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��M !■ ETI N Ci; O F
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January 12, 1876,
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F'MlRTHSft VfSM VMM BISCOVRstt DKLITKRKI) fJY
REV
W. IL EURNES^ D.D
Sunday, Jan. 1O, 1876,
i*M the ^tension el %
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January 12, 1823.
it Pi XHELPHIA:
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A 0O„ PRINTERS.
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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
�65
cheerfulness, with great joy in God and great love for the
brotherhood. Then followed in the very next week,
February 16th, the installation of the Rev. Henry Cole
man in the Barton Square Church, of Salem, at which,
among others, Messrs. Frothingham, Pierpont, and Brazer
officiated. I ought to mention that at the beginning of
the same year, 1825, if not a little earlier, our eminent
brother, the Rev. E. B. Hall, a particular friend of Dr.
Furness, received a call to the then new parish in North
hampton, which the state of his health did not permit
him at once to accept. But tima parish would not give
him up; and in the August ensuing, his health being
partially restored, he became their minister; the venerable
Dr. Ware preaching the sermon, and Pierpont! Willard,
Lincoln, and Brazer, assisting in otl^P exercises.
Said I not truly that the year which gave Dr. Fur
ness to Philadelphia, was memorablafor its*rdinations
in our denomination ? Certainly no other has been so
fruitful. And all these eminent brothers ordained, with
two or three exceptions, were the coevals and intimate
personal friends of him whom we have come here to
night to honor with the outpourings of our respect,
gratitude, and affection.
Now there is one other event relating to our good
friend, which I hope it will not seem improper for me to
refer to, having been for twenty-seven years of my life a
minister in the city where it occurred ; a very important
event in the history of his singularly happy life. It
occurred in the year following his ordination; and it has
probably had quite as much to do with his comfort and
happiness here as your unfailing kindness and sympathy.
The event was of so much importance that it was chron
icled in the Salem Gazette in this wise:
“ In Salem, August 29th, 1825, by Rev. Mr. Emerson,
Rev. William Henry Furness, Philadelphia, to Miss
9
�66
Annis Pulling Jenks, daughter of the late Mr. John
Jenks.”
I don’t dare to tell all I have heard about the bride,
though I think from what you now see, you would find
no difficulty in believing it. I refer to the event because
of its influence and its long-continued charm ; and I hope
the few lines from Rogers’ “ Human Life,” with which I
close, if I can join them to what I have been saying, will
not inappropriately relieve your attention.
“ Across the threshold led,
And every tear kissed off as soon as shed,
His house she enters there to he a light
Shining within when all without is night;
A guardian angel o’er his life presiding,
Doubling his pleasures and his cares dividing;
Winning him back when mingling with the throng,
Back from a world we love, alas, too long,
To fireside happiness, to hours of ease,
Blest with that charm—the certainty to please.”
I am requested to introduce our Brother Chadwick, of
Brooklyn.
Rev. John W. Chadwick, of Brooklyn, N. Y., spoke
as follows:
Dear Friends : It seems to be the order of the
evening for each speaker to justify in some way his
presence on this sacred and beautiful occasion, and I,
knowing that my turn was coming, have been not a little
troubled as to what I should say for myself. But Dr.
Thompson has helped me out. In the accounts of
various ordinations which he has read to you, you
must have noticed how few old men had anything to do
with them, from which it would appear that, whether
there is or is not less respect for age now than formerly,
there was formerly much more respect for young men
than at present. Nowadays we never take up with any
�67
young men at ordinations and such times, till there are
no more old men to be had. I suspect, therefore, that I
have been invited to speak here this evening as a sign
that respect for young men has not entirely died out.
Dear friends, I saw this occasion while it was yet a
great way off. When Robert Collyer said to me up at
Saratoga last September, “John, we must all go to
Philadelphia next January,” I answered, I have been
meaning to this three years.” After your invitation
came, thinking it might possibly mean that I should say
something, I began to think what I would say, and all at
once I found my thought was going to a sort of tune. I
couldn’t account for it except by the fancy that my
thought was sympathizing with the music of Dr. Furness’
life, which has been a sort of symphony—a “Pastoral
Symphony ”—for has not the thought of the Good Shep
herd been the central thought and inspiration of it all
from the beginning until now ?
