, and were defrauding people
of his service. He let the exigency of the hour break without cere
mony into the sacred study, and he rose to meet the pauper and the
slave, to perform the great symbolic action of marrying two fugitives
with a Bible and a sword. The perishing classes, the neglected, the
unfortunate, always held a mortgage on his precious time. But life
never seemed so precious to him as when he was killing himself to help
emancipate America. What a homely sublimity there was in this giv
ing of bread to mouths that had munched the old political and sectarian
chaff and had swallowed indigestion 1
Now it is for you to honor him by imitating this action: not so
much to prolong a memory as to resuscitate, a life that was laid down
in the service of mankind; yes, to revivify that bust, poor, passionless
’ and rigid remembrancer of the nature you knew, that was so manifold,
so profuse, so virile with anger, love and friendship: to bid that white
ness mantle again with his florid cheek; to make those eyeballs beam
with a blessing or a threat, so that Theodore Parker shall be heard
again in Boston.
This shall be your service in this place, to reproduce his manliness;
if not with the same fertile and sturdy vitality, or with the same
warmth which lifted up so many beacons of indignation and warning,
which compelled the East to look at him, and the West to listen, and
the South to dread, still, at least, with the old sincerity, the old persis
tent purpose to be dedicated to the rights and wants of man.
5
�34
X.
ADDRESS BY FRANCIS E. ABBOT.
When, nearly thirty years ago, the founders of the Twenty-eighth
Congregational Society' rallied around the unpopular and ostracised
minister of West Roxbury, and, with a laconic brevity worthy of Sparta
in her best days, voted that “ Theodore Parker should have a chance to
be heard in Boston,” what was the real meaning of their act ? Did
they intend to rally about Parker as the disciples of old rallied about
Jesus, in order to proclaim a new personal gospel, to glorify a new per
sonal leader, and to sink their own individualities in that of a new “ Lord
and Master”? James Freeman Clark has said that, when the radicals
give up Jesus of Nazareth, it is only to attach themselves to some other
leader; that they only abandon Jesus in order to take up with Socrates,
or Emerson, or Parker. Was this the real purport of that now famous
and historic vote ?
If this had been your aim and spirit, we should not be here to-day.
When the eloquent voice was stilled, the stalwart form laid in its far
Florentine resting-place, and the man whose words had electrified two
hemispheres had passed away forever from human sight and hearing,
in vain would you have voted that “ Theodore Parker should have a
chance to be heard in Boston.” Small respect would Death have paid
to your resolutions. No ! If your vote had meant only that the pow
erful personality which had so impressed itself upon the times as to be
henceforth a part of American history should still utter itself from your
platform to a listening world, you would have disbanded; you would
have broken ranks, and scattered sadly and silently to your homes;
you would have discontinued your meetings, and surrendered your or
ganization. Parker had been heard; his message had been delivered.
Henceforth the book of revelation that all men read in his speech and
life was sealed forever, and no man could either add to or take away
from its fullness.
But you did not disband. Your meetings were continued. Your
platform was maintained. Other prophets were summoned to speak
in Music Hall, now chiefly known abroad for the work done there by
you and your great minister. They were summoned, not to echo Par
ker, but to speak themselves. They were no servile followers of a dead
leader, no blinded apostles of a vanished Christ. Far from it. They
were called by you to proclaim independently and fearlessly the secret
thought of their own hearts ; for this alone did they come before you.
And still your platform means this, and this only. True, in one sense
�35
Parker is still heard from it; for his ideas are not dead, but living. But
you have perpetuated your organization and your platform for a higher
object than to secure endless reverberations of any one voice, however
piercing, eloquent, or potent. You meant, and mean, that Truth shall
here speak for herself, not that Parker alone shall be heard, magnifi
cent spokesman of Truth though he was. And Truth has infinitely
more to say than has yet been said.
No, it was not so much Parker’s individual voice that you voted should
“ have a chance to be heard in Boston,” as it was the great, heroic, burn
ing purpose to which he had dedicated his all —the purpose to make hu
man life genuinely religious in spite of the churches. I repeat it—to make
human life genuinely religious in spite of the churches. Not ecclesi
astical, not theological, not formal or ritualistic; but religious in the
high sense in which he used the word, as signifying devotion to right
eousness, to noble service, to devout aspiration. This purpose of Par
ker’s soul was even grander than his thought. Thought must change;
it must move j it must advance. |£ven since Parker’s death we all
know that there has been a great onward movement of thought; and to
the best thought of the times, be it what it may, you mean always to
keep open ear and heart. But the purpose to make human life genu
inely religious must abide as the best and purest that can inspire a hu
man soul. This was Parker’s inspiration and power, obeyed under the
frown of all the churches of the land. To this sublime purpose of his
you first voted a hearing, and now ^dedicate these walls. That mar
ble bust before you, perpetuating Parker’s visible features to your sight,
is changeless, immobile, ungrowing; it will be the same a hundred
years hence as it is to-day. But Parker’s mind, could it still have
manifested itself to us, would have been in the very foremost ranks of
thought. This you will remember, and know that, in the best sense,
you hear Parker still in the noblest utterances of ever-developing
knoweledge and ever-deepening aspiration. His mighty purpose shall
still be ours; and all the churches of the land shall lack the power to
quench or cool it. This stately hall, built as a grateful memorial to
the singleness and power with which he put it into deed and word, shall
be a home for all who cherish it,— a place of comfort, enlightenment,
and inspiration to all who love it, a place of mutual spmpathy and en
couragement for all who would pursue it. You could have raised no
fitter monument to Parker, and rendered no better service to those
who would further Parker’s cause.
�36
XI. ADDRESS. BY CHARLES W. SLACK.
Mr. Chairman : The spirit that has erected this handsome build
ing was latent in the community, and needed only to be called into
activity to have ensured the same result before as now. I congratu
late you, and all this large and interested audience, at the splendid
conclusion of our labors in this direction.
You will remember, sir, that it was at the annual meeting of the
Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, on the first Sunday in April,
1871, — only two years and a half ago, — that I had the honor to sug
gest that it seemed to me that we, as a Society, were not doing our full
duty, either to the memory of our great teacher, or to the community
in which we dwelt; that we held great truths in matters of religion
which should have a more conspicuous enunciation; that if we were
willing to adopt the forms of worship in which we were educated,
erect a church edifice, and, in good time, as judgment should approve,
select a permanent minister, who should not only be a guide in thought,
but a visitor and counsellor in our families in the alternating incidents
of life and death; I should be only too happy to lend what energy and
influence I possessed to the consummation of that purpose. You will
remember, too, sir, that the suggestion was kindly received, and it was
felt that the plan of a meeting-house of our own was practicable, if
one-half of the amount of money deemed necessary for its ■ erection
could be secured before operations should commence. It was our
great pleasure, you will also remember, Mr. Chairman, to announce at
the next annual meeting, in April, 1872, that fully fifty thousand dol
lars, in money and work, had been pledged by our small band for the
new enterprise. Thence everything moved with alacrity ; friends were
found on every hand; plans were considered and adopted; and now,
in a little more than fifteen months from the commencement of opera
tions, we find ourselves in this completed and central edifice, with
every convenience and many elegances, ready to proceed to our neces
sary work and demonstrate our need in the community i» which we
dwell.
And there is reason that we should make this demonstration. We
had a leader who, while he lived, was acknowledged to be a power in
thought and personal influence. He uplifted every pulpit in the land,
giving freedom to the voice and thought of their occupants; he bade
the young men of his day accept independence of character and action ;
he taught the liberalizing of opinion, and urged resistance to those often
�brutal episodes of public clamor when the dominant majority sought to
crush out the honest, thinking minority; in a word, he made every man
with a soul within feel the better and the nobler for his ministration in
religion, politics, and morals. If his high aim and earnest endeavor
be not so potent and perceptible to-day as fifteen years ago, possibly it
is because we have not improved our opportunities in presenting his
example and teaching to the world. There is indeed need that we
dedicate ourselves anew to his service when we read, as we may in
the latest “ Biographical Dictionary ” published, bearing the imprint
of the great house of Macmillan & Co., London and New York, and
compiled by Thompson Cooper. F.S.A., this estimate of his public
position': —
“ He became a popular lecturer, and discussed the questions of slavery,
war, and social and moral reforms, with much acute analysis and occasional
effective satire ; but as a practical Teacher he was in the unfortunate posi
tion of a priest without a church and a politician without a state.”
And this is the best judgment of I® intelligent Englishman, so many
years remote from Theodore Parker’s activity among us 1 Surely the
editor is too far away to discern the influence of this great man on
the thought of the times. Possibly he may have been “ a priest ” with
out “ a church,” but he was a minister who made every denomination
in the land envious of his scholarship and eloquence, and more than
half the churches jealous of the throngs of his weekly disciples.
But why be surprised at the judgment of the Englishman, three thou
sand miles away, when we have on our own soil, near-by, a more depre
ciatory estimate by one belonging to the generally large-hearted and
catholic Methodist denomination ? The Reverend Professor George
Prentice, of the Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., can afford to
say in “The Methodist Quarterly Review,” for July, 1873, of Theodore
Parker, this: —
£< I am amazed at the daring of a man who never had fine culture and
high philosophic talent; whose chief gift was the gift of exaggeration ;
whose life was largely that of a peripatetic stump-orator, hot with perpetual
lecturing, agitating, denouncing and misrepresenting, when he tries to
mould the thought of the world on a matter profound and difficult.”
And this is the verdict of the Methodist collegiate instructor, and
of his denomination, fitfeen years after the death of Theodore Parker,
of that man’s transcendent abilities — is it? Let me, as the humblest
of the humble followers of Theodore Parker, fling back to its obscure
�38
utterer his flippant, his impudent, detraction of a man whose courage
of opinion has made it possible for his defamer to utter even his slan
der without public rebuke— whose claims to culture and scholarship
will live long after the occupant of the professor’s chair who now belit
tles him will be utterly forgotten, if not despised! The scholarship
of Theodore Parker questioned! — as soon ask if mind and character
are formative elements in New England character 1 Go to the scholars
of twenty-five years ago who measured weapons with Theodore Parker,
and this forward stripling will learn that he had a reputation for cul
ture and humanity that no later-day controversialist can question, anx
ious however he may be that the students under his charge shall never
hear to the contrary, and thus be led to examine for themselves into
his opinions and services.
Without “fine culture ”!•—a “peripatetic stump-orator”! — a “priest
without a church and a politician without a state” ! — this the conjoint
testimony to-day of England and America! Surely there is something
for us to do, friends, to show that there is at least one congegation,
still abiding at the home of this great man, which does not accept this
estimate. Nor are we alone in this. It was but yesterday I was con
versing with Vice-President Wilson in relation to the exercises of this
day, when he surprised as well as gratified me. by incidentally mention
ing that when he first entered the Senate Mr. Seward, the great Sena
tor of New York, a statesman as well as legislator, came to him one
day and said, “You have a wonderful man in Boston — Theodore
Parker. I know of no man in the country who so thoroughly appreci
ates the political situation, has such a comprehensive grasp of the
issues involved, and applies so faithfully the moral teachings that will
safely land us on solid ground.” Surely, friends, we can safely leave
the influence of Mr. Parker in morals and politics, letting alone schol
arship and religion, to those who knew him best and were brought
within the range of his acquaintance and co-operation!
Standing here to-day, then, in the capacity of representative of the
proprietors of this beautiful edifice, it remains only for me to bid all
welcome who find themselves drawn by sympathy or love to worship
with this congregation. May it be the home of helpful teaching and
quickening influence 1 May good-will and all sweet charities abound-!
Spacious in area and soft in coloring, may it typify breadth of affection
and the repose of settled conviction ! Thus used, and thus influencing
us, we shall come to believe that we have made a wise investment, and
�39
take satisfaction in the thought that the good work of the generation
now on the stage of affairs shall descend, developed and multiplied, to
their children for long years to follow.
XII.
GOD IN THE HUMAN SOUL.
BY SARAH F. ADAMS.
(Sung by Choir and Congregation?)
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee 1
E’en though it be a cross
That raiseth me ;
Still all my song shall be, —
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee 1
Though like the wanderer,
The sun gone down,
Darkness be over me,
My rest a stone ;
Yet.in my dreams I’d be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee!
There let the way appear,
Steps unto heaven;
All that Thou sendest me,
In mercy given ;
Angels to beckon me
Nearer, my God, to Thee,.
Nearer to Thee !
Then, with my walking thoughts
Bright with Thy praise,
Out of my stony griefs
Bethel I’ll raise;
So by my woes to be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee 1
�40
Or if, on joyful wing
Cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars forgot,
Upward I fly:
Still all my song shall be, —
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee 1
XIII. BENEDICTION.
BY SAMUEL LONGFELLOW.
�LETTERS.
The following letters were received, addressed to John C. Haynes,
Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Twenty-eighth Congrega
tional Society, in answer to invitations to be present at the dedication
of the Parker Memorial Meeting-House: —
Salem, Sept. 14, 1873.
I have been quite ill for a month, and, though now gradually gaining
strength, am too weak as yet for any effort; so that I shall hardly be able
to attend, even as a hearer only, the Memorial Hall services, next Sunday.
I need not say that my best sympathies will be with the occasion, and that
I am sorry to lose the opportunity to hear what will be so quickening to the
higher life as the word it promises to bring with it.
What omens can you ask, better than the house itself, and the secret
forces that impel Its whole movement, and its grand ideal duties, as inevi
table as the rights we claim ?
Sincerely yours,
Samuel Johnson.
New York, Sept. 17, 1873.
The completion of your new hall is an event to be congratulated on, an
achievement worthy of the Old Guard that bears the glorious banner and
preserves the glorious tradition of Theodore Parker. The thing that should
be done in New York, that must be done here before long, and in other
cities, too, you have done in Boston. There Radicalism has a rallying place
and a home. Here it is dependent on the good, must I say, rather, the ill
will, of proprietors who are so jealous for the reputation of their halls that
good, honest infidels cannot use them. With you now, the Young Men’s
Christian Association have not all the fine audience rooms. The devil has
not all the good tunes.
I wish I could be present at your dedication to the Spirit of Truth, the
Comforter. Your'speaker will say the right word. But many right words
need be said on such an occasion, and no speaker can say them all. May
the spirit of the great and good Theodore be with him and you !
You say your hall is commodious. I hope it is handsome, fair in propordon, beautiful in decoration, cheerful, airy, good for voice and ear; attrac-
6
�42
tive and inviting to strangers ; like the new faith itself, which would glorify
every spot it touches. Spare no pains to make it and keep it a centre of
happy influences; crowd into it as much intellect, sentiment, earnestness,
and aspiration as it will hold; and as these angels take up no room, a mill
ion of them standing on the point of a needle, you will have space enough ,
for a good many. Use the room for good purposes. If you have a preacher,
let him have a multitudinous voice, in the persons of truest spirit wherever
found, that a line of prophets may pass before you and deliver their word.
In this way you will best make a worthy succession, for the man who has,
and is likely to have, no successor.
To write these hurried lines, I turn my pen off the task of writing his
biography, which has been the refreshment of my summer. As it draws
near completion, I am conscious of a new indebtedness to the great soul I
admired and loved so deeply. If the readers of the book find what I have
tried to put there, they will confess that not one Memorial Hall, but many,
should be erected to the honor of that great leader.
Thanking you for your kind invitation to be present on Sunday next, re
gretting my inability to be present, because my own services are resumed on
that day, and wishing you the brightest of days and the sweetest of omens,
believe me,
x
Heartily yours,
O. B. Frothingham.
West Manchester, Sept. 20, 1873.
I have just got your note. It is impossible for me to be, as I gladly would,
at your Dedication, having to go -to Salem to-morrow. Were it my privilege
to speak, I should certainly say in what honor I hold Theodore Parker for
his honesty, courage, piety, and philanthropy ; and for the application he
made, beyond any other theologian or scholar of his day, of moral truth and
the results of study to the social condition and want. No such hero wore the
clerical gown. While poets and essayists were willing to leave their views and
visions in their treatises or musical lines, he insisted in putting every prin
ciple as a power in gear ; and, if any error or iniquity were hid beneath, he
would rend the veil of the temple in twain. But if he destroyed, it was to
rebuild, whatever hands beside his own might be required.
I may be allowed to express the early affection I had for him, and to re
member the friendly regard he cherished for me beyond my deserts, so that
I have a debt of gratitude to pay, should we meet again where the warrior’s
armor is laid aside. It was his wish that I should give him the Right Hand
of Fellowship in West Roxbury, but I was away in another State at the
time of his settlement in that town.
As so long indeed he has had it, may he, with you, accept it, in the spirit,
now!
Cordially yours,
C. A. Bartol.
�43
New York City, Sept. 17, 1873.
I have received your invitation to be with you at the dedication of your
new hall, next Sunday. I sympathize very deeply with the Society in this
new opening, but my obligations here make it impossible for me to be pres
ent.
•
After many years of doubt and trouble and hard efforts, you enter at last
upon cheering prospects. The climb has been difficult, but the hill-top is glorious. You will enter now and possess the land, spread out before all with
invitation, but to be possessed only by those who will work in it for the good
of man. No heart among you beats for you more exultingly or more hope
fully than mine.
*
I wish I could figure to my mind the interior of this goodly home which
you have erected. Sometime I shall see it. Meantime I shall think of it as
a worthy body for the soul of the Twenty-eighth Society; neat, clean, lovely,
and simple. It will be a place where the best may be uplifted, and the
worst be not repulsed.
I think I can imagine the joy and enthusiasm with which you take pos
session of your abode. An exquisite composition by William Blake depicts
the union, or reunion, of the soul and the body at “ the last great day,” as it
is called by those who forget that every day is great and is a judgment-day.
The body arises from the tomb, and the soul bursts rapturously from a cloud,
and with inconceivable force descends headlong upon the body, whose neck
it clasps, whose lips it seizes, in the ecstasy of reinvesting the animal frame
with life and joy from heaven. This has been in my mind as an image of
your advent to new life, when you, the soul, enter into your newly arisen
house, the body. I think it is your just reward for a past which has cer
tainly been very steadfast under many discouragements ; and I believe it in
volves for you the prophecy for the future which is so radiantly given in the
above-mentioned poet’s picture.
,
I am sincerely yours,
J. V. Blake.
Monday, Sept. 15, 1873.
We are still in the country, and this, with Mrs. Phillips’s health considered,
renders it impossible for me to be with you Sunday. I am very sorry. Ac
cept my heartiest wishes for your full success.
Wendell Phillips.
New Bedford, Sept. 15, 1873.
I am happy to learn that the “Parker Memorial Meeting-House ” is so
soon to be dedicated. It would give me great pleasure to accept your invi
tation to be present on the occasion; but as I have just resumed my pulpit
duties at home, after several months’ absence, I do not think that I ought to
be away so early as Sunday, the 21st, and must therefore deny myself the
gratification of joining with you in the interesting services. The name, “ Par
�44
ker Memorial Meeting-House,” has a pleasant sound, — not only as holding
the memory of Theodore Parker, but as recalling the primitive days of the
Puritans, of whom Mr. Parker was a genuine descendant, both by the pro
gressiveness of his thought and the robust heroism of his character.
Long may the new meeting-house stand to help keep alive in Bbston the
elements of such character, and so to promote the interests of pure and ra
tional religion.
Very truly yours,
Wm. J. Potter.
Brooklyn, Sept. 15, 1873.
It would give me sincere pleasure to be present at the dedication of your
new “Meeting-House.” I am glad you have named it as you have. I like
the sound of “ Meeting-House” much better than the sound of “Church.”
It is homely and solid, and so joins on well with Parker’s name — he was so
homely and solid. If it has a savor of Quakerism, that will not hurt. I
cannot be with you, because I am just back from my long vacation. I am
sure Longfellow will speak the right word to you,, and then you will have it
printed so that the poor fellows who cannot come to the feast will have a
sort of “ second table ” spread for them.
It seems to me much better that Parker should have a memorial hall
built for him thirteen years after his death than at any time before. A
great many men, who get imposing monuments soon after their death, would
go unmonumented if the world paused a little and considered. But every
year since Parker’s death has made him seem more worthy of remem
brance. In calling your building by his name, I know you do not mean to
make it any citadel of his opinions, but a home for his spirit, which was the
spirit of truth and love and righteousness. And I trust the new “ MeetingHouse ” will justify its name by being not merely a meeting-place for differ
ent people, but also a meeting-place for different opinions and ideas. Radi
calism is good, but still better is Liberality, and the faith that wrong opinions
may somehow represent a truth to those who cherish them. And so, “ with
malice towards none, and charity for all,” may you go forward, and may the
dear God prosper you, and comfort you, and build you up forever.
Yours faithfully,
J. W Chadwick.
Dansville, N.Y., Sept. 18th, 1873.
I thank you for the invitation to be present at the dedication of your new
“ Meeting-House,” and heartily wish it was in my power to accept it. But
I have been debarred from work by illness for some months past, and am
still an invalid, though I trust on the road to health.
I congratulate you on the completion of the Society’s new home, and shall
have pleasure in thinking of you in your commodious quarters. While I
�45
wish you all material prosperty, my desire is a thousand-fold greater that
you may be imbued with the spirit of him whose name you commemorate ;
that you may emulate his courage, his fidelity to the truth however unpopu
lar, his grand catholicity, that could be satisfied with nothing less than the
salvation, temporal and eternal, of a whole humanity. As he recognized the
motherly element in God, and made his religion vital with love as well as
luminous with thought, so may you. May you accord to women in the pul
pit, in the society, in all the walks of life, full equality with man; equal lib
erty to use the powers with which God has endowed her. May you consti
tute such a fraternity'of true-hearted men and women as the world has never
seen ; untramelled by any creed, limited by no boundaries of sect, the world
your field, the sorrowing and sinful your especial care ; may you go on from
strength to strength; and with no doubtful sound proclaim the dawning of
“ the near new day.”
Hoping sometime to be able to accept the invitation to preach for you
again, I am, with all best wishes,
Cordially yours,
Celia Burleigh.
Syracuse, N.Y., Sept. 19th, 1873.
I am glad to be able to congratulate you all on the completion of your
enterprise, which once more gives you a local habitation. The name you
have always had. It is a noble one, and binds you all by many grand mem
ories to the steady and persistent pursuit of Truth in Thought and Righteousmess in Life.
_ The bitter days when the prophets prophesied clothed in sackcloth are
over, thanks to God and their God-directed labors. It is the task of our
generation to help to bring in that Coming Time, which they foresaw and for
which they gave themselves, body and soul. May you all be inspired to do
your full share of the great work.
With kindest remembrances to all your Society, I remain,
Yours fraternally,
S. R. Calthrop.
Marshfield, Sept. 19, 1873.
I received to-day your kind invitation to attend the dedicatory services of
your Parker Memorial Hall, on Sunday. I should be glad to comply with it
and participate briefly in the exercises as you request. It is not easy for me
to leave home for two nights, as would be necessary in order to be in Boston
on that day of the week, and I see no way to do it.
The construction of your hall I look upon as a most auspicious event, as
well as an evidence of the faith and courage of those who, through doubt
and discouragement of no common magnitude, have held aloft the standard
of free thought and speech since your great hero was summoned from earth,
and his body laid to sleep in the Soil of the beautiful Italian city made fa-
�46
mous in history by the genius of Dante and the sublime piety and martyrdom
of Savonarola.
In this marvelous dream which we call life, there is nothing more won
derful and inspiring than the great moral and political revolution which has
been accomplished in this country since Mr. Parker came upon the stage of
manhood. I remember seeing him at the series of reform meetings, held
mostly in Chardon St. Chapel, in i839~4°> t° discuss the character and use
of “ the Sabbath, the Church, and the Ministry.” He was a young, modest,
and unassuming man ; but even then giving signs of the mighty force which
afterwards in the Melodeon and Music Hall exposed the rottenness of Church
and State, and gave such an impetus to the cause of freedom, both of body
and mind.
From him largely proceeded the impulse that has given new life to a na
tion, and emancipated the mind of the age from the thralldom of priestly rule.
His mantle rests upon you. His spirit and purpose are nourished by the
Society which bears his name. You do well to inscribe that name on the
building you have erected. Long may it continue, and be an instrument in
the hands of the Parker Fraternity for the more perfect education, eman
cipation, and elevation of the human race.
Yours, in the everlasting life,
N. H. Whiting.
I
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Victorian Blogging
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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>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Dedicatory services of the Parker Memorial Meeting House by the twenty-eighth Congregational Society, of Boston, Sunday, Sept,21, 1873
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
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Place of publication: Boston
Collation: 46 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: Dedication hymn / Samuel Johnson -- Remarks of John C. Haynes -- Scripture reading -- Prayer -- Dedication hymn / W.C. Gannett -- Discourse / Samuel Longfellow -- God in humanity (hymn) / John G. Whittier -- Address by Ednah D. Cheney -- Address by John Weiss -- Address by Francis E. Abbot-- Address by Charles W. Slack -- God in the human soul (hymn) / Sarah F. Adams - benediction / Samuel Longfellow. Contains letters (p.39-46) received by John C. Haynes, Chairman, in answer to invitations to be present at the dedication of the Parker Memorial Meeting House. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Cochrane & Sampson, printers
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1873
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<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 (Dedicatory services of the Parker Memorial Meeting House by the twenty-eighth Congregational Society, of Boston, Sunday, Sept,21, 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>
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Sermons
Conway Tracts
Parker Memorial Meeting House (Boston)
Sermons
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Text
DISCOURSE
Believe olgrnE
and thou shat.t
be saved.—JLcis xvi, 31.
Such was the burden of the first teaching of the Re
ligion upon wh^M^^^^^fe/bjMMisten d om is based.
Its first mi|^H^ appeared, declaring to all men, both
small
thajMMjtedoe^^S. in one Jesus of
Nazareth they would be saved.
What precisely was in
when they thus
talked of being saved, I do not undertake to say. But the
fact that, believing in Jesus, a man was delivered from evil
inclin%tiffl|n^Bb'e|^faB^^^Eel|i|hioned after a new
and high
jSp^ind humane, became conscious!
not only of a sense of safety, but of an ineffable peace of
mind, such as he had never known before,—this fact, I
do venture to say, was a salvation in the fullest meaning
of the word. If
teachySwhad any other mean
ing than thislfflcmM not possibly have been anything
better, nor so good. E®was a salvation worth giving
one’s life for.
It was strikingly illustrated in those first teachers them
selves. From being private, obscure persons, they became
�4
FAITH IN CHRIST
through their faith in Christ men of extraordinary mark,
of indomitable energy, stirring the world with their speech,
Fforming everywhere associations of men that gradually
■’evolutionized empires, and, notwithstanding manifold
(sufferings, conscious all the while of a joy that made the
prisons into which they were thrown ring with their glad
hymns.
The same thing wag shown also in great numbers of
their followers, both men and women, in old men and
tender girls, who, for their faith in Christ, with perfect
composure, nay, with an air of triumph, confronted the
horrors of the Roman theatrAl where they were flung to
be consumed in flames or torn in pieces by wild beasts.
Is it not, then, a matter of great interest to ascertain
how and why it was thatlwith faith in Christ, there came
so vital a change, so great a gaBation ?
And it is the more, interesting because there is still in
these days what bears the same name, Faith in Christ.
Whole nations are professing it. But it is not attended
by anything like the same Effects. Thousands signify
their profession of it bwolemn forms, but, between them
and others, what difference is there to see to, unless it be
that of the two, the latter are oftentimes the more agree
able in their manners^ and the more trustworthy in affairs,
while the former are noted chieflv for a punctilious oblervance of certain forms and a Scrupulous abstinence from
certain social amusements^ Beyond this, what now passes
for Christian Faith shows no remarkable force. It does
not keep the heart pure, nor save it from being eaten out
by pride, and intolerance, and a greed for money, that
�FAITH IN CHRIST
5
leads men to do the meanest things and the hardest. It
is no salvation from an abject deference to the way of the
world, or from the fanatical ambition which is driving so
many to sacrifices self-resp@cteihonor, and conscience to a
brilliant appearance and to social position. Does our
modern faith in Christ inspire any special enthusiasm for
Humanity, or what efforts in that behalf does it prompt,
save in fashionable ways, and- by popular methods, sub
scribing money and the liH3| It neither renders people
more amiable, nor gives them the cheerful air of a great
peace and joy in their believing.
Surely if our faith Md that ancient faith are one and
the same thing, it has undergone in this respect a mighty
change. It no longer saves men in the old-fashioned way.
It is claimed for it that it saves them from future and
eternal torments. I do not know about that. It certainly
does not, what it once did, save them now. Whence this
great difference ? What made the old faith such a power ?
The first thingEl J)
as Helping us to an
answer to thiMueswonT is this : in those early times faith
in Christ was n(ai)O|uSE safe, but very unpopular
and very unsafe. Indeed it was as much as a man’s life!
was worth, so much as to whisper the name of Christ with
respect in the car of his b(j§rm friend. It instantly ex
posed him to be shunned, pointed at, informed against
by his nearest of kin, put in peril of being hooted atJ
mobbed, stoned to death in the street.
What then is the conclusive presumption ? Why that
no one in his senses could then have been found believing
in Christ, unless he had been so mightily moved thereto
�6
FAITH IN CHRIST
that he could not for his life help it, unless there had
entered into him a power sharper than any two-edged
sword, piercing to the marrow. Understanding, heart,
conscience, all that was within him, must have wrought
to create in him faith in Christ. What else was there to
induce a man to believe in Christ? Everything else,
every interest in life, wen directly and most powerfully
*
the other way, to drive men off, as they valued their lives,
from so much as looking at his alleged claims. His
bare name was odious in the extreme, a great deal worse
than the name of Abolitionists some few years ago, and
that was bad enough, as you all know. It stood for
everything hateful, for the rankest Atheism, for the turn
ing of the world upside down, for deadly hatred of gods
and men.
The Christian Faith of those days, therefore, must have
been a most intimate personal conviction. It could have
been nothing else. It was not a hearsay, a tradition, nor
a phrase. It was no fancy. There was nothing to catch
the fancy about a man who had suffered the vilest of
deaths, but everything to shock and repel the fancy. It
was not a mere opinion. . Neither was it a faith which a
man might assert that he had, but did not know for cer
tain. It was the genuine thing, Faith, nothing less or
other.
Now we all know that Faith, properly so called, is one
of the greatest forces, if not the very greatest force, in all
known nature. It is the support which upholds the com
merce and prosperity of nations. Steam, electricity, mag
netism, powerful as they are, are its household servants,
�FAITH IN CHRIST
Mountains sink and valleys rise at its bidding.
7
It is
annihilating time and space. It is the men who believe
in the things which they aim at, who turn stumbling
blocks into stepping stones. They are the born rulers
upon whom all things and all men wait. They discover
and conquer new worlds. |gH|was the quality of Faith
in Christ at the first. It was faith ad no mistake.
Being thus a true, ISSg conviction, it could not be
concealed. It could no more be kept to itself, as you
now keeg your sceptical doubts to yourselves, than fire
can be kept to itself in the midst of dry straw. I have
no doubt that most, if not all, of those who, in those
early daysyvi|re ^‘Oju>g^^^^elieve InyTesus were brought
to it, at th e first, with great reluctance. The instant
there flashed upon them
of a favorable
leaning towards him, ^haW gKdEr must have gone
through them! It madp their hearts beat quick, you may
depend, and their cheeks flush and turn white, and the
sweat to stand in great beads upon their foreheads, as
there glared upon them the awful doom to be met, if they
dared to yield to this new and dangerous influence. Thus
they must have shrunk from it with affright, even while,
and even because, they felt themselves drawn towards it.
The inevitable effect oOtheESggfe to keep it off was
to make them think, no| tlfegM but the more, of the
perilous subject that was draSg them to itself with a
force not their own, as .with the clutch of Fate. Was
there anything that could drive it deeper and deeper into
their hearts, like trying to keep it out, trying to forget it ?
The arrow that had pierced them was barbed. The effort
�8
FAITH IN CHRIST
to get away from the object of their faith, forced them
into closer acquaintance with it. And the nearer they ap
proached it, the more powerful grew its attraction, and
the more their interest in it increased, until they were
so helpless to resist it that they had to speak out or die.
They might keep it secret for awhile, so long as their
dread of turning friends into'ifoes and of suffering perse
cution was stronger than their new conviction. But this
conviction, being alive, was sure to grow, as we have just
seen, and to keep growing. The spring of a new life,
opened within them steadily rising, would, sooner or
*
later, float them over all their fears, and bear them right
onward into the very thick of th dangers that menaced
*
them. In fine, the cl^mge%taking place in them, would
be sure to betray itself, if not in one way then in another;
most probably in the first place, by their lukewarmness
in the observance of their old religious customs and by
their neglect of the altars of the gods. A word spoken,
nay, a word unspoked silence, might blab it. Accord
ingly they would be forced,^sooner or later, to confess the
faith that they had embraced, or, rather, that had em
braced them.
Here we see another reason why the primitive faith
had such extraordinary power. The open profession of
it instantly summoned into active service one’s whole man
hood. The best that was in a man had to come right to
the front. There was an immediate necessity for all his
courage and fortitude. Hesitation, fear, had to be trampled
under foot. Do you wonder,—does it seem hard to under
stand,—how a simple faith in Christ, now so easy, should
�FAITH IN CHRIST
3
have had such power, power to work the most difficult km
changes, rarely witnessed,., the change of the persoiSd
character, the salvation of the soul ? The wonder ceases,
the fact is in great part explained, when we consider the
circumstances in which this^aith wiiconceived and con
fessed. It was in the immediate presence of danger, and
of death in the frightfullest shapes, and at the cost of the
tendere&i ties.
So that, wf|»ut>Twference to the person of him in whom
this faith was reposed, or to the power there was in him,
we may readily perceive that the circumstances attending
the public confession of it must have rendered it very
powerful. An occasion, in fact a most urgent necessity,
*
was created for the instant exertion of the utmost reso
lution. Those^mfhj, aunties were put in immediate re
quisition, the possession of which is equivalent to a regen
eration of Ee whole wan.
with salvation.
A man was at once made brave and true; and this he
could ngMfe and be the same man that he was before,
with his low worldly habits and his sins cleaving to him
still. He was shaken all out of them, an'd translated into
a higher co *fSl, wfeer<gieEtfeME^S-e had the ascen
d
dency over the lower, the s#^iltfhver the flesh. Thus he
had at once, on the spot, searching experience of salvation
in the profoundest sense of the word.
Now, in thesf times, it is entirely different. There is
nothing of this kind connected with IS profession of faith
in Christ. It long ago ceased to be dangerous and un
popular. So far from its demanding any strength of
mind now, the weakest man may proclaim it aloud at the
�10
FAITH IN CHRIST
' Street corners, without exerting anymore force than is re
quired to open his lips. Instead of calling for courage, it
appeals to cowardice, to the most worldly motives. To
profess it, we are under the necessity, not of reforming,
but of conforming, a necessity very easily complied with.
Thousands there are who, by upholding certain institu
tions, virtually profess to be Christian believers, when
they have no intelligent personal faith whatever. And
so it has come about that there has been generated the
monstrous delusion that the most superficial, unthinking
formalism of thought and observance is a religion, a
Religion unto salvation!
There are no two things in naturegmore opposite, the
one to the other, than the faith of these our days and the
faith of the first Christians, the modern Profession and the
ancient Confession. The formers is a garment woven by
the world, having no more vital Hinection with the man
himself than his clothes have, nor .so much, for his clothes
keep him warm, while his faith Fworn, not for comfort,
*
but for fashion’s sake, that he may do as everybody else
is doing. But the ancient! Faith !—it was mingled with
the heart’s blood. Every nerve was thrilled by it. It
was a flaming fire, blazing at the very centre of life.
And it was thus vital, because it was no faith of man’s
making. It was kindled by Nature, by God himself.
Faith came to men in those days, attended, not by the
acclamations of their fellow-men, but by their curses, loud
and deep. It came, through fire and blood, girt with
lightnings and thunders, breaking in upon them, not by
their will, but in the first instance, without their will,
�* FAITH IN CHRIST
11
and against their will. They did not choose it. It chose
them, and made them all its own through struggles am
agonies almost breaking their hearts.