Here is what came to me.
W. H. F.
January 12th, 1825. January \2th, 1875.
Standing upon the summit of thy years,
Dear elder brother, what dost thou behold,
Along the way thy tireless feet have come
From that far day, when young and fresh and bold,
Hearing a voice that called thee from on high,
Thou answeredst, quickly, “ Father, here am I.”
Fain would we see all that thine eyes behold,
And yet not all, for there is secret store
Of joy and sorrow in each private heart,
To which no stranger openeth the door.
But thou can st speak of many things beside,
While we a little space with thee abide.
�68
Tell us of those who fifty years ago
Started thee forth upon thy sacred quest,
Who all have gone before thee, each alone,
To seek and find the Islands of the Blest.
To-day, methinks that there as well as here
Is kept all-tenderly thy golden year.
Tell us, for thou didst know and love him well,
Of Channing’s face,—of those dilating eyes
That seemed to^eatch, while he was with us here,
Glimpses of things beyond the upper skies.
Tell us of th®t weak voice, which was so strong
To cleave asunder every form of wrong.
Thou hast had good companions on thy way ;
Gannett was ®rith thee in his ardent prime,
And with thee still when outward feebleness
But made his spirit seem the more sublime,
Till, like another prophetj&mmoned higher,
He found, like him, a chariot of fire.
And that beloved disciple was thy friend,
Whose heart was blither than the name he bore,
Who yet could hide the tenderness of May,
And bleaker than December, downward pour
The tempest of his’Wrath on slavery’s lie,
And all that takes from man’s humanity.
And thou hast walked with our Saint Theodore,
Our warrior-saint, well-named the gift of God,
Whose manful hate of every hateful thing,
Blossomed with pity, e’en as Aaron’s rod,
And lips that cursed the priest and Pharisee
Gathered more honey than the wilding bee.
All these are gone, and Sumner’s heart beneath
Should make more pure the yet untainted snow ;
Our one great statesman of these latter days,
Happy wert thou his other side to know,
To call him friend, whom ages yet unborn
Shall love tenfold for every breath of scorn.
�69
All these are gone, but one is with us still,
So frail that half we deem she will not die,
But slow exhale her earthly part away,
And wear e’en here the vesture of the sky.
Lucretia, blessed among women she,
Dear friend of Truth, and Peace, and Liberty.
And one, whose form is as the Son of man,
Has been with thee through all these busy years,
Holden our eyes, and He to us has seemed
As one seen dimly through a mist of tears Bl
But thou hast seen him clearly face to face,
And told us of his sweetness and his grace.
Standing upon the summit of thy years,
Dear elder brother, tbou canst see the day
When slavery’s curse had sway in all the land,
And thou art here, and that has passed away.
We give thee joy that in its hour of pride,
Thy voice and hand were on the weak® side.
But from thy clear and lofty eminence
Let not thine eyes be ever backward turned,
For thou canst see before as cannot we
Who have'^ot yet thy point of ’vantage earned.
Tell us of what thou seest in the years
That look so strange, seen through our hopes and fears.
Nothing we know to shake thy steadfast mind
Nothing to quench thy heart with doubt or fear ;
But higher truth and holier love revealed,
And justice growing to man’s heart more dear.
And everywhere beneath high heaven’®3ope,
A deeper trust, a larger, better hope.
There are some here that shall not taste of death
Till they have seen the kingdom come, with power.
O brave forerunner, wheresoe’®| thou art,
Thou wilt be glad with us in that glad hour.
Farewell! Until we somewhere meet again.
We know in whom we have believed. Amen.
�70
Rev. Mr. Chadwick, in turn, introduced the Rev.