Consequently, as they could no more shake their faith
off than they could ‘unesseaace’ themselves, it was imposJ
sible for them to hold it ligh||ys, as a superficial appendag J
worn JnlvJ^rlsnow. Why, it was nothing less than their
very liffl What else had they on earth or in heaven to
sustain them ami^w ho^ror^bhal surrounded them |
What deeper interei^gadHIBy thanjffknow what it was
that they were putting their faith in at the cost of all that
they h elewdear
They could not impose upon
themselves, as we do now-a-days, with mere forms and
phrases. They could not feed upon articulate wind.
With the fierce flaml^ of persecution darting right at
them, they had to plunge in to the very heart of their
faith and wring all the life out of it they could. Once
committed|^thei^iSSBW' aQ face to face with a ter
rible opposition!thSthalO ma!fefy>od to themselves the
fearful position which they had taken. They had to for
tify themseivclj the uttermost. As they could look for
no reinforcement to eom^^ their aid from without, as
the world around them was all iigrms against them, they
were forced back, driven in, into the very citadel, where
sat enthroned the Obj e^| d^heir faith, there to obtain the
strength which wja||needed^ make their resistance effec
tual and to secure the victory. Accordingly they knew
the person in whom they believed.
And here, friends, we come to the last and main source
whence the early Christian Faith derived its power. But
�IS
FAITH IN CHRIST
let me repeat briefly what I have said. It is worth while.
Our subject is of great moment.
The first reason that I have given why Faith in Christ
was so strong at the outset is, that it really was faith, a
genuine conviction of the mind. Such it was of necessity.
There was no earthly inducement to move any sane man
to believe in Jesus, unless his understanding, his consci
ence, his whole soul compelled I aim to believe in him.
There was nothing to lead him to imagine that he believed
when he did not believe. Gfeete was not a loophole for
any self-deception. There was e wry thing to frighten
people away from the thought of Christ, to deter them
jfijpm so much as glancing i# that direction, save with
speechless dread. The faith ithfn of those days was a
real conviction. And a true, conviction is never without
Bower. Indeed, we see e<ery^here that personal faith is
the power of the world.
I In the next place, that earljy faith, being of the true
■quality, could not be hidden, kept to itself, although,
doubtless, they who had it were prompted by the fear of
the alienation of friends and the violence of foes to keep
it as long as they could to themselves. You may rely
Ripon it, they were in no hurry to publish what was sure
to bring swift dishonor and death. The Christian faith
could not, therefore, be confessed without the exertion of
the utmost moral force. Thus the salvation of the be
liever took place, incidentally, undesignedly on his part,
without his being aware of the great change begun in
him. Forced to depend upon himself, he had to dispense
with what is as the breath of our nostrils: human coun-
�FAITH IN CHRIST
13
tenance and sympathy. When that can be done, ther^Q
a new birth. Self-trust is the indispensable condition
of spiritual growth. In relying upon ourselves, we emerge
from our minority. We cease to be children. We standi
upon our feet. We go alone, leaning upon no crutches
of authority, listening to no hutward voice for our law,
but becoming every one a law to himself, or, which is the
same min^ffle sacred Jaw-. |Bfe&>ed to in the heart, ass^^
its supremacy over
power comes to us
from ®iS,in, from the immaterial, (ftifathomable, im
mortal soul within. Thence it w,a| thatWFaith at the firsl
drew its extraordinary strength. There, within, the great
Idea of Christ met tth^aiwi believers and communicate<l
to them such power that one of them exclaimed: “ I can
do allTthings through Christ strengthening me.”
I haveBras indicated two things which made Faith in
Christ, a faith unt^' salvation. The third and the foun
tainhead of its p)w6- wwhida EMey who believed drank
deep, and from which they drew a life, exuberant and
immortal, was, the object of their faith, in one word,
Christ.
Now in order to see #na^SweMthere was in him to
move men so mightily, we must endeavor to conceit
what a wonder, what apurpassin^mirade that phenom-1
enon was Tthe appearancirli^flthe world of such a man as
Jesus of Nazareth, considered simply as a man. I have
no idea that he himself e’verdrearned of claiming to be
anything more.
His name now is representative only of creeds, of
churches, of doctrines, which so far from commanding
; ‘•.'Gr' jA-K
.v. £. 1 • X <.J ’’
�14
FAITH IN CHRIST
the respect of the understanding, fetter and gag the under
standing, and shock the heart and pervert the conscience;
Or, if the name of Christ still represents a person, it is
a person of the Godhead, a vague fiction of the theological
imagination;
Or, if a human person, still only a person of so shadowy
an existence that he is hardly to be descried through the
legends and fables, of which the accounts that we have of
him are supposed to be made up.
It requires no slight effort, therefore, to put out of mind
these present modes of thought and to consider what a
new, strange, wonderful thing the Story of Jesus,—told
so humanly as it is told in swstaifce when the record is
head aright,—must have been in that distant age, long
before our creeds and churches and doctrines of Trinities
and Double Natures, and our critical and sceptical notions
were dreamed of, and when men were everywhere wor
shipping military power, and when^too, with huge tem
ples of stone and thousands of idols, and altars smoking
with the blood of slaughtered animals, and long glittering
processions of priests and countless imposing ceremonies,
—when with such things all that is sacred was identified,
and men hardly knew that there was anything holier or
more venerable.
Just think, friends, what a new thing under the sun
was the story that was told, told in the all-subduing
accents of the sincerest conviction, in the voluptuous cities
of Greece, and in the old warlike Roman empire, of a
lyoung man, of stainless purity, in the bloom of life, only
thirty years of age, of humble origin, put to a most shame-
�FAITH IN CHRIST
15
ful and cruel death for his simple truth’s sake, who, while
living, had gone about doing good, knowing not in t.lW
morning where he should rest his head at night, speaking
such words of wisdom that people came to him in crowds
from far and near, and followed him till they were ready
to drop from hunger and fatigue. He told them stor™
(so went the fervid 'report)-, breathing fraternal love and
the deepest human tenderness. He gave his blessing to
the poor, the sorrowing, the-gentle^tEe merciful, the pure
in heart, the lovers of peace; and so fearless was he withal,
as free as a child, as simple as the light and the air, amidst
savage passions ragfegO^gst- him, going his perilotB
way straight to a foreseen, violent death just as he walked,
just as he breathed, doing and saying the greatest thin J
as the merest m^grlTof course, fef-ppssessed, self-forget-J
ting, with heart open^^^thje while as the day to the
neglected and the outcast, transferring his own claims,
whatever they - werok thef Bwest of his brother-men. JI
malice of foes, no treachery of friends, so it appeared,
could exhaust or embitter the sweetness of his spirit. He
took little
hi^arms^«figessed them. The
wretched flocked »to him ias to a wide open temple of
Mercy. The poor woman, sin-defiled, from whose ton J
the pioujshranj as from ir a, leper, he addressed in words
of brothers kindness. rWhath a^ftene was that! The
poor heart-broken creature bowing fown and kissing his
very feet over and over again, and, as her hot tears fell
upon them like rain, wiping them away with her hair!
Such are only some of the many things which were told
of him, and which gave the world assurance of this new
�16
FAITH IN CHRIST
and most original Man. Could we only read the narra
tive of his last few hours, as we should, if we read it now
[for the first time, Roman Triumphs, Royal Progresses,
Coronation pomps, the Te Deums and Misereres of cathefdrals would all vanish away before the mingled pathos
and majesty of those scenes.
What a story, I reiteratflwas that to be told to a world,
‘[shining all o’er with naked Swords!’ What a sensa
tion must it have made!
What attention, what interest
must it have arrested! What Sympathy ! What adoring
admiration!
Furthermore, and borers the fact of supreme interest,
me Story of the Life and Death of Jesus was a wonder,
the like of which had never before been witnessed on
Earth, why? For what -rcasorif Even because it was
[perfectly simple, thoroughly natural, essentially human.
Being thus natural and human, it went straight into every
open heart as its native homfft, and Jesus was welcomed
there as the nearest of kin, the most intimate relative of
mankind. In fact, that Story, although its apparently
preternatural incidents affecte'd the imagination greatly
and made the world ring again, still was the most deeply
touching in this: that it silently breathed a thoroughly
human spirit, a spirit which was in far closer kinship
to the deepest and best in human nature than any mere
bniracles or any affinity of blood could possibly claim.
On this account it was that men took it in as naturally as
their eyes received the light or their lungs the air.
And all the more deeply did it interest them because
there was scarcely anything then to interest the popular
�FAITH IN CHRIST
mind, that went beyond the eye and the passion of fear and
the love of the marvellous. It was these only that were ad
dressed and excited, nothing deeper. Consequently, when
there went ahroaMan® from lips touched by the fire of
personal faith in its truth, the Story of one, whose whole!
being throbbed with ® »irit^St struck to the very heart,
quickening into full activity its noblest sentiments, people
leaped to embrace him, the most formidable obstructions
notwithslandinglby a sympathy as instinctive as that
which makes the ®hild cling to its mWier’s bosom.
By the way, we^^^-|jQM'St»ied! to speak of Jesus as the
Founded of ferisip^fefc/ Butf as I conceive of him, he
had no Sought of ®O»ly
a religion. He
was and is the foundation of Christianity, but not the
founder. . It had no founder. It founded itself. And it
was for this ver^^eason,he had no scheme of his
own, because, in th^e_ freedom and simplicity of Nature,
there went forth from him an effluence which was one
with the deepest and best in the soul of man,—for this
reason it gagthat a religion sprang from him which has
lasted now »r cBituMeSand fcwillBlfi^ for centuries
come.
But to return. When once we fully apprehend this
fact th® H was a simple human life, as natural as it was
original, the fbaa^ where^il^^O aSo^ on the wings of
faith, we begin to un(figtandFvhv,it was that, notwith
standing the fearful circumstance attending the confes
sion of belief in it, it at once took captive such a host of
men and women. The increase of the first believers was
amazingly rapid. Immediately after the death of Christ
�18
FAITH IN CHRIST
they were numbered, according to the Book of Acts, by
thousands. Thirty years afterwards, in the capital of the
Roman Empire, and Rome was then a great way off from
Judea, there was, as Tacitus informs us, a mighty multi
tude of them, ‘multitude ingens' The Catacombs of
*
Rome are filled with the ashes of the early Christians, and
their number is well nigh incredible.
The fact was, as I have said, the would was occupied
with superficial formalities, altars, and statues, splendid
rituals, sacrificial offerings, and holidays; things that
engrossed attention, and so Sased the conscience with
petty scruples, that, as Plutarch states, on one occasion, a
religious procession to propitiate some god, owing to some
trifling deviation from the prescribed forms, started from
the temple thirty-six times. Hardly,.anything deeper was
appealed to than the love of sight-seeing, and the super
stitious passion for thei marvellous.
And yet, consider, friend^ -those ancient generations
of Jews and Greeks and.4 Romans,—they were human
beings like ourselves, far more like than different. They
had this same human heart bleating all the while in their
bosoms. They were brothers, sisters, sons, daughters,
fathers, mothers, and on daily occasions were perforce
following the kindly dictates of our common humanity.
In the midst of all that externality and child’s play,
there came, in a man, in a young man, the living, breath
ing power of sacred human affection, showing the true
life to be, not a gilded ritual, but one ceaseless office of
self-forgetting human love. Of course it came like the
rain, like the former and the latter rain to the thirsty
�FAITH IN CHRIST
19
earth. It went down, swift and straight, down to the
central core of our human nature, whence it came, melt
ing the hardness which had grown over it, setting its
deepest springs flowing, and causing it to flower out
noble and saintly deeds.
Thus it is apparentnthe one wbduing charm was not
any new truth or doctrine, addressed only to the specula
tive faculty. Far enough Was it from being any system
of theology. Neither was it any miracle, which, at the
utmost, could excite only surprise and wonder. It is no
image of Jesus as a wonder-worker; it is Jesus in the
weakest condition of human nature, as a little child in his
mother’^ arms, or as hagBg dead on the Cross, that has
for ages since takBplgpM^ajl commanded the homage
of Christendom. It is no bewildering Tri-une God, but a
mother, exalted above God, a human mother, to whom the
tenderest worship has been
and widely rendered.
The Madonna andgn^^Kfl^—to what myriads of suf
fering andTlying men have these most human of symbols
spoken of the InfingjBove fl This iff was, the purely
human and humane spirit of Jesus, which through those
who at the first believed in him, ran like quicksilveS
from heart to heart by the irresistible power of the inde
structible syiflpathies of human nature.
So was it at the first. How is it now ? Now that Faith
in Christ is no longer persecuted, no longer unpopular,—
now that all is so changed in this respect, has the object
of Faith lost its vitality ? Can we no longer be saved by
Christ as the men and women of old were saved by him ?
2
�20
FAITH IN CHRIST
Was the saving power of this Man of men exhausted in
those early days ?
It would argue but very feeble sensibility to the great
ness of Jesus, it would indeed be doing him great dishonor,
to forget that it is not possible in such a world as this of
ours that so bright a light should arise and shine without
gradually spreading itself far and wide, and, notwithstand
ing whatever clouds of ignorance and superstition may
arise, should be reflected from unnumbered points, and, in
the course of time, render the whole atmosphere of Life
luminous and impregnate that with its saving efficacy, thus
consecrating all Life to the ministry of human Salvation.
This it is that has taken place in the case of Christ.
His spirit was caught by thos^ in attendance upon him,
and through them by a great host of confessors and mar
tyrs,—a cloud of witnesses; and so there started into ac
tivity countless saving agencies, Christ-like lives and
deaths, inspiring memories, humane institutions, revolu
tions, reformations, emancipations of multitudinous races;
and through these, and through all the freedom and
civilization which have followed' upon his appearance in
the world, Jesus is still carrying on the work of Salva
tion, of the blessings whereof all are, consciously or un
consciously, more or less partakers, even those who deny
his influence, and question his very existence. The his
tory of Europe, for now nearly two thousand years, is the
history of Christ, still far from being finished. At this
hour, as a philosophical writer has remarked, Europe is
struggling onward to realize the Christian ideal.
Is it only, however, in this indirect way, by the spirit
�FAITH IN CHRIST
21
which these reflections of his personal influence propagate,
that he is still the Saviour of men ? Has the full, rich
spring of his personal power, which at the first so flooded
human hearts, run dry, so that he is no longer able to
comman^j faith in himself that shall be unto salvation ?
Ah! dear friends, could he only be seen as he was, in
his natiyg greatness, jhtW earts would .burn with something
of the fire o^sa^tguaMi which
kindled in theirs of
old. But he is
longer visible. His person has been
for longlages hidden in th ^Storting mists generated by
the imaginatio®, wHRJth^unprecedented novelty of such
a life most jywrMBQt^^d. The extravagant and ir
rational representations thal hf^gbeen made of him could |
not reach in to the cenwal springs of our nature. They
can only play u
surface, and noisily agitate that.
To the still de^^^S csgnotfj^getrate.
And now, whf^t^^^tagjysicaljsions that have so
long veiled the human person of Jesus are fading away,
the case is Tiardly
to the blinding mists
of SuperstWon ^a^^iUd^ed^i^h di mists as blinding of
Scepticism • and to nuOW^s p^Bflonly a myth. He is
not known.
I should not presume to mah^ this assertion, were not
the reason plain wny he is not known. The ignorance,
the superstition, the monstrous dogmas, for which his
name has been cWmed, gjaavfl driven even intelligent,
learned, and conscientious men to the extreme of regard
ing with distrust,, one might almost say with contempt,
those artless accounts of Jesus, which have come down to
us, and from which alone we obtain any knowledge of him
�B2
FAITH IN CHRIST
personally. Accordingly, while, on the one hand, these
accounts are studied to find authority for some established
creed, on the other, they are read only to feed the scepti
cism with which they are looked upon. Jesus must needs,
therefore, be unknown when we seek, not for him, but for
the confirmation of some system of faith, or of no faith.
Murmur not, complain not, that you cannot see him.
4 No man,’ he himself is recorded to have said, ‘no man
can come to me unless He who sent me draw him’
Where is the single, earnest eye, to which alone, bent full
and searchingly on the record, its meaning will open, and,
emerging from the dimness of centuries, Jesus will stand
in sunlight clearness befor.e us with arms outstretched to
save us ?
Of all the great personages of History, there is no one
of whom so individual and living an idea may be had as
of Jesus. Such is my conviction. And for this reason,
not only because the accounts of him, as I have found, are
impressed all over and all through .with inimitable marks
of truth, but because, brief and imperfect as they are, they
are, to a singular degree, made.ujTof just such particulars
as always afford the most satisfactory insight into the stuff
and quality of the persons of whom they are related.
Thus persuaded, I believe the time will come when it
will be understood what manner of man Jesus was. As
we learn to know him, and to appreciate his exalted char
acter ; as we thus draw near to him, his spirit will breathe
upon us, and we shall receive the Holy Ghost. We shall
be learning Veneration and Love. Thus will he quicken
into a. new life those best sentiments of our nature by which
�FAITH IN CHRIST
23
it will be delivered from whatever now hardens or depraves
it. In this way, Faith in Christ personally will again
put forth its saving power. ‘The idolatry of dogma!’
says Mr Lecky, ‘will pass away. Christianity, being
rescued from the gitarianism and intolerance that have
defaced it, will shine Mg own Iplgpdor, and, sublimate®
above all the sphere of controversy, will assume its right
ful position as an ideat and not a system, as a person cmd
not a creed.’*
There is, in these times, in one great respect, a special
need of such a Saviour. The grasp of human authorities
and hereditary faiths upon the minds of men is loosened I
they cannot hold the world forever. In the free and pro
gressive M^Mytejd^^o;uishes Christendom, Science
is advancing as never before. Theories of Life, of its
origin and development, are becoming popular, which put
to naught our E&^Hfiogms, anlBtoevolutionizing our
modes ofjFhSght.
there who
earnest men of Science are
me mni^me. and can find no
God. Startled
listen and hear
everything attempted to be accounted for by blind law
and brute Enatter, f we ^ni to be in a boundless desert,
where is no SaOed Presence, where consummate order
reigns, but~nd Infinite Love Ipreathe
.
*
In this state of things, what tongue can tell the worth
of such a Person as Jesus ? When the things told of him
are established as historically true,—when he ceases to be
* History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism
Europe, p. 191. American edition, 1866.
in
�24
FAITH IN CHRIST
a myth, and becomes a Reality, and we accept him as a
Fact in Nature as truly as any fact that Science has dis
covered, or may discover, and in as perfect accord with
Nature, then, as plants spring up under the air and the
light, there will be created in us spontaneously an im
pregnable Trust, and an inextinguishable Hope, which,
to all purposes of guidance and consolation, will be equiva
lent to Faith in God. The Idea of Jesus, enshrined within
us, by the aspirations it will kindle for the Highest, will
be a witness in our inmost consciousness of the Invisible
and Everlasting. Beholding Jesus, we shall behold God
and Immortality. And, moreover, what a testimony shall
we have to the truth of our great Christian Ideas in the
fact, that it was in them that he, in whom the highest
condition of humanity lias Peen shown, lived, and moved,
and had his being! These1 rit was thaQreated him after
so Godlike a fashion.
The great and the good of every age and country have
ministered, and are forever ministering, by the inspiration
which they breathe, to IK salvation of mankind, as well
from the gloom of unbelief, as from the darkness of super
stition. But Jesus stands high, high above them all; not,
it may be granted, in the abstract wisdom of his teachings,
although it may be questioned whether, even in this re
spect alone, any other of the great leaders of the world
have approached him,—have uttered so much of the high
est truth as he; but in the overflowing fulness of his spir
itual being, in the fact that he impresses us with the con
viction that there was a great deal more in him than his
words or even his acts expressed, an unfathomed reserve
�FAITH IN CHRIST
25
of personal power. Who has ever moved the world
like him ? Who is there that, like him, has challenged
centuries to define his position,—to take his measure?
He so stirred the imagination alone, that for ages, poor
peasant as he was, he has heen held to be nothing less
than the Infinite God himself; and this, too, not in
the absence of information concerning him, inviting the
imagination to so extravagant a flight, but in the face
of explicit facts showing him to have been a man, a
tempted,4suffering, dying, all-conquering man. ‘Two
things,’ said the philosopher Kant, 1 fill me with awe I
the starry heavens and the sense of moral responsibility
in man.’ To these two I add a third, filling the soul
with faith and love and hope, as well as awe, the Per
son of
To the Spirit, in him made Flesh of our
flesh, be this fair Church, risen from its ruins, every stone
of it, and th4 living Church within, its pastor, my friend,]
brother,..son, and his flock, dedicated now and forever!
�DEDICATORY HYMN
BY ROBERT COLLYER
0 Lord our God, when storm and flame
Hurled homes and temples into dust,
We gathered here to bless thy name
And on our ruin wrote our trust.
Thy tender pity met ourapain,
Swift through the world the angel ran
And then thy Christ appeared again
Incarnate, in the heart of man.
Thy lightning lent its fuming wing j
To bear his tear-blent sympathy,
And fiery chariots rusIHfflto bring
The offerings of humaniw.
Thy tender pity met our pain,
Thy love has raised us from the dust.
We meet to bless thee, Lord, again,
And in our temple sing our trust.
�
Dublin Core
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Victorian Blogging
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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>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Discourse: faith in Christ
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 25, [1] p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Text of discourse from Acts xvi, 31 - "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved". Final unnumbered page is a dedicatory hymn by Robert Collyer. Includes bibliographical reference.
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[s.n.]
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[187-?]
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G5368
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[Unknown]
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<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 (Discourse: faith in Christ), 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>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Subject
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Sermons
Conway Tracts
Faith
Sermons
-
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Text
^Ci5>d.i scourses
ON OCCASION OF
THE DEDICATION
OF
HOPE-STREET NEW CHURCH,
■/’A
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",
■■
LIVERPOOL,
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, AND SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1849.
*
■
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-
BY
REV. THOMAS MADGE.
REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.
REV. CHARLES WICKSTEED.
LONDON:
JOHN CHAPMAN, 142, STRAND.
MDCCCXLIX.
PRICE ONE SHILLING AND SIXPENCE.
��DISCOURSES
ON OCCASION OF
THE DEDICATION
HOPE-STREET NEW CHURCH,
LIVERPOOL,
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, AND SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1849.
BY
REV. THOMAS MADGE.
REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.
REV. CHARLES WICKSTEED.
LONDON:
JOHN CHAPMAN, 142, STRAND.
MDCCCXLIX.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY RICHARD KINDER,
GREEN ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY.
�PREFACE.
The occasion of the following Discourses was naturally
one of great interest to the Society in whose service they
were prepared.
At the entrance of a new era in its con
gregational history, it seemed fit that some comprehensive
expression should be given to the aims which it proposes
to realise, and the views of life which distinguish its in
terpretation of Christianity.
The immediate request for
the publication of the Sermons justifies the hope that they
fairly represent the state of mind and purpose with which
the new Church is entered by its possessors; and that
they may stand as a record of the time and connexion to
which they belong.
This circumstance gives to them a
value not due to any intrinsic qualities of their own; and
induces the preachers to consign them to a permanent
form, less as original expressions of divine truth, than as
marks in the ever-changing course of human sentiment.
November 14, 1849.
a2
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item,
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�THE DEDICATION OF THE CHRISTIAN TEMPLE TO THE
WORSHIP AND SERVICE OF GOD.
A SERMON,
PREACHED ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18th, 1849,
By THOMAS MADGE,
MINISTER OF ESSEX STREET CHAPEE.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY RICHARD KINDER,
GREEN ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY.
�A SERMON.
Already, my brethren, as it was meet that it should be
so, has the voice which has so often given utterance to
the devout sentiments of your hearts, and to which, after
a period of silence, you must rejoice again to listen, —
*
already, I say, has that voice breathed forth the prayer of
thanksgiving and the prayer of supplication becoming the
occasion on which we are now assembled. Nevertheless, I
cannot enter upon that part which has been allotted to
me of this day’s service without once more beseeching
Him whose favour is the primal source of all illumination,
of all truth, and goodness, and happiness, to look merci
fully upon us at this time, and graciously accept our
humble endeavours to glorify his holy name. The words
which I have chosen as introductory to the observations
which I have now to address to you are taken from
Acts i. 13, 14.
“ And when they were come in, they went up into an upper
room, where abode both Peter, and James, and John, with
the other apostles. These all continued with one accord
in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the
mother of Jesus, and with his brethren?'
* The devotional services were introduced by the Rev. James Mar
tineau, the Minister of the Church, who, since his return from the con
tinent after an absence of more than a year, had now, for the first time,
presented himself to his congregation.
B 2
�Most interesting and affecting must this first meeting
of the apostles and their companions have been after the
trying scenes through which they had lately passed, and
the dispersion of that cloud of doubts, and fears, and
anxieties, which had so heavily hung over them. From
the deep depression into which their minds had sunk as
they fled from the garden of Gethsemane and the tragedy
of the Cross, they had now risen into a state of hopeful,
joyful expectation. For a brief season they had given up
all as lost. They disappeared from the public eye, and
it seemed, for a moment, as if a life of privacy and retire
ment were henceforth the life most fitting for them to
lead. But the sudden re-appearance among them of their
risen and now ascended Lord dispelled their growing
despondency, revived their expiring hopes, brought them
again upon the open stage of life, and imparted to them
fortitude and courage, patience and perseverance, untiring
and unconquerable, in testifying to the truth of what they
had seen and heard. It was when their hearts were thus
re-assured, and their confidence was more than restored,
that they assembled together in the upper room men
tioned in the text, to call to mind those words and deeds
of power and of love of which they had recently been the
admiring witnesses,—to bow down in grateful acknow
ledgements before God for the glorious issue of their Mas
*
ter’s labours and sufferings in his triumphant resurrection
from the dead,—and to invoke the divine blessing upon
their own future labours in the Christian cause. Here
they had met to commune with one another on the new
and important relation into which they had just entered,
and the obligations and duties to which it summoned
them. Hitherto, for the purposes of religious worship
and instruction, they had assembled with their Jewish
�5
brethren in the temple or the synagogue. Now they
were associated together, expressly and purposely, as
Christians, to dwell upon their Christian blessings and
privileges, and to present unto God their thanksgivings
and supplications in the name and as the disciples of
Christ. This meeting, therefore, may be regarded as the
type of all future churches, as indicating the purpose for
which they were designed, and the end to which they
should be subservient. It teaches us that, in entering
the Christian temple, we should enter there to sit at the
feet of Christ and learn of him; to meditate with the
men of Galilee on mortality and immortality; and to
unite our voices, in one blended song of praise and
thanksgiving, that so they may go up in accepted chorus
to the throne of God. Honourable alike is it, my friends,
to your feelings and principles that it was in your heart,
as it has been in your power, to raise up this beautiful
structure for yourselves and families to worship in—de
voting it, not to the interests and fashion of a world that
passeth away, but to the interests and welfare of that
higher life which shall not pass away.
In this place, then, we have nothing to do with the
wisdom of the schools, with the doctrines of human phi
losophy, or the speculations of human ingenuity. I deny
not that in other places, and at other times, they may
well and properly occupy some share of your thoughts and
attention, but here we have greater and more important
topics to dwell upon, higher questions to resolve, a nobler
science to learn, more grave and solemn lessons to attend
to.
The first and greatest truth with which we are here
concerned is the existence and government of God. That
he is, and that he is the rewarder of all who truly and
�diligently seek him, is a proposition of momentous import,
upon the reception or rejection of which awful and mo
mentous consequences are made to depend. But with
the nature of God we must necessarily be totally unac
quainted. It is a subject embracing heights which we
cannot ascend, and depths which we cannot fathom.
What the divine essence is,' or in what manner God
exists, is one of those things which are properly termed
mysterious. It is hidden from our sight. It belongs not
to us to inquire into it. It forms no part of our know
ledge or of our belief. It lies completely out of the sphere
of our understandings. But there is one truth concern
ing the divine existence which it is not difficult for us to
conceive of, nor unimportant for us to believe. It is a
truth for which reason and revelation both earnestly
plead ; and it is a truth which the history of the world
shows to be intimately associated with the virtue and the
happiness of man. That God is one; that he has no
equal, no rival, but reigns absolute and alone, power
above all powers, is the great pervading doctrine both of
the Old Testament and the New.
We, therefore, dedicate this Church to the worship of
one only God.
With the doctrine of the Divine Unity there is closely
connected in the gospel of Christ that of God’s paternal
character. It tells us that as we came from him we are
dear to him ; that as he is our Father, so we are his chil
dren. It assures us that he has not only given us all
things richly to enjoy, causing his sun to shine and his
rain to descend, that the earth might give her increase
and bring forth food for the service of man, but that even
darkness, and storms, and tempests, are his messengers
for good, that his afflictions are in kindness sent, and that
�7
he chastens us for our benefit. It speaks of God as our
almighty friend who ever careth for us, and who, in call
ing us into the ways of piety and virtue, calls us to the
nearer and more perfect enjoyment of himself. It assures
us that as in love God made us, so in love he sent Jesus
Christ to redeem us, that with him there is no respect of
persons, that what he demands of one he demands of
all, that he pities our infirmities and hath compassion
upon them that love him, and that all who sincerely
repent of their sins will be equally the objects of his for
giving mercy. These are glorious, delightful revelations
of Almighty God, well fitted to cheer and encourage the
good, to reclaim the bad from the error of their ways, and
to melt the hard and obdurate heart into penitence and
submission.
We dedicate this Church to the service of God the
Father, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In accordance with the view presented to us by our
Saviour of the character of God, is the representation
made by him of the duty of man. When asked what
was necessary to be done in order to, secure the gift of
eternal life, he answered plainly and distinctly, “ Keep
the commandments • love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and mind, and strength, and thy neighbour as
thyself; this do, and thou shalt live.” And when the
Scribe acquiesced in this declaration, and acknowledged
that there was no God but one, and that He alone was
entitled to the supreme homage and affection of his
creatures, Jesus turned to him and said, “ Thou art not
far from the kingdom of heaven.” In like manner, when
he gave to his followers a test of true discipleship, it was
not subscription to an unmeaning creed, the adoption
of some mysterious dogma, but it was the practical
�8
application of the precept, Love one another. “ By this,”
said he, “ shall all men know that ye are my disciples if
ye have love one to another.’* Wherever he saw piety
associated with charity, there he recognised the only
bond by which man is connected with heaven, “ the only
step or link for intercourse with God.” “ Blessed are the
meek, for they shall inherit the earth, Blessed are the
merciful, for they shall obtain mercy, Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Impressive and
beautiful, however, as these words of our Lord are, it is
in his life still more than in his words that we see and
feel the power and the beauty of the doctrines which he
taught. Thus explained and illustrated, they become
clothed with a touching sense of reality and truth. They
speak to the soul with a voice of power to which all its
purer feelings beat responsive. When I see how he went
about doing good, healing all manner of sickness and
ministering to the sorrows of the sorrowful, how he pitied
the erring and sought to reclaim the wandering, what
compassion he had on the multitude and what sympathy
he felt for their distresses,—when I see him mingling
with the despised and neglected of his race, and braving
the misrepresentations and calumnies of his enemies in
his efforts to raise up the fallen and to comfort the miser
able,—when I look at the treatment which he observed
towards the penitent, and perceive how gentle and merci
ful it was, and that to the contrite spirit he ever turned
an eye of encouragement and hope,—when I thus con
template the conduct of Jesus, and remember that he
appeared on earth as the image and representative of the
Most High, I feel that his life is, indeed, the best of
teachers and instructors, that it leaves upon the mind an
impression of what God is, and man should be, such as
�9
even his own gracious words would alone have failed to
impart. Our duty, then, as it respects our Maker, our
fellow-creatures, and ourselves, lies clearly and plainly
before us. The gospel relieves us of all difficulty and
dissipates all doubt. From its pages may be heard the
voice of Jesus, saying to us, Hither come, this is the way
of truth and righteousness. Whosoever folioweth me shall
not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
We dedicate this Church to a righteous and holy God,
wTho sent his Son Jesus Christ to redeem us from all
iniquity, and to purify unto himself a peculiar people
zealous of good works.
From what has now been said you will perceive that
Christianity does not present us with cold and comfort
less abstractions, fitted to the entertainment of the spe
culative understanding, but that it brings before us those
relations which connect us immediately with God, and the
contemplation of which is adapted to touch and engage
our hearts, to warm and enliven our affections, to awaken
virtuous emotions, and to prompt to virtuous actions. It
does not send us to struggle with conceptions too mighty
for our grasp, but it places before us those sublime and
simple truths, which, while they are intelligible to the
humblest understanding, interest and delight the loftiest
mind. To refine and elevate our souls, to lift us above
the meannesses and littlenesses of earth, and to give us
longings for the glories and satisfactions of heaven, our
eyes have been opened to see the things which the wisest
of ancient days desired to see, but were not able. Jesus
Christ has torn away the veil by which the human mind
was once shrouded in darkness and doubt, and let in upon
our souls the discovery not only of that which will inform
and instruct our understandings, but of that also which
�10
will lighten the pressure of grief and relax the bondage
of despair.
Much as on this account it becomes us to prize the
gospel, we have yet still more reason to prize it for the
clear and explicit assurance which it contains, and for the
confirmation which that assurance receives in the resur
rection of Christ, that we shall live again, that this world
is not the last stage of our existence, but one to prepare
us for another and a better. Were I asked what, more
than anything else, is needed to make man what he
should be, to give him courage in the profession of what
is true, and firmness in the practice of what is right; to
make him, in all his ways and doings, pure-minded and
single-hearted, uncorruptible by temptation and uncon
querable by sin,—my answer would be, the doctrine of a
future everlasting life, such as is brought before us in
the revelation of Jesus Christ. No man who truly admits it
into his thoughts, but must feel its great, its inestimable
value. In all states and conditions of our being, whether
we are cast down by misfortune, or whether sorrowing
for the loss of friends, what more blessed source of peace
and consolation can be opened to us than the anticipa
tion of that rest which remaineth for the people of God.
And when we ourselves are stretched on the bed of death,
—when the last dark hour of mortality approaches, and
weeping friends gather around us to take their solemn
farewell,—what is the doctrine we value then ? What
is the hope to which we then cling,—what the prospect
upon which we then dwell ? At such a moment, do we
concern ourselves with questions about the divine essence,
or with distinctions in the divine nature ? Oh ! no. To
the one only question then in our minds, “ When man
dieth and giveth up the ghost, where is he ?” the answer
�11
of Jesus, “ I am the resurrection and the life; whosoever
believeth in me shall never die,” is all sufficient. This,
—this satisfies the heart and gives rest to the soul.
With glad and grateful spirits, therefore, we dedicate
this Church to the Author and Giver of Eternal Life, to
Him who hath given us the victory over death and the
grave through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The views of which I have now presented to you the
merest outline, constitute the common faith of Christians;
and to those who cordially embrace them, they afford
every help and every encouragement that can be given to
the mind of man when struggling with the evils and ad
versities that here assail him. Some of the wisest and
best men that have ever lived have been distinguished
for their attachment to this common faith. Yes, among
Christian professors of this enlarged and liberal school
are to be found those wTho have daily and hourly walked
with God; the consciousness of whose presence has been
to them the sanctifier of their inward thoughts and the
guardian of their outward actions; men, whom the se
ductions of pleasure could not tempt, nor the terrors of
suffering drive from the path of duty; men, whose great
object in life was to do the will of God, and who, for this
purpose, pressed right on in spite of every advancing dif
ficulty and every surrounding danger, and who, when
the summons of death arrived, fixed their thoughts upon
that heaven, the promised inheritance of the wise and
good, and so departed in peace and hope. Many are the
men of this stamp and character who have been found in
all churches. Take, I would say, Eenelon from the Roman
Catholics; Jeremy Taylor, and Barrow, and Tillotson
from the Church of England; Locke, and Newton, and
Hartley from among the ranks of Christian philosophers;
�12
and Doddridge, and Foster, and Price, and Priestley from
the various classes of Dissenters ; and you will find that
the great principles which they most valued and cherished
—those principles which were the actuating motives of
their conduct, and which shed upon their souls refreshing
dews of joy and of hope—were the principles which they
held in common, that is, were the principles by which
we, as a Christian body, are emphatically distinguished.