R. R. Shippen, of Boston, Mass., who said:
My dear Friends : Amid these memorials of your
Christmas rejoicing, and these fresh flowers and ever
greens of tropical luxuriance with which you would
symbolize the fragrance of the memories that cluster
round this aniversary, and your desire to keep them
green, it is my pleasant privilege to speak for the
Unitarian Association a word of greeting, giving you
congratulations on this your golden wedding, with best
wishes for the coming years. Yet as I speak for the
Association, I remember that some of our noblest and
best, from Channing through the list, have been some
what fearful of ecclesiastical entanglements, and of
hard, dry machinery, and have deemed the truest and
best work in life that wrought by character and personal
influence; even as Jesus himself did his work, not by
organizations, but by his own personality. Permit me
then to touch two or three lines of personal influence
flowing forth from this pulpit, that are but representatives
of many more. Let me speak for one in your city, now
in her ninety-third year, kept from this meeting only by
the feebleness of old age, who this afternoon told me of
her fresh remembrance of the occasion of fifty years ago,
vivid as if but yesterday, who has been a lifelong friend
of our cause, a generous worker in this church and bene
factor of the Meadville Church and. Theological School,
who recognizes this pulpit as the source of some of the
choicest inspirations of her life. Shall I speak for one
who in a large home-circle of many brothers has been a
loving, sisterly influence of sweetness and light ? who in
her youth was here a worshiper, and caught the inspira
tion of this place, and in her greeting sent me to-day
writes that she is with us here in spirit to-night; that no
one present can join in these services with a more deep
�71
and tender gratitude, and no human thought can fully
know what her life owes to the ministry we now com
memorate ? Shall I speak for another, a younger
brother, the brightest of the seven, whose youth and
early manhood were spent in this city in study and
practice of law ? who Sunday by Sunday learned here
that blessed faith that, when in the full promise of his
manly prime his last hour came, enabled him to go
bravely to death full of a cheerful hope of immortality ?
As to-night he makes heaven more real and more attrac
tive to my thought, in his name I-pay the tribute of
thanks for the inspirations of this pulpit. Shall I speak
for myself ? In my early home I remember your pastor’s
familiar volume of “Family Prayer” as a household
word. At the outset of my ministryf at the Portland
Convention, just twenty-five years ago, I first heard the
genial, charming, gracious word of your minister in his
prime. And as in Boston one may, day by day, correct
his own timepiece by Cambridge observations of the sky,
whose electric communications give us every passing hour
the celestial time true to the second, so in my young
ministry at Chicago,—a lonelier frontier post then than
now,—when the barbarous Fugitive Slave Law passed
through Congress, and the Northwest Territories were
opened for slavery, and the dark days came upon the
nation, if, as I tried, I bore any worthy testimony for
freedom, I rejoice that I was aided in setting my con
science true to the celestial time by this observatory in
Philadelphia. The blessed influences of your pulpit have
run their lines through our land and through the world.
And, friends, what does our Association seek but to
extend and multiply these lines of personal influence, to
enable Boston and Philadelphia to join hands in the
same noble work ? When I asked your pastor for the
last book of Whittier, that I might quote a forgotten
�72
line, he replied, “ All good books have feet and wings
and will find their way at last.” But our Association
only desires to quicken their speed, and by the people’s
generosity to enlarge their wings; that as we are now
sending Channing through the land, we should gladly
send the noble words of Dewey and Furness flying on
the wings of the wind.
And what do our Association and Conferences stand
for but for fellowship ? for the good-will and helpfulness
of brotherly greetings ? Pennsylvanian as I am by birth
and ancestry, with you I rejoice that these Boston
brethren have been brought to Philadelphia. It will do
us all good to know more of each other. This meeting
to-night is just like our Conferences, where our hearts
are warmed by words of brotherly kindness. As I recall
your minister’s inspiring word at the Portland Conven
tion, it has been one of the regrets of my life that we have
not heard him oftener among us. But it is never too late
to mend. On behalf of the Association and the Confer
ence I invite our Brother Furness and all of you to at
tend our meetings henceforth every time.
And now, my friends, when Brother Mumford wrote
that editorial last week, I said, “You are a generous
fellow; why didn’tl^ou keep that to make a speech
from ?” I am sure I don’t know what he is going to say.
I am requested to ask him to speak.
Rev. Thomas J. Mumford. Dear Friends: On account
of the lateness of the hour I will only say that that was
my speech. The next speaker will be Brother White,
and when I say Brother White, I mean brother just as
much as they did in the days of Henry Ware.