Now these principles we are desirous of upholding in
their simplicity and integrity ; of preserving in their sin
gleness and purity, apart from all admixture with foreign
ingredients. We look upon the vital, essential truths of
Christianity to be those which are possessed, not by any
one sect exclusively, but which belong to the church of
Christ universally. Our peculiarity therefore—if so it
may be called—that which separates us from other bodies
of professing Christians, consists mainly in this, in the
prominence and distinction which we give to these truths ;
in regarding them as of supreme and paramount import
ance ; as, in fact, the be-all and the end-all of the Chris
tian dispensation. We hold the catholic or universal
faith to be the true genuine Christian faith, and the only
one that should be made a condition of Christian com
munion. It is upon this broad ground that we take our
stand as a Christian society. It is upon this wide foun
dation that the fellowship of our churches is based.
Ever sacred be this temple to the cause of religious free
dom, of piety, peace, and charity !
Of all the bonds by which man is connected with man,
the first and the greatest is that which unites them all to
the Creator. If there be anything more than another
which belongs to us in common, in which we are all one,
it is that of being the creatures of God, subsisting by his
�13
will, depending upon his bounty, daily witnesses of his
majesty and might, daily partakers of his kindness and
care. Receiving common mercies, it is reasonable that
we should unite in common acknowledgements. With
the same reasons for thankfulness and praise, it becomes
us to mingle our songs with the songs of our brethren,
and in sacred union and fellowship to pour out our prayers
and supplications together. Like the good men of old,
it becomes us to go to the house of God in company,
and, with the purest influences of heaven, to mingle the
dearest sanctities of earth. For this let us welcome the
return of each Sabbath morn, inviting us to suspend for
a while the chase after worldly gains and pleasures, and
opening to our inward sight the vision of an immortal
heaven.
There are, I know, those who say that they need not
the ministriations of the sanctuary to remind them of their
relation to God and eternity, to silence the clamour of
worldly passions and pursuits, and to beget in them a
genuine religious thoughtfulness. They can commune
with their own hearts, they tell us, in the stillness of their
chamber, or go forth, like the patriarch Isaac, to meditate
in the fields at even-tide. I believe, however, that for
the most part they who talk in this way do neither the
one nor the other. Gallio-like, they are careless about
these things, and make their objection to time and place
which has its deeper foundation in their own indifference.
This observation, I willingly grant, may not be applicable
to all of the class of whom I am now speaking. There
are instances among them, I doubt not, where the spirit,
in its moments of high-wrought emotion, may think that
it can safely dispense with all external helps and sup
ports,—may even regard them as suited only to ignorant
�14
and feeble minds,—may imagine that its piety need not
be poured forth in words,—that human language only
restrains, cramps, and confines it,—that time and place
are but hindrances and barriers to its exercise, and that
“ wrapt into still communion with God, it will rise far
above all the imperfect offices of prayer and praise.”
Now admitting that there are a few gifted minds capable
of rising by the force of their own wills into the high re
gions of pure spirituality, and that occasionally inclina
tions and desires, looking in the same direction, may be
partially felt by a few more, it is not to be believed, I
think, that such a state of feeling can be either general
or lasting. On the contrary, I am persuaded that most
men’s experience will convince them that in the cultiva
tion and exercise of their religious principles and affec
tions thev must have recourse to much the same means
of exciting and improving them that are employed in the
formation and exercise of their affections and habits ge
nerally.
Humanity does not become changed, is not stripped of
the attributes by which it is usually characterised and dis
tinguished the moment it touches the ground of religion.
It still possesses the same tendencies and is subject to the
same laws by which it is commonly influenced and go
verned. As we feel the value, the comfort, and the hap
piness of the social affections in all other things, I cannot
understand the wisdom or the propriety of refusing their
aid and co-operation in the concerns of religion. We are
sustained, strengthened and cheered in our convictions
and attachments by the presence and communion of our
fellow-men. In the midst of the animating associations
of the church and the radiating sympathies of other
minds, we gather encouragement, confidence, and assur
�15
ance. It is therefore a great error to suppose that a dif
ferent process must be pursued in building up in our
minds the fabric of religion from that which is adopted
in raising any other of our intellectual and moral struc
tures. It is not in enthusiastic sentiments and fervid
emotions that we must place our trust. Suddenly may
they come, and as suddenly may they depart. Our chief
reliance must be founded on the diligent and faithful use
of all those appliances by which the heart of man is
usually impressed and affected. The dread of supersti
tion and the contempt of vain and idle ceremonies have,
I am persuaded, led many to an undue depreciation and
disparagement of the outward means and instruments of
exciting and elevating our religious sensibilities. There
is no doubt that abundance of mischief has been done by
overloading religion with rites and observances. There
is no doubt that the external garb and covering has been
too often mistaken for the genuine inward grace, and that
dead, inanimate forms have been substituted for the living
spiritual substance. Too much care and caution, there
fore, cannot be used to guard against such a perversion
as this. But when that care has been taken and that
caution has been exercised, let us beware of falling into
the error, less pernicious, perhaps, but still an error to be
deplored, of supposing that the religious principle can be
built up and firmly maintained in the soul under a total
disregard and neglect of those assistances and supports of
which, upon other occasions, we are glad to avail our
selves.
We read of the prophet Daniel that, during the time
of his captivity in Babylon, when he prayed and gave
thanks before his God, his mind seems to have been im
pressed by the circumstance that the windows of his
�16
chamber opened towards Jerusalem. Now this is an in
stance of the manner in which we are sometimes affected
by little things,—by things, in themselves considered, of
no importance, but which derive all their interest and in
fluence from the thoughts and feelings associated with
them. He whom Daniel worshipped was the same God
and as ready to listen to the prayer of his servant
whether his eyes were bent on Babylon’s plains, or
turned towards Judea’s hills. Apart from the feelings
called forth by them, it mattered not which of these it
was. But who does not perceive that, with the thought
of Jerusalem and the tender and solemn recollections
which that thought would awaken, there would neces
sarily come over the mind of Daniel a more intense and
vivid feeling of God’s presence and power, of his pre
sence to cheer and his power to save ? Tell me not that
such a feeling betokens a state of pitiable weakness.
For, if it be a weakness, it is one which God has attach
ed to the very constitution of our nature, and above
which the proudest pretender to philosophy, falsely so
called, cannot exalt himself. Will he say that no pecu
liar interest hangs around the spot where he has played
in his childhood or sported in his youth ? Has no place
ever become endeared to his thoughts and consecrated in
his imagination by friendship and affection ? Can you
visit the tomb where a parent sleeps, or walk over the
ashes of the child you loved, with the same emotions with
which you would tread on common ground ? Then times
and places do exercise a power over our thoughts and feel
ings to which we are all of us, in some measure, subject and
obedient. It is a law of our very being, and resistance to
it would be as impotent in its efforts, as it is vain and fool
ish in its aim. And why, we may ask, why should man be
�17
treated in his religious capacity in a manner totally diffe
rent from that which is observed towards him in all his
other relations? From the reasoning and conduct of
some people in this matter it might be inferred that with
reference to the subject of religion they contemplated
man as a being who had neither senses to be exercised,
nor imaginations to be affected, nor feelings to be
touched, nor hearts to be impressed. They would take
him out of the circle of all those influences which, in
other respects, so powerfully move and govern him.
They would deprive him of the benefit of those associa
tions which, on all ordinary occasions, form one of the
chief sources of interest and attraction. Such a proceed
ing I cannot but deprecate as both unnatural and unrea
sonable ; implying equally a forgetfulness of what the
real condition of man is, and of what is taught us in the
lessons of experience. If the love of country will grow
stronger and warmer when standing before the shrine of
her illustrious dead, or when gazing upon the scenes of
her former greatness and glory, why should we not admit
that the feelings of devotion may also be raised and
strengthened in a similar manner, by going to the house
of God in company, and uniting with our brethren in
those sacred services which impressively speak to us of
the glories of creating power and the riches of redeeming
love ? Let not Religion be deprived of all those accom
paniments which are calculated to enliven her sentiments
and to render her services more beautiful and attractive.
Let us view ourselves on all sides. Let us consider what
is due to us as thinking, reflecting beings, and what may
be needful for us as sensitive and imaginative creatures.
And when we feel inclined to treat as superfluous and
vain all outward aids and influences to further the ends
c
�18
of religion,—to think that all regard to times and places
may be utterly discarded, and that our minds are strong
enough to elevate and sustain themselves without such
instrumentalities ; when we are disposed to reason in this
manner, it would be well for us to remember the words
of Christ, “ the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,”
and instead of presumptuously relying on our own imagined strength, to feel more humbly concerning ourselves,
and to be careful to put on the whole armour of God, so
that in the day of trial we may be able to stand, to be
firm and faithful, enduring to the end.
Our failure in duty, our neglect of the things belong
ing to our eternal peace, arises, generally speaking, far
more from insensibility and thoughtlessness than from
absolute ignorance. We need, therefore, to be told, not
so much of what we do not know, as to be reminded
of what we do; to have the dormant energies of our
souls roused from their degrading, destructive torpor,
into watchfulness and vigour; to have the genuine feel
ings and principles of our nature called into activity
and exertion, and those truths which lie, as it were, upon
the surface of our minds, impressed deeply upon our
hearts, and wrought into the web of our affections. One
of our greatest aims should be to rescue admitted truths
from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their
universal admission. Truths, says Coleridge, of all others
the most awful and interesting, are too often considered
as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and
lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side
with the most despised and exploded errors. If the
principles which we hold, fail of prompting to virtuous
conduct, of generating kind and devout affections, of
making the life pure and holy, it is not because they
�19
are intrinsically unfitted to produce these effects, but it is
because they are not sufficiently rooted and grounded in
the mind to be capable of sending forth strong, vigorous
shoots of morality and piety. It cannot be, that while
our faith exists thus loosely in the head without drawing
the least nourishment from the fountains of the heart,—
while it is a mere chance outward profession, and not a
real inward conviction, a cold abstract speculation, into
which there does not enter a single warm affection of the
soul,—it cannot be, that, while it exists in such a form
and under such a condition as this, any very valuable or
precious fruits should be gathered from it. The fault,
however, lies not in the principles which we profess to
believe, but in not truly and heartily believing the prin
ciples which we profess. Now the design and tendency
of the services of this place is to excite within us those
recollections of God and of Christ, of our duty and destiny,
of our condition as men, and of our hopes as Christians,
which cannot come frequently before the mind without
rendering it, in some degree, purer and better and
happier.
I am not ignorant that complaints are sometimes
made that the range of topics to which the preacher re
stricts himself is too narrow and circumscribed to satisfy
the thoughtful and inquiring. Hence there are those
who seem to be desirous that other questions should be
introduced here than those of a strictly religious character.
Now while I admit that, in many cases, there is just
ground for complaining that the discourses of the pulpit
are trite and uninteresting, I must, at the same time,
contend that this is owing, not to the nature of the sub
jects treated of, but to the manner in which they are
treated. Bring to their treatment judgement and imagic 2
�20
nation, genius and sensibility,—such, my friends, as you
are no strangers to,—or, to say nothing of rare endow
ments, let the speaker, if he be possessed only of ordi
nary qualifications, give forth what is in him with simpli
city and earnestness, and with a heart penetrated with
the love of God and goodness, and it will, I think, no
longer be found wanting in interest or impressiveness. I
cannot agree, therefore, with those who are for including
among the themes to be discoursed of here, questions of
government and politics, of literature and science. I
know well the exciting nature of these topics, and the
resources which they supply for strong impression and
immediate effect. But we assemble within these walls
for other purposes than amusement and excitement. We
have a more momentous and solemn end to answer, that
of awakening the soul to its obligations and its hopes, as
the creature of God and the child of eternity. With so
many means and opportunities around us for acquiring
all kinds of information, literary, scientific, and political,
it were, as it seems to me, a wanton desecration of the
purpose for which this temple is reared, to divert and
alienate the little portion of time to be spent in it from its
directly religious ministration. Considering the absorb
ing nature of the things that press upon our senses, and
the almost constant immersion of our minds in the cares
and pursuits of this world, it surely is not too much to
ask that our thoughts and affections should, for a few
moments in the week, be withdrawn from these solici
tudes and engagements, and be devoted exclusively to the
spiritual and immortal concerns of our being. Of course
I am taking it for granted that we have spiritual and
immortal concerns; that out of and beyond this world
lie treasures of knowledge and stores of enjoyment, with
�21
which the wisdom and the gladness of the present mo
ment are not worthy to be compared. If it be so, most
fitting and reasonable is it that we should be awakened
from our dreams of vanity, and be made to feel that
earth is not all, nor man the mere tenant of an hour,
but that when the night of the grave is past, the dawn
of an endless day shall burst upon him, and he shall
spring forth the denizen of a new and nobler community.
We come here to think of these things, to meditate on
this- high and holy destination of our being, and upon
the feelings, purposes and actions which are its required
and appropriate accompaniments. We come here to
listen to the voice which speaks to us of a better and
more enduring substance than meets our bodily eyes; of
hopes which are unfading, and of joys which are imperish
able ; of communions and friendships which time will not
impair and which death will not interrupt. We come
here to have our minds enlightened with the wisdom
which is profitable to direct; to have our hearts touched,
as it were, with a live coal from the altar of God, that
even when we quit the precincts of the temple, a purify
ing and invigorating warmth may still be felt glowing
within us. We come here to break that continuity of
little and low cares in which the world almost necessarily
involves us, and to fasten upon our souls the links of a
chain which embraces in its circuit wider views and loftier
interests. In a word, we come here as weak, dependent,
sinful, dying creatures, to be reminded of what, as such,
it becomes us to be and to do; to be reminded of the
power that made us, of the goodness that supports us,
of the mercy that saves us, and of the heaven that awaits
us. We come, the weak to be strengthened, the careless
to be warned, the erring to be corrected, the sorrowful to
�be comforted, the penitent to be soothed and encouraged,
and all to have the spirit of their minds renewed, and to
receive fresh impulse to run with patience the race that
is set before us. The object for which we assemble on
the “ day of the Lord” is not to pamper the appetite,
ever greedy for something new, for something that may
play around the head, but which comes not near the
heart. It is rather to call attention to truths already
acknowledged, but not sufficiently dwelt upon, not suffi
ciently admitted into the homes and intimacies of our
spiritual nature. It is to draw near and make bright to
the inward eye, views and prospects which lie clouded in
the distance. It is to make that felt within us as a
warm and living reality which too often dwells without
us as a cold and lifeless abstraction. It is to assist us in
lifting up our hearts unto God, and to make us feel that
in his favour there is life, and that his loving-kindness is
better than life. It is, that seeing we may see, and
hearing we may hear, what God hath done for our souls,
and that the glad tidings of the gospel may not lie before
us as a dead letter, but may be “ felt in the blood and
felt along the heart, and passing into our purer minds
with tranquil restoration.”
I repeat then,—it is not for the gratification of the spe
culative understanding that we are to assemble here as a
congregation of Christian worshippers, but the lighting up
in our souls of desires and aspirations which may lead us,
when we retire from this place, to commune with our own
spirits, and to make diligent search whether they are in the
state in which they ought to be,—in the state becoming
their distinguished privileges, worthy of their high descent,
and befitting their heavenly destination. If the result of
our weekly communion should be to send us away in
�23
quiring within ourselves what shall we do to be saved, a
real and substantial good will be obtained by it, a bless
ing conferred infinitely surpassing any other which it
could be the means of imparting. Let me observe also
that, important as I consider just views and correct
opinions on the subject of religion to be, more especially
those which relate to the character and will of God, I
must, nevertheless, not omit to remind you that it is of
more consequence to feel right than even to think right;
to do well than to reason well; that the best orthodoxy
is the orthodoxy of the heart, and that while sentiments
and creeds and systems perish, the best and purest feel
ings of the human soul remain unchanged; the same in
all countries, sects and generations, and so will continue
to remain as long as the relations of man to God and of
God to man have any existence. Doing righteously,
living virtuously, carrying into the world a pure and a
gentle and an elevated spirit, this is the beauty of holi
ness, and the excellence of faith, this is the bright con
summate flower, the end, the crown, and the ornament
of the whole.
Peeling it, then, to be our duty to gather ourselves
together for the pure and spiritual worship of God, let
us gratefully remember the blessed and benignant cha
racter under which the object of our worship is brought
before us in the generous and merciful dispensation of
the New Testament. Let us be thankful that we have a
religion so pure, benevolent and holy; so glorious in its
doctrines, so precious in its promises, so beautiful in its
hopes. Let us rejoice that we are ever in the sight of
God, and that the same Lord over all is rich unto all
that call upon him. Let us cheer and comfort ourselves
with the welcome assurance that all who do his com
�24
mandments shall eat of the tree of life, and live for ever;
that there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth;
and that no humble contrite spirit shall go forsaken of
its God. In the presence of such a being let there be
banished from our minds all desponding and despairing
thoughts. Let us come and kneel before the Lord our
Maker in the spirit of filial affection and in the confidence
of filial trust. In deep submission let us bend before
Him in whose hands our life is, and whose are all our
ways. Humbly and meekly let us adore Him joyfully
and reverently let us praise Him; making melody in our
hearts as well as with our tongues. And since we have
all one Father, let us bear in mind that we are one family,
bound to render to each other mutual assistance and
comfort. To our piety, therefore, there must be added
charity—to the love of God there must be joined the love
of man. Let these be the offerings with which we ap
proach the altar of the Lord. Let us consecrate this
house of prayer by the humble mind, the worshipping
spirit, the devout heart, the grateful thanksgiving which
we bring to it; and then peace within and hope in the
favour of heaven will sweeten the days of our earthly
pilgrimage, till, fit for a purer world of love and blessed
ness, we pass on from this perishable temple to that eter
nal temple not made with hands, where at a nobler altar
we shall offer up to God a nobler worship, where we shall
unite our feeble voices to those of adoring millions, and
sing his praises everlastingly.
To you, the members of this congregation, and to him
whom you have chosen to be here the leader of your de
votions and the expounder of Christian duty, I would
now offer my cordial congratulations at the completion
of that work and labour of love which stands before us,
�25
together with my earnest wishes that you may long be
spared to assemble under this roof, mutual helpers of
each other’s joy. On the one hand, may you, my
brethren, rejoice in the privilege of possessing a Teacher
so richly endowed and so thoroughly accomplished to
instruct you in all things pertaining to the kingdom of
heaven ; and, on the other, may my friend, your valued
and beloved minister, have the happiness of seeing that
the work of the Lord prospers in his hands, and that
through his instrumentality many have been made wise
to the salvation of their souls. So may you both have
reason to be thankful that you came up hither to keep
the holy day, and may the intercourses in which you have
delighted here be renewed and perfected in that land
where dwell for ever the spirits of the just.
�•
• J*
'
*
�THE
WATCH-NIGHT
LAMPS.
A DISCOURSE,
PREACHED ON THE FIRST SUNDAY OF PUBLIC WORSHIP,
(OCTOBER 21, 1849,)
HOPE-STREET NEW CHURCH,
LIVERPOOL.
BY
JAMES MARTINEAU,
MINISTER OF THE CHURCH.
�ZfW.k
• KA«
‘
I T ' :•
*
-I'
�THE WATCH-NIGHT LAMPS.
Now does the Heavenly Mercy rebuke all my fears. The
long-imagined moment is really come; God restores us
to each other. Beneath his eye we parted, and before
his face we meet; and that Infinite Light scatters the
lingering shadows of misgiving which have hung around
the forecast of this hour. We have not hoped in vain
that He would remove with us to the shrine we have
devoutly raised; and now in his eternal memory he sets
the vows and prayers by which this new opportunity is
to be consecrated or condemned. In distant lands,
through waiting months, my eye has rested upon this
day; which has appeared as a star of hope behind the
perspective of every scene, and looked down, with a clear
and guiding sanctity, on intervening tracts that had
sometimes no other, and never a diviner, ray. Standing
here at length, and looking round on this strange mix
ture of the new and old,—the outward structure new
and beautiful, the living temple of faithful hearts both
old and dearer far,—First, I greet you with all the
warmth of my affection and the fresh devotion of all my
powers; consecrating myself anew to the service, not in
deed of your will,—but of your faith and highest hope,
your love and conscience, your remorse and aspiration,—
E
�30
which you know to be interpreters of a Will that must
be monarch of your own. Next, I remember some, whom
we had thought to have with us as sharers of our joy,
but whom the voice of our salutation can no longer reach.
Those close-filled ranks cannot hide from me the vacancies
in their midst; and I miss here the sweet attentive look
of maidenly docility,—there the dear and venerable form
of one from whose eyes age had exhausted the vision
but not the tears, and whose features were quickened
and kindled by the light within. Greeting to others,
Farewell to them ! and to Him, with whom we and thev
alike live; from whose presence no pathless sea, no
Alpine height, no gulph of death, can e’er divide ; who
spares us for his work, or calls us to his rest; who makes
sweet the memory of dreadful hours, and turns our
tremblings into joy;—to Him, the assuager of care, the
reviver of hope, the giver of opportunity, I render for
this hour a glad thanksgiving, and renew my vow to bear
again his glorious yoke.
My purpose this morning is very simple. I ask you
only to think what you have done in raising this building,
and to find for your own act its true ground of thought.
That you have built this house at all, places you at once
in the great commonwealth of Christendom, and detaches
you from all faiths or ^faiths that would destroy it.
That you have joined together to build it, proclaims that
through your religion there runs a common consciousness
which blends and organises your individual wills into a
higher unity, and makes a Church. The forms you have
given to its outline, and the memorials embodied in its
stones, speak everywhere the sentiments of Worship, and
promise here, not the severity of teaching, but the mel
lowed tones of meditation and prayer. That you throw
�31
open its gates on this sacred day, and ever, when a week
is gone, think to come back to it again, is a confession
that you cannot make your every day a Sabbath, and
would not turn your Sabbath into an every day; but
would still intersect the time with holy lines, and help
to prolong that ladder of heaven which climbs as yet
through all Christian duration, the favourite pathway of
saintly souls. These cardinal points I silently assume
as fixed upon the very face of your design; and what
further may be the function of a Church, and ought to
be the function of this Church, in the present age of the
world, I would explain from the words of the parable,
Matthew xxv. 4.
“ The wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps?’
And then, presuming on their supplies, they took their
ease, like the foolish, and while the bridegroom tarried
they all slumbered and slept. So must it not be in that
great watch-night,—that solemn eve of an eternal day,—
which we call Human Life. The spirit that sits sentinel
through its hours, intent for the Master’s voice and ex
pectant of his approach, cannot, however rich her stores,
set the lamp of duty idly on the ground, while she
dreams away beneath the stars; and then hope, by a
sudden start, at the last knock, to refit the neglected
fires and join the pomp and mingle with the everlasting
train. The watch-lights which we must burn before
God are no outward thing, no ritual adornment, but,
like the glow-worm’s, the intensest kindling of our own
life, rising and sinking with the tone of our energies;
and the oil that feeds them is too ethereal to be set by;
it exists only by being ever used and ever re-distilled.
To keep the heart awake,—to resist all collapse of the
e 2
�will and the affections,—to bring the angels of our nature
to a mood not merely less heedless than the foolish virgins,
but more faithful -than the wise; this is the disciple’s
great thought, ever ringing like a midnight bell upon his
ear, from the Master’s awful word, “ Watch ! ” A Church
is a fraternity for accomplishing this thought; an asso
ciation for realising the Christian life, creating the Chris
tian mind, and guarding from deterioration the pure type
of Christian perfection; and its agency is designed for
keeping to their vigils the several Graces of the soul com
missioned to wait upon their Lord; for trimming the
lamps they severally bear, and screening them from the
winds and damps of this world’s night. Let us number
these Graces as they stand. Till their lamps were lighted
they were themselves invisible, dark negations on the
grand summit of human nature, looking into the dark:
but since the glory of Christ has caught them, they shine
afar, and we see in their forms the distinctive spirits of
our religion. First, I discern the Spirit of
Endeavour.—Foremost among the elements of the
Christian consciousness do I place this,—that we must
strive and wrestle to achieve the Will of God, and that
only he who faints can fail. What else means the deep
doctrine of self-denial, which it has ever been the lowest
impertinence of philosophy to doubt, and the last degra
dation of human nature to reject? How else can we
read the contempt we feel for those who evade martyr
dom with a lie,—the throbbing of our hearts as we watch
the tempted in the crisis of his trial,—and their leap of
exultation when he decides, “Better perish than be false”?
These sentiments, than which none are more ineradicable
in man, and none more intensely stamped into Christian
history, would be absurd illusions, if we were not en-
�33
Jdowcd with a knowledge, placed under a law, and in
vested with a power, of right and wrong : they are founded
on the conception of life as an Obedience due, and of mere
Self-will as an insurrection against authority infinitely
venerable. This faith which assigns a moral basis to all
religion, touches, I believe, the ultimate point of all cer
tainty : older than this or newer, more authentic, more
infallible, no revelation can ever be. Its very contra
rieties, which offend the one-sidedness of logicians and
enthusiasts, constitute its truth, and accurately represent
man’s balanced position; whom you can neither turn
into the mere realm of nature nor invest with the dignity
of a God; who is at once bound, yet free to slip his bonds,
and strangely finds in his thraldom a true liberty, in
escape a wretched slavery; and is conscious of divine and
infinite prerogatives immersed and struggling in finite
conditions. All religion is Christian in proportion as it
takes up into its very substance this law of conscience,
and resolves itself a consecration of Duty. It is the great
glory of the Catholic religion, that it adopts and pro
claims this principle : to this one deep root, which pene
trates through the soil and very structure of our human
world, far beyond the reach of ecclesiastic storms, does
it owe the width of its branches and the richness of its
shade. Conscience, indeed, in reference to the universe
of Persons, like Reason in relation to the universe of
Things, is the Catholic faculty of human nature ; and no
faith which does not interpret and sanctify it can take as
its motto, “ Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omni
bus.” I am not forgetful of St. Paul’s depreciation of
legal religion, and of the triumphs, asserted in all the
churches of the reformation, of a Gospel of Love over a
System of Law. This also I embrace with all my soul,
�34
and chime in with the hymn of Grace led by Luther’s
mighty voice. But this truth is only the other’s second
half, and without it could no more exist than the comple
ment without the primal arc, or the joy of convalescence
without the lassitude of illness. Did not Conscience pro
pose the awful problem, and the Will struggle into its
midst, Faith and Affection could never bring the relief of
solution. Law and Love are but the strophe and anti
strophe of the great chorus of redemption; and without
both the opening and the answering voices, the thought
and melody must alike be broken. The moral law of
God then, and the moral freedom of man, constituting
life a theatre of endeavour, we lay as the granite pillars
of an everlasting faith,—the Kock on which we build our
Church; and whoever, in the partial spirit of one age,
builds on any more inflammable material,—on the wood,
hay, stubble, of a disenthralled enthusiasm,—shall find,
when his work is tried by fire, that, however poised for
awhile on the upward pressure of elastic heats, it will
lean and totter as the temperature declines, and either
drop on to some more primitive foundation, or collapse
among the ruins of the past.
Is Christianity, then, a mere Ethical System ? and do
we identify religion and morality ? Shall we say that
the man who commits no fraud, or violence, or excess, is
forthwith a denizen of the Kingdom of Heaven ? God
forbid ! as soon might we say that every scribbler who
makes no slip in scanning his metres and tuning his
rhymes is a great Poet. Morality speaks like the defiance
of the hero to his foe,—“ DepartReligion like the
summons of the leader to his impatient host,—“ Arise,
come on !” As a prison-task to an Olympic race, so is
the duty copied from a code to the service inspired by a
�35
faith. So long as moral restraints and obligations are
urged upon us we hardly know how, by usage, by opi
nion, by taste, by good sense and regard to consequences,
they appear to lie within a very moderate and definable
compass, and to be matters of dry necessity included in
the conditions of respectability. But when the voice of
Christ has opened our spirit to their true nature, and
from utterances of human police they become tones,
stealing through the foliage of the soul, from enshadowed
oracles of God, their whole character and proportion are
as much changed as if the dull guest had turned into an
angel, and the stifling tent expanded to the midnight
skies. From the drowsy figure emerges the sleepless im
mortal ; upon the heavy body grow the glorious wings;
and the sheet which seemed a tiresome limit to our head,
passes into the deep of stars open for an everlasting flight.
The feeling of duty, no longer negative, ceases to act like
an external hindrance and prohibition, and becomes a
positive internal power of endless aspiration. Yes, of
endless aspiration; for if the suggestions of conscience
are breathings from the Holiest, they are no finite whole,
but parts of an infinite Thought, the surface movements
of a boundless deep. When we have brought ourselves
to be at one with them, when they are no longer dashed
and broken by the resistance of our spirits, but carry
harmoniously with them all the movements of our nature,
still all is not over; God will now try us with a quicker
time: wave after wave of impulse will roll in with in
tenser speed from the tides of his eternal Will; till the
undulations reach the limits of a new element, and our
thrilling spirits burst into an immortal light. To whom
soever God is Holy, to him is Duty Infinite. The good
habits, in which others abide content, give him no rest;
�36
they are but half his world, and that not the illumined
half: by the rotatory law of all custom, they have gone
off into the dark, and make now but the negative
hemisphere of his obligations; and this must be com
pleted by another, where the morning light of thought
is fresh, and the genial warmth of love yet glows. To
such a mind is revealed the depth of that word, “ There
is none good save One •” and of that other, “ I must work
the work of Him that sent me, while it is day
and life
appears simply as the appointed scene of holy Endeavour.
Now, to awaken this consciousness of infinite obliga
tion, to draw forth and interpret its solemn intimations ;
to resist and expose, as a Satanic delusion, every slug
gish doubt or mean doctrine which denies it,—and to
sustain it in its noblest resolves,—is the first function
of a Christian Church. The great antagonist to it is that
corruption of ease, that poisonous notion of enjoyment
as the end of life, which in so many men absolutely stifles
the higher soul, and suppresses in them the belief in
its existence. In that lowest condition of human nature,
man enjoys a certain unity with himself, because all
powers above his animal and intellectual being are fast
asleep, and give him no contradiction in his unworthy
career. In its highest condition, his nature reaches again
a unity with itself, because faith and conscience have
carried their demands, and rule without dispute what
ever is below. It is the aim of the Church to urge him
through the vast interval between these two limits;,
during the whole of which he is at variance with himself‘
and cries out for deliverance from that “ body of death,”
which at first made up his entire consciousness and is no
other than his unawakened self. When that fatal sleep
is once broken, it is the business of a Church to suggest,
�37
perhaps even to provide, a discipline of voluntary self
denial, without which the incipient insight will not last,
but relapse into the darkness which it is so difficult to
dispel from the infinite. It is wonderful how faithful
endeavour withdraws the curtain from before the opening
eye of the late slumbering soul. As one who just turns
on his pillow,—with another folding of the hands to
sleep,—-feels without recognising the dazzling light, and
it only passes through into his dreams to paint anew
their empty phantasies;—so the mind, just stirring from
the dead repose of self, does not yet treat as real the
dawning glow of a diviner consciousness; which, stopping there, will only glide as a bewildering spectrum
over the scenery which the man takes to be the world.
But let him spring up and break the bands of sleep; let
him move about among the objects which the new light
shows, and do the things which it requires; and anon
he finds what’s true, and feels how he is transferred from
the subterranean den of dreams into the open and lus
trous universe. Effort is the condition of the commonest
intellectual knowledge; much more, of insight into things
moral and divine. Is there a poem or a landscape which
you are anxious to remember? So long as you only
look at it and take it in, though with attention ever so
fixed, its hold upon you will be slight and transient:
but invert the mental order, begin at the active instead
of the passive end, and force yourself to reproduce it by
pencil or by word; and it becomes a part of yourself,
incorporated with the very fabric of your mind. So with
the whispers of the holiest spirit; while they only pass
across the still—though it be listening—ear of the soul,
they are evanescent as the traceless wind; but act on
them, and you will believe in them ; produce their issue,
�38
and you shall know their source; and he with whom
God’s presence has quieted a passion or subdued a grief
is surprised by the nearness of his reality. Such
deavour, such earnestness of life, do the members of a
Church undertake to preserve in one another’s remem
brance.
But next to this high Angel of the Soul, I observe a
downcast spirit, bearing in her hand the lamp of Humi
liation : and she too must never cease from her sorrow
ing watch.
Endeavour has its seat in the Will. If there were no
sense of difficulty in the exercise of Will, if all resistance
crumbled away at the first touch of purpose, and thought
could fly off into instant execution, failure, shame, re
morse would be unknown; conscience would realise
whatever it conceived; and though the infinite character
of holy obligation would leave an ineffaceable interval
between our position and our aspirations, the one would
for ever tend to overtake the other; and the chase, al
beit without a goal, would be inspired by the joy of an
eternal success. No deeper shade than the mild sense of
imperfection would fall upon the spirit. But our actual
condition is very different. The suggestions of God are
ever fresh and his enterprises always new, demanding, if
not new matter, at least a new spirit: and it is hard to
our Will to quit the old track, to snap the old restraints,
to lash itself into a higher speed. And thus, with a
sentient nature that loves the easiest, and a conscience
that reveres the lest, we feel that Epicurus and Christ
meet face to face within our soul; which becomes at
once the theatre, the stake, the arbiter, of the most
solemn of all conflicts. The pleasant pleadings, so perl
suasive to our languid strength, make our Temptation 1
�39
and their triumph plunges us into the Sense of Guilt.
This utterly changes the relations of the mind to God;
breaks the springs of Endeavour; turns every blessed
sanctity from a life within the heart to a load upon it;
and condenses the infinite heaven of duty into a leaden
universe of nightmare on the breast. So sinks in sad
ness the pure enthusiasm that had flung itself upon the
godlike track; and the wing that had soared so high
hangs drooping and broken down. It is less the anguish
of this fallen state, than its weakness, that makes it awful.
Who shall remove this burden of sin, which paralyses the
soul’s native strength and restrains it in terror from seek
ing God’s ? Could the immediate remorse be banished
or outlived, yet who can resume an infinite race with a
lowered hope, or faith abashed ? This crisis is the turn
ing point of many a life. By either fall or rise may the
mind escape from it; in the one case relapsing by the
gravitation of the world into the stupor of indifference
and the old belief in the dreams of sense : in the other,
lifted once more into a light of heaven, milder perhaps, ‘
but less precarious. Lifted,—I say; for sure it is that
the fallen, though he may hold his place and fall no more,
has crippled his power to lift himself. Even an arch
angel’s wing cannot rise without an atmosphere; and
the human will (in things divine) is ineffectual with its
mightiest strokes, unless surrounded by a certain air of
pure and clear affection,—which recent sin exhausts and
spoils. While the sweet element of love and hope
and self-reverence is lost to the mind, the spasms of reso
lution are but pitiable distortions,—cramps of uneasiness
and fear, not the progressive action of a vigorous health.
It is the awful punishment of all unfaithfulness, that it
turns the mind in upon itself; makes it look at its dis
�40
ease, and put forth a writhing movement to escape it,
with no effect but to renew the anguish, to feel all the
weakness, and sink down again in faintness and despair.
The intense power which conscious evil gives to con
siderations of Interest, the tumult of anxiety and alarm
it induces, is in itself the most fatal obstacle to recovery :
on which however, with the delusion common to all em
pirics, the mere moralist rests all his hopes. There are
no terms in God’s universe on which the selfish can be
saved; no,—not if a thousand Calvaries were to repeat
to him the divine tragedy of the world. And the more
you set upon him with fists of unanswerable reasons, the
more do you make him the sharp-witted alien from God.
What opening then is there for the offender prostrate
under the sense of sin ? Shall I be told that expiation
must be made by another, who will bear the burden for
him ? Doubtless, with the low mood to which guilt has
brought him, he is just in the state to accept that mer
cantile view of sin, and reckon it as a debt against him
on the ledger of the universe, which the overflowing
wealth of some perfect nature might gratuitously wipe
off. And if you can then convince him that such free
sacrifice has actually been made, that for him in his de
gradation a heavenly nature has been moved with pity,
taken up the conditions of sorrow, laid down the im
mortal prerogative and died; I do not deny that you
may touch the springs of wonder and delight, and that a
burst of thankfulness may break his ice-bound spirit and
set it free. Gratitude for an immense personal benefit
is the first affection of which a low and selfish mind is
susceptible; its very selfishness rendering an act of
generosity in another the more surprising. The pas
sionate emotion thus awakened may certainly tear him
�41
from his prison; and as the object to which your fiction
conducts him is the Jesus Christ of sacred history, that
sublime and holy being, the gentle and winning type of
God’s own perfectness, it will be strange if the false and
immoral grounds of his first homage are not insensibly
exchanged for a veneration purer and more disinterested.