Rev. William O. White, of Keene, N. H., then ad
dressed the meeting as follows:
�73
There is one comfort, dear friends, as I thank you at
this late hour, for giving me the pleasure of being with
you, and that is, that Philadelphia time is a little more
generous than the time which I carry in my pocket; but
I will not abuse even Philadelphia time. The word that
Brother Mumford just mentioned brings up very dear
and tender associations with men so closely united in my
memory with our friend and brother, Dr. Furness. But
I will not carry out the thought that comes to me. I
would gladly help along one or two strains that vibrate
in our hearts, as the words are spoken, that “the time
will come when we shall take a last farewell of death,”
and that other word of a younger speaker who almost
felt, and almost knew that one of the long-departed
friends of our Brother Furness was here./'
I am glad to feel that I am here, just as some of my
younger friends were, because I am the son of a friend
of Dr. Furness, a layman whose tastes led him to the
study of theology, and who, I think, was more attached
to the studies of the ministry than many of us ministers
are. I say this, because as soon as I saw Dr. Furness
this morning I was greeted as my father’s son.
And I would not hava spoken here at all at this late
hour, but to try to fasten to those one Im two sweet
thoughts that have been uttered to-night, to which I
have alluded, a line of the poet-sculptor “Michael
Angelo.’^ He is contemplating theyvasting block of
marble upon which he is working; the block lessens ;
lessens, lessens, continually in size; and so the years of
our friend’s sweet, earnest ministry here, are fast pass
ing away before our eyes. But the great lesson that I
have found, as I go back to the time when I remember
to have heard Dr. Furness’ voice in my father’s house,
and in the old pulpit in Salem, and as I remember the
week that I spent with him more than a score of years
10
�74
ago, and as I recall the tenderness of his voice, in his
supplications and his preaching, only last October, the
great lesson I have taken with me about him fastens
itself to the line which I am now to quote of “ Michael
Angelo.” As the poet and sculptor contemplated the
wasting marble, he said:
“ The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows.”
So, with our friend, the years are passing away ; pass
ing away, soon they must be gone; but the statue grows
with tenderness of heart deeper than ever; that sweet
voice, rich with varied experience of the joys and sorrows
of those friends of his in his flock, year after year, has
acquired an added tenderness; and we feel
“The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows,”
and we can welcome the time when he, or any of us, who
try to live in a like spirit of devotion to the Master, shall
“take an everlasting farewell of death.”
I am requested to call on our friend Brother Putnam,
of Brooklyn, New York.
Rev. Dr. A. P. Putnam made the following address:
My dear Friends : I think it must have been for a
larger number of years than Brother Chadwick said for
himself, that I have been looking forward to this occasion,
meaning to be here not with a set speech, as you will very
soon see, but because I wished to come and to say from
my heart, I thank you, Dr. Furness.
I remember when I was a bookkeeper in Boston, how
my elder brother, who was in the divinity school at that
time, used to bring me the volumes of Channing, Buck
minster, and Ware, and also various pamphlet sermons of
Dr. Furness. I recollect well the delight with which I read
Dr. Furness’ pages, and the gospel of liberty they taught
me, and the new revelation they seemed to give me of
�75
the Christ. I have been a disciple following far off. Yet
I know I have not lost during all these years the strong
conviction I had then. It has deepened and deepened
from that time until now. I have gathered his pamphlets
wherever I could find them, and with not a little zeal
I have searched for all his books, many of which are out
of print and are not easily to be found, until, some years
ago, I completed the whole list, and I cherish them as
among the most precious treasures in my library. The
argument which he draws from the naturalness, the
simplicity and artlessness of the gospel records for their
truth, and the uplifting of the curtain so that the Christ
may be seen in his higher spiritual beauty! what a
debt do we owe him for that. Does he know ? can he
know ? can we tell him how much the members of our
churches feel of gratitude and love to him for all that
he has done for us in this way ? Perhaps in some far off
time he may know it more fully; but it is right, dear
friends, that we should come together thus and say these
words which are uttered here to-night, and before he
has gone away tell him how much we do love and
honor him, and why it is we do love and honor him, and
why it is that yve shall always revere and bless him.