As it is sometimes easiest at the moment to cure a mor
bid patient by a trick, the immediate case of many souls
may be met by this disenchanting legerdemain ; but not
without the cost inseparable from untruth. The great
doctrine of mediation is here corrupted by a complete
inversion of its truth. There are two parts of our nature
essential to our first approaches to God; the Imagination
places him before us as an object of conception external
to the mind ; the Conscience interprets his personal rela
tions of communion with ourselves. The first of these
emphatically needs a mediator; the function of the
second perishes, the moment he appears. We cannot trust
the representative faculty of our nature whose pencil
of design varies with the scope of Reason, and whose
colours change with the moods and lights of Passion, to
go direct to the sheet of heaven, and show us the Al
mighty there: else, what watery ghost, or what glaring
image, might we not have of the Eternal Providence ?
Only through what has been upon earth can we safely
look to what is in heaven, through historical to divine
perfection; and by keeping the eye intently fixed on the
highest and most majestic forms in which living minds
have ever actually revealed their thoughts and ways, we
have a steady type, with hues that do not change or fly, of
the great source of souls. Jesus of Nazareth, the centre of
the scattered moral possibilities of history, is thus media
tor to our imagination between God and man. On the
�other hand, we cannot allow the Conscience to resign for
an instant its native right of immediate contact and au
dience with God: to delegate the privilege is treason;
and to quit his eye is death. Yet the current theology
reverses this. The imagination of the offender, at the
very instant that it is throwing out the fire and smoke
of conscious guilt, is invited to paint its own unmediated
image of the Most High, and rely upon the terrible pic
ture with unquestioning faith; and while the corrupted
fancy is thus sustained in its audacity, the shuddering
Conscience is encouraged in its cowardice, and allowed
to hand over its burthen to a mediator, under pretence
of forfeited approach. Who says, that the sinner must
fly the terror of the Lord? I say, he must face the
terror of the Lord, and instead of blasting it will only
melt him then. You say, he dares not tell his tale and
cannot pray ? Then, I answer, not yet is he true and
contrite; and it is not his humility, but the little speck
of insincerity still spoiling it, that asks for a mediator.
He must accept his whole abasement; must desire, not
to escape, but to endure, his woe •, must not even hang
the head and veil the face before God; but look full up
into the eye of infinite Purity, and, as he disburthens
himself, seek its most piercing glance, that nothing may
escape. Nothing but truth can appear before God ; but
the truth always can appear, and loses its very nature in
parting with its rights to an intercessor. And, as dread
ed duties are apt in the performance to surprise us by
their lightness, so the moment the soul lies thus exposed
and transparent before God, he appears terrible no more a
the dark reserve thrown from the heart seems to sweep
away the cloud from him; and he shines upon us, not
indeed with the sudden blaze of clearance after storm,
�43
but with the affectionateness of an eternal constancy.
We have trusted him, and he is distant no more; we
are emancipated into sympathy with his pure nature;
the old aspirations find way again ; and instead of look
ing at him with outside recoil, we go up into his glory,
losing ourselves once more in those positive admirations
and desires for perfection, which are the very glow of his
spirit, and which, far more than any passionate gratitude
for personal benefits, are fitted to restore our union with
him. And in this crisis it is that the repentant eye, now
purified by tears, turns with infinite refreshment from the
false forms that have beguiled it, to rest on Christ, as the
divine depositary of the sanctity we have lost and seek
again ; and that the ear feels the deep sweetness of that
call, “ Come unto me, ye weary and heavy-laden, and I
will give you rest.”
Now to give this humiliating self-knowledge, to open
the sources of remorse, to prevent its lingering into
morbid and credulous woe, to cause every film of pride
and fear to drop away, and bring the penitent to make
a clear heart before God, is the proper aim and function
of a Church; which thus humanises, while it sanctifies,
and uses our own sins as ground for pity to others, not
others’ as excuses for our own. In the early Christian
societies, penitents were recognised and distinguished as
a class,—a practice which, however needed in evil times
as a check to apostacy, could have no place now, without
drawing fines of classification not truly distinguishing
the characters of men. In later times, the still more
dangerous practice of confession to a human—yet hardly
human, because a sacerdotal—ear, bears witness to the
boundless power of repentance in the heart of Christen
dom. Perhaps the reaction into the jealous individuality
�44
of modern times, in which each soul not only repels the
intrusion, but declines the sympathy of another, has been
carried beyond the point of natural equilibrium. At
least it is not natural that, in fraternities under common
vows of Christian obligation, flourishing selfishness should
often hold a higher place than humble sanctity; and un
repaired, therefore impenitent, injustice should lift its
head unabashed amid indulgent worshippers. Surely the
power of rebuke is too much lost in an easy indifference;
the estimates of the world,—ranging greatly by outward
fortune and condition,—have extravagantly encroached
on those of the Church, which can look only to internal
soundness and affluence of soul. That is not a true com
munity of disciples, in which a collective Christian opinion
does not make itself felt by at least some silent and sig
nificant expression. So long as the trumpet gives an
uncertain sound, who will prepare himself for the battle ?
By its revelations of self-knowledge, its echo to the voice
of self-reproach; by its suggestion of a restorative dis
cipline ; by its appeal to that faith in infinite possi
bilities which alone sustains the burthen of penitential
self-denial; by leading the soul at once to suffer, to
aspire, and to love much,—must every Church of Christ
pour into the energy of endeavour, the lowly spirit of
humiliation.
Side by side with this sad Angel of the Soul stands
another, with look of equal meekness, only clear of shame :
and the small fair light in her hand, shining a few steps
into the dark around, is the lamp of
Trust.—The companion Spirits of which we have
hitherto spoken preside over the work and temper of
the Conscience in its relation to God; and they would
still have to stand upon their watch, though the soul
�45
(were such a thing possible) lived in empty space, in
mere private audience with its Creator. But now comes
before it another object, forcing it to look a different
way, and pressing for some orderly interpretation;—
viz., Nature or the outward Universe. To a mind that,
through moral experience, has already begun its life with
God, the glorious spectacle of the heavens and the earth
will instantly appear divine: the voice of the waters and
the winds, the procession of the sun and stars, the moun
tain’s everlasting slopes, smiling upwards with pastures
till they frown in storms,—will seem the expressions of
Eternal Thought. Well would it be if this first absorp
tion of nature into the substance of faith enabled them
permanently to grow harmoniously together. But the
universe, which ought to be the abode, becomes to us the
rival, of the living and indwelling God. Its inflexible
steadiness, its relentless march, so often crushing beneath
the wheels of a blind law the fairest flowers of beauty and
the unripened fruits of patient hope, look so unlike the
free movements of a living and loving mind, that the
decrees impressed on finite matter begin to contest the
sway of the Infinite Spirit. Other sorrows than any
mentioned yet,—sorrows not merited or self-incurred,—
and which even fancy cannot plausibly link with any sin,
come upon us; and as we cannot sincerely meet them
with humiliation, we need some other guide from infidel
despair. The order of Cause and Effect crosses and con
flicts with the order of Moral Law. This is plainly seen
in the history of the physical sciences-; whose exclusive
pursuit first lowers the conception of God to that of the
primal force, or at best the scientific director of creation;
and then lapses, consistently enough, into a fatalistic
atheism. And the same thing is keenly felt in that in
�46
explicable distribution of suffering in human life, which,
in every age, has perplexed the faith and saddened the
love, of hearts not alien to God. How must this contro
versy be ended in our souls, between the physical God
omnipotent in nature, and the holy God who reveals himself in Conscience ? I will not say here what may be the
solution which the thoughtful may draw from a devout
Philosophy; only that it must be one which charges no
evil upon God. Whatever cannot be glorified into good,
let it be referred, so far as it is not from the human
will, to that negative datum, that shapeless assemblage
of conditions, which constitute the ground of the Creator’s
work; but it must be withheld on any terms from him
who is the perfectly and only Good. He must be ever
worshipped, not as the source, but as the antagonist, of
ill; the august and ever-living check to its desolating
power, who never rides upon the whirlwind, but that he
may curb the storm. It is only in this view that He can
have pity on our sorrows; for who could pity the sufferings
which he himself, without the least necessity, invents and
executes ? That cry on Calvary, “ My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?”—was it not a cry for rescue,
■—rescue as from a foreign foe, from a power ^divine ?
And did it not then burst from One who felt the anguish
of that hour as the inrush of a tide from which the barrier
of God’s volition had withdrawn ? And so the faith
which gave way in that momentary cry is just the oppo
site of this; a faith that no evil is let loose without his
will; that he knows the utmost it can do, keeps it ever
in his eye, and will yield to it no portion of his holy and
affectionate designs; that he has considered all our case,
and will not fail to bring it out clear, if we are true to
him. Trust has no other bearable meaning than this; for
�47
else it would only say that God, being the unquestionable
cause of evil, is not malicious in producing it, and would
thus merely silence a doubt impossible in a Christian,
aud scarcely pardonable in the grossest heathenism.
Trust therefore in the ascendancy of divine Thought and
Affection in the universe, serene confidence in their per
fect victory, I take to be the essence of the Christian faith
respecting nature. The particular thought of God that
may be hid amid events, moulding their forms and pre
paring their tissues for some growth of incomparable
beauty, it may be impossible to trace; but He is there
and never leaves his everlasting work; which is the same
in the shrine of conscience, in the mind of Christ, and
through the sphere of universal nature.
Now to interpret life and all visible things in the spirit
of this Trust; to raise the mind oppressed by the sense
of material necessity: to meet the tendencies towards
passiveness and despair, and, for the consolation of
memory and the kindling of hope, show where the order,
not of a hard mechanism, but of beauty, love and good
ness is everywhere enthroned;—this also is the duty of a
Church. In this relation we must contradict the doc
trine of mere science, which proclaims Force, rather than
Thought, as the source of all: we must counteract its
purely causal and fatalistic explanations -, must detain in
the living present, that God whom it would allow to re
cede indefinitely into the Past, and must lean upon Him
as the nearest to us in our weakness, the most loving in our
sadness, and the Rock beneath our feet in our alarms.
We agree together to sustain each other in this sacred
trust; to withstand the godless doubts and grievings
suggested by our lower mind; to defy nature’s inexorable
Laws to disguise for us the supernatural light and love
f 2
�48
within; and to feel the hardest matter of life, as well as
the severest work of conscience, burning at heart with his
dear spirit.
This triple group, however, of Endeavour, Humiliation,
and Trust, are never found apart from a sister Spirit, in
whose features you trace more human lineaments, and in
whose hand is borne the lamp of
Service.—An individual mind, alone in the universe
with God, might hold the latent germs of all that is
human, and yet, in that solitude, could hardly enter,
perhaps, on the real experience of endeavour, humiliation,
or trust. It is only amid other minds, in the reflection
of eye upon eye and soul upon soul, that we so read our
impulses, and decipher our inspirations, as to be really
capable of the religious life. Society, which opens the
sphere of mutual sympathy, touches also the springs of
reverence and worship. And I entreat you to notice
how it is that the companionship of our fellows operates
to bring out these individual affections. We hear much
in this connexion about the natural equality of souls, implied in their common source and common work and
common end, and are referred to this evident brother
hood as the true basis of both fraternal love to one
another and filial acknowledgment of God. And, no
doubt, this identity of spiritual nature is indispensable to
all sympathy and all devotion ;—not, however, as their
positive and exciting cause, but only as their negative
condition. Like only can comprehend like: and if the
being next me had not the same nature and the same
kces with myself, I should have no key by which
\ him; he would belong to an unintelligible
id fellow-feeling could have no place. But the
here required is not in the minds as they are,
�49
only as they might be. Their circles of possibility must
coalesce; the same capacities must sleep within them,
and the same Law must rule over them. This similitude
of kind, the silent assumption of which lies in all our
affections, merely expresses an ultimate and unrealized
tendency, to which present and actual facts will continually
approximate. Meanwhile, these facts present a very dif
ferent picture;—not of resemblance between man and
man, but of variety so vast and contrast so startling, as
almost to perplex our faith in the unity of nature. Now
it is precisely this inequality of souls which is the positive
awakener of all our higher affections. No man could love
or venerate in a universe stocked with mere repetitions of
himself; the endless portrait would be a barren weari
ness. He pities what is below him in happiness : he re
veres what is above him in excellence: he loves what is
different from him in beauty. His affections rest on
those whom he blesses and those who bless him,—on his
clients and his God. At the shock of lower lives and the
startling spectacle of higher, he is driven to moral recoil
and drawn to moral aspiration; in the one case invested
with armour for the resistance of evil, in the other
equipped with wings to soar after the good. Whatever
is purer and nobler in another than in ourselves opens to
us a new possibility, and wields over us a new authority;
and thus it is that, ascending through the gradations of
souls which culminate in Christ, we find ourselves carried
thence at a bound over the chasm between finite and in
finite, and present at the feet of the Most High, saying,
“ Just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of Saints; who
shall not fear Thee, 0 Lord, and glorify thy name, for
Thou only art holy ! ”
It is therefore precisely through the diversity of minds
�50
that the unity of the Divine law reveals and asserts itself
within us; and the common end of life to all is felt. And
it is on this same inequality of souls that Christianity, as
a religion of love and mutual aid, builds all its work. On
the one hand, the strong must bend to the weak; and on
the other, the weak look up to the strong. In both
cases there is self-denial,—self-renunciation from pity, in
the former,—from obedience, in the other. In both there
is reverence for what is divine ■ with the one, for a god
like capacity in the low; with the other, for a godlike
reality in the lofty. When the differing ranks of minds
read off their relations in these opposite directions, the
whole compass of Christian service is given. Within the
Church therefore the eye must be trained to discern this
rank, the affections to own it, the will to obey it. Dis
guised under a like exterior of life are souls divided by
immeasureable intervals; and it is strange and even ter
rible to think what secret differences lurk beneath the
common gloss and gaiety of the same assembled numbers.
How superficial is the kindred of the utterly earthly, who
sees no reality but in the means of ease, the course of
material interests, and the colours thrown up by the
shifting game of external life; with the saintly sufferer,
before whom these flit as unsubstantial shadows, and
nothing is real but the spirit-drama that is enacting in
the midst and the great Will that plays the everlasting
part. Yet we often move about where both of them are
found, and speak with them face to face, and believe them
much alike. Can we not catch from our Lord, who
looked with divine perception straight into the heart of
the widow and the Samaritan, some portion of that in
sight which detects the heroes and despises the impostors
of the present ? Why should we leave it to history to
�51
find out and glorify the good? If they are with us, they
are the most precious of all God’s gifts; let us know
them ere they die, and feel that the earth is sacred where
they tread. Above all, in every Church, the only classi
fication known should be of character and age : and in
using these as grounds of mutual service, provision should
be made for teaching the child, for lifting the suffering,
for confirming the weak, and for supplying duties pro
portioned to the strength of the strong.
And while this angel of Service stands to her watch, a
glorious Spirit is at her side and closes the train; with
an undying flame from her lamp of
Communion.—The relations of service are far from
being limited to the present and its intercourses. Our
life is but the focus of living light into which the Past
and the Future condense their interests. The ranks of
minds by which we help each other, run up both the di
rections of time, and cover the two worlds of mortals and
immortals. We are ourselves disciples of an ancient and
a foreign prophet; and as we pronounce the word
“ Christian,” we feel the spark of his transmitted inspi
ration uniting us with a long chain of generations, and
fusing Christendom into one life and one Church. We
are disciples also of an ascended prophet; nor is it pos
sible for any one to bow down in soul before the divine
law of which he has made us conscious, to burn with the
aspirations which it kindles, and touch upon the peace of
entire surrender, without feeling assured that he is created
on the scale of immortality, and that the risen Christ is
indeed, as the Scripture saith, the head of an immortal
host. It is a faith which fails chiefly to those, who, in
looking at human fife, miss its grandest elements, and
are little familiar with the highest and characteristic
�52
features of our nature. Ask the confidants of great
souls,—the bosom-friends of the holy,—and they will tell
you that life eternal is the only lot at all natural to the
children of the Highest. And the more you grow faith
ful to your own most solemn experience, and learn to
trust your noblest love, the more will that amazing pros
pect assume proportion to the terms of your daily thought.
The happy instinct of purified affections is ever one of
hope and ready faith. And when I simply remember
what faculties, what conceptions, what insight, are im
plied in a being to whom a Church is possible at all; when
I think what a scene in the universe must be opened to
a mind ere it can pray; when I reflect how the Infinite
God must estimate one whom He thinks it worth while to
put on trial amid the theatre of free souls;—all sense of
difficulty recedes from the Christian doctrine of an here
after ; all rules drawn from other races of creatures sink
absolutely away; and man appears no less ennobled
above them than if, like the Angel of the “ Revelations,”
he were standing in the sun. Under the influence of
this truth, the natural kindred of souls is infinitely
extended and deepened; exalted into independence of
change ; and glorified by the hope of sympathy and con
nexions ever fresh. The blessed family of God colonises,
not only the banks of the time-stream that passes by, but
the Alpine heights from which it flows, and the blessed
isles of the ocean to which it tends.
This sense of Communion between all ages and both
worlds, it is the business of a Church to cherish. Within
its walls, and by its ways, must the mind be surrounded
by the atmosphere in which this faith may thrive and
grow,—this family tradition of noble souls be guarded
and handed down. For this end, neither the mediation
�53
of argument nor the directness of authority will avail so
much as the just and holy discipline of the conscience
and affections. To nurture the love of greatness and
goodness in the past; to awaken confidence in the intui
tive estimates of the pure and pious heart; to glorify the
dark places of the world with some light of thought and
love; to vindicate the sanctity of death against the pre
tensions of its physical features, and penetrate its awful
spaces with the glow of prayer and hope;—is the true
method of clearing away the mists from holy expectation,
and realising the communion of Saints.
See then in complete array, the five wise Spirits of the
soul that must stand through the night of the Bride
groom’s tarrying, with their ever-constant lights of En
deavour, Humiliation, Trust, Service, and Communion.
To maintain them at their vigils is the proper end of
every Church that would maintain the Christian attitude
of life. Am I asked, by some theologic wanderer, what
then is special to this Church ? I say, chiefly this, that
these five lamps, and these alone, we believe to be held
in angel hands, and fed with the eternal aliment of truth;
nor will they ever give of their oil to nurture the emptied
lamps, which many foolish servitors of the bridegroom
have brought, and which now are flickering with their
last flame, and expiring in the smoke of error. A pretty
late hour in the watches of this world has struck: many
of the interests and controversies that once dazzled with
their flame have been self-consumed: and when, to find
how the night rolls, we look up to heaven and observe
the altered place and half-inverted form of the eternal
constellations, we know that a morning hour is drawing
on. It behoves every Christian Church to be awake and
set itself in order for a coming age, in which, as I beG
�54
heve, the strife will be something very different from that
whence existing churches obtain their several names. It
is not without some view to that Future of the Church
that I have called the five Spirits, spirits of the soul, and
have shown them to you as they rise from our nature
itself. I might with equal truth have called them cha
racteristics of Christianity, and have evoked them by
appeal to Scripture, and the analysis of Christian history.
But we are on the verge of a time, when the mere use
of an external authority, however just and moderate its
application, will cease to be of much hearty avail; and
only those elements either of Scripture or of Christian
history will have any chance of reverent preservation,
which find interpretation and response in the deeper ex
perience of Man. Whoever keeps fearlessly true to these
may feel secure; but none can say what else will survive
the perils of the present and the coming time. What mean
the strange movements of Catholicism on the one side,
and a pantheistic Socialism on the other, between which
every form of mere Protestantism is growing weaker, day
by day? Are they not a reaction against the extreme
individuality, the disintegrating tendency, of modern
Christianity ; whose unions, born in the transient enthu
siasm of reformation, cannot maintain themselves against
the habits of freedom they have created, or live upon the
dogmas they refuse to change ? Are they not both an
attempt, only prosecuted in opposite directions, to re
cover some centre of human cohesion, more powerful
than interest or judgment, around which the scattered
sympathies and dissipated energies of society may be
collected? In this common quest, the one reproduces
an authority dear to the Memory of Christendom, the
other pours out prophecies dazzling to the Hopes of all
�55
men; the one adorns the old earth, the other paints a
new. The field seems clearing fast to make room for
these great rivals; and in their mutual position the signs
are not few, that they portend a mightier contest than
Europe has seen for many an age. The hosts are already
visibly mustering. On the one hand the venerable
Genius of a Divine Past goes round with cowl and Cro
zier ; and from the Halls of Oxford and the Cathedrals
of Europe gathers, by the aspect of ancient sanctity and
the music of a sweet eloquence and the praises of conse
crated Art, a vast multitude of devoted crusaders to fight
with him for the ashes of the Fathers and the sepulchres
of the first centuries. On the other, the young Genius
of a Godless Future, with the serene intensity of meta
physic enthusiasm on his brow, and the burning songs
of liberty upon his lips, wanders through the great cities
of our world, and in toiling workshops and restless col
leges preaches the promise of a golden age, when priests
and kings shall be hurled from their oppressive seat, and
freed humanity, relieved from the incubus of worship,
shall start itself to the proportions of a God. Who shall
abide in peace the crash and conflict of this war ? He
only, I believe, whose allegiance is neither to the anti
quated Past, nor to the speculative Future; but to the
imperishable, the ever-present Soul of man as it is; who
keeps close, amid every change, to the reality of human
nature which changes not; and who, following chiefly
the revelations of the Divine will to the open and con
scious mind, and reading Scripture, history, and life, by
their interpreting light, feels the serenity and rests on
the stability of God.
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.
�THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND CHURCH OE THE
EIRST-BORN.
A SERMON,
PREACHED IN
HOPE-STREET NEW CHURCH,
LIVERPOOL,
ON
SUNDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 21, 1849.
By CHARLES WICKSTEED, B.A.,
MINISTER OF MILL-HILL CHAPEL, LEEDS.
�<> k k
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�A
SERMON.
Hebrews xii. 22-24.
“ But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city
of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innu
merable company of angels, to the general assembly and
church of the first-born, which are written in heaven,
and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just
men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new
covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh
better things than that of Abel
Of all the desires of the present time, there is no one
more profound and general than the desire for Christian
unity, communion, and fellowship. Indeed, the craving
for agreement, for, as it were, spiritual identity, for the
support in conviction, and the comfort from conviction,
that according numbers seem to imparty has characterised
the history of Christianity through it^whole extent. On
this has been founded the determination of the Roman
Catholic Church, to preserve at all costs, at costs often
most painful to itself, its spiritual and formal unity : and
in this have originated the imitative efforts of the various
protesting churches which have sprung from it.
h 2
�60
But taught by the experience of ages, taught by the
resolute and the ever-recurring intellectual differences
of mankind, the unity at which, for the most part, the
present age is aiming, is a unity of feeling, a fellowship
of labour, a communion of love. The old desire for
unity took the form of Proselytism. Each Church sup
posing itself to be constructed especially and exclusively
after the heavenly type, it could realise no other and no
better unity than the conversion of all mankind to its
standards, and the introduction of the whole race within
the veil of its Temple. Much of this aim and expecta
tion is to be met with still. The Roman Catholic Priest
goes about, hoping to bring his Protestant neighbours
back into the true faith, and rejoicing in the prospect
which he thinks begins to dawn, that unity may be yet
achieved in England, by the return of the Church and
the nation into spiritual submission to the Papal See.
The clergyman of the English Church may still be found,
ignoring the existence of Dissent in his parish, talking of
the number of souls under his care, of spiritual destitu
tion, of there being only one church or two churches,
one school or two schools, in such and such a population,
while there may be an equal number of other churches
and other schools maintained for Eke holy purposes, but
to whose very existence, as they are not within his spiri
tual precincts, he chooses to be blind.
But though these are very important phenomena, and
show that the old dream of the outward comprehension
of all the inhabitants of a country under the same forms
and symbols, in the bosom of the same outward Church,
is being dreamed among us still; yet such is not the
tendency of the general and independent elements of
society. The liberal churchman is beginning to regard
�61
his Church as a religious community among religious
communities, and only desires permission for it to take
and keep its ground, as others are to take and keep theirs
too. The Wesleyan probably never did regard his con
ference or association as the ultimate or general form of
Christian government and fellowship, but if he ever did
so he must now be taught, by the rapid course of events,
to regard this view of it as untenable. The Independent
earnestly struggles for his theory of Congregationalism;
but so far is that theory from tending to a comprehen
sion within the limits of one outward Church and For
mulary, that it rests upon the basis of the independence
of each society. Added to these signs of hopelessness of,
or indifference to, universal dominion on the part of the
separate bodies, is the increasing desire to unite on prin
ciples which are sufficiently wide, and for purposes which
are sufficiently general, to allow each body to retain its
own peculiar standing-point.
The modern desire of union and of fellowship, then,
takes the form, not so much of proselytism as of com
prehension ; is founded, not so much on the expectation
of bringing all communions into one Church, as of bring
ing all Churches into one communion. It is distinguished
by the effort, while seeing the points of difference, to
discover the points of agreement, and, while recognising
the right of intellectual and theological variety, to bring
out into practical relief the reality of a moral harmony.
The organisations by which it has been attempted to
combine parties otherwise differing, for the expression of
some common feeling or the achievement of some common
object, however imperfect in their conception, or incom
plete in their accomplishment, are indications of the ex
istence of this desire. Contemplated in this light, the
�62
Evangelical Alliance itself is not without its interest!
For, whatever may be its exclusions, and whatever its
narrowness, it yet at least attempts to penetrate through
the mere Episcopalianism of the Churchman, the mere
Congregationalism of the Independent, the mere Me
thodism of the Wesleyan, to a common Christianity,
deeper and more vital than anything involved in these
points (important as in themselves they may be), and so
far even this, in many respects exclusive and limited,
association bears witness to the growing desire of our
times for peace combined with liberty, independence
combined with concord, and the love of truth combined
with the love of each other.
But besides this tendency towards a larger compre
hension and wider terms of union, there is a growing
dislike in most bodies, of denunciation and virulence.
The firm adhesion of a man to that Church or that Body
which is to him the depository of the purest forms of
truth, is a subject of genuine respect. But there is
less and less disposition to approve of the peculiari
ties of that division being made all-important, and
theological intolerance has now to be combined with
some striking practical excellence or moral power to
be itself tolerated. The working classes of our large
towns especially look upon the struggles and animosi
ties of sects with indifference, and even with disgust,
regarding that man as the best man who lives the best
life, and that man as the purest Christian who most re
sembles his Lord.
Two things have principally contributed to this ten
dency : First, the growing disposition to ask what are
the essentials of Christianity, and to separate from these
the adjuncts or modifications which the convictions of
�each body require it, in its own case, to make. Accord
ing to the breadth or narrowness, the grandeur or petti
ness, of our estimate of these essentials, will be the cha^
racter for comprehensiveness or exclusiveness of the
Church we found upon them. Thus, if to submit to the
authority of a particular Church be necessary to the right
reception of the Christian faith, then the essential element
of unity is conformity. If the essentials of Christianity
be a set of theological propositions laid down in a special
ecclesiastical symbol, then there is no such thing as a
Christian Church comprehending all, but only a Christian
sect requiring that all shall belong to her. But if the
essentials of Christianity are found out to be not in the
things which distinguish Churches so much as in that
which is common to all, then we may worship with a
liturgy or without a liturgy, under the ceiling of a meet
ing-house or the roof of a church, under the ministry of
clergymen ordained by Bishops, or ordained by Presby
ters, or ordained bv the voice of God in their own consciences, and in their people’s choice; the essentials of
Christianity will be alike within the reach of us all: and
there may on earth be found such a thing as free thought
combined with a common heart, individual liberty with
universal charity, and Christ may say unto us all, “ I am
the vine, ye are the branches.”
The second thing which has contributed to this desire
for Christian union, and a perception of its possibility, is
the influence of good men; the natural, catholicising
tendency of their Christian tempers, and their holy-lives.
Persons who have been in the habit of supposing belief
in certain doctrines essential to Christian character and
Christian salvation, are startled from their position by the
discovery that certain men, whose lives and characters
�64
they venerate for their purity and goodness, and about
whose salvation it is impossible for them to doubt, do
not believe all these supposed essentials. These truly
good men rise up before them in every branch of the
Church; live long, holy, and beneficent lives ; manifest
the fruits of sincere truth-loving and heavenly hearts;
and they cannot possibly conceive of such men being
driven from the presence of their God, and living in the
eternal sorrows of his displeasure.
In asking, then, who are the true Church below, we
find a very good guidance in the light reflected from this
other question, who are the true Church above ? In in
quiring whom we should consider our brethren and fellowChristians here, our greatest help will be found in the
answer of our hearts to the question, who are likely to be
of the general assembly and church of the first-born
hereafter ?
Thus there grows up, almost unconsciously, within
every man whose heart is open to the signs of human
excellence wherever discerned, a sort of Church of the
Soul, very different in its filling up and in its limitations
from any of the fixed ecclesiastical divisions around us,
which we exclusively call Churches. And we find our
selves anticipating as it were the conditions of heaven
and the judgment of God, in settling (not indeed to the
satisfaction of the logician, but in obedience to the
yearnings of our own hearts) what are the essentials of
Christian Faith and Life on earth, and who are the chil
dren of the kingdom here.
It will be my object, then, to-night, with a single eye
to the end I have in view, and without scrupling to
employ any plainness of statement which I may find
necessary to my purpose—to bring this test before your
�good sense, your conscience, and your affections, in the
most palpable form I can command.
Let us, then, vary the ordinary tenor of address, and the
customary appeals of argument and demonstration, and
inquire for Christianity by inquiring for our fellowChristians, and for the essential faith of Jesus Christ by
inquiring for the general assembly and church of the
first-born in heaven.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, a young
French ecclesiastic of extraordinary piety and virtue com
menced his career of public duty with the charge of a
seminary devoted to those who had been newly converted
to that branch of the Christian Church of which he was
himself a conscientious member. Subsequently, he went
into an unhealthy and desolate district where the greatest
cruelties had been practised against those whom he was
now desired to convert. The first demand he made of
the king was, that all armies should be removed from
the district, and that all persecution and oppression
should immediately cease. He then set himself to the
task of recovering the wanderers by kindness and per
suasion to the bosom of that Church from which they had
strayed. He lived a long life, but when removed from
that district, he watched over it and all others similarly
circumstanced, and whenever he heard of harshness and
severity sent his remonstrance to the seat of power.
From this post of duty he was removed to the most
fascinating and brilliant court of Europe. He was made
tutor to a boy of great ability, but almost ungovernable
pride and passion, but of whom it was important to the
world that he should create an accomplished man and a
virtuous Christian, for he was heir to one of the greatest
monarchies of the earth. Here, amidst his pupil’s bursts
�66
of passion, he maintained an unbending dignity, and the
proud boy soon learned to weep before him for his sins,
to drink in his instructions with eagerness, to delight in
him and to love him. Here royalty, too, received his
calm but intrepid rebuke, and power acknowledged his
sincere independence.
He was raised, but by no arts or efforts of his own, to
an archbishopric. Here the still piety, which was part
of his nature, was misapprehended. His principles and
his doctrines were misinterpreted and condemned. A
storm of calumny gathered round him. The smile of
royalty was converted into a frown, the arm of patronage
was changed into a weapon of offence—friendship turned
away from him—that Church which he had so sincerely
served, began to regard him as her enemy—and the re
vered head of it slowly and unwillingly pronounced his
condemnation. In the midst of all this (gentle, suscep
tible, modest as was his nature), he held fast to his in
tegrity. Immersed in a wearisome, protracted contro
versy, he preserved throughout his courage undaunted,
and his charity unchilled. “ God, who is the witness
of my thoughts,” says he to one of his greatest adver
saries, “ knows that, though differing with you in opi
nion, I still continue to revere you, to preserve unceas
ingly my respect, and to deplore the bitterness of this
contention.”
In the midst, and in the pauses of this storm, he was
performing the duties of his See with exemplary fidelity.
A peace-maker among the divided, a rebuker of the
dissolute, an encourager of the deserving, a father to the
poor: surrounded by the pomp of a princedom, he lived
the life of simplicity. The humblest village pulpit in his
diocese knew the sound of his voice, and the presence of
�67
his care. He would sit down in his walks with the
rustic on the grass, and utter his pure words of counsel.
He would daily have his almoners around him, to mi
nister to the necessitous; and when the evening hour
set in, he was found with his household in prayer.
Throughout all these labours, sorrows, and painful re
membrances, his only recreation was to walk. His con
versation was directed to instruction. “ I have still fresh
in my recollection,” says one, “ all the serious and im
portant subjects which were the topics of our discourse;
my ear caught with eagerness every word that issued
from his lips: his letters are still before me, and they
bespeak the purity of his sentiments, and the wisdom of
his principles. I preserve them among my papers, as
the most precious treasure which I have in the world.”
His sense of friendship was intense and pure. “ Good
friends,” says he, “ are a dangerous treasure in life; in
losing them we lose too much. I dread the charms of
friendship. Oh 1 how happy shall we be, if, hereafter,
we are together before God, loving each other in his
love, and rejoicing only in his joy, and no longer exposed
to separation.” At length the hour of death approached
him. He lay thinking of his friends, his flock, and his
Church; receiving the consolations of his faith—hearing
the selected words of the Scripture, and saying, “ Repeat
—repeat to me those holy words again.” He died as he
had lived, in sanctity—all his goods given to his stu
dents, to his clergy, to his guests, to works of piety, and
to the poor.
This man was a Roman Catholic—his name was
Fenelon.
In our own country, and nearer our own time, at the be
ginning of the present century, in a county bordering on
�68
the Principality of Wales, there resided, in a not ignoble
condition of life, a true servant of God, who took under
his care the spiritual and the temporal wants of an ex
tensive but humble neighbourhood. Diligent in busi
ness, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, he watched with
anxiety over the morals, the faith, and the happiness of
those about him. Frank and cheerful in his manners
and habits, he was full of an earnest piety. He thought
that the strictness which made no distinction between
things absolutely immoral, and things that were innocent,
or blameable only in their abuse, was prejudicial to the
interests of sincerity and religion. He was so absolutely
simple and good-natured, from the innocence of his own
heart, so little prone to consider how others might view
him, when he saw and meant no evil—that people who
were accustomed to judge of seriousness of character by
habitual length of countenance, scarcely appreciated the
religiousness of his soul, as it really lay deeply within him.
From a child he was devout. When in circumstances
of danger his mother was in alarm, the infant monitor
beside her said, “ Be still, mother; God will protect us.”
The generous liberality which compelled his parents,
when sending him to school, to sew up his money in his
pocket, lest he should give it all away upon the road,
tempered with the wiser judgment of the man, continued
with him in maturity. When the poor came to speak
to him, he always, if possible, went out to them immediately, for he said, “ the time of the poor is very valu
able to them; besides, they are more sensitive to any
apparent inattentions.”
In the midst of all this simplicity and goodness, he
was courted by the great for his talents, and for the fas
cination of his company, and his connexions opened out
�69
to him the prospect of a brilliant and distinguished
career. But there was one subject which pre-eminently
engaged his interests, away from the engagements im
mediately around him. He thought much of the super
stitions, ignorance, neglect and misery in which lands at
a distance lay under the reign of Heathenism. He heard
of a Brahmin who had gone to die on the banks of his
sacred river—but to whom a British officer had given
nourishment, and whom he had thus saved. The Brah
min lost caste by this occurrence, was avoided by his
own countrymen, became dependent on the British offi
cer, and each day, as he came for his subsistence, cursed
the hand that had saved his miserable life. “ Now,”
said he, “ if I could only rescue one such miserable crea
ture from this wretched superstition, I should think
myself repaid for any sacrifice.”
The dear claims of neighbourhood, friendship, old
family associations, and old familiar habits—the still
dearer claims of his relationship, as father, husband, bro
ther, son—made him pause for a moment, but at length he
accepted the arduous and honourable post that was as
signed him in the eastern continent. Bor three or four
years he laboured in that fatal clime, travelling from
region to region, initiating and confirming in the mild
faith of the Gospel, raising the character, and stimu
lating the zeal, of the Christian population, elevating the
condition of the natives, noticing and remonstrating
against their oppression or neglect, founding schools for
their instruction, and endeavouring to bring the blessings
of justice in their own tongue into their own neighbour
hoods, till at length he killed himself by the labours that
were too great for his strength, and left a Church in
India sorrowing as for a father.