When I have thought what words have gone forth from
that desk in behalf of liberty and right in this land, I
have wished that the church might remain just as it is
to-night, and that pulpit just as it is for years and
generations to come. It speaks a lesson for all; those
words abide with us still; they have come home to our
hearts, and kindled in our souls new zeal for the truth
as it is in Jesus. How many chains they have broken,
and oh ! what a welcome, in comparison with which these
congratulations of the hour are small indeed, is reserved
for our venerable father and friend, from the spirits of
�76
the ransomed freedmen who have ascended to heaven,
and who will greet him there.
Let me say that forty years ago it was, that Dr.
Furness preached the installation sermon of the first
minister of the church which I represent here ; the first
society of our faith in Brooklyn. It seems a long, long
while indeed. I have been over ten years there myself.
Dr. Farley preceded me, and he was there twenty years
or more. Mr. Holland was there several years before
him; Mr. Barlow several years before Mr. Holland. Dr.
Furness preached the installation sermon of Rev. Mr.
Barlow, who was the first minister of our faith in
Brooklyn, forty years ago the 17th of last September.
Of the ministersjwho took part in the services of that
occasion, all except your pastor and my immediate pre
decessor, who was then of Providence, R. I., have passed
away,—William Ware, John Pierpont, Caleb Stetson,
E. B. Hall, and others^ Nearly ten years later, Dr.
Furness was present at a| convention held there at the
time of the dedication of our church, and preached the
closing communion sermon. His is a familiar name with
my people, who are all with you here in the spirit, and
would join me, I know, in heartily saying, “God bless
him and you, and the cause of humanity and righteous
ness, which is so dear to you.”
I am requested to call upon Rev. Mr. Ames to address
you.
Rev. C. G. Ames, of Germantown, Pa., said:
As I am one of the younger brethren, and very much
at home, I feel that I should deny myself, and take up
my cross, and introduce a brother from a distance, espe
cially as you have met to hear from these patriarchal
ministers who can offer things which I cannot. But I
may boast one advantage; they cannot see Dr. Furness
�77
every day. Nor can I speak freely of what I feel; it is
too much like being one of the family. I live too near,
and can easily be excused. My voice is very frequently
heard in this house. With a heart brimming full, I
have the painful pleasure, therefore, of holding it down,
knowing it will keep.
I will introduce Rev. Dr. Bellows, of New York.
Rev. Dr. Bellows made the following remarks:
I am sure both modesty and discretion would suggest
the wisdom of my being taught by my junior and friend,
and in releasing you from any further attendance on this
interesting service. As for myself, I feel tired as a child
with the pleasures of the evening; and I can conceive that
you all must be so tired that you would welcome as your best
friend him who would permit you to go home and think
over all the kind things you have heard here. And yet
I think it is a kind of duty to say 1 word in behalf of my
own people and city, and all that great community which
I am privileged to represent here. New York speaks
to Philadelphia; and to a good many of us in New York,
Brother Furness is more than half of Philadelphia.
When we think of Philadelphia we think rather of him
than of anything else, and it is not for anything he has done
either; not for all that great service to freedom, not for
all that valuable contribution to theological speculation
or criticism, but for being what he cannot possibly help,
and that is, himself. It is so much more to be than to
say, or even to do, that I have not always a great deal
of praise for the bright things he does, or the bright
things he says,—only because he is what he is and can’t
help it, and deserves very little thanks for it; for God is
the being we must thank, not him. It is, therefore, that
I am by force compelled to thank God for him, and not
thank him.
�78
Good fellow! he has had it all himself. God gave
him all his precious gifts; he gave him his broad and
generous humanity; made him a harp for all the winds
of heaven and earth to play on, not a fife, to be stopped ;
gave him that benignant smile which he doesn’t know
anything about himself; and gave him that delicious
voice which is in itself a harmony of all his sweetest
powers, an expression of the depth and clearness of his
spirit.