�70
That man was a Bishop of the English Church
—his name was Reginald Heber.
An upholsterer in London had an only son. Having
been successful in his business he left him considerable
property. With this the son greatly enlarged an origi
nally small estate, lived among his tenantry, and devoted
himself to their good. The neighbourhood being un
healthy, he drained it—the cottages being badly con
structed, he rebuilt them—the people being ignorant, he
opened and supported schools. He encouraged the habit
of attending religious instructions, and warned all those
about him from places of intemperate or dissolute resort.
His health being delicate, from the commencement of
manhood he had often travelled for its improvement.
On one of these occasions, attracted by the mournful in
cident which had left Lisbon in the ruins of an earth
quake, his course was directed to the shores of Portugal.
He was seized, when on the waters, flung into captivity,
and confined in the nauseous dungeon of a jail in France.
Here, meat was flung to himself and his fellow-captives
as to dogs; they had no instruments wherewith to cut it,
and they gnawed it off the bone in the ravenousness of
their hunger. In the midst of the horrors of this capti
vity, he excited a most remarkable feeling of reliance
on his honour—was presently permitted to be at large
upon his word—and finally was sent home on the express
condition that he would return to his confinement in
France, if the English government refused to liberate a
French naval officer in his place. This promise he would
have fulfilled, if the government of his own country had
not, by their compliance with the conditions, rendered
his return unnecessary.
Years rolled by, and his life was marked by the same
�attributes of sobriety, virtue, religiousness and benevo
lence, with the addition of great efforts on behalf of cap
tives of war, with whose fate and sufferings he could now
so acutely sympathize—till he was made High Sheriff of
his county. In this official capacity he was, at Assize
time, to be met with in the prison, examining into the
condition and government of its every part, even to its
inmost cell. “ The distress of prisoners,” he says, “ of
which there are few who have not some imperfect idea,
came more immediately under any notice, when I was
Sheriff of the county of Bedford; and the circumstance
which excited me to activity in their behalf was, the see
ing some, who by the verdict of juries were declared not
guilty; some, in whom the grand jury did not find such
an appearance of guilt as subjected them to trial; and
some, whose prosecutors did not appear against them;
after having been confined for months, dragged back to
jail, and locked up again till they should pay sundry fees
to the jailer, the clerk of assize, &c. In order to re
dress this hardship, I applied to the justices of the
county, for a salary to the jailer in lieu of his fees. The
Bench were properly affected with the grievance, and
willing to grant the relief desired; but they wanted a
precedent for charging the county with the expense. I
therefore rode into several neighbouring counties in
search of a precedent; but I soon learned that the same
injustice was practised in them; and looking into the
prisons, I beheld scenes of calamity, which I grew daily
more and more anxious to alleviate.”
You know the rest—you know the heroic career of
philanthropy which filled every town and county of Great
Britain, and every country of the world, with the name
of this great social benefactor. Devotedly attached to his
�72
own views of Christian truth, in the work of Christian
benevolence, to him Christian, Mussulman and Hindoo
were all alike ; he would have risked his life to save any.
In a remote province of Russia, stricken by a fever caught
by attendance on another, lay at length the philanthropist,
at the goal of all his earthly labours. In his memoran
dum book he had been writing, “ May I not look on
present difficulties or think of future ones in this world,
as I am but a pilgrim or wayfaring man that tarries but a
night; this is not my home; but may I think what God
has done for me, and rely on his power and grace.”—
“ My soul, remember how often God has sent an answer
of Peace, Mercies in the most seasonable times—how
often better than thy fears, exceeded thy expectations.
Oh! why should I distrust this good and faithful God ?
In His word, He hath said, ‘ In all my ways acknowledge
Him, and He will direct thy path.’ But, Lord! leave me
not to my own wisdom, which is folly, nor to my own
strength, which is weakness. Help me to glorify Thee
on earth, and finish the work Thou givest me to do.”
“ Suffer,” he said to his friends as he was dying, “ suffer
no pomp to be used at my funeral, nor any monument,
nor any monumental inscription whatsoever, to mark
where I am laid: lay me quietly in the earth, place a sun
dial over my grave, and let me be forgotten.” This man
was a Calvinistic Dissenter—his name was Howard.
More than a hundred years ago a pious boy left a
country parsonage, the abode of his father, and entered
the Charter-house school in London. From thence he
went to Christ Church College, Oxford. There he ad
vanced, not only in the learning of the place, but in
habits of Christian seriousness and piety, which were not
of the place. Associating himself with a few others like
�73
minded with himself, they devoted a portion of their
time to a study of the Scriptures and to serious reading.
Always of a moral and religious disposition, he might be
said to have obeyed the commandments from his youth.
But this he soon began to feel was not enough. He
began to visit the sick in prison and the poor in their
homes,- prayed and exhorted; avoided all trifling ac
quaintance ; and commenced the religious observance of
the ancient fasts of the Church, keeping Wednesdays
and Fridays with a distinct religiousness. In the midst
of all this he had much heaviness and fear—was often
weak in his new faith, and of doubtful mind. Yet keep
ing his eye upon his object, he practised abstemiousness—
underwent exposure to sudden changes of climate, heat
and cold, fatigue and dangers, which were, under Pro
vidence, to prepare him for his work. Presently he
stepped forth to awaken a drowsy, careless world, sunk
in sin and sensuality. The conventionalism of society
was shocked.
Though a clergyman of the English
Church, the door of the English Church was shut against
him. But Newgate was open to him; the hill-side, and
the high-way, and the market-place, were free to him;
and submitting to be made thus vile, as he expressed it,
against his own natural taste and liking, he preached
with ardour the word of warning; and while he created
great disquietude of heart in those who heard him, at the
dreadful nature of sin and the just wages of it, he spake
again to the storm and tempest of these souls, and im
mediately there was a great calm.
All these services were not rendered without great
contradiction of sinners. The brutal people rose up
against their benefactor; thereby showing what need
they had of him. Alluding to the gradual growth of
�74
these outrages, he says, “ By how gentle degrees does
God prepare us for his will! Two years ago a piece of
brick grazed my shoulders. It was a year after that a
stone struck me between the eyes. Last month I received
one blow, and this evening two; one before we came
into the town, and one after we were gone out; but both
were as nothing; for though one man struck me on the
breast with all his might, and the other on the mouth
with such a force that the blood gushed out immediately,
I felt no more pain from either of the blows than if they
had touched me with a straw.” At length he was sur
rounded with fellow-labourers in this cause, in this great
and good cause of the conversion of the heathens at home.
He made rules, he organised a society, he appointed dis
tricts, and preachers, and meetings. And he nobly says,
“ The thing which I was greatly afraid of all this time,
and which I resolved to use every possible method of
preventing, was a narrowness of spirit, a party zeal, a
being straitened in our own bowels; that miserable
bigotry which makes many so unready to believe that
there is any work of God but among themselves. I
thought it might be a help against this frequently to read
to all who were willing to hear, the accounts I received
from time to time of the work which God is carrying on
in the earth, both in our own and other countries; not
among us alone, but among those of various opinions and
denominations. For this I allotted one evening in every
month; and I find no cause to repent of my labour: it
is generally a time of strong consolation to those who
love God, and all mankind for his sake, as well as a means
of breaking down the partition-wall which either the craft
of the devil or the folly of men has built up, and of en-<
couraging every child of God to say, ‘ Whosoever doth
�the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my
brother, and sister, and mother.’ ”
No doubt in all this a strong will was manifested, and
was accompanied by the exercise of no little authority.
Considerable means poured in upon him to help him in
the accomplishment of his extensive work. Selfish men
were not slow to attribute to him the baseness which
would have characterised themselves. But death, the
great earthly judge, vindicated his character from this
calumny, for he died possessed of nothing but his
books.
This man, the spiritual father and regenerator of
many thousand souls, was unwillingly the greatest
Schismatic the Church of England has ever known—his
name was Wesley.
I must touch upon two characters I wish still to call
to your remembrance with much less detail. One there
is, the record of whose life must have recently passed
through the hands of many now present, who was worthy
of being enrolled among those women who followed our
Lord unto his death, and ministered to his last necessi
ties. The gentle woman who could throw off the allure
ments of a life of refinement—who could submit to the
distressing demands of public duty upon a shrinking
nature—who could go with her spotless purity into the
midst of the most abandoned of her sex, and appease
the anger and calm the passions of guilty men—to
whom the coarse ribaldry, the loathsome filth, and the
tomb-like uncleanness of soul, which characterised the
inmates of a jail, were no barrier to the sun-like beams
of her penetrating Christian love—that woman—the
observer of no ordinances, the acknowledger of neither
Bishop nor Presbyter, member of neither Protestant
i 2
�76
nor Catholic Church—could not have stood the test of
any of the Churches. She was a Quaker—and her name
was Elizabeth Ery.
It is difficult sometimes to return in memory to the pre
judices, the indifference, and the doubt with which great
works have been regarded in their commencement: it is
difficult to realise the state of feeling which made a given
labour necessary, but which now no longer exists, the very
labour which it called forth having driven it away almost
from our recollections. But the corn of wheat, which
first fell into the ground, abiding now no longer alone,
but bringing forth much fruit, must not be forgotten.
Not many years has the tomb closed over the remains
of a humbler and less known labourer in the vineyard
of God, than any that I have mentioned. Placed in
early life upon one of those streams of social good, the
channels of which Society scoops out for herself, and in
which the majority of her sons are content, and wisely
content, to bear their portion of the freight of human
duty,—he of whom I speak devoted himself to the service
of the Christian ministry. Eor many years he was happy
and content to do the work of an evangelist among his
neighbours and parishioners, shedding the light of a pure
heart upon their daily Eves, healing the bitterness of
their sorrows by the overflowing balsam of his sympathy,
and each week assembling them together to point out to
them again the brightening way of truth and heaven.
At length his heart was smitten with the thought of
those who never saw him, and whom he never saw. Be
hind the goodly array of pure young faces, of sober man
hood, and reverend old age, that stood before him in the
Church—behind the attentive countenances, the cleanly
robes and the decorous manners which the Lord’s day
�weekly called before him—his mind’s eye saw a gather
ing group of guilt, intemperance, and crime—of sorrow
ing, sinning men and women, and of children, with
their tears of pain drying upon their unwashed cheeks.
In the very midst of those who came to him to hear the
sounds of peace and holiness in that happy temple, his
soul filled with the thoughts of those who never came. As
he stood upon the steps of the doors which at his touch
were to throw open to him homes of cheerful innocence
and competence, radiant with a welcome to himself, his
heart grew full and heavy with the remembrance of those
at whose door he never stopped, and who never sat at
good men’s feasts. He thought of those great cities in
his own young country, of those greater cities in other
lands, older in sorrows, and more crowded with crime.
His own more limited range among the poor of his
prosperous, healthy village-town, satisfied not the craving
of his sympathy with the wide-spread humanity that
pined in neglected sorrow, and uncombatted vice. He
threw up his easy, happy charge, he went to the nearest
great city, to study and to alleviate its unseen woes, and
to stir up the heart of philanthropy and religion to the
obligation and necessity of this work. Now that Bishops
organise large companies of Missionaries for this very
work; now that Town Missions send forth their hun
dreds of labourers; now that almost every considerable
society of Christians in our large towns bears a part in
this holy undertaking, as an obvious and indispensable
part of their Christian duty,—it is difficult to believe how
new and strange this very work appeared, even to the
best of men, twenty years ago—and how this apostle of
the neglected, this remembrancer of the forgotten, toiled
to convince men’s judgments, and to satisfy their hearts
�78
of the possibility of taking religion and hope into the
very homes of the poor.
Yes ! I remember him when he landed on these
shores, with that countenance, the light whereof was a
divine charity. I remember him when he came among
us, new from the actual personal fulfilment of his own
scheme, and about to return to it again, to die in it.
Yes ! I remember him, with his thrilling tones, and his
overflowing heart, and his consecrated life, and I re
member, too, that at that time there was no such thing
in this country as a Domestic Mission to the outcast of
society, and the neglected and forgotten of Christian, as
semblies, and that most men thought that there never
could be!
This man, so full of purity, so rich in human tenderness,
so affluent in divine forbearance—this man, the friend of
the heroic Follen, the spiritual brother of the high-souled
Channing, and yet the daily companion of the hardest
and most neglected beings in the streets of Boston—was
a Unitarian, and his name was Tuckerman.
Now to which of all these men wTill even the Bigot
venture to deny a place within the Infinite Bather’s all
comprehending mercy ?—a place in the reverent regards
of the great human family ? a place in the heaven of the
just made perfect ?—which of all these will he ven
ture, in any assembly of the good and wise on earth, to
declare unfit to share in the inheritance he anticipates
for himself? Whichsoever of these sainted men is the
object of his intolerant presumption, there is not one
high soul in the world that will cry Amen to his ana
thema. And yet to the Roman Catholic I say, here, in
this group, is to be found almost every possible form of
schism from the unity of your Church ! To the Church
�79
of England man, I say, here are a Quaker and a Uni
tarian ! To the Unitarian, I say, here is the professor
of what you call the stern and gloomy faith of Calvin,
here the submissive subject of the See of Rome ! Not
withstanding, as surely as our Lord said of the little
children, “ of such is the kingdom of heaven,” we may
say of these men, of such is the general assembly and
church of the first-born, whose names are writ in heaven 1
When you ask me, then, for the essentials of Christianity,
I point you to the belief these men had in common ! When
you ask me for the Holy Catholic faith, I tell you, it is
there ! It was not the belief in transubstantiation in one,
or the belief in episcopal ordination in another, or a be
lief in vicarious sacrifice in another, or the neglect of
public religious ordinances in another, or the mental
adoption of the doctrine of the divine unity in another—
that made of him a child of God, and a true follower of
Jesus Christ; but it was that which each had in addi
tion, that which each had, I will say, in superiority, to
these special characteristics of his individual faith—first,
a hearty sincerity in the belief he did profess; and, se
condly, an actual incorporation into his own spiritual
being, of the life and mind of Jesus Christ.
There is one possible conclusion, however, from these
considerations, against which I would earnestly warn you;
it is the adoption, as any result of this survey, of that in
fidel and worldly latitudinarianism, which proclaims it as
indifferent, what mode of faith the individual mind adopts
or professes. The survey of the lives of these great and
good men teaches us nothing of the kind. Each one of
these men commenced, as the very basis of his spiritual
existence, with being earnest and sincere in his own pro
fessions and belief. Each one of them laid the founda
�80
tion of his character in serious thought, and in honest
confession.
We are not to stand before this noble army of holy
men, and, as a result of the contemplation of their excel
lency and their glory, say, “ then it is indifferent what
form of Christianity we shall profess—any is sufficient, all
are good.” Do we suppose that was the spirit in which
they formed their faith ? On the contrary, these men
wrought out their faith with the profoundest anxiety, and
took reverently to their souls every word of God. Fenelon
would have been no Fenelon had he been merely a con
forming Catholic, and not a true and earnest man. Re
ginald Heber would have been no confessor had he been
in heart a Unitarian or a Congregationalist.
These things cannot be. Nothing great or good is
ever founded on a lie. These men were sincere; and
though we may not be able to see how the specialities of
their belief influenced their characters, they were without
a doubt wrought deeply into the tissue of their souls,
were not put on as a garment in which to go forth to
meet the world, or in an easy indifference as to what
profession they should make, but formed a genuine part
of their individual religious being. It was this very
earnestness, this profoundness and sincerity of individual
conviction, that made Christianity to them so intense and
vital an influence. They received the faith of Jesus
Christ under that form which appeared to them, after
grave reflection, to be the purest and the best; and
henceforth it could exist as a personal influence in no
other form whatever to their hearts. When will men see
that he to whom all faiths are alike has no earnest faith
at all ? It is the very lesson of these men’s lives that they
had convictions, determinate convictions, convictions that
�81
made them what they were, and that they were faithful
to them.
It is indeed a holy and delightful thought, that we
may also conclude, (without denying the reality, and to
the men the necessity, of those special and distinctive
peculiarities in which the common faith of Christ ap
proved itself respectively to their consciences,) that the
great saving power of their faith consisted, not in that
which distinguished them from one another, but in that
common treasure which lay at the foundation of all their
differences, in that obedience to God, that love to Christ,
that charity to man, that hope of heaven, in which they
all rejoiced together; that carefulness of mind with which
they sought the truth; that conscientious fidelity with
which they maintained it; that vigilant self-discipline
with which they applied its lessons : and that joyful hope
with which they rested on its promises.
It is not for me, my friends, to speak of the holy
lessons to which this temple shall, from week to week,
be devoted, in the building up of human souls for the
conflicts of earth, and the inheritance of heaven. But I
believe I may with certainty specify two general objects
in its erection; that it stands as an offering to since
rity, to the sacredness of the individual conscience, and
as the provision of an altar for an honest and truthful
sacrifice, such as they who come here may truthfully and
earnestly offer: and that, in the next place, it stands in
determined Protest against those accretions and additions
which Churches too generally enforce upon Christian
belief, as essential to salvation, and in restoration of that
old and only catholic Christianity which is common to all
Churches, though obscured and weakened in so many.
Por we, too, in common with all the holy men whose
�lives and characters we have been considering—we, too,
believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Hea
ven and Earth—we, too, in common with all these holy
men, believe that he hath, in his merciful providence, sent
Jesus Christ to turn away every one of us from his ini
quities, and to be the way, the truth, and the life to us
—and we, too, in common with all these holy men, look
forward to a life beyond the valley of the shadow, where
our sins and our sorrows shall be lost in the light of the
benign presence of God; and trusting in the mercy of
Him who forgiveth, we long, with them, to be prepared,
by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kind
ness, by the holy spirit, and by love unfeigned, to join
that blest assembly and church of the first-born, which
are written in Heaven.—Amen.
�NOTE.
In the above Sermon—designed to promote a feeling of
eatholic charity, in an audience consisting of a variety of de
nominations—the question remains unsolved, and indeed
unattempted, Does any one of these forms of Christian doc
trine accord more than the rest with the teachings of the
New Testament, and is any one more conducive than the
rest to the realization of Christian life and character ? That
this must be the case with some one or other of them, no one
can doubt, for no one can pay attention to their several cha
racteristics, and believe them to be identical in their essence
or in their influence. That any one of them actually reaches
the ideal standard which these two tests imply, is more than,
the writer at least is able to assert. He is much more
disposed to believe that each of these forms of Faith contains
a portion—and the purest and most vital portion—of Christian
truth and influence ; but that in actual development, that
portion in each Church suffers from a relative exaggeration,
or a relative neglect—the exaggeration leading to an exclu
sion of other important principles, necessary to be associated
with it in an integral Faith—and the neglect leading to a
gradual and half unconscious admission of other and inferior
principles, which ultimately predominate and overwhelm it.
The apparent result of this view is Eclecticism. But Eclec
ticism is an artificial and critical process, landing us in a
result which is usually destitute of all homogeneity, a collec
tion from without, under the guidance of the judgment,
�rather than a natural integral production of the soul within.
It is a kind of Peripateticism among the sects—alternately
assimilating and rejecting the elements of actually existing
Churches. Surely the old, but rarely realized, idea, of a recur
rence to the New Testament itself, as containing the spirit of
Christianity in its purest form, and to the life of Jesus Christ,
as affording the only perfect instance of that spirit exemplified
in humanity, involves a far sounder principle. It is a truth
often overlooked in these discussions, but nevertheless to be
borne carefully in mind, that no human being can tell on
what proportion the peculiarities, the differentia of the Roman
Catholic form of Christianity, entered into the composition of
the mind and character of Fenelon—any more than he can
tell in what proportion Calvinism entered into the spiritual
fabric of Howard, or Unitarianism into that of Tuckerman.
It may be—and this is probably nearer the truth—that the
distinctive peculiarities of their special forms of faith were in
each case the subordinate parts of their spiritual system—
that the common essential Christian truth excluded from
none of their systems, but, lying at the base of all, was the
great element in their personal and actuating faith; and
that this fact was precisely the influence which made them the
excellent men they were—as it is probably the fact which
seems to make men of the highest spiritual excellence almost
always of one interior family and creed.
A great mind is able to penetrate beyond the outworks of
its creed, and lay hold of the citadel. But ordinary minds
rest in those very outworks. With them the accretions are
the great thing : and therefore it is, that the purification
of popular belief is a work of great necessity still, for in the
subordinate and comparatively uninfluential elements of the
various prevailing forms of Christian belief, pressed upon the
notice of the general mind, as they are, by the very differences
and antagonism they create, the ordinary mind takes its chief
position, and of these it takes the firmest hold. The doc
trine, then, of this Sermon—the salvability of all these good
and great men of every Church, does not alter the duty of
�85
preventing the saving truth, which they were able to discern
and make their own through all that surrounded it, from
being overwhelmed and paralyzed by accretions—preventing
in fact the saving truth from being saving to the hearts of
the multitude.
The truth appears therefore to stand thus : Each Christian
Church contains within itself the means of salvation, and the
essentials of Truth—but each contains them in various
degrees of development, some having them more perfect in
one direction, others in another. By the first of these posi
tions, we are bound to a universal charity—by the second, to
mutual help, correction and enlightenment. Far from mono
polizing all Christian truth—still less all Christian excellence—
and less still, all Christian salvation—for that religious body to
which the writer belongs—he yet should say, if by so vague
a word he could denote his own version of the Christian
Faith, that among prevailing systems the theory of Unitarianism appears to him to be in itself the purest, the
highest, and the most enduring; and when it shall have
engaged in its development and application a larger number
of the best minds of the community, and the attention of its
adherents shall not be engrossed in its dogmatical defence
(as by the necessity of its position is too much now the case),
it must necessarily produce loftier and more extended spi
ritual results than the world has ever yet witnessed—that it
must necessarily produce the highest characters, and the
greatest number of them: that is to say, the belief in one
undivided and infinite God, our Father, is in itself, and in its
influences, necessarily higher and holier than the present
scholastic division of that unity into natures and persons;—
the belief that God was as fully manifested in J esus Christ,
as the Divine can be in the Human, affords a better support
and guide to our spiritual nature, than the dogma that Christ
himself was the Infinite God;—the desire to partake of the
divine nature in Christ, and to grow up into a resemblance
in all things unto him which is our Head, is a more holy and
influential desire for the heart of man, than a reception of
�86
the doctrine of a vicarious sacrifice, a substituted righteous
ness and a substituted punishment;—and, finally, a prospect
of futurity, in which the fruits of the seeds sown in this life,
whether they be good or whether they be evil, shall be reaped
by each man in a world of greater light and higher progress
beyond the grave, is in itself truer, and in its influences more
efficient, than a belief in the ordinary twofold division of an
everlasting Heaven and an everlasting Hell, into one or other
of which each man is to depart at his resurrection.
This form of Christianity, then, which is at present distinguishedfrom others bythe designation “Unitarianism,” is still,
in the writer’s opinion, a very noble thing to avow—a very
righteous and holy cause for which to labour and to suffer
reproach.
THE END.
Printed by Richard Kinder, Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey.
�May be had of John Chapman, 142, Strand, and all Booksellers,
Price 6d.,
PAUSE AND RETROSPECT;
The Last Discourse preached in Paradise-street Chapel, Liverpool.
BY
JAMES
MARTINEAU.
With an Address on occasion of laying the Foundation-stone of the New Church in
Hope-street.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
In two volumes 12mo, price 7s. 6d. each,
ENDEAVOURS AFTER THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.
Each Volume may be had separately.
ALSO, THIRD EDITION,
Price 4s. paper cover; 4s. 6d., cloth,
THE RATIONALE OF RELIGIOUS INQUIRY;
OB.
THE QUESTION STATED,
OF
REASON, THE BIBLE, AND THE CHURCH.
In one vol. 8vo, price 7s. 6d.,
LECTURES IN THE LIVERPOOL CONTROVERSY.
1. THE BIBLE, WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT;
2. THE DEITY OF CHRIST.
3. THE ATONEMENT.
4. CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MORAL EVIL.
5. CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST AND WITHOUT RITUAL.
WITH INTRODUCTION, AND PRELIMINARY CORRESPONDENCE.
Bach Lecture may be had separately.
�In 12mo, price 3s. 6d.,—to Congregations, 2s. 6d.,—bound in cloth,
HYMNS FOR THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND HOME.
COLLECTED AND EDITED
BY
JAMES
MARTINEAU.
SIXTH EDITION.
Congregations requiring a supply should make application to the Editor, Liverpool.
.a
Price 21s.,
THIRD EDITION.
HOLY SONGS AND MUSICAL PRAYERS.
*
Composed or adapted, and harmonized for Four Voices, with separate
accompaniments for the Pianoforte and Organ.
By J. R. OGDEN, Esa.
EDITED BY
JAMES MARTINEAU.
A set of Sixty-two Compositions, of which three-fourths are original, expressly designed for
Hymns in the above Collection.
The Supplement to the former Editions may be had separately, price 7s.
Price 6d.,
IRELAND AND HER FAMINE.
A DISCOURSE.
Price 6d.,
THE BIBLE AND THE CHILD.
A DISCOURSE.
On the 1st of February, May, August, and November,
Price 2s. 6d.,
THE PROSPECTIVE REVIEW.
EDITED BY
Messrs. J. J, TAYLER.
J. H. THOM.
C. WICKSTEED.
J. MARTINEAU.
Respice, Aspice, Prospice.
St. Bernard
�
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Victorian Blogging
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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>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Discourses on occasion of the dedication of Hope-Street New Church, Liverpool, Thursday, October 18, and Sunday, October 21, 1849
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Place of Publication: London
Collation: 86, [2] p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Contents: The dedication of the Christian temple to the worship and service of God: a sermon preached on Thursday, October 18th, 1849 / Thomas Madge -- The Watch-night lamps: a discourse preached on the first Sunday of public worship, October 21, 1849, in Hope-Street New Church, Liverpool / James Martineau -- The General Assembly and Church of the First-Born: a sermon preached in Hope-Street New Church, Liverpool on Sunday evening, October 21, 1849 / Charles Wicksteed. A selection of related titles from the publisher's lists on unnumbered pages at the end. Printed by Richard Kinder, London. Date given in Roman numerals.
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Madge, Thomas
Martineau, James
Wicksteed, Charles
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1849
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John Chapman
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Sermons
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Conway Tracts
Sermons
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Text
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January 12, 1876,
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��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
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�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 !’ ”
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�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
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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
�
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Victorian Blogging
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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>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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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
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Furness, W.H.
First Congregational Society of Unitarian Christians in the City of Philadelphia
Description
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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.
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Sherman & Co., printers
Date
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1875
Identifier
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G5366
Subject
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Unitarianism
Sermons
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<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>
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Conway Tracts
First Congregational Society of Unitarian Christians in the City of Philadelphia
Sermons
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FAITH AND FREEDOM IN AMERICA.
SERMON
AT THE
CONSECRATION
OF THE
Church
of the
Messiah,
Park Avenue and Thirty-Fourth Street,
APRIL 2, 1868.
By REV. SAMUEL OSGOOD,Id.D., Pastor.
WITH THE ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE,
By REV. GEORGE W, BRIGGS, D.D.
NEW YORK:
TROW & SMITH BOOK MANUFACTURING CO., 46, 48, 50 GREENE ST.
1868.
��SERMON.
And other sheep I have which are not of this fold : them also
I must bring, and they shall hear my voic^ andthere shall be one
fold and one shepherd.—John x, 16.
What a startling commentary the simple facts of
history give to these words! Spoken by a person
unknown among the great powers and leading men
of the world at that day, to a little circle of disciples,
in the face of a knot of cavilling Pharisees, they have
been heard, accepted and answered by countless num
bers in all countries and ages, tongues and nations.
How marvellous is that great array of powers that
have come into Christ’s fold!
See barbarous nations at thy gates attend,
Walk in thy light and in thy temple bend I
See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings,
While every land its joyous tribute brings.
Has our country given her answer^, and our America,
has she heard his voice and entered the fold of the
one shepherd ? America, now one of the great na
tions of the earth, is she to be also a leader of Chris
tendom ? and it is our task to-night to consider the
�4
bearing of our national passion for freedom upon our
Christian faith.
Of old, Christianity made its way without
worldly favor, and in the teeth of the fiercest oppo
sition. It marched to victory upon the Roman roads
that were made and trodden by legions that were
bound to crush every religion whose champions
would not sanction the idolatry of the Roman Pan
theon ; it preached the word of its New Testament
in the Greek language, that was a still grander high
way than the Roman roads, and used the tongue of
the martyred Socrates to proclaim to the winds, that
God.had come to dwell with men, and that the king
dom of heaven rested upon a gospel that was to the
Greeks foolishness. No bar of persecution lies before
its progress here to challenge courage and stir hero
ism; nor does state patronage tempt servility or
silence dissent. Since we have been a nation every
man has been free to choose his religion, and if greatly
encouraged, never compelled, to profess the Christian
faith. Never in the world has there been such reli
gious liberty as here in the nineteenth century. The
Church and the State have been wholly separate, and
there has moreover been such diversity of opinions
among the influential classes, as to create a whole
some balance of power and to allow no one sect
wholly to domineer over its neighbors, and compel
conformity or invite sycophancy. We certainly have
full sweep to show what we really are, what we be
lieve or do not believe, and it is a most serious and
pressing question for us to decide which way on the
whole we are drifting, and whether our freedom
�5
shows itself in free faith or in freedom from all faith.
Our people, or their forefathers, came from countries
where there were restraints upon liberty of opinion
and worship, and brought with them generally great
zeal for their own convictions and no little fire at the
very thought of having them trampled upon. What
is their temper when the old fire cools down, and full
freedom, alike from state threats and bribes, invites
tranquillity and tempts indifference, if not laxity ?
I. Do we hear the voice that calls us to the one fold,
and does our mind consent to accept the good shep
herd’s lead ? Are we to be Christian or not ?
It is clear that at the beginning of our national
independence, there was among certain leaders of the
movement and a considerable portion of the people
great impatience of all the old faiths, and not a little
of the feeling that in this new world, country and
age, all things should become new, and it was a weak
superstition or poor prejudice to go back to Judaea for
our religion, or. to Europe for our theology. The
American Revolution was not merely the rise of the
old Colonial manhood againsf British despotism, but
it was part of the great movement of the human
mind against the ancient rule of priestcraft and king
craft, creeds and conventionalism, that was so charac
teristic of the 18th century ; and here, as in Europe,
there were many who had the feeling that the age
of all positive institutional religion wras over, and the
age of reason and common sense was to do away with
the old Gospel and Church, content with nature for
its Bible and conscience for its guide. The great
Liberals of America in 1776, were evidently more or
�6
less disciples of the higher French Illuminism, that
came to its practical head in France in 189, and
7
*
Jefferson and his associates took their direction from
the philosophy of Descartes, that hade every man
take his principles from his own consciousness, and
break with the traditions and faiths of the past. The
Virginia school of statesmen were far more sweeping
in their radicalism than the statesmen of the Middle
States, and New England, who took their liberty
from their Bible and their free church method, and
believed that freedom was inside of the Gospel and
its ministry. Whilst Virginia turned theology out
of its leading college, as if it were of necessity the
minion of Anglican tyranny, Massachusetts, NewYork and New Jersey clung to theology as the safe
guard of human rights; and with them the National
Independence was a continuance of the historical king
dom of God rather than a break in history and a war
with the antecedents of faith and order. Now how
has this difference been settled, and how far has free
dom been willing to accept faith and harmonize reason
and conscience with Christianity! It is precisely
here that we are to make our main point clear; and I
affirm without misgiving, that our America has been
now for nearly a hundred years bringing the instincts
of liberty into line with the sentiment of faith ; and
that our highest work as a people in the 19th cen
tury has been the reconstruction of religious ideas
on the basis of freedom of conscience. May we not
explicitly declare, that the voice within the soul has
been more and more hearing the voice of our Lord,
and seeking the sway of the Good Shepherd and the
peace of his fold.
�7
I
1. The first illustration of the alliance of freedom
with faith is given by the unquestionable fact, that
our American people have been constantly growing
into the conviction that the Christian religion is
essentially humane, and that its founder and head is
perfected humanity and the historical centre of all
pure and exalted human characters and virtues. His
voice is more than human we believe^ yet none the
less human from its union with the Divine; and we
1 are feeling perhaps as no. nation ever before felt, that
Jesus belongs to us all as men, that the Son of Man
belongs to mankind, and no ghostly dogmas or
priestly devices should be allowed to take him away
from our human sympathies and affections. The
time was, and some of us can remember it, when it
was thought almost impious to speak of him as an
example for us, and the whole stress of preaching
was laid upon his miraculous nature and office. Now
the most earnest preachers are willing to say, “ Behold
the Man,” and the most rigid of educated theologians
are quite sure that he is Son of Man as well as Son
of God. Our conscience listens reverently to his
conscience, and the voice within us is ready to hear
the voice within him. Our heart beats with his
heart, and our love is confirmed by the perfect love
that was within him.
The growing regard for the humanity of Jesus
comes from various causes^, in part from dissatisfac
tion with the noisy, aggressive humanity of the
merely theoretic or political shool of reformers; in
part from our sense of our own imperfection and the
yearning for a perfect standard of human character;
�8
•
in part from the influence of enlightened and exalted
teachers, who have seen so clearly the great truth,
that man as such was made for religion, that not
merely his misery and sin, but his worth and welfare
call him to the Gospel, and that our Lord himself is
a truer example of genuine manhood than any of the
scoffers who have jeered at him as an impostor, and
called it manly to deny his sacred name. We are
little aware how much the principle of the true dig
nity of human nature has had to do with the rising
reconciliation of free conscience with Christian faith.
The old Deists, when they scoffed at the miraculous
or supernatural claims of Christianity, spoke, indeed,
with frequent respect of the character and pre
cepts of its great teacher, but the chief of them had
little idea of his nearness to our humanity in his in
most faith and in his communion with God. When
in the year 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, that strong
and not atheistical, but coarse and venomous book,
appeared, how many of its host of readers had any
adequate sense of the true human worth of the being
whose religion was thus rudely assailed ? How many
who liked the book had any such conviction as now
prevails of the riches of our Lord’s human character;
and how many who hated the book saw how far the
fierce Deist’s argument might be turned against him,
and the humanity of Jesus might be the ground of
how deep and exalted a faith ! What a transition
from the Deistical Humanitarianism of that day to
the Christian humanity of our own—from the nega
tive Unitarianism of Thomas Jefferson to the positive
Unitarianism of William Ellery Channing—from the
�9
shocking materialism of Helvetius on. Man to the
earnest, tender and wise spirituality of the “ Ecce
Homo,” that remarkable book which bigots dread
and devout thinkers enjoy; the book which some
small churchmen here as in England have hooted at
as utterly deadly to religion, but which masters of
scholarship and manhood&like Gladstone, the first
layman of the Church of England, haiL.as a new plank
in the platform of faith, a iew and blessed plea for
the Divinity of Christ as having its proper resting
place in his pure and perfect humanityl| Or, to con
trast stormy agitators with each father, compare the
Age of Reason with The|dore Parker’l ‘J Discourse
of Religion, defective as itsKheology is, and see how
far humanity may rise above scoffing into faith, and
how much of the divine it may find in the humanity
* We must learn in future to distinguish between Theodore Parker
as a rash assailant of historical Christianity,, a sometimes doubtful
scholar in the Scriptures, an extravagant theorist, a bitter partisan, and
Theodore Parker as a devout and humane man, and a powerful, elo
quent champion of human rights and spiritual religion, I have met
nothing of late that recalls so favorably the good genius of my old fel
low-student and messmate at Cambridge, as his admirable statement
of the often forgotten distinctionjbetween thdtimmanence and trans
cendence of God : “ If God be infini®| then he must be immanent; per
fectly and totally present in Nature and in Spirit. Thus there is no
point in space, no atom of matter, but God is there; no point of spirit,
nd atom of soul,-but God is there. And yet finite matter and finite
spirit do not exhaust God. He transcends the world of matter and. of
spirit; and in virtue of that transcendence continually makes the world
of matter purer and of mind wiser. So there is really a progress in
the manifestation of God, not a progress in God'Ahe manifesting.”
Here surely is a philosophical base for a stronger Christology than Mr.
Parker ever affirmed. Here is the Father over all, revealed by the
Word and Spirit, if we carry out the thought into history,' as the true
Transcendental thinkers are now doing.
�10
of Jesus, and yearn to declare to all who doubt God’s
Fatherhood and man’s immortality. From these and
all instances, acknowledge that the conscience of our
people has been drawing nearer Christ on his human
side, and claiming him as part of our human birth
right. Fair play to the human mind, we say, in the
face of all attempts to trample upon reason, con
science and humanity now. Fairplay to the human
mind, whether in face of the slave-power that would
make of man a chattel or a beast of burden, or in face
of the priestcraft that would tread down his liberty
of conscience. If the slave power in America quar
relled with the human mind, so much the worse for the
slave power ; if the Pope’s Encyclical Letter quarrel
led with the human mind and invokes the return of
the tyranny of the old Inquisition, so much the worse
for the Pope. Justice to the human mind in all ages,
we are also ready to say, justice above all to him
who presents the human mind in its most exalted
relations, open to the breath of the Holy Spirit and
in union with the mind of the Eternal God. We
Americans hear thy voice, O Son of Man, and the
voice within us accepts thine as the voice of true man,
made in the image of God, and calling it death to
live apart from God—the living God.
2. So the voice within us calls for the voice of
the Son of Man, and within us and within him, it
calls out too for the voice of God. We want true
man, because we want the true God, without whom
man is not himself, but a sad prodigal, a famishing
runaway. In free conscience we hear Jesus, because
God was with him, and speaks to us through him.
�11
'
Fair play to tlie human mind to rise as well as range,
to rise into communion with God, as well as range
freely in the wide fields of human fellowship, culture
and daring. If we are free to know man’s capacity
for receiving God, we are free to know God’s love to
be near to man, and there is no nobler freedom than
that which yearns for God. The perfection of His
being appears in His diffusion of His gifts, and above
all in the gift of Himself. He who is good to all and
whose tender mercies are over all His works does
not deny our most inward and pressing need, our
want of Himself. He seeks to communicate Himself to His creatures, and all earnest souls cry to
Him for His Word and Spirit, as eagerly as the
ravens cry for food. All races, nations and ages feel
this want, and God in some way provides for it, and
never leaves himself without a witness. This aspect
of history, we Americans have been more and more
accepting; and our dangers more from the Pan
theism that confounds all mind with God, than from
the Atheism that denies his being. Are we not
seeing and feeling more and more the need of faith
in the personal God, our Father in heaven as mani
fest in Jesus Christ, and witnessed byes the Spirit,
alike to meet the needs of’our own souls, and to save
us from a host of wild fancies and perilous delusions.
How fearful is that ready Pantheism that makes a God
of the multitude and is confounded by a Babel of
tongues or a niob of impulses and opinions, and per
haps consciences, and how blessedClhe faith that leads
the free conscience to the Eternal Word that made
all things and speaks to us in Jesus Christ. His-
�12
tory is luminous as read in that light, and man is
seen to rise as God comes to him and illuminates
and moves him, and gathers him to his kingdom.
We are studying God’s dealing with us more from
his character as Father and from our need of re
ceiving him as such, and urging more the approaches
of his mercy as Father, than the visitation of his *
wrath as King and Judge.
So we are receiving the doctrine of the Incarna
tion of God in Christ as never before, and looking
upon it as the regular development of the divine
plan, and not merely as a startling wonder * depend
ing solely upon the miraculous birth of Christ. With
that miracle, as in Matthew and Luke, or without
* As to the miraculous birth of Jesus, our fathers and brethren
have precisely the same liberty of opinion as other Christians, and dif
fer about as widely. Some of them stoutly contend for the miracle, as
essential to faith, others are unwilling to dogmatize about it, others
emphatically deny it, while the greater number are content with main
taining that whatever view we may hold of the origin of Jesus, his Di
vine Sonship rests upon his partaking of the divine nature by the in
dwelling Word and Spirit, and not upon the specific miracle of birth.
The great Bible-work of Bunsen maintains that Jesus is Son of God by
being in direct and full union with God, according to the Gospel of
John, and not by his having no human father. Our most severe
Unitarian critic, Andrews Norton thought that Luke’s account of Christ’s
birth presented no important difficulties, and that “ in regard to the
main event related, the miraculous conception of Jesus, it seems to
me not difficult to discern in it purposes worthy of God. It corre
sponds with his office; presenting him to the mind of the believer
as an individual set apart from all other men, coming into the world
with the stamp of God upon him, answerably to his purpose here,
which was to speak to us with authority from God.” Need I say that
we must distinguish between the usual belief in the miraculous concep
tion of Jesus and the Roman dogma of the immaculate conception of
the Virgin Mary in the womb of her mother Anna, who is said to have
conceived of a sinless child in marriage.
�13
urging it, as in John, the Incarnation, according to
the Gospel of John, is the union of the Divine Word
or Eternal wisdom with mankind in the Beloved Son,
and this union is represented as the completing of
creation, the humanizing of God, and the divinizing
of man. It gives us not only Jesus, but the Christ,
and as we behold the Divine mind so abundantly
imparted, we see the true Emanuel, God with us, and
are ready to repeat the faith of the Church Univer
sal: “Thou art the Christ, the Sony of the living
God.”*
Our America has been accepting this faith as
never before, and our best minds have been showing
* It is evident that our American thought is dealing more thorough
ly with the subject of Christ’s nature and distinguishing as never before
between the human Jesus and the divine Christ. All Writers that aim
to present God as manifesting himself in fereationvand history by His
Word and Spirit, such as Swedenborg ahd Schleiermacher, find a pow
erful and widening circle of readers, and our native Americans of
theosophic gifts like Bushnell, Emerson, and Hedge, ai'^much cherished.
Our modern philosophers, too, who have tried to grapple with the unity
of things and show forth the idea of the universe^, are slowly winning
their way to notice, and helping to shape our notions of the manifesta
tions of God. Spinoza, Descartes, Leibnitz, Kantj Schelling, Hegel,
Schopenhauer, all are throwing light in different Ways, and imore or
less clearness on the Christ, as the manifistation of God, by showing the
manifestations of supreme law in nature and man. Even the new pos
itivist school of Comte, and Spencer, and Mill, has its spiritual use,
and will ere long tell on the higher plane of thought, as soon as spiritu
al phenomena are duly recognized, the facts of history and man are ob
served and analyzed, and it is seen that that the Eternal Word is writ
ten everywhere, and the Eternal Spirit is"the chief fact of creation,
and the factor of history, at once the great phenomenon of time and the
great purpose of nature and life. The new freethinkers, also, without
meaning it, are helping our faith, and while the brilliant Renan vindi
cates Jesus as an historical person, the philosophizing Strauss shows
that the Christ came not of man but of God and his providence.
�14
its bearing on the elevation of man and the glory of
God, and its freedom from the tri-theistic superstition
that has so often made it repulsive to thoughtful men.
Our most enlightened Trinitarian preachers and
writers, like Dr. Bushnell and his large school of
followers, are declaring most explicitly the monothe
ism of the Bible, and virtually accepting the view of
the Deity which Dr. Dorner, of Berlin, the leader of
the higher German Evangelical theology, set forth
last year, in his noble book on Protestant theology,
when he wrote that “ God is one absolute personality
in three modes of being ”—a view which Unitarians
as such are not compelled to reject, and which some
of them receive, although, like myself, they refuse to
insist upon this definition, as essential to faith. Our
own leading thinkers are taking more decided ground
for the Divinity of Christ and presenting him as
transcendently partaking of the Divine nature Dr.
*
F. H. Hedge, in his Reason in Religion, writes: “ To
* The best way of expressing our faith in Christ is to take the simple
and comprehensive language of the Scriptures, especially of the Gos
pels, in order to declare the being and manifestation of God, and to
shun narrow sectarianism and unwarrantable dogmatism. The essen
tial fact of God in Christ saves us from Tri-theism and bald Humanita
rianism. I can never hear it declared that Christ is mere man, and
only the official agent of God, apart from especial union with the divine
nature, without recalling the scathing sarcasm of Leibnitz in response
to the Socinian dogma in the simple word : “ Muhammedanismus.” I
love the old Gospel realism as to God over all, in history and the soul,
or overruling, indwelling and animating, and never repeat or read the
order of Baptism “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,”
without regarding the words as comprehending the marrow of sacred
history, the rule of life, and the sum total of divine grace and spiritual
blessedness. It is cheering to see what positive ground our own best
thinkers are taking, and how they are appreciating and defending the
�15
me it seems that the truest form of the Christian
faith unites both elements, the divine and the human;
and that none can know the full power of the Gospel,
and experience all its height and breadth, where
either is wanting. We want the divine; we want to
see in Christianity the power of God and the wisdom
of God made manifest for the moral welfare of man;
we want to see the Spirit ofGod entering into human
nature, to revive and redeem it. We want a teacher
conscious of God’s in-presence, claiming attention as a
voice out of heaven. We want a" doctrine which
shall announce itself with divine authority; not a
system of moral philosophy, but the word and king
dom of God.” Another of our leading theologians,
and like Dr. Hedge, a professor of our Cambridge
Theological School, Dr. James F. Clarke, in his Truth
and Errors of Orthodoxy, writes thus:According
to the New Testament, the Father wOjild seem to be
the source of all things, the Creator, the Fountain of
being and of life. The Son is spoken of as the mani
festation of that Being in Jesus Christ ; and the Holy
Ghost is spoken of as the spiritual influence proceed
ing from the Father and the Son, dwelling in the
hearts of believers, as the Source of their life—the
idea of God seen in causation, in reason, and in con
science, as making the very life of the soul itself.”
The view that I am moved to present1 concerning
ideas of St. John’s gospel, and vindicating the real thought of Athana
sius from its tri-theistic corruption^ and from the errors of the socalled Athanasian Creed. Such scholars as Hase, Meyer, and Tischendorf, abroad, and Fisher, Hedge, and Clarke at home, maintain the
genuineness and truth of the fourth gospel.
�'*
16
Christ is, that he is the historical and continuous
centre of union between God and man, by his own
divinely human personality and work; that he is the
fixed and living foundation of true faith and virtue
and fellowship; the true and living Head of our
human family; and his being, life and work not only
give us the ground of justifying faith, but the spirit
of filial goodness ; that by what he suffered and did
and is, as well as by what he was, he gave the whole
race a new status of faith and power, put us all upon
a new footing, and calls us all to reconciliation and
atonement, which he has won for us. He calls us to
*
* It is evident that the nineteenth century is to make its mark upon
Christology from its own characteristic point of view, which is the
scientific study of facts and laws in the universe. The Kicene theolo
gy of the fourth century was vitiated by the Manichean dualism that
set nature against God, and made religion discordant with true human
life by setting the hermitage above the home. The Roman theology
of the twelfth century was vitiated by the same error, ultimated in the
supremacy of the priesthood and the sway of ghostly confessors over
the human mind. The theology of the Reformation in the sixteenth
century was trammelled in Germany by a secular pride that sacrificed
catholicity to earthly thrones, and in Geneva by a sharp legalism, that
looked upon the Scriptures as a code of arbitrary institutes and in hatred
of Rome, failed to see the great currents of divine life that evolved
themselves in the historical church. We are called by God to accept
Christ as centre of the world’s history under universal laws, and to
discern his union with the whole providence and method of heaven.
This is, in the large sense of the term, the Unitarian or Universal age,
and they who are Trinitarians in name feel the grfeat inspiration of the
century which compels us to think and work out the unity of nature
and religion, reason and revelation; society and the church, time and
eternity, and to give hell and the devil far less place in the schemes of
God and the destiny of the world than, heretofore. One American
theologian of orthodox name goes so far as to maintain that hell itself
is better than nothing, and is the poorest part of the kingdom of God,
and better than no place at all.
�17
God, and if we hear his voice we walk upon an open
way, and his truth and life are with us there.
3. This is not all. Our America hears the voice
that calls us to man in his higher nature, and to God
in his abounding and condescending grace; and more
than this, it calls us to the kingdom of heaven, to the
life of the eternal good here and evermore. This is
the true progress that our striving nature craves, and
this is the great consummation to which our best
thoughts tend, the perfected and blessed society of
the children of God with each other and with Him,
the heavenly order which is the end of all Provi
dence and the crown of all creationjl Our American
mind tends to look at Christianity in this way, as a
progressive life in true relations, and not merely as
a return to an old Eden or a deliverance from the
tortures of a horrible hell. The notion is very prev
alent in all quarters, and quite decided with most ot
our friends, that too much stress is laid upon the in
dividual Adam, his perfection and his fall, and that
the whole temple of faith should rest not upon a per
sonage so uncertain and questionable, and according
to the Bible so weak in his innocenee and so human
in his fall. We can take Father Adam to ourselves,
and bless God in Christ for calling us to a higher
life and condition than his, and leading his children
forward to the kingdom of heaven^ and not back to
that earthly paradise. Nor need we hold the once
popular notion of eternal torments from the terrible
judge to give us joy in the eternal life offered by the
Beloved Son. Our American mind generally sees no
part of God’s universe that was made purposely to
2
�18
inflict torture, and all Christian legislation seeks to
correct the criminal more than to torm ent him. In the
American pulpit, too, there is less of an arbitrary hell
and more of divine order and its rule, in proportion to
the preacher’s power and the hearers’ intelligence,
yet not less call for the preaching of retribution.
The offer of progress into new light, life and joy, has
its serious and appalling side to them that reject the
call and love darkness rather than light because their
deeds are evil. They that will not go forward and
upward, stay behind and down, and darkness is upon
them and with them, here and hereafter; and the
strange notion that death is salvation has died out
by its own frailty. The most serious preaching in
America presents this issue, and they that urge the
gospel of the kingdom, not merely as a recall to
Adam’s estate, or an escape from inflicted torture,
or even as a cure for utter depravity, but as an offer
of true salvation, the state of heavenly fellowship,
the nurture of blessed life; it is they that preach the
perils of the great loss most effectively, and to them
that will not accept the great gain.
Something of this view of Christianity as the pro
gressive faith appears in all the great religious bodies
of the land, and alike in the estimate of man’s nature
and God’s plan in the Incarnation and Atonement.
Enlightened and earnest men are preaching the gos
pel as bread of life, not merely medicine and surgery,
and declaring that Christ’s work is not only to rebuke
sin but inaugurate holiness; not only to correct man
but to complete his being, by a salvation that is larger
than sin, even as God is larger than the world, the
�19
flesh and the devil. This sentiment is growing and
having much to do with the new and genial features
of personal piety and church-life in all quarters. We
may discover it at work in the prospective reunion
of the powerful, earnest, and well-taught Presbyterian
bodies, to whom the new school presents brighter
views of human ability and larger estimates of the
positive work of Christ,las completing nature, as
well as rebuking its abuses. Methodism is full of
the same great sentiment^ and it preaches and sings
and prays, that man may use his best free will and
carry the gospel of salvation even further than sin is
found; up into the heights of the Jflessed life of per
fect love. Our own people have been all aglow with
this conviction, and in no American heart did it ever
burn more fervently than in Channing, whether in
his Easter sermon on the glories of heaven, or in his
Lenox address on the emancipation of the slaves in
the West Indies, when his eloquence rose into proph
ecy as he welcomed the new ages of liberty, peace,
justice and piety, and declared that the Song of the
Angels will not always sound as a fiction. “ O come
thou kingdom of heaven, for which we daily pray I
Come, Friend and Saviour of the race, who didst shed
thy blood on the cross to reconcile man to man and
earth to heaven.”
Too much of the merely material and political
spirit has appeared in our visions of the future, and
we see now as never before the need of more Chris
tian elements, spiritual faith, and immortal hope in
our progress. The war, that we accepted, and which
we always deprecated when made upon us, originated
�20
in unchristian tempers, and men like Channing strove
to bring liberty without bloodshed, and could have
done it, had they been duly sustained by the leaders
of the nation. Let our America in her terrible grief
see now where her hope lies. She who sung her
Magnificat of triumph has since sung her Miserere of
agony; the Song of the Angels has been silenced in
the clash of arms, and in the battle-cry of brethren
who should be one; and the star that led to the
cradle of her royal child has been hidden in the
darkness that spread over his cross. Let her welcome
the angel of the Resurrection and not seek the liv
ing among the dead. Let us hear the voice of the
Good Shepherd calling us to the kingdom of God.
His wounds are ours as never before, and the pathos
of our own hearts brings us nearer his passion and its
priceless gift.
II. The Shepherd thus speaks to us, and we
Americans have heard his voice ; calling us to know
man and God truly, and to discover the kingdom of
heaven which makes God and man at one in true
communion. Hearing is not the whole of the matter.
He is the one Shepherd, and he asks to be followed
as well as heard—to be followed as our Shepherd to
his pasture and his fold.
1. Has our America in any earnest sense followed
or tried to follow him as the great leader ? Has
there been among our people any kind of practice of
the temper and virtues that are essentially Christ-like?
Has there been here any of his meekness, patience,
self-sacrifice, any thing of his burning charity, his
unflinching courage, the godly wisdom of his Word,
�21
and the godly power of his Spirit ? Who will say
that there has been none? or who will say that there
has been all that there should be ?.
How much of Jesus, the human, example, the
Son of Man—-may we not say it with gratitude as well
as humility—how much of Jesus there has been
among the men and women of America! What a
contrast between the best heart that has beat in our
homes and schools and churches, since the Pilgrims
of the Mayflower, the Dutch Calvinists of Manhattan,
the Churchmen of Virginia, the Friends of Pennsyl
vania, and the Catholics of Maryland, first raised
their voices here in hymn and prayer^ and the heart
that before beat in this continent in savage beast
and almost as savage man ! How many martyrs and
saints there have been in America to the Cross, who
have lived and died for the true faith, and how many
were the godly men and women in the old colony
times that planted the rose and myrtle of faith and
charity in the howling wilderness and made it a
garden of God!
Nor has the new age been wholly wanting in the
Christ-like temper. America, in the nineteenth cen
tury, does not indeed repeat the spirit of the twelfth
or thirteenth century, nor interpret the imitation of
Christ wholly after the mind of Thomas & Kempis
and his ascetic school; but may there not be the
love of God in Christ without monastic severity,
poverty, and loneliness ? May not God’s children
live in the world, yet keep from its evil ? With all
our restless enterprise and love of prosperity, has
there not been in our best people a burning desire
�22
to make all enterprise bring out the best strength,
and to use prosperity for the welfare of man and the
glory of God? Has there not been a largely in
creasing class of persons of the common lot who live
devoutly and humanely, devoted to the best cause,
and not tainted by the passion for gain ? And is it
not clear that among the wealthy and conspicuous,
there is a growing number of earnest souls who care
less to be rich than to be godly and charitable, and
who indicate the rise of a new and exalted class of
Americans, who do not desire wealth as the main
thing, and who give us our best type of society and
put to shame the flashy ostentation and coarse self-in
dulgence that have been and are too characteristic of
our people ? Nay, has not the devout life been grow
ing ? and is there not an increasing love for the calm
and comforting ministry of the church and clergy
among the more conservative classes, and a softening
of militant passion into filial faith on the part of
flaming agitators ? What is more memorable than
the fact, that reporters have been sent to take down
the prayers of our two great liberal reformers, and
two books have been the result that will do some
thing to give the devotion of America a place among
the litanies of the nations. So here,
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano’s tongues of flame.
At the same time the passion for worship shows itself
on a grand scale in popular assemblies, and while the
old camp-meetings still make the forests ring with
�23
the voices of worshippers, our cities gather thousands
of all names and conditions into halls and theatres,
where the hymns and prayers are given with as much
response as the stirring words of the preacher.
2. How far have we followed our Shepherd in his
pasture and faithfully taken and given its nurture ?
If labor and thought, and time, and money are
proof of Christian piety, then the history of the
American Church in the nineteenth century is a con
stant record of fidelity, for the largest increase of
Christian activity in this century has been in our
country. How memorable are the simple facts in the
leading religious bodies ! The Methodists have in
creased from 15,000 communicants to about 2,000,000;
the Baptists from 35,000 to about ^,700,000 ; the
Presbyterians from 40,000 to 700,000 the Con*
gregationalists from 75,000 to 275,000; the Episco
palians have increased to about 170,000 communi
cants, and the Catholics to about 4,000,000, and the
denomination of Christians called Liberal, most con
spicuous among them the Unitarians and Universalists, with their popular influence, eloquence and liter
ature, have risen into their position and power as
distinct bodies since the century began, although
their principles are seen throughout all ages. It is
remarkable, that while the population has increased
six-fold, the church membership has increased over
fourteen-fold, and that while in 1800 there was one
communicant to about fifteen of the population, in
1860 there was one to six. Then consider the 54,000
churches, reported in 1860, with their Sunday-schools,
missions, and plans of education and charity, direct
�24
and indirect, and who will say that there has been no
earnest following of Christ in America ? The
church of our America is more and more the bless
ing of the nation, and more and more pervading and
purifying social life, and battling with the atheism
and sensuality, the license of opinion and practice
that are assailing the foundations of the family, and
undermining all sacred obligation. Most good works
originate among its disciples, and vast is the table,
and large the provision of grace and truth, that is set
before our people, by the pulpit, press, and literature
of Christian America. Probably our work of educa
tion and charity has been, with few exceptions, based
upon positive Christian principle, and been Christlike in motive as in effect. One of our own ministers,
with hearty co-operation from brethren of all creeds,
led the great national charity that carried healing to
the sick and wounded of the war, and enlisted helpers
and virtues more precious than the 15,000,000 of dol
lars spent in the service. The spirit of such charity
does not die with that emergency, but ranges and
rises in manifold beneficence, to body and soul.
May we not say that with all our worldliness,
there has been a rising of the American mind into a
higher plane of thought and a higher tone of action
and fellowship in the best classes of our population ?
Has not our great work of organizing the continent
on the basis of freedom and industry, developed a
large public spirit that comes near the true enthusi
asm of humanity ? Has not our thinking under the
training of schools and books, of experience and his
tory, of family life and church influence, recognized
�25
more devoutly the need of God as the supreme wis
dom, and of his word in Christ as the eternal light ?
Has not the spirit of beauty taken more full posses
sion of us, and has not true art, in poetry, as in hymns
from brethren among our poets, jn music, painting,
sculpture, gardening, architecture and eloquence,
taken a more Christian expression and given promise
of the day when God shall be worshipped in the
beauty of holiness, and his loveliness shall be adored
with his goodness and wisdom ?
With all our shortcomings, we surely may cher
ish high hopes, and God who has been with us in
such might, will not desert us in our^coming need.
In a way that we little know, he may lead us to
himself by the one Shepherd, and more and more
to us open the inexhaustible riches that are in Christ
and the Spirit.
3. But what hope is there of the one fold ? Is
there any disposition in our nation toward Christian
unity, and is the multiplication of sects and strifes to
go on without end ? Ther® are surely no signs of the
speedy consolidation of all denominations of Chris
tians under one official centralized priesthood, nor do
our thoughtful and devout men desire any such con
summation. Yet to all appearance the disentegrating
process has reached its extreme point, and we discern
decided tendencies toward! virtual union between
the members of the several great bodies of Christians
most congenial with each otherj and the three divi
sions of our Amercan Christendom, the Ritualists, the
Evangelicals, and the Liberals are coming to more or
less agreement among themselves, and certainly feel
�26
ing each other’s presence as never before. Meanwhile,
throughout all churches sweeps the spirit of the
nineteenth century, and calls on all reasonable and
earnest men to help reconstruct spiritual society on
the basis of free conscience and rational faith. As
belonging to the order of Christian Liberals, we look
with great interest upon all efforts to bring our char
acteristic American independence into large and
generous Christian fellowship, and rejoice in the
many signs of progress that unite personal freedom
with universality of faith and charity in religious
habits, convictions and institutions. It is clear that
we are becoming weary of mere individualism, and
because we are conscious that we do not belong to
ourselves alone, or to our own families alone, but to
civilization, to manhood, and to God, we are ready
to recognize other men as belonging to the same
great loyalty, and yearning for a due recognition of
our place with them in God’s kingdom. It is becom
ing almost a national sentiment, if not, a popular
passion, to acknowledge the existence of the great
commonwealth of mankind, and our best thinkers
are not content to find the commonwealth of mankind
outside of the kingdom of God, or to think that the
Atlantic cable can make the unity of nations, unless
the Spirit of Divine Love send through them its quick
ening spark. On all sides generous minds are find
ing each other out, and although church organiza
tions may be expected to continue to draw their lines
somewhat as heretofore, there are master-spirits who
soar above them and sing in the upper air, the new
song of Christian faith and love under the church
�27
universal, fraternal, and filial. You showed the gen
erous temper of your own faith in laying under your
corner-stone, side by side with a copy of Channing, a
volume of the most gifted and enlarged preacher that
Europe has produced in our day, and the light from
our eastern window falls on the spot where Robert
son and Channing plead here together for God, and
Christ, and human kind, and these two leaders of the
free conscience of the nineteenth century in death are
not divided. And I am glad to say that when the
great Christian moralist of Germany, Richard Rothe,
died last summer, as soon as his death was known here,
a commemorative discourse was preached in our
chapel, and your pastor was apparently the only
preacher in America to deliver and publish a tribute
to this noble light of the evangelical church of
Germany.
We need in all proper ways to bring about the
union of freedom with universality, and make our
worship express the liberty and the charity of the
Gospel. The Independents of America to whom we
belong, have done much toward this end, and the
two branches of Congregationalists have led most of
the free and earnest thought and large fellowship so
characteristic of Americans for a half century. The
end is not yet. Our Christian Liberals instead of set
tling down upon any mechanical and final organization,
are to work out heartily and thoughtfully from their
own historical or providential centres, and not doubt
that they will draw nearer each other and the uni
versal church of God. Already some of the most
cheering aspects of American catholicity are to be
�28
found in the life of free congregations, where the
*
worship, the preaching, the work of instruction and
charity, give promise of what liberty shall do when
* Congregationalism is probably the most characteristic and original
development of church life in America, and is especially native to our
people, although of course it springs from the ancient seed. We keep
within its borders, and to-night we consecrate our church edifice in
Congregational liberty and fellowship. If we have departed somewhat
from the old Puritan ways, our brethren of the straiter sect have gone
as far alike in thought and action. It is hard to find freer thinking
than in men like Bushnell and Beecher, and. it is clear that in church
architecture and worship the change has been as great. The most
costly and ornate Gothic church building in Boston belongs to Ortho
dox Congregationalists, and in the parish where, under Dr. Jedediah
Morsel ministry, I was baptized in 1812, when a fortnight old, the new
sanctuary has a cross on the spire and a chime of sixteen bells within
the tower, not at all to the grief of the exellent pastor, Rev. Mr. Miles,
and his worthy people. Those cheerful chimes will echo to one occa
sional pilgrim there the voice of the old baptismal blessing of fiftyfive years ago.
Powerful as Congregationalism has been in America, it has shown
points of danger which need careful attention, or religious liberty and
order will alike suffer. The system works well where the people of
the congregation are devout and well bred, and they form an effective
alliance with the minister. But in rude or undisciplined communities,
the order of the church has suffered and the liberty of the pulpit been
invaded by the tyranny of insolent individuals or crude and excitable
majorities. The chief danger of our Liberal congregations comes from
the neglect of parish affairs by the most cultivated and effective men,
and leaving the control to a few persons, who are sometimes made the
tools of a coarse capitalist, or tricky politician, or ignorant zealot.
We need a more thorough organizing of our congregations on a devo
tional and practical basis, by which the whole mind of the people may
be brought out and also put into vital and wholesome co-operation with
the mind of our whole brotherhood. Too often at present the minister
is made a mere hireling, with no rights but such as depend upon
the promise to pay. Where Christian gentlemen rule, they rule well,
and are a law to themselves, but where they do not abound, there is
need of church order far more positive than now prevails, or young
men of spirit will not enter the ministry, where they are to be brow
beaten by their inferiors.
�29
it mates with faith and love; and free prayer and
extemporaneous preaching join with the choir of one
or two thousand voices in responsive psalms or choral
hymns, to give us some notion of what the ritual of
America is to be when her heart comes out, and pul
pit and people take and give their due. Everywhere
the cry is for a more sympathetic worship, and evi
dently America has too much life of her own to afford
to borrow wholly her religious method from Rome,
or Greece, or England. In Christ let us abide, and
be sure to abide in his truth that makes free, and be
not entangled with any: yoke of bondage.
In one respect, new heart is showing itself in our
worship, and our people are recognizing the unity of
the family of God and taking greats comfort in the
faith that all of his children belong to one commu
nion of spirit. The sentiment that has opened beau
tiful cemeteries in every city in the land, and‘which
has broken out in a strange and powerful, and in some
respects wild and hurtful movement called spiritual
ism, has appeared in our churches ima calm and
blessed remembrance of the dead, and in time I be
lieve that it will win great power, and draw our
people to Christ as the mediator between, the visible
and invisible world, to enter into his promise, “ If
I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.” Our
yearning hearts cry out for our true affinities on earth
and in heaven, and will not be comforted by the
selfishness or the materialism thai- says “ they are
not.” Every year chapels, churches, monumental
marbles and windows show our love for the dead, and
every year we bring myrrh to the altars of Christ, to
�30
make his name fragrant, and embalm in the immortal
sweetness the loved ones of our own hearts and
homes. With this private affection, a reverential
recognition of the great leaders of religion and hu
manity is gaining ground, and the Scriptures, and all
high literature, art, and history, are opening to us the
lives of God’s august children as perpetual members
of our race and continuous powers of his kingdom.
Thus in other ways America acknowledges the unity
of all true souls, and calls her sons and daughters to
the one fold of the one Shepherd. In our own way,
we are as a nation to do something for Christendom,
and it cannot be that a people that 'have done so
much under God to accommodate and assimilate so
many tongues and kindred and races under the au
spices of liberty, should have no original mission in
religion, and be destined merely to rehearse the old
creeds *nd litanies, and repeat the old feuds, sects,
a
and dynasties of old Asia and Europe. America hears
and follows the one Shepherd all the better by com
ing in her own free and large way into the one fold.
III. I have thus spoken of America’s place within
the fold, and treated of our acceptance of the idea
and the leadership of Christ in hearing his voice and
following his call. We must not forget the particu
lar aim of our meditation at this time.
We add now another edifice to the churches of
America, and must state in a manly way what this
church means in itself, and what relation it claims to
the church at large. The honest way is simply to
refer to our own history and to rest loyally upon our
actual foundation, and be what we are by the provi
�31
dence of God, alike as Christians and as Liberals.
This congregation was established in the year 1826,
in simple faith in Christ, by a society of Unitarian
Congregationalists, who desired liberty to worship
God in the name of Jesus Christ, without being ma
ligned as infidels. We greet here to-night the goodly
company of delegates from All Souls Church, or the
First Congregational Church that preceded ours, over
*
which Rev. William Ware was ordained, December
18, 1821, and rejoice in their good name and pros
perity under their present minister, whose absence
we regret, and seek to remedy as far as wel can by
his respected substitute, Rev. Dr. Briggs. We build
upon the same foundation as then, and on the same
essential faith and freedom, and repeated at our lay
ing the corner-stone the same gospel that Rev. Wil
liam Ware uttered more than forty years before, at
the laying of the corner-stone on Prince and Mercer
streets. We hold here together the characteristic
* The first regular Unitarian preaching in New York city was held
April 25, 1819, to about thirty persons, by Dr. Channing, in the house of
his sister, Mrs. Russell, when a considerable portion of the hearers were
from the Society of Friends. On his return from Baltimore, Dr. Chan
ning preached again, May 16, in the Medical College, Barclay St., and
November 15,1819, the First Congregational Church was incorporated.
April 29, 1820, Henry Ware, Jr., laid the corner-stone in Chambers
street, and January 20, 1821, Edward Everett preached the dedication
sermon. It is well to remember Everett in his early years as preacher,
and to believe that it has been his high mission to represent powerfully
the old Greek culture in American letters and religion, to breathe so
much of beautiful taste and fancy into American life, and save the old
humanities from the sweeping proscription of bigots and ascetics. It is,
perhaps, worth remembering here that a memorial sermon was preached
by the pastor of the Church of the Messiah after his death, on Sunday
evening, January 22, 1865, forty-four years after that dedication. The
sermon was published under the title of the Patriot Scholar.
I
�32
doctrine of Christian Unitarians, that the Supreme
*
God, our Father in heaven, is to be worshipped in the
name of his Son, and that there is unity in the being,
aims, and ends of the Godhead. We still hold the
principle that Dr. Channing declared in his dedication
sermon in 1826, that freedom and faith should be as
one, and the soul should be in all ways cheered up
ward to God, who is true life and eternal blessedness.
We speak Channing’s name with filial affection here
now, and greet cordially our revered and beloved
father, who brings his mantle here to-night that he
caught from his ascending chariot of fire. How
Channing’s name has risen before the nation within
that forty-two years, and all true Americans at home
and abroad are ready to call him their own. With
out an impassioned temperament or very sympathetic
nature, he was a zealot for the rights of the human
mind and the welfare of the race; without being
constitutionally of the muscular school of religion, he
stood up manfully for fair dealing with the body and
the soul; without being a great scholar he was a true
sage, and without being a noted philosopher he was
a great seer. A reformer without rancor; a patriot
* As represented by Channing, American Unitarianism has little
affinity with the old Unitarianism of Socinus, or of Priestley and
Belsham, but it is the most emphatic expression of spiritual liberty and
Christian faith among our people. Inwardly it is far more allied to
the spiritual doctrines of the Friends than to the semi-materialism of the
old English Socinian school. In Germany, Schleiermacher far more
adequately represents the Channing movement here, than do any of the
usual names that are set up as leading the old European Unitarianism.
At present the most earnest and able of our thinkers and writers are
more of the Broad-Church type of Robertson, Bunsen and Rothe, thaD
of the narrow, Socinian type.
�33
without clannishness; a conservative without being
reactionary; a gentleman without pride of caste; the
admiration of aristocratic scholars, yet the friend of
the workman and the poor and enslaved; a liberal,
but not a demagogue; a recluse thinker without being
a dreamer; a statesman, not a politician; a theological
leader, not a sectarian; a Christian, and none the less,
but all the more, a man; Channing has risen above
all mists and clouds into the upper sky of fame, and
he shines upon us to-night from the firmament of
thought and fidelity. The late Baron Bunsen, in his
noted work “ God in History,” places him among the
five Protestant worthies who in his judgment stand
pre-eminent as representatives of the Divine presence
in man, and thus characterizes him: “In humanity, a
Greek, in citizenship a Boman, in Christianity an
apostle.” “ If such a man, whose way of life, in the
face of his fellow - Christians, corresponded to the
Christian earnestness of his words, and presents a
blameless record—if such a one is not a Christian
apostle of the presence of God in man, I know of
none.”
The temple thus dedicated in 1826, had fitting
ministers in William Parsons Lunt and Orville
Dewey. Dr. Lunt’s short and faithful ministry laid
the foundation of his mature and honored work at
Quincy, Mass., and Dr. Dewey’s ministry of fourteen
years, in spite of its interruptions by illness, made a
mark upon the city and the country. His name and
this letter speak for themselves; and with the noble
bust in marble in our chapel, from the gifted hand
of Ward, help us submit to his absence on profes
sional duty at Baltimore now.
3
�34
New York, March 27th, 1868.
To the Pastor and Brethren of the Church of the Messiah :
I congratulate you on the completion of the new Church of the
Messiah, and desire to bring my felicitations, and the expression of
my friendly and pastoral interest, to the occasion of its dedication.
I should be with you if I were not obliged, by previous engage
ment, to go to Baltimore.
I could say much, if I had time, upon this resurrection of the
old Church of the Messiah, which was built under my pastorate,
and which, for ten years and more, was the centre to me of a life
most happy while it was passing, and most precious in recollection.
May the glory of the latter house exceed that of the former, not in
visible appearance only, but in nurturing the invisible and blessed
life of multitudes and generations to come.
Your friend and brother in the Gospel,
Orville Dewey.
Iii piety toward God and man we thus consecrate
this Church, and reverently associate the old times
and the new. Sacredly we cherish the past, not as
the chain, but the root of the present and the future.