Poor fellow! he cannot help it; he has carried it with
him all these seventy-two years. And, surely, the first
time I ever saw him his voice was the thing that spoke
to me. I didn’t care what it said; there it was, and I
have often thought if a soft voice be an excellent thing
in woman, such a voice as his is, is one of the most
magnificent and significant gifts that God ever gives to
man. Well, let us thank God for him, and then let us
thank him for using those talents so well. Now let me
thank you in behalf of the denomination, dear brethren,
for not being able to be otherwise than so generous, so
kind and faithful to a man who, for all I know, never
used one particle of machinery to keep you together, has
taken no particular pains to keep you together, but just
stood like a kind of magnet, and drawn you to his
heart. We don’t understand it all, but God does; and
we see how with a witchery he has done more than most
of us are able to do by getting every sort of instru
mentality at work that we can possibly use to supple
ment the defects of our natural constitution. I wish I
could work just as Dr. Furness does, and have that same
influence and power, without seeking any. If I could
stand up in naked simplicity and majesty, and then win
the people without using all this painful labor, this
fatiguing desperately drudging machinery, I should be
very glad indeed ; but for most of us poor fellows, it is a
�79
necessity to resort to these matters, to supplement the
defects of our natural constitution and faculties; but I
think Brother Furness can do without it. One thing
further I will say of Dr. Furness. It is a subject of
special congratulation that he has been always himself;
that no theological or critical studies have given an
ecclesiastical tinge or twist to his character, or prevented
the people from seeing him in his native outline. He
has been a preacher and minister, but still more, a man,
and although no man less deserves, in the depreciating
sense, the name of a man of the world, yet in a noble
sense he has been a man of the world; for he has made
the world tributary to his growth; drawn in its widest
culture, enjoyed its largest freedom, entered into its every
day feelings and joys, and made it his own by his great
enjoyment of it, and insight into its meaning. Neither
ecclesiasticism nor dogmatism has been able to quench
his native originality, and that is one of his chief charms
to-day.
Dear brethren, let me congratulate you at the close of
this half century of your minister’s labors, upon what we
n ow behold in the magnificent development of th e theologi
cal ideas and religious temper for which our branch of the
church has meanwhile stood. We expected great things,
but we have seen larger ones, although of a different
kind. We looked for a multiplication of our churches,
which we have not seen, but how vast has been the spread
of our ideas and principles? We expected to be the
chief instruments in the work of liberalizing Christian
thought and feeling, but Divine providence took up the
work with larger methods and new agencies, and made
us rather sharers than leaders in theological reform. We
happened to be the first wave of what turned out to be
an incoming tide, which has swept the whole church on.
I think Luther did not see in his day a greater, a more
�80
important reformation in theological ideas than we have
realized in the last half century.
Whether there be one Unitarian church in Phila
delphia or more, or whether our churches in New York
and Brooklyn, Baltimore and Washington, New Eng
land and the West have multiplied as fast as we hoped or
not, there is more liberal Christianity preached in this
country to-day, than the boldest prophets could have
foreseen when our enterprise started. It has advanced,
and it has triumphed, by whatever way. God has taken
it up, and brought the aid of a broad science, a broad
philosophy, a broad reformatory influence in society,
during all these last years, to bear powerfully upon it.
We have seen results which may cause many of us to
say, “Mine eyes have seen thy salvation; let now thy
servant depart in peace.” I feel no further anxiety
about the spread of liberal Christianity. It now spreads
by a necessity. It is a glorious privilege to work in it
and for it. But the business is essentially done. The
leaven is at work, and it is working everywhere, just as
much in the orthodox churches, so-called, as in our own.
And very little free thinking is done in our denomination
which is not just as fully represented in the old ortho
doxy. We are no longer the sole officers in that great
army. I thank God that the business of fighting is
pretty much over’, and that we are now beginning to
think more of cultivating religiously the area which has
been left for us specially to take care of. Let us now
look to it, as churches and ministers and parishes, and
see that we produce workmen, and, finally, spiritual
fruit, in the particular area over which we are set as
husbandmen and gardeners. That you may succeed
in cultivating your own soil, and in making the vine
yard a nobler and grander one, and in bringing forth
more clusters of grapes of the particular vine from which
�81
you are set, is my earnest prayer. And that we may all
return from these services bearing your blessings and
Brother Furness’ blessing with us into our own several
fields of labor, and that we may be abler and nobler and
more careful shepherds, and more faithful husbandmen,
is the best thing I can ask, that we may be permitted to
carry away from this hour and this blessed assembly of
Unitarian Christians and friends.