With our best thought, and effort, and affection, we
give this temple to God in the name of the Messiah.
This building itself is loyal, in its ample accommo
dation, open spaces, and admirable hearing and speak
ing qualities, to its predecessor, the old Broadway
temple, while true to the higher standard of archi
tecture now prevailing, and creditable to the taste of
the architect. In religious expression, too, we sa
credly retain the old associations, and our prayers,
hymns, chants and ordinances, repeat the old Zion.
The old name is in the very fabric of the building,
from chapel door to church front, and from corner
stone to cross-crowned roof, so that if we should hold
our lips silent, these very stones would cry out and
�35
preach the gospel of our Lord. The old mahogany
pulpit stands in our chapel, and its sacred wood
whispers to us of the hundred voices of our brethren
who preached and prayed at its shrine, and is a bond
of communion of the past with the present, the living
and the dead. The whole interior is an embodied
gospel and a witnessing church. This whole end of
the sanctuary, with its pulpit, and font, and table,
with its star and anthem of the nativity on the arch;
with its word of promise of the spirit from the Master,
presents the gospel of God to our souls. The other
end of the interior, with its organ, the gift of our
good women, and its' windows, in memory of the
mother and of childhood, represents the great human
heart, that should receive the gospel and speak it out
in the voices and the lights of home on earth and in
heaven. God consummate the union of the two, and
bring the gospel and the heart together in this new
Church of the Messiah.
In thy Beloved Son and by thy Holy Spirit,
Father in heaven, bless this our Church, that we may
hear his voice, and be of the one Shepherd and the
one fold.
�ADDRESS TO THE CONGREGATION
BY REV. GEORGE W. BRIGGS, D. D.
Christian Friends : I more than share the uni
versal regret that the older church of our faith in
this city speaks to you in these glad, services of con
secration through a transient occupant of its pulpit,
rather than from the lips of its own honored minister,
Could he be present now, with all the associations of
years of friendship stirring his heart, with all the in
spirations of Palestine enkindling his soul, how fitly
would he speak the words of fellowship and brother
hood, how glowingly would he utter words of living
faith and Christian cheer. Still, though representing
his congregation only for the hour I feel authorized
to give you the special congratulations of its members;
congratulations expressed with far greater emphasis
by the names of its delegates, than by any words of
mine. I confidently give you, also, the congratulations
of our whole brotherhood of churches; of our minis
ters and people, all of whom glory in your success,
and rejoice in your joy. It is always an occasion of
true joy, indeed, to see a new temple, enriched by art,
by whatever may delight the eye, or charm the taste,
�37
as well as speak to worshipping hearts to quicken the
religious sentiment and life, consecrated to Christian
worship. We would carry the Gospel to the poorest,
and pour its life-giving influences around them all, as
freely as God sends the air and the light to all alike.
Let there be places whose doors open so widely, that
they seem to speak to men with the universal, loving
invitation of Jesus to the multitudes; places, halls,
theatres, groves, whatever they may be, yet made
churches for the hour, because living men stand in
them to speak God’s ^everlasting truth to needy, suf
fering, sinning brother souls. God be thanked for
every true attempt ‘to draw together those who have
no Christian home; to meet them on the broad plat
form of a common humanity. But the religious senti
ment delights also to raise the massive temple, and
the costly altar. It was the impulse of devotion, as
well as the divine command, that made the vessels of
the ancient worship of pure gold. The deepest peni
tence brought the precious ointment to Jesus to pour
it upon his feet. Pride rears splendid shrines; ex
alting itself even by what it claims to raise for the
worship of God. But devotion builds them also;
seeking by the costly gifts of earth, to express its
reverence for the priceless truths of Heaven. Beau
tify the sanctuary ‘of God; make the place of his
worship glorious, if prosperity enables you to bring
such splendid offerings. All the resources of taste
and art, all the gifts of genius, or of wealth, fulfil
their highest office when they can add a single charm
to human worship, or help to deepen the impression
of religious truths.
�38
But I confess for myself to-night. I venture to
express for our whole brotherhood, another and pe
culiar joy in the occasion and the hour. Brethren,
friends of this congregation, in the erection of this
fair temple you have given a new, an emphatic ex
pression of your devotion to that general, liberal faith
which we hold to be so priceless. It is a matter of
profoundest interest to all of us elsewhere, to have
this faith conspicuously assert itself in this great
metropolis, through the churches which it rears for
its worship, and the living voices that expound and
unfold it. It should assert itself here and everywhere
with unfeigned humility, with inexhaustible charity,
but still with unwavering confidence. The time has
gone by for it to plead for recognition as a part of
Christendom. It came into existence in the provi
dential development of religious thought. Though
our churches have been comparatively so few in
numbers, our general faith has done much to influence
other communions. We arrogate nothing to our own
special branch of the general Liberal Church. There
are other liberal communions besides our own, whose
representatives we gratefully welcome, in our glad
waiting for the hour, so surely coming, in which the
natural tendencies of thought shall obliterate every
seeming separation, and bring them and us into an
unbroken fellowship. Old creeds have put on a new
aspect; former dogmas have received a new interpre
tation, since these liberal communions have sprung
into being. The ideas of Channing are moulding
men’s opinions far and wide. Though dead, he still
speaks more powerfully than even by his living, thrill
�39
ing words. We point to the consecrated names of
those once ministering at our altars, here and else
where, whom all men now acknowledge as saintly.
All sects recognize them as belonging to the true,
spiritual, universal Church, now they have ascend
ed, though fellowship was denied to them while they
lived. The Liberal Church needs no longer to plead
for recognition, or apologize for its own existence.
Its past history and influence, its venerated names,
are its sufficient vindication. It .only needs that its
adherents should be true to it—true to its ideas, and
to its spirit, to make its future grander, mightier
than its past.
First, it needs that men should be true to its ideas.
You do not set apart this church, friends, to a nega
tive, but to a positive faith. Liberal Christianity Js
not a mere denial of others’ creeds. It is positive in
a glorious sense of the term. If I were to define its
purpose and character, I should say it is an attempt
to grasp and present the essential, fundamental ideas
of religious faith, separated from all alloy of human
speculation. If Liberal Christianity exposes the
“ errors of orthodoxy,” it is in order to discover and
enforce its truths. Everywhere it demands the cen
tral, vital, spiritual, positive thought. There is a
spiritual, vital faith respecting God, for example,
which is no metaphysical abstraction, no speculation
of the intellect, but a sublime conception of one living
spirit of perfect love, manifested not only in threefold,
but in myriad ways; revealed in nature ; imaged in
Jesus, and in every transfigured type; appearing in
this eternal Providence; present to inspire every true
�40
desire and thought. It is a conception too sublime
for us to grasp; whose grandeur awes, but whose
beauty subdues and charms; in whose glorious fulness
all little separate faiths are included, as single drops
in the boundless sea ; one grand, majestic, incompre
hensible, eternal, blessed presence, that in the sweet
words of Jesus we would call our Father, till every
question of the intellect, or of the heart, shall give
place to trust, and every fear be cast out by love.
So, too, there is a, comprehensive, spiritual concep
tion respecting Jesus, which recognizes him as especially manifesting the heart, the love of God; for
there can be no such manifestation of a living God
as in a living soul—none so bright as that in the
divinest soul; which recognizes him also as manifest
ing the true life for man; as showing that man is
capable of receiving the divinest life; that humanity
in its true estate becomes one with divinity, and that
every true son of man is a true son of God.
So, once more, there is a grand spiritual idea re
specting the words of Jesus, which regards them as
the axioms of the spiritual universe, the fundamental
laws of the soul’s life; not resting even upon his au
thority, but true in the nature of things; so that, for
example, when he says, “Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God,” apprehend the infi
nitely pure; or when he announces any other law of
his kingdom, we hear a statement which we see to
be as undeniably true as the axioms of mathematics.
It is these spiritual, fundamental religious ideas,
which prove themselves when held up in their divine
simplicity; it is this sublimely positive faith which
,
�41
Liberal Christianity, in all the phases of its manifes
tation, really seeks. The world can poorly spare the
churches that unfold it. In the confusion of its
speculations, amidst its superstitions, and its scepti
cisms, the world needs nothing so much as to recog
nize one central idea of the Liberal faith ; the idea,
that there is an indestructible foundation for religious
faith in the soul of mannand that the teachings of
Jesus are the statement of the eternal facts of spiritual
truth. What fear then of a lasting “Eclipse of
Faith ? ” What wonder is it that Jesus said, “ Though
heaven and earth pass, not one^jot or tittle of my
words shall fail! ” Bold are the assumptions of
science. But what can science, in its-pxplorations of
these material worlds, do to unsettle the eternal laws
of the spiritual nature ? There are truths far older
than those of science;older 'than the universe which
science explores. Before the earth and the heavens
were made, “ in the beginning was the word with
God.” It shall remain the same when- the earth and
the heavens have been taken downed
Warring with mone,^welcoming fellowship with
all, in the interests of spiritual, positive faith, that
feels, itself to be standing on the abiding foundations,
yet strives to be perfectly loving and free, you have
set apart this building to its sacred uses? God help
*
you to make it the representative of a religion that
is at once rational, and spiritual, and cheerful, with
all the vitality, and might of love.
Let it represent a rational religion, obedient to
the words of Jesus, “Why, even of yourselves judge
ye not what is right?”—a religion which remembers
�42.
^ow terribly the mind has erred, yet which will not
therefore quench the human reason, or ignore it, but
seek, rather, to purify it, believing that the lowly,
seeking soul can learn of the doctrine; believing in
the presence of the divine Spirit to give wisdom,
light, inspiration to loyal, asking hearts.
Let it represent a truly spiritual religion; a reli
gion which does not neglect observances and forms,
though they so often disgust when they become sub
stitutes for life, or are converted into fetters to cramp
Christian liberty; but which secures hours of conse
cration to stimulate to hours of work; and in its
acceptance or rejection of ceremonies, only seeks that
which most surely helps to fill the heart with the life
of God.
Let it represent a cheerful faith; cheerful, not
lax; for the laws of spiritual life are as immutable
as the laws of nature; cheerful, not thoughtless, for
consecration is profoundly serious. The tasks of love
and self-sacrifice are serious. Every, thoughtful view
of life is serious. Still a true faith remembers the
joy of existence also. Nature laughs in sunshine and
in flowers. Jesus was at marriage-feasts. Let faith
be cheerful, for this world is our Father’s house,
upheld, lighted,, adorned, filled by his perfect love.
We are not alone, for he is with us always; and with
that sublime assurance, how can faith be any thing
but joy ?
Once more, let this church represent a living
religion. You desire to set this building apart to
the ideas of a liberal faith. But you desire, still
more devoutly, to set it apart to the cultivation and
�4
43
diffusion of the spirit of such a faith. We do not
talk of works alone, as so many say. We believe
also in faith. But it is a faith in grand, life-giving
ideas. We believe in a conception of God that once
embraced, inevitably enkindles love. Faith in his
forgiveness leads to consecration ; impelling us to
bring our alabaster box, with its costly offering, to
pour it out in loving service. The idea of his father
hood demands that we should open our arms in the
spirit of universal brotherhood. Every truly Chris
tian idea has an electric power to quicken the hand
and heart to new activity and love. How profoundly
Jesus said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”
The life of God in the soul of man must spontaneously
imitate the activity of him whose inspiration it is.
You do not build this Church simply that you may
come here and worship. It bears the name of the
Church of the Messiah. * If it is to be a Church of the
Messiah, it will be a place in which men and women
will gather to ask themselves what they can do for
those for whom Jesus himself would work, were he
here striving to seek, and save those that are lost; a
place in which to gain the spirit that will inspire
them to undertake such divine ministries, of mercy.
What can you do, here in this great city, at this day
and hour, to instruct its ignorant masses; to reclaim
its fallen; to rescue its neglected, or worse than
orphaned children; to act the part of angels to those
in peril of perdition ? What can you do to save this
metropolis, made so splendid by the glories of civili
zation, yet reeking with abominations that are its un
utterable shame ? These are the questions that ought
�44
to ring through these Churches, above the sound or
liturgies, or the clash of warring creeds, until, even
before they bring their gifts to the altar, the wor
shippers should strive to rescue their perishing broth
ers. All true Christian worship does its work when
the soul is filled with the one question: What it can
do to save others ? For the man that loses his own
life in such Christ-like love, will inevitably find it.
It ou dedicate this Church, I trust, to Christian work,
as well as to Christian faith; to such Christian work
as the needs and sins all around it demand, and God
gives you power to do. You set it apart to Christian
ideas for the one purpose of creating, inspiring this
Christian life. Thanks be given that the world is
fast coming to regard, not devotion to forms and
creeds, but consecration to ministries of love, and
deeds of sacrifice, as the realization of discipleship,
the ideal of saintship to-day. Every other heresy
will be forgiven except the heresy of a selfish and
unchrist-like life. Show us the print of the nails
upon the hands and the feet, the tokens of a living,
suffering love—is the cry coming up louder and
louder every day—or we shall never believe that
Jesus is here. Fruitless worship begins to receive
the contempt which it merits. Earnest, Christian
men, speaking in the inspiration of living faith, only
intend to pour the love of Jesus himself into human
hearts, to lift human nature everywhere out of its
degradation and its sins, and to set it in heavenly
places; whether acknowledged or excommunicated
by ecclesiastical communions, these will be honored
by humanity as the true spiritual powers, the Apos
tolic succession, recognized and ordained of God.
�45
Brethren, the consecration of a Church is not a
form. It should be the re-consecration of all those
whose hands joined in its erection; of all who pro
pose to become worshippers at its altar. All its
beauty is dim in comparison with the beauty of the
life in the true souls that may gather here. You can
consecrate it, friends, by your devotion and your love,
and make it the house of God, the gate of heaven.
Ye are the temple of God, if his spirit dwelleth in
you. Church of the Messiah; consecrated, inspiring
name; a place in which to unfold the mind of Jesus,
and, as God gives you grace, to attain his life. Un
fold his mind, attain his life, and you will ensure the
victory of his Gospel. Once more I give you the
congratulations of our Liberal fellowship. May the
prayer of this hour be answered, and its hopes be
abundantly realized. May the consecration of this
church, and of your own ysouls, be accepted above.
For my brethren’s and companions’sake, I say, “Peace
be within these walls,” now and forevermore.
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APPENDIX.
1.
ORDER OF SERVICES
AT THE
/
J
•
dtamatfon uf flu fcrrh uf th Itemlr,
CORNER 34th STREET & PARK AVENUE,
NEW YOKE,
Thursday Evening, 7f o'clock, April 2, 1868.
I. Voluntary on the Organ.
II. Sentences, by the Minister and People.
-
(Congregation Stand.)
Minister. Our help is in the name of the Lord,
People.
Who made heaven and earth.
Minister. Blessed be the name of the Lord,
People.
From, henceforth even forever.
Minister. I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into
the house of the Lord,
People.
Our feet shall stand within thy gates, 0 Jerusalem !
Minister. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
People.
They shall prosper that love thee.
Minister. Peace be within thy walls,
People.
And prosperity within thy palaces.
Minister. For my brethren and companions’ sake I will now
say, Peace be within thee.
�47
Because of the house of the Lord, our God, I will seek
to do thee good.
Minister. The law was given by Moses,
People.
But grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
Minister. This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the
only true God,
People.
And Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.
Minister. Praise ye the Lord.
People.
The Lord's name be praised.
People.
III. Anthem, Jubilate Deo.
(Congregation remain Standing.)
Music, J. R. Thomas.
O be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness,
and come before His presence with a song.
Be ye sure that the Lord he is God; it is He that hath made us and
not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
O go your way into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts
with praise ; be thankful unto Him and speak good of His name.
For the Lord is gracious, His mercy is everlasting; and his truth
endureth from generation to generation.
Glory be to the Father, Almighty God, through Jesus Christ our
Lord.
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without
end. Amen.
*
IV
Act of Consecration.
(Pause for Silent Prayer.)
Minister. Brethren of the Ministry and People of the Con
gregation, let us rise and Consecrate this Church
with our united voices.
Ministers and People. To the worship of God our Father in
heaven, to the grace and truth of His Son, to the
communion of His Holy Spirit, to peace on earth
and good will to men, to salvation from sin and
to the life eternal, we devote this sanctuary and
consecrate this Church of the Messiah. Amen.
V. Prayer of Consecration.
Rev. E. S. Gannett, D. D.
�48
VI. Sacred Song.
Holmes.
O Love Divine, that stooped to share
Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear,
On Thee we cast each earth-born care,
We smile at pain while Thou art near !
■. . ,r.
Though long the weary way we tread,
And sorrow crown each lingering year,
No path we shun, no darkness dread,
Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near!
VII. The Holy Scriptures.
1. Old Testament.
1 Kings viii. 22-30.
Rev. A. P. Putnam.
Choir. Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the
only wise God, be honor and glory, through Jesus Christ, forever
and ever. Amen.
2. New Testament.
John xvii.
Rev. E. H. Chapin, D. D.
VIII. Consecration Hymn.
William C. Bryant.
Music, Edward Howe, Jr.
O Thou, whose own vast temple stands,
Built over earth and sea,
Accept the walls that human hands
Have raised to worship Thee.
Lord, from thine inmost glory send,
Within these courts to bide,
The peace that dwelleth, without end,
Securely by thy side.
May erring minds that worship here
Be taught the better way,
And they who mourn, and they who fear,
Be strengthened as they pray.
May faith grow firm and love grow warm,
And pure devotion rise,
While round these hallowed walls the storm
Of earth-born passion dies.
IX. Sermon.
Rev. Samuel Osgood, D. D.
�49
X. Solo.
From Handel’s Messiah.
Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf
unstopped; then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the
tongue of the dumb shall sing.
He shall feed His flock like a shepherd.
He shall gather the lambs with His arm,
And carry them in His bosom,
And shall gently lead those that are with young.
XI. Address tb the Congregation.
*
Rev. George W. Briggs, D. D.
.1..; .OidiBiV:-.!
(I , ’■
> <
XII. Congregational Hymn.
Nuremberg.
(All will Join.)
On thy church, O Power Divine,
Cause thy glorious face to shine.
Till the nations from afar
Hail her as their guiding star ■
Till her sons, from zone to zone,
Make Thy great salvation known.
Then shall God, with lavish hand,
Scatter blessings o’er the land;
Earth shall yield her rich increase,
Every breeze shall whisper peace,
And the World’s remotest bound
With the voice of praise resound.
•tH
-
XIII. Lord’s Pray er.
Minister and People.
XIV. Benediction.^:
XV. Amen.
Choir.
Historical Memoranda.
Church on corner of Prince and Mercer Streets, dedicated December 7,
1826, as the Second Congregational Unitarian Church, and Dr.
Channing preached the sermon.
Rev. William P. Lunt, D. D., settled June 19, 1828.
4.
�50
Rev. Orville Dewey, D. D., settled November 8, 1835.
Church of the Messiah, Broadway, consecrated May 2, 1839.
Rev. Samuel Osgood, D. D., installed October 3, 1849.
Church of the Incarnation on Madison Av. and 28th St., occupied from
Sept., 1864, to May, 1867.
The corner-stone of the present edifice was laid October 3,1866.
The First Congregational Church in Chambers Street (Rev. William
Ware and Dr. H. W. Bellows, Pastors,) was dedicated January
20, 1821, and Rev. Edward Everett preached the sermon.
II.
THE PRAYER OF SENEX.
EROM MASSACHUSETTS,
FOR
NEW
YORK.
(Received by mail from Medford, Mass., without name, after the Consecration.)
Our lowly dwellings suit our lowly lot,
The rural mansip^/and the humble cot;
But the Lordm|Eouse to nobler heights should rise,
Its lofty turrets mingling with the skies.
Round the home-altar child and parent kneel,
Their hopes to brighten and their wants to feel;
But at this shrine all families in one,
Would seek the Father through his holy Son.
At the home-table they who take their seat,
Only receive earth’s perishable meat;
But at the table which the Lord hath spread,
All souls believing eat the “ living bread.”
This house, this altar, and this table too,
We give to GOD, the Great; to Christ, the True;
But, above all, to Them ourselves we give;
With them to labor, and in them to live.
�51
III.
(From the Christian Register.)
EASTER IN NEW YORK,
The usual Easter services were held in the new Church of the
Messiah in New York, and ample proof was given that old friends
and the public had found their way to.’ the new edifice. At ten
o’clock in the morning a number of children were baptized at the
new and beautiful marble font, over which the pastor said a few
words of benediction before giving it to its sacred service.
The morning service followed the usual order, and begun with
the Easter Anthem, “ Christ our Passover,” and was cheered by
the voice of the fine organ, now just complete, and by the charming
array of flowers in the chancel, which were never more profuse and
exquisite. A large Greek floral cross hung in front of the pulpit,
with a centre of red camelias, and rose above a large basket of
flowers which bore in red carnations in the centre the letters I. H. S.
Each of the heavy chancel chairs was surmounted by ^combined
cross, anchor and heart of rich design, whilst in front..stood two
massive pyramids of roses, lilies, &c., on pedestals?
*
The font was crowned with a cone of conspicuous flowers,
among them some magnificent callas, and bore in front of the shaft
a floral cross of camelias, roses, and violets, which was ordered by
a mother on Friday morning, • in memory of a daughter, who died
that very night. Rich baskets of flowers were set within the chan
cel, and stars and other emblems in flower-work were hung upon
the chancel-rail. The preacher’s large chair ^n the pulpit bore a
rich floral cross above the word Messiah which is carved upon the
wood. Much heart wag shown, as usual, in these gifts which were
so abundant, and whilst on the previous Saturday flowers were not
to be had in the city for money, th^ products of several private
green-houses were put at the service of our ladies.
It snowed in the afternoon, yet the attendanc#of children and
friends was large at the festival, and the usual good spirit prevailed.
Dr. Osgood conducted the services, and gave
#
*short
sermon ®n
“ The Mind, a Garden—and how to plant it.” The scholars all re
ceived an Easter gift, and the large Bible-class of the pastor were
favored by photograph copies of a new and admirable picture of
�52
Mary and the Risen Saviour, which were sent from Paris for the
occasion by a parishioner there. Interesting memorial gifts were
assigned to families that had been bereaved, and a handsome Scrip
ture engraving was sent to the church of Dr. Gilman in Charleston,
in remembrance of him, with an Easter gift of fifty dollars for the
purchase of books for the Sunday-school there. A host of little
children came up for picture cards, whilst the hymn “ See Israel’s
gentle Shepherd stand ” was sung. Thus closed this twelfth Easter
Festival of Youth in this congregation.
In the evening, in spite of a driving snow-storm, the church was
filled, and the services, scripture, music and sermon were of a me
morial character. The new organ was highly satisfactory, and the
Odell Brothers have no reason to be ashamed of this their chief
work, which is delightful in its union of sweetness and power.
The building is unusually satisfactory as to its convenience and
beauty. For speaking and hearing it is remarkable, and notwith
standing the high ceiling and large ground, it is as easy for the
voice as a common parlor, and a conversational tone from the
pulpit can be heard in every part of the auditorium. The congre
gation, parents and children, with one voice consecrated the build
ing, and resolved with God’s help to stand by the cause so identified
with their history for over forty years.
L
IV.
GIFTS TO THE CHURCH OF THE MESSIAH.
1. Massive communion service of Etruscan pattern : two flag
ons, six cups, three plates, from communicants some time since.
2. Marble bust of Rev. Dr. Dewey, by J. Q. A. Ward, from
a number of friends.
3. First class organ of great compass, sweetness and power,
by Odell & Brother, from the ladies of the congregation.
4. Communion table of black walnut and butternut, with rich
carving of the Christ child, and the words, “ Come ye unto me,”
between two crosses made of an olive branch from the Garden of
Gethsemane, from a gentleman. The olive branch from the pastor.
5. Six alms plates of black walnut, with inscriptions in raised
letters from the words of Christ, thus :—1. Blessed are the merci
�53
fill. 2. The poor ye have always. 3. Lay up treasure in heaven.
4. To my brethren as to me. 5. God so loved the world. 6. Sick
and ye visited me. The last of these plates was given by a Christian
wife and mother, Mrs. Hervey Brown, the evening before her death.
One of the plates was the gift of an English friend, a descendant
of the old Hollis family.
6. The pulpit of black walnut and butternut, with carving,
from three gentlemen.
7. Books for the pulpit. Large Oxford bible, smaller bible,
two service books, two hymn books, Cr.uden’s Concordance, all bound
in red morocco and gold, from a gentleman.
8. Wilton carpet, in maroon and orange, for the chancel, from
a gentleman.
9. Massive baptismal font, of Italian marble, with the inscrip
tion in raised letters, “ Abide in me and I in you.” Three hundred
dollars of the cost from a gentleman, and two hundred dollars from
Mr. T. J. Coleman, partner in See & Co’s marble works.
10. The large rose window, sixteen feet in diameter, opposite
the pulpit, with dove, clouds, stars, vines, lilies and passion-flowers,
expressive of Christian womanhood, and surmounted by the first
verse of the Magnificat, 11 My Soul doth magnify th^tLord, and my
spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour,” a masterly work of Henry
Sharp, from a gentleman, in memory of his mother and sister.
11. Two small rose windows, by the same artist, bearing heads
of the Angel of the Nativity and of the child Jesus, with the in
scriptions, 11 The angel said, fear; not; I bring you glad tidings,”
and “Suffer little children io come unto me,” from a gentleman,
in memory of twin children.
12. Two massive chairs of black walnut and butternut, with
velvet seats, for the chancel, from two sisters.
13. A massive chair for the pulpit, of original design, with the
word Messiah carved on the back, from a gentleman.
14. Cover for the font, of black walnut, with flowers and cross
in bronze, in memory of a mother and daughter.15. Chest for alms for the 'vestibule, of black walnut and but
ternut, with heavy brass mountings, from a gentleman.
16. Gown of silk for the pulpit, from one of the pastor’s Bible
class.
�54
V;
DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW CHURCH OF THE
MESSIAH. .
The Church presents a front, on 34th Street, of 75 feet, and a
depth, on Park Avenue, of 125 feet, twenty-five feet' of which are
taken for the width of the chapel, leaving the Church proper 100
feet deep. The depth of the chapel is 80 feet. The original de
sign contemplated two spires, one 20 feet square by 180 feet high,
and the other 16 feet square by 125 feet high. The foundations
of these spires have been built in one solid square mass of cement
and stone to the level of the ground, upon these temporary turrets
have been built, so as to give a finished appearance to the edifice,
leaving the erection of the spires to the future. The front has a
porch of three archways with granite steps. The arches are sup
ported by eight columns with elaborately-carved capitals of ori
ginal, and each of different design, representing Christian emblems
and studies from natural foliage, lilies, ivy, ears of wheat, grape
vines, grapes, olives, thistles, passion-flowers, &c.
One of the
centre capitals has a beautifully-sculptured representation of a
pelican feeding her young from her own body, as emblematic of
true Christian love and self-sacrifice. The group sfeems nestled
under a cluster of white lilies, the large leaves of which appear to
shelter the pelican. On the opposite and corresponding capital is
sculptured a dove and olive leaves, the emblem of the holy spirit
and peace. On the face of the outer arches are the inscriptions,
“ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” The Church of the Messiah
(and under it), “ This is my beloved Son, hear him,” and on the
third arch, “ Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Over the
inner or entrance arches are the inscriptions, “ Seek and ye shall
find,” “ Lo! I am with you al way,” and the third, “ Hallowed
be thy name.” Above the porch is a rose window 16 feet
, in diameter, and at the apex of the front there is a cross 22
feet high inclusive of its base or plinth. The arms of the cross
seem to be within a ring, the emblem of eternity. The approach
to the nave is through a vestibule 10 feet deep and 40 feet in
width. At the ends of the vestibule, and in the turrets, are spacious
stairs leading to the galleries. The nave has 928, and the galleries
a
�55
'4
300 seats. There are no columns in the nave, the galleries being
supported by brackets. The galleries are 13 feet in width by the
depth of the nave, 80 feet. The easterly end gallery is used entirely
by the choir and organ. -The organ occupies a space of 40 by 12
feet, at each end a space of 12 feet square is encased. The inter
mediate space is filled with large pipes exposed to view; and all
will be richly decorated. On each case is A cluster of a fine-carved
lyre, bugles and palm-tree branches. In the centre panel of the
wood-work of the organ gallery front is an allegorical sculptured
emblem of music, representing an angel upon clouds, playing the harp.
The chapel being at the rear of the church, and the space being
limited, prevented the construction of a recessed sanctuary or
chancel; instead of beingt^recessed it was built into the nave, and
partly formed by a tabernacle with columns supporting A triumphal
arch, intended as symbolical of the triumph of Christ, and is sur
mounted by a cross at the apex. On the arch is the inscription :
Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and good will to all
men. The base of the tabernacle is about 10 feet high, its upper
mouldings are surmounted by ornaments of natural foliage, the
lilies largely predominating, besides studies of morning-glory, ivies
and passion-flowers.^ Behind these flowers are gas jets to light the
pulpit. The columns which support the arch have sculptured
capitals with heads of a cherub, lion, ox and eagle, the symbols of
the four evangelists. Under the arch of the tabernacle is the. altar
and pulpit, both worked harmoniously into each other as if intended
to present an altar and super-altar; the face of the pulpit is panelled
to form a cross with an ornamental monogram of I. H. S. The
centre panel of the altar is richly ornamented by sculptured work,
representing Christ as an infant, holding a cross in one hand, and
the other hand resting upon a globe. Upon the globe are the out
lines of the continent, and the words North America. All is surrounded by a wreath of grapes, vines, and ears of wheat, and the
inscription: Come ye unto me. In the two side-panels of the
face of the altar, small crosses have been formed by pieces of olive
brought from Jerusalem by & friend of the pastor who took
the olive branch from the garden of Gethsemane.
The whole sanctuary is enclosed by a railing. The roof is
unsupported by columns, but is trussed, resting entirely upon the
�56
side walls and buttresses. The ceiling is at its highest point 54
feet above the floor, and is moulded with ribs to indicate, as much
as possible, the construction of the roof. It terminates at the side
walls in a large cove, and resting upon a cornice, and all seems
supported by large sculptured corbels. On the face of these cor
bels are winged cherubs with olive branches; the sides have panels
with water lilies; the corbels are surmounted with a gas fixture of
original design, representing a large white lily. On the top of the
sluice cornice, along the entire side walls, are jets of gas with star
burners, about 6 inches apart, lighting the church entirely from
the ceiling, leaving no glaring lights near the eyes of the audience.
The exterior is faced with stone from quarries at Nyack, on the
Hudson : the light-colored stone used in the ornamental work and
trimmings, is from quarries near Cleveland, Ohio, and.a'11 resting
upon a base of Quincy granite. The architecture is in the Ger
man Round Gothic or Rhenish style. The rose window, over the
organ, is a striking feature of beautiful design, a dove in the cen
tre represented as descending from the clouds, and the divisions on
the outer circumference are richly ornamented with ecclesiastical
emblems and flowers. In the turrets, at each side of the organ, ar
e
*
pictorial windows with cherubs, which, with the rose window, were
presented as memorials; they were designed and excuted by Mr.
Sharp. The woodwork of the interior is of black walnut and
butternut.
All of the work was done under the supervision of a
building committee, composed of the following-named gentlemen :
John Babcock, Dexter A. Hawkins, Richard Warren, Robert M.
Field, and John H. Macy, with the pastor, Dr. Osgood, as advisory
member, without a vote.
The cost of the edifice was $160,000. The painting of the
tabernacle and the woodwork of the altar and pulpit, also the deco
rating of the organ, was done by Messrs. J. I. & R. Lamb. The
masonry, by John T. Conover. The plastering, by the Power
Bros. The carpenter work, by Messrs. Jennings & Brown. The
stone cutting and porch, by Messrs. Jacques & Mooney. The
sculptured work, by Mr. E. Plassman (of Plassman’s School of Art,
6th Av., near 9th St.). The organ was built by Messrs. J. H. &
C. S. Odell, 165 7th Av. The upholstery work is by Doremus
& Nixon. Mr. Carl Pfeiffer is the architect.
•
�57
The society sold their church on Broadway for $150,000, paid
off the debt, some $20,000, and purchased the present site, 125
feeton Park Avenue by 105 feet bn 34th Street, for $75,000;
and, for use until they should build, purchased the Church of the
Incarnation, corner of Madiso# Avenue and 28th Street, for $45,000. This they sold, after three years’ use, for $70,000. The
generosity of members of; the society has contributed gifts of the
value of $15,000 more, making^ fund of $170,000, as a basis of
future financial prosperity.
The location of the new church is one of the best, if not the
best, on Manhattan Island. It is on the5 crown of Murray Hill,
overlooking the lower half of New Yorkfand part of Brooklyn, in
the midst of the best residences of the city, %n the corner of two
streets, one, 34th Street, 100 feet wide, and the other, Park Avenue,
140 feet wide, having unequalled advantages of light, air, and access;
and yet, on the Sabbath, undisturbed by the roar, and noise, and
dust of Broadway or Fifth Avenue.
By the side of the church is a lot for a parsonage, and at the
rear of the chapel, space for a sexton’#■‘cottage.
The site, though costing $75,000, would, if in the market now,
sell for $100,000. The property of the Church is worth $250,000.
The pews were valued at only sixtyFperi cent, of this sum, since
that would be sufficient to pay all debts, and redeem, at par, all
scrip held for pews in the old church. This gives to every pur
chaser of a pew in the new church $100 of property for every $60
paid by him.
5
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Victorian Blogging
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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>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Faith and freedom in America. Sermon at the consecration of the Church of the Messiah, Park Avenue and Thirty-Fourth Street, April 2, 1868.
Creator
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Osgood, Samuel
Briggs, George W.
Description
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Place of publication: New York
Collation: 57 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Includes the address to the people by Rev. George W. Briggs. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Appendix 1: Order of Services. II: The Prayer of Senex. II: Easter in New York (from the Christian Register).
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Trow and Smith
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1868
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G5268
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<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 (Faith and freedom in America. Sermon at the consecration of the Church of the Messiah, Park Avenue and Thirty-Fourth Street, April 2, 1868.), 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>
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Text
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English
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United States of America
Sermons
Church and State-United States of America
Church of the Messiah (New York)
Conway Tracts
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PDF Text
Text
In Memoriam
A MEMORIAL DISCOURSE
IN HONOUR OF
JOHN
STUART
MILL,
BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY.
WITH
HYMNS
.AJSTZD
HEADINGS,
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL, FINSBURY,
Sunday, May 2 sth, 1873.
PRICE SIXPENCE.
��HYMN.
Britain’s first poet,
Famous old Chaucer,
Swanlike, in dying
Sung his last song,
When at his heart-strings
Death’s hand was strong.
“ From false crowds flying
Dwell with soothfastness ;
Prize more than treasure
Hearts true and brave ;
Truth to thine own heart
Thy soul shall save.
“ Trust not to fortune ;
Be not o’ermeddling ;
Thankful receive thou
Good which God gave ;
Truth to thine own heart
Thy soul shall save.
“ Earth is a desert,
Thou art a pilgrim :
Led by thy spirit,
Grace from God crave ;
Truth to thine own heart
Thy soul shall save.”
�4
Dead through long ages
Britain’s first poet—
Still the monition
Sounds from his grave,
“ Truth to thine own heart
Thy soul shall save.”
Music by E. Taylor.
w. J. Fox.
READINGS.
How beautiful, upon the mountains,
Are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings,
That publisheth Peace I
Upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, have I set watchmen
Who shall never hold their peace, day and night.
Go through, go through the gates ;
Prepare ye the way of the people !
Lift up a standard to the peoples !
Behold my servant whom I uphold,
My chosen one in whom my soul delighteth :
I have put my spirit upon him ;
He shall publish right among the nations.
A bruised reed shall he not break,
And the smoking flax shall he not quench.
He shall publish right in truth.
He shall not grow feeble nor be discouraged,
Till he have established right in the earth ;
And the isles shall wait for his law.
I have called thee for deliverance,
A light of the nations,
To open blind eyes,
To set at liberty those that are bound,
Even them that sit in the prison of Darkness.
Isaiah.
�5
I have heard these words—“ Living in solitude to master
their aims, practising rectitude in carrying out their prin
ciples”—but where have I seen such men ?