Music.
Duet for Two Sopranos and Chorus,
.
. Mendelssohn.
“I waited for the Lord,” from “Hymn of Praise.”
Chorus, .
..........................................................Spohr.
“ Happy who in Thy House Reside.”
Dr. Furness then addressed the meeting.
Dear Friends : While I am very glad to meet here
my brothers in the ministry, and am not at all insensible
to their kind words, I call you all to witness that they
are not here by my invitation. I never invited them
to come here and talk about me. But as long as they
have done so, I congratulate you all, and all who are in
terested in the success of the good cause. It is, you see,
in the hands of young men. Although some of your
guests here show gray on their heads, they are very
young men evidently, fond, especially brother Bellows,
of romancing. I use the words that Dr. Bancroft used
at my ordination: “ It was a comfort to him to feel that
as he was going away the cause would be left in hands
that would carry it on a great deal better than he could.”
Some of my friends told me I had better not come here
to-night; but brother Bellows intimated to me that by
staying away I might seem to be bidding for praise. So
I thought I would come and see whether some restraint
11
�82
could not be put upon the speakers by my presence. But
I don’t think I have availed much.
The day that I was ordained—but I am not going to
tire you with old time stories,—when an old minister
begins telling his experiences we never know when he
will stop—we were all invited,—the gentlemen of the
clergy, and the delegates from Boston and New York,—
to dine at Mr. Thomas Astley’s, who lived at the corner
of Ninth and Walnut Streets, a wealthy Englishman of
our persuasion. While we were sitting waiting for dinnoy,
the report came that the kitchen chimney was on fire!
One of the gentlemen suggested that the fire could be
put out very readily by putting a blanket before the
chimney, and throwing some sulphur into the fire-place.
After dinner, when the wine was passed around and the
toasts were given, one of the gentlemen proposed “ the
Furnace that had been kindled in Philadelphia.” And
another added, “May it never be put out with brim
stone.”
The meeting was closed by a benediction pronounced
by Dr. FurnessJfc
�*
LETTERS.
�THE FOLLOWING LETTERS WERE RECEIVED BY
THE COMMITTEE FROM PERSONS WHO
WERE UNABLE TO BE PRESENT.
�Sheffield, January 4th, 1875.
To the Committee of the First Congregational Society
of Unitarians.
Gentlemen : I am obliged and gratified by the invitation.
I wish that I could comply with it. It would have been a
great pleasure to me, to join the friends of your honored pastor,
in commemorating a ministry, not only so long, but otherwise
equally remarkable. I should like to be in your church on
that interesting evening of the 12th, to hear the pleasant things
that will be said, and to say some, perhaps, myself.
But I cannot, that is, I cannot take so long a winter journey.
I am not sure enough of my health and strength to venture
upon it. Will you give my love to Dr. Furness and his family,
and accept for yourselves and the society, the congratulations
with which I am,
Very truly yours,
Orville Dewey.
Hazelwood, Cambridge, January 6th, 1875.
Gentlemen : I feel very much honored and gratified by
your invitation to be present at the commemoration of Dr.
Furness’ settlement in the ministry in Philadelphia, but the
state of my health forbids me to accept the invitation. My
interest in your society dates from a still earlier period.
I have listened in your old Octagon Church to the preaching
of Mr. Taylor, and I believe of Mr. Vaughan, as well as
preached there repeatedly myself. For more than fifty years
I have been your pastor’s admirer and warm friend.
I heartily wish him future happy years of earthly life, and I
pray God that after his retirement from your service another
pastor may serve you with an ability and zeal not too inferior
to his.
I am, gentlemen,
Very respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
John G. Palfrey.
�86
Cambridge, January 1st, 1875.
Gentlemen : I regret very sincerely that college duties
render it impossible for me to accept your invitation. Regard
ing your pastor with equal reverence and affection, I should
deem it a great privilege to he present at the commemorative
services, from which imperative necessity alone would detain
me.
I am, gentlemen,
Very truly yours,
A. P. Peabody.
Hingham, January 4th, 1875.
Gentlemen : I thank my dear friend, Dr. Furness, and the
committee for thinking of me at this time. I should he so very
happy to be with you, and