To sit in silence and recall past ideas, to study and feel
no anxiety, to instruct men without weariness ; have I this
ability in me ?
The man of character does not go out of his place. He
is modest in speech, but exceeds in action.
He will hold rectitude essential—bringing his work
forth in humility, performing it with prudence, completing
it with sincerity. What he seeks is in himself.
There is a divine nobility and a human nobility. Tobe
a prince, a prime minister, or a great officer, constitute
human nobility. Benevolence, justice, fidelity, and truth,
and to delight in virtue without weariness, constitute
divine nobility. The ancients adorned divine nobility, and
human nobility followed it.
It has never been the case that he who was not sincere
could influence others ; nor that he who possessed genuine
virtue could not influence others.
Whenever the superior man passes renovation takes
place.
The principles of great men illuminate the universe.
The principles they cherish begin with the common duties
of men and women, but in their extent they light up the
'universe.
Confucius.
Buddha was residing at Jetavana. In the night a
heavenly being, illuminating Jetavana with his radiance,
approached him, saying—“ Many gods and men desire to
know the things that are excellent.” Buddha said :
�6
“ To serve the wise and not the foolish, and to honour
what is worthy of honour : these are excellencies.
“To dwell in the neighbourhood of the good, to bear the
remembrance of good deeds, and to have a soul filled with
right desires : these are excellencies.
“To have knowledge of truth, to be instructed in science,
to have a disciplined mind, and pleasant speech : these are
excellencies.
“To honour father and mother, to provide for wife and
child, and to follow a blameless vocation : these are
excellencies.
“ To be charitable, act virtuously, be faithful to friends,
and lead an innocent life : these are excellencies.
“ To be pure, temperate, and persevering on a right path:
these are excellencies.
“ Humility, reverence, contentment, gratitude, attentive
ness to wise instruction : these are excellencies.
“ To be gentle, to be patient, to converse with the reli
gious : these are excellencies.
“ Self-restraint and Charity, the knowledge of the great
principles, and the hope of the eternal repose : these are
excellencies.
“To have a mind unshaken by prosperity or adversity,
inaccessible to sorrow, secure and tranquil : these are
excellencies.
“ They that do these things are the invincible ; they
attain the perfect good.”
Buddha.
Seeing the multitudes Jesus went up into a mountain ;
and when he had sat down, his disciples came unto him.
And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying :—
“Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the king
dom of heaven.
�7
Blessed are the lowly ; for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they who mourn ; for they shall be com
forted.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after jus
tice ; for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful ; for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart ; they shall see God.
Blessed are the peace-makers ; for they shall be called
the children of God.
Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness
sake ; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and perse
cute you, and say all manner of evil against you, falsely
.......... for so did they persecute the prophets that were
before you.
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a
hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and
put it under a bushel, but in a candlestick ; and it giveth
light to all that are in the house. In like manner let
your light shine before men, that others seeing your
good works may judge of your Father in Heaven.”
Jesus.
Calmly, calmly lay him down !
He hath fought the noble fight;
He hath battled for the right;
He hath won the unfading crown.
‘
Memories, all too bright for tears,
Crowd around us from the past,
Faithful toiled he to the last,—Faithful through unflagging years.
�8
All that makes for human good,
Freedom, righteousness, and truth,
Objects of aspiring youth,
Firm to age he still pursued.
Kind and gentle was his soul,
But it glowed with glorious might;
Filling clouded minds with light,
Making wounded spirits whole.
Dying, he can never die !
To the dust his dust we give ;
In our hearts his heart shall live ;
Moving, guiding, working aye.
Music from Beethoven.
Adapted from Gaskell.
MEDITATION.
Sweet day ! so cool, so calm, so bright,
Bridal of earth and sky ;
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die !
Sweet rose ! in air whose odours wave,
And colour charms the eye ;
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die !
Sweet spring ! of days and roses made,
Whose charms for beauty vie ;
Thy days depart, thy roses fade,
For thou must die I
�9
Only a sweet and holy soul
Hath tints that never fly ;
While flowers decay, and seasons roll,
It cannot die.
George Herbert.
JOHN STUART MILL.
Of old it was said “ The righteous dieth and no man
layeth it to heart.” That at least cannot be said of
England standing beside the grave of her noblest son.
Friend and foe have laid to heart the departure from
the world of one who has left so deep an impress upon
it. The Church journal which honestly exults in his
death, saying it is glad he is gone and does not care
how soon his friends follow him, has laid it to heart.
Those who are busily circulating in private a printed
catalogue of slanders against his fair fame, have laid
it to heart.
Let them rave,
He is quiet in his grave.
They cannot rave his truth out of existence. Their
hatred only reveals how deep his arrow has gone into
the heart of their wrong. Great men may be mea
sured, like towers, by the shadows they cast. Their
elevation is attested by the wrath of the base against
them. But they alone know the height who have
�IO
climbed to it, and caught the grander view it com
mands. And whilst a few, with vulture instinct, are
tearing the sod above the great heart, we may well
turn with a sad satisfaction to the general and real
grief of this people at the sorrowful tidings that the
powerful brain so busy with schemes for human wel
fare is still, that the heart which beat only for man
beats no more. The high-toned and impressive utter
ances of the press have done honour to the national
feeling. Westminster Abbey has asked permission
to enshrine his dust. Prime Minister* and Peer have
joined with philosopher and poet to do homage to his
worth. Whatever posterity may have to say of the
shortcomings of this generation, so much we may be
sure will be recorded in its honour. There is a dreary
catalogue in the past of the great unrecognised, of
mighty spirits sitting in the world at mighty tasks,
and departing, to leave a consecration only to the
vacant rooms where they have laboured, and bring
men as‘pilgrims to pay to their dust the homage
denied to their lives. That day is past. The people
listened to this great man ; bore him to their Parlia
ment ; shaped their law to his thought ; and they now
feel on them the shadow of the dark valley into which
he has entered.
Certain eminent men, in giving their names to the
Committee formed to express in some suitable form
* Since this was spoken, Mr. Gladstone has withdrawn from
the Committee formed to prepare some fit memorial of Mr.
Mill.
�this national feeling, have taken care to say that it
implies no unity of sentiment with Mr. Mill on great
■Questions. However needless such a precaution may
rf be, it is another tribute to his distinctive grandeur. It
rf reminds us again that his fame was won without com
cr pliance. It was not by concession to the opinions of
O others ; it was not by bending before the position or
q principles of the powerful, or reflecting established
q prejudice, that he gained the reverence now accorded
rf him. But it is despite a life-long opposition to such
ot i opinions and prejudices that his genius and character
rt make themselves felt, and prevail like some law of
rt nature. And, indeed, this man’s strength lay in his
rt near relationship to the laws of nature. We may say
a ■ of him as Confucius said of his dead friend, ‘ Heaven
38 alone is great and he was like unto it.” No artificial
£2 systems could allure him from his allegiance to the
X) i order of nature and the order of thought. He had
33 j raised his heart and brain into accord with the truth
to of things, to its vision he was ever obedient, and what
'fl he spoke to men was what he had learned while
KJ sitting as a devotee in his solitude, communing with
»9 eternal reason.
There is a date in my own memory, marked round
with vermilion, when I had the high privilege of pass
ffj ing a day with him amid wood and field, and beneath
fii the blue sky. And while he spoke, leaf and flower
If and sunbeam seemed to weave themselves around him
. J as a frame. His words were their kindred, so real
I 'fl were they, so gentle and so true. To listen was to be
J
if
�12
raised into a purer atmosphere. He spoke of a modern
French philosopher, with whom he had been too much
identified, who had treated certain sciences with a
certain contempt as not being of utility to man. “ As
if,” he said, “ any one could tell what is of utility to
mankind ! How many a truth, seemingly insignificant,
has turned out to be of momentous importance ! How
many inventions, after remaining a long time little
more than toys, have become engines of civilisation !
This little plant I have just plucked, and mean to
examine, who can say it may not be just the one link
needed in a great chain of knowledge ? It is never
safe to regard any fact as small. All that we esteem
great truths have been built up by these apparently
small bits of discovery, and to despise any truth
because we cannot see its use would bring our advance
to a full stop.”
At another time, and when listening to his conver
sation on a totally different subject, I had reason to
observe how each conviction he held ran through
and through him. He was this time speaking of
the downfall of slavery in America, and the prin
ciple he had maintained of reverently treasuring every
truth, however small or seemingly useless, re-appeared
in his faith that right ideas should be pursued, how
ever hopeless or visionary they might appear. From an
intimate acquaintance with the chief anti-slavery men
of America, I had said that they had not at all hoped to
see the success of their labours. They had grown up
from nothing; they had been derided as a handful of
�i3
visionaries; they had agreed that they were vision
aries, and the most sanguine among them had never
dreamed of that near consummation of their hope
which they have lived to witness. 11 It was that very
k fact,” said Mr. Mill, “ that made their power so great,
iS and their victory so complete. Not seeing a near
success, not hoping to reap what they were sowing,
they gave themselves all the more absolutely to the
principle. They were not tempted to compromise it
by any prospect of securing success by doing so. It
is no true Utilitarian principle for men to maintain
only that whose practical outcome and effect they can
see and measure; but it is to trust that the truth is
and must be useful, if not to us, to those who come
after us. To serve the truth thus unreservedly is
itself, too, success, even though it may appear unsuc
cessful. The anti-slavery men of America refused to
sanction a great wrong by participating in the politics
of the country : they would not even vote ; but each
man who abstained from voting thereby really voted
very heavily; and the abolition of slavery which has
followed is the sublimest manifestation of purely
moral power which our time has witnessed. It is
a lesson of the might that may lie in the most
seemingly ineffective and unpractical principle that
we hold.”
This, you will observe, is a restatement in applica
tion to morals and politics, of that principle he had
maintained with reference to Nature, that the smallest
and most useless fact was to be studied and rever-
iv
al
ffi
wi
�14
enced as much as the greatest, and that it was con
stantly turning out that the least was the greatest.
It is hard to preserve patience with those who
have attributed to Mr. Mill the belief in that kind
of Utilitarianism which is coarsely conceived by
themselves as a mere consecration of that which
is convenient or immediately serviceable. The whole
life of this man was devoted to ideals. Above
the heads of time-servers and self-seekers, he passed
on with his eye fixed on the star-like truth from
which he never swerved. I will not dwell on that
which his personal friends know : that he might
have been a man of large wealth had he not
held his income more for solitary students, and poor
scholars, and public purposes than for himself ; but I
may ask with what Idealist can you associate more
ideals than with him ? The right of the labourer in
the land, the secular education of the people, the
emancipation of mankind from superstition, the en
franchisement of women—all visions ! As visions he
espoused them ; as fair ideals he lived for them ; as
dreams unrealised he has gone down amid them to
his long sleep. Yet these were the bright hopes of a
Utilitarian philosopher, of one whose Utilitarianism
consisted in his perfect faith that whatever was true
was also useful, and who had proved to us in the world
that though we do not avail ourselves of that truth,
its utility is already manifested in its power to build
up a noble life and adorn it with spiritual beauty.
It is one of the saddest signs of the degree to which
�i5
the most civilised countries are as yet sunk in super
stition that the majority among us, perhaps, can only
think of such a man as a Sceptic, or an unbeliever in
religion. There was infinitely more religion in his un
belief than can be found in all the Churches of Eng
land. In an epigram of Schiller’s it is said : “ To what
religion dost thou belong?” “To none you could
name.” “ And wherefore to none ?” “ For the sake of
religion.” (Aus Religion.) In an age which bows down
to graven images—none the less graven images be
cause set on inward altars—here was one who would
not bow down to such nor serve them, and straight
way the cry is heard “ Infidel,” “ Atheist !” It really
makes religion a mockery. If Infidelity means such
lives, Heaven send us more Infidels ! The truth was
that he could belong to none of the religions around
him simply because he was too religious. There is
a certain characteristic which is inherent in all fine
natures, that what they they think they also feel. It
was the character of Mr. Mill, beyond all the men I
have ever known, that his feelings went along with
his thoughts. It was not enough for him to know
virtue, he must possess it; and it was not enough for
him to possess it, but he must love it. Truth was his
Lord, and his delight was in the law of that Lord ; and
on that law did he meditate day and night. Con
sequently it was impossible for him to follow the
common plan of saying one thing while he felt an
other ; to repeat creeds not in his heart; or to enter
temples where he must leave truth at the threshold.
�i6
But the habitual reverence of his mind, his essen
tial religiousness, made him in every moment a
worshipper, and every spot whereon he stood a
temple.
In matters of transcendent import with which small
theologians have complete though suspicious fami
liarity, he was reticent. On one occasion within my
knowledge he spoke in conversation concerning the
great subjects of human belief and hope—spiritual
existence and immortality. “ On these things,” he
said, “ there is no positive evidence at all. It is true
that in experience we know of mind only in connec
tion with physical organisation; but this is no evidence
that it may not exist otherwise. There is really no
evidence bearing on the subject one way or the other.
All that can be said is, that the common aspiration of
mankind furnishes a presumption in favour of the
reality of that towards which it aspires; but the actual
proof or confirmation of that presumption must wait
for the further increase of human knowledge. Noth
ing is proved—all is possibility.”
This, may seem a very slight faith beside the inti
mate knowledge copiously poured forth from every
little chapel pulpit, where everything is known about
Heaven and Hell and God, even to the number of
his family; but I believe that Humility will rather
go and sit beside the thinker in his ignorance, and
acknowledge its inability to comprehend the incom
prehensible or utter the unutterable. Socrates once
received a prize in Athens for possessing greater
�i7
knowledge than any other; and that knowledge in
which he excelled was knowledge of his own ignor
ance.
It may be noted of Mr. Mill that he is one of the
very few great authors who have never uttered or
written one word of discouragement. As a political
economist he was the first to encourage the labourer
to believe that his lot might and would be improved;
as a social reformer he was the first to encourage
woman to have faith in her larger destiny; and now
here in the region of religious inquiry, in the moment
when he was warning a friend of the lack of real
knowledge of those high matters, he ended with the
cheering words, “ All is possibility!” He knew full
well how many planets had rolled on overhead, un
discovered through long ages, to be revealed at length
to watchers by night when the instruments for seeing
them had been perfected, to say to us, Because you
know nothing now you will never know anything.
Rather amid the darkness he has sounded the watch
word clear and strong—“ All is possibility.’^ For this
really is the tenor of all he has written. And we may
say that his whole philosophic work was an endeavour
to perfect the lenses and the telescopes of the mind,,
to teach men how to use the instruments of thought,
through which that highest knowledge is to be reached,
if it is ever to be reached. And so great was his
service in teaching men what knowledge is and what
it is not, in teaching them the meaning of words and
the values of their ideas, that I doubt not when all the
�i8
fictions and superstitions have cleared away, if then
any insight into supersensual mysteries is attained,
the age attaining it will canonise as a saint this man
who taught men how to look and whither to look.
The ancient world—to use an illustration suggested
by himself—did not much regard the mathematicians
of Alexandria, who passed what seemed idle days and
nights investigating the properties of the ellipse, but
two thousand years after their speculations explained
the solar system, and through their labours ships now
circumnavigate the globe.
There is a passage which Mr. Mill once wrote about
Plato in which, as I think, he unconsciously described
the task of his own life. He says
“ The enemy
against which Plato really fought was Commonplace.
It was the acceptance of traditional opinions and cur
rent sentiments as an ultimate fact j and bandying of
the abstract terms which express approbation and dis
approbation, desire and aversion, admiration and dis
gust, as if they had a meaning thoroughly understood
and universally assented to. The men of his day (like
those of ours) thought that they knew what good and
evil, just and unjust, honourable and shameful, were,
because they could use the words glibly, and affirm
them of this and of that, in agreement with existing
custom. But what the property was, which these
several instances possessed in common, justifying the
application of the term, nobody had considered ;
neither the sophists, nor the rhetoricians, nor the
statesmen, nor any of those who set themselves
�T9
up or were set up by others as wise. Yet, who
ever could not answer this question was wan
dering in darkness; had no standard by which his
judgments were regulated, and which kept them con
sistent with one another ; no rule which he knew, and
could stand by, for the guidance of his life. Not
knowing what justice and virtue are, it was impossible
to be just and virtuous; not knowing what good is,
we not only fail to reach it, but are certain to embrace
evil instead. Such a condition, to any one capable of
thought, made life not worth having. The grand busi
ness of human intellect ought to consist in subjecting
these general terms to the most rigorous scrutiny, and
bringing to light the ideas that lie at the bottom of
them. Even if this cannot be done, and real know
ledge be attained, it is already no small benefit to
expel the false opinion of knowledge; to make men
conscious of their ignorance of the things most needful
to be known, fill them with shame and uneasiness at
their own state, and rouse a pungent internal stimulus,
summoning up all their mental energies to attack these
greatest of all problems, and never rest until, as far as
possible, the true solutions are reached.
Such was the aim of Plato who lived in an age of
transition, inquiry, doubt, like our own ; and such was
the aim of Mill. Where he saw the houses built on
sand swept away, there at least he would dig deep and
lay foundations which could never be shaken, based
on the truth of things, the eternal rock. We may
build on it in darkness, but there will come those who
�20
shall build on it in light. However much we may
misunderstand those sent to guide and raise us, we
may be sure posterity will make no mistakes. When
they cast their eyes back they will surely detect those
who amid groaning humanity sought only their own
good,—cringed to the strong,—repeated the servile
creed,—their double tongue uttering all that is sordid
and base. And they will pick out those who came to
the rescue of humanity in its time of trial, who stood for
justice and simple truth, faithful unto death.* They
will say that in the grave of John Stuart Mill closed
one of the few sacred lives of history.
There was blended with his intellectual work other
that required a yet higher nature, work that needed
preponderating moral sensibilities, a deep human
sympathy, a rich emotional nature. I have said that
Mr. Mill always felt what he thought,—and whenever
he spoke the blood in his cheek spoke too. But there
were two themes only upon which I have known his
habitual calmness give way to agitation,—two only
where, as he spoke, his mind caught flame and rose
into passionate emotion. One of these was when
before emancipation had taken place in America he
saw humanity enslaved, and a Republic fettered by
the same chain it had bound around the negro. The
other was when he saw women struggling to break
the galling political and social chains inherited from
ancient, from a barbaric past. Into their cause he
* I have remembered here words spoken by Emerson on the
death of Theodore Parker.
�21
entered with an enthusiasm which brought again the
age of chivalry, and the brave efforts he made to
secure woman from hereditary wrong made him to
our prosaic time the figure of St. George rescuing the
maiden from a dragon. The world has felt a silent
sympathy as in the French town he sat, studied, wrote,
at a window overlooking the grave that held that trea
sure of his soul beside whom he now reposes ; but it
has admired as it saw this personal devotion to one
noble woman consecrating him to the cause of all her
sisters. Ah, ye women, who amid many buffets and
sneers are striving to attain a truer position and larger
life, to help man to raise the suffering world to a
higher plane,—ye women, what a friend have you lost!
Daughters of England! weep not for him, but weep
for yourselves and for your children !
The Hindoo standing beside his dead is accustomed
to render him back solemnly to the elements. “ O
Earth,” he cries, “ of thee he was formed, to thee we
commend our brother. Thou Fire, emblem of purity,
dids’t quicken him, to thee we return him. Air that
gave him breath, to thee we yield him. Water that
sustained, receive thy share of him who has taken an
everlasting flight!” Even so must we .consign to
Nature which gave him to us the man for whom we
mourn. Great-hearted brother of all the sons and
daughters of men, brave warrior of truth, you have
fallen at your task suddenly, when your hope and ours
were highest for your future work ; but we consign
you to the elements that worked in and through you,
�22
not without consolation; for we know that the prin
ciples you maintained are deep in the heart of that
nature to which you return. The flowers blooming
over your grave shall write them in the dust, and the
rustling leaves repeat them; the sighing winds will
whisper, the storm will publish them ; they shall move
with the stars in their courses.
Part in peace ! Is day before us ?
Praise His name for life and light;
Are the shadows lengthening o’er us ?
Bless His care who guards the night.
Part in peace ! with deep thanksgiving
Rendering, as we homeward tread,
Gracious service to the living,
Tranquil memory to the dead.
Part in peace ! such are the praises,
God our Father loveth best;
Such the worship that upraises
Human hearts to heavenly rest
Music by Miss Flower..
AUSTIN AND CO.,
PRINTERS,
Sarah F Adams.
17, JOHNSON’S COURT,
FLEET STREET, E.C.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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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>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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In memorium: a memorial discourse in honour of John Stuart Mill ... with hymns and readings
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 22 p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1. Printed by Austin & Co, 17 Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, London.
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South Place Chapel
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[1873]
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G3329
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Sermons
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (In memorium: a memorial discourse in honour of John Stuart Mill ... with hymns and readings), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
John Stuart Mill
Memorial Addresses
Morris Tracts
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Text
INAUGURAL DISCOURSE
AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL,
ON SUNDAY, 1st OCTOBER, 1871.
BY
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY, B.A.,
ST. EDMUND HALL, OXFORD, LATE VICAR OF HEALAUGH.
LONDON:
To be obtained of the Author at
ST. GEORGE’S HALL.
1871.
Price Fourpence.
��SERMON.
c< Let us not be weary in well-doing; for in due season
roe shall reap if we faint not.”
Q&LKTlkKS
vi. 9.
I have chosen this text as a motto on this very
interesting occasion of our assembling here to-day,
rather than as a special subject of our meditation.
It would be unnecessary, and even unprofitable, to
occupy our thoughts with an essay on the duty of
perseverance, or with a string of common-places
about success being the reward of patient and
well-sustained exertion. We are too much men of
the world not to know by experience that if we wish
to succeed in our present undertaking, we must
bring to bear upon it our best and wisest thought—
our undaunted courage under, apparent failure—and
our most patient and self-denying exertions.
It seems more fitting to the circumstances of the
hour that we should begin our work with a brief and
comprehensive review of what we have undertaken
�4
to do, so as to get, if possible, in plain words, a
definite statement of the objects which have drawn,
and are still drawing, together from all parts of the
world so important an organization as that which
we profess to represent.
Our first work—that indeed which has been the
key note of this organization — is to undermine,
assail, and, if possible, to destroy that part of the
prevailing religious belief which we deem to be false.
We make no secret of our antagonism. We
frankly state our denials, and are ready to give our
reasons for the denial of any doctrine which we de
nounce. We are in open warfare against much of
what goes by the name of Christianity. We repu
diate at the outset the tacit or avowed assumptions
which are almost universally accepted as the basis
of religious belief.
To be more explicit, we deny the doctrines of the
fall of man from original righteousness; of the curse
of God against our race, and of his supposed sen
tence of any of his creatures to everlasting woe;
therefore we deny not merely the doctrine of the
atonement, but the necessity for any method what
ever of appeasing the imaginary wrath of God. For
every one of these doctrines involves a flaw in the
moral perfection of God, and violates our instinctive
perception of His goodness. The fall of man, e.g.,
involves an admission that God was either unable or
unwilling to keep His creature as good as He had at
first made him ; and that, contrary to the conclusions
of science, God’s work is not progressive, that the
�5
first man was a paragon of perfection, instead of
being in the lowest rank of savages. The doctrine
of God’s curse against our race in consequence of
the first man’s sin involves a still greater blemish on
the moral perfection of God; it is contrary to all
sense of justice that one man should be an object of
wrath in consequence of another man’s sin, much
more that a whole world of countless millions should
be deemed accursed and sentenced to everlasting
perdition through the sole faults of their first parents.
This doctrine we discard, because it is morally de
grading to God. For the same reason, only with
immeasurably greater indignation, we reject the
doctrine that God withdrew the curse and sentence
from the heads of a few of our race in consequence
of the death of Jesus, by which, orthodoxy tells us,
the Father was reconciled to men. The remedy was
worse than the disease. The compromise more dis
honourable than the injustice which it was intended
to amend. These are only a few, but they are the
most prominent of the doctrines which nearly all socalled Christians deem to be essential; and our first
work, I say, is to hasten their coming downfall—to
rid the world of ideas which, though once were good
and useful in comparison with the ideas which they
supplanted, have now become both poisonous and
loathsome—full of injury to the human heart and
mind, and blasphemous in the ears of the most
High.
Gathering round these abjured doctrines are others
of only less noxious character, such as the belief in
�6
a Devil, the doctrine of the Trinity, the Godhead,
and even the superhuman Divinity of Jesus Christ—
the expectation of His return to earth as the Judge
and King of men—the doctrine of the Church as a
spiritual and authoritative power—the doctrines of
sacraments, of holy orders, of priestly interference
and control in every shape, and of the necessity for
priestly intervention at the burial of the dead. All
these topics are suggestive of many protests, which
it will be our duty to make.
There is one, however, which I have not yet men
tioned, reserving it for a paragraph by itself. We
shall be met at the onset of our attack by the
warning, that we have no right to form about any
of God’s dealings an opinion which may be con
trary to the revealed religion contained in the
Bible, or in the Church, or in both. This is
where the conflict will be hottest. We must bring
all our forces to bear against this insidious and
plausible plea. We shall have not merely to defend
our own right to use the Light of Nature within us,
but to show up the weak points in our enemies’
armour—to challenge them to a defence of those
glaring immoralities and absurdities in the Bible, or
in the £‘ revealed ” religion, which none of them as yet
have had the courage to defend—to exhibit also un
sparingly the numberless fallacies which abound in
their theories of a Church, and to make them show
cause why any claimant for our obedience should be
accepted more than his rivals. We must repeat and
repeat the fact, that so-called revelations abound in
�7
all the earth, each one being believed by its ad
herents to be the only true one; and that Chris
tendom itself is divided piecemeal into separate and
antagonistic Churches, each of which in turn is, of
course, the only true Church.
To the world outside, who may watch the struggle,
we may appeal with confidence, knowing that all the
Churches, all the priests, all the Bibles, and all the
Catechisms, have never yet been able to quench the
spark of Divine justice, and love of truth, which the
Almighty God has kindled in the human breast.
The time will come when, if our orthodox opponents
shall have succeeded in proving that the Bible or
the Church teach authoritatively doctrines against
which the mind and ■ heart and conscience of men
rebel, men will make answer—“ So much the worse
for the Church—so much the worse for the Bible;”
and what is bad in both will be cast away to the
moles and to the bats—to the dust and darkness
appointed for all falsehood.
To pave the way for even this preliminary work of
necessary destruction, we must first of all persuade
the timorous to enter upon the work of religious
enquiry without any dread of being punished for
honest conviction. The Churches hold all their
power at this moment through the superstitious fears
of men and women. From first to last the cry is,
“Flee from the wrath to come,” “Believe this, and
thou shalt be saved and as nothing is so catching
as fear, the multitude run hither and thither, to seek
shelter from impending doom.
�A great part of our work, then, must be to pro
claim the perfect safety of the path of enquiry. To
tell men and women that even if they go wrong in
opinion, even if they miss much precious truth and
embrace much mischievous error, the Lord of all will
not damn them for it for ever. The Father’s love
will not shrivel up or grow cold because, in our
blindness or twilight, we have missed the path of
truth, or made but slow progress therein. We must
teach them that, wrong or right, they are equally safe
from the absurd horrors which have hitherto scared
them; and that all the ill-consequences of error which
Divine goodness has ordained, are only ordained to
teach us to correct our mistakes, and to improve our
method of search after His truth. 1 sometimes fear
that—as regards this country at all events—most of
us will not live to see the false doctrines of Christianity
utterly rooted out, but we may well hope to have set
free our countrymen in a few short years from this
insane and ridiculous fear of damnation as the penalty
for error in opinion. We can do nothing with the
religious masses till we have set them free to think
without trembling at every step. Let us do this with
all our might, and let us not be weary in this piece
of well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we
faint not.
But our work does not rest here. I believe I am
only echoing the thoughts of every heart which has
sympathised with us, when I say we should be both
distressed and ashamed if all our work were only
destructive, if all our energies were to be exhausted
�9
in pulling down even false belief and only in under
mining erroneous doctrine. So far from that, we
only pull down that we may build up, we only de
sire to eradicate false beliefs that we may be able to
plant true beliefs in their place. Though I am only
an insignificant unit in the great brotherhood of free
thinkers and enemies of orthodoxy, I may point with
an honest pride to those published works for which
I have been expelled from my benefice, and ask, Are
not those writings full of positive beliefs ? Can you
find a sermon amongst them all which does not pro
claim as much my anxiety that we should believe and
teach what is true, as that we should give up and de
nounce what is false ? Had this not been so, I
should certainly not deserve to stand here to-day as
the mouthpiece of so many earnest and devout men.
But we must be prepared for every form of reproach
and every degree of misrepresentation. When
people can deliberately say of a man, “ He is only a
Theist,” assuming that, in their own minds, and in
that of their hearers, contempt need go no further,
it proves that they know nothing whatever of Theism
and that they have never taken the pains even to
ascertain what we really believe, or why we believe
it; still less why we should have willingly suffered
for it.
It will be our chief duty and our highest delight
to proclaim our real convictions — to contrast our
own faith with the faith we have so gladly aban
doned, and to try to teach those who may be halting
between two opinions, and others who may have
�10
no faith at all, to embrace the views which our own
hearts, as God made them, have taught us to ap
prove.
It will delight us to tell how we have learnt to
call God our Father—to trust Him unseen—to look
to Him for guidance in difficulty, and for strength in
duty—to feel that He is about our path and about
our bed, near to us at every moment of our lives,
ready to give all the light and knowledge which our
narrow souls can receive—to console us under every
disappointment and sorrow—and to give us hope
when everything else is gone. It will be our joy to
show that this faith in our Father is the natural
outcome of the possession and exercise of loving
virtues; that—if there be a God at all—He must
for ever be above, and never below, the moral beauty
of the best of His creatures; that as we grow in
friendliness, and brotherliness, and fatherliness to
our fellow-men, we learn more and more of the ex
ceeding and unspeakable love of God ; that we give
to Him the best name we know to-day, ready to ex
change it for a better and truer one on the morrow,
if human life and its relations rise higher still.
Contrasting this with the miserable narrow estimate
of God’s love as given us in Christianity, we gladly
proclaim that all that God is to ourselves, He is also
that to every one of our fellow-men. He has no
favourites, and the best and happiest one amongst us
all, in this world or in the world to come, is only the
type of what every other soul shall be when his turn
come. Meeting with the objection against His love,
�11
drawn from the sufferings and moral degradation of
many of our race, we can either explain it by
thoughtful reference to pains and sins we have our
selves once experienced, and found them to be preg
nant with eternal blessing, or we take refuge in the
thought that our goodness—small as it is—would
not allow us to inflict one grain of pain or shame
without a purpose of lasting good, nor to withhold
any amount of painful discipline that was necessary
to secure the ultimate happiness and virtue of the
individual exposed to it; and then we ask ourselves,
“ Shall mortal man be more just than God ? Shall
the creature be more loving than the Creator ?”
We shall have to confront those who believe too
little as well as those who believe too much. We
know that if an unspoken Atheism be rife in this
land, it must be laid at the door of those who painted
man worse than a worm, and God blacker than a
fiend.
The creed of Christendom is the cradle—nay, the
mother of Atheism ; and the Churches may thank
themselves for degrading not only the name and work
of Jesus—one of the world’s best men—but also the
principles of mankind and the honour of God. If
we would do any successful work amongst those who
are exiles from the regions of faith, we must come to
them to learn, not to teach—to learn every bit of
truth and duty which they have valued, while, per
haps, we have under-valued it. We must come to
them, honouring them for their protest against a foul
caricature of the Most High and His dealings, and
�12
only desiring to impart to them what is so precious
to ourselves by the legitimate process of argument,
and the still more efficient agency of a well-ordered
example. If they make their just boast that they
are all for mankind—to raise their kindred and their
race, to un-loose the heavy burdens, to let the op
pressed go free, and to break every yoke—let us
meet them, at all events, on their own ground as
brothers of humanity, and as setting the highest
possible value on services rendered to man as the
only true service acceptable to God.
Amongst the beliefs which it will be our duty to
proclaim, stands next in order our hope for the life to
come. We do not dogmatise on this or on any other
point, but it will devolve upon us to multiply and
strengthen all the evidences on which our hopes are
based. We all feel that our future life is bound up in
the very existence of God; the two must stand or fall
together; and while we are careful never to allow our
hopes and longings for immortal bliss to clog our foot
steps in the path of duty upon earth; while we are
most scrupulous to avoid turning it into a bribe for
the performance of duties which are their own reward,
we should do all in our power to deepen the roots of
our belief in the world to come, as the only solace
under the bitter pangs of bereavement, and as a
wholesome stimulus to our efforts after holiness,
which can never be adequately satisfied in the world
below.
To all this, which we may call our public work,
we must add the far more important business of
�131
cultivating in our lives the spirit of truth, integrity,
purity, and brotherly love. In our own homes, and
in the pursuit of our daily toil, we must find the
great field of self-culture and discipline, without
which all our public exertions in the service of truth
and liberty will be thrown away. If we find our
honour growing more sensitive, our thoughts more
elevated, our speech more refined and exact, our
tempers more placid and enduring, our consciences
more tender, and our affections more wide and deep,
we shall find, also, that our public and social influence for good will grow at the same time, and men
will learn to love us in spite of our creed, and will
pardon us for spurning their own. And above all,
if, in our desire to know more of God, and to be
convinced of His goodness, where we only doubted
before, we seem only to become more confused, more
bewildered by the strife of tongues, our only chance
of rest, and peace, and joy in believing, will be found
in our own efforts to be good and to do good. There
is no other avenue to the Throne of God’s majesty
on high; no other means of rending the veil which
hides the glory of His love, but what is to be found
in the goodness of each man’s own heart. “ Blessed
are the pure in heart for they only shall see God.”
Time would fail me were I to attempt to enume
rate the many collateral duties which will belong to
us as an association. We must only resolve to meet
them as they arise, in the same sincerity, and with
the same activity, as that in which we desire to
regulate our lives.
�141
Of the service in which we have all united to-day,
it becomes me not to speak but in terms of humility
and hope. It has been prepared in distressing haste.
At best it is only an experiment, and time alone will
enable us to test its value and to correct its faults.
I only ask you—and that with perfect confidence—
for your patient trial of it.
One word more upon my text and I have done.
“Let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due
season we shall reap if we faint not.”
For my own part, I have taken up my share in this
great work without any sanguine expectation of my
own success. But I mean to work at it body and
soul, day and night, if need be, in spite of any
amount of opposition and discouragement. I do not
mean to let it go till I am beaten off it, as it were,
lifeless. As long as I have a voice left me, it shall
be raised to magnify the loving kindness of the Lord,
and to speak good of His name. No terror shall
shut my lips—no bribes shall tamper with the utter
ance of my heart’s thoughts. So help me God ! But
in saying this for myself, I know I am speaking for
the thousands who have hitherto supported me, and
for those who are gathered here to-day. If we fight
shoulder to shoulder, turning neither to the right
hand nor to the left, we shall in time disarm all
opposition, win over to our ranks the wavering and
fashion-fearing multitude, and plant our banner of
truth, and liberty, and love, where no foe can reach
it. Thank God, the cause to which we have pledged
ourselves is not our cause only but His—does not
�15
depend on my life or fidelity, or feeble powers—no,
nor on all of us put together——it must prevail in the
end, conquering every obstacle, and rising over every
wave of seeming failure, because it is devoted, first
to God’s truth, then to God’s honour, and last, but
not least, to the true welfare of man. u Our help
standeth in the name of the Lord who hath made
heaven and earth I ”
��
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Victorian Blogging
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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>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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Title
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Inaugural discourse at St. George's Hall, on Sunday 1st October, 1871
Creator
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Voysey, Charles
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Text of sermon from Galatians vi. 9 "Let us not be weary in well-doing; for in due season we shall reap if we faint not".
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[The author]
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1871
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G5371
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Sermons
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<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 (Inaugural discourse at St. George's Hall, on Sunday 1st October, 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>
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Text
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English
Conway Tracts
Sermons
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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
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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
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Voysey, Charles [Rev.]
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Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: From the Eastern Post, October 11th 1872. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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[S.n.]
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1872
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CT22
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Sermons
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<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>
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English
Conway Tracts
God
Man
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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.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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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>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Reading: a sermon
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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).
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[Unitarian Review and Religious Magazine]
Date
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[1874]
Identifier
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G5435
Subject
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Sermons
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<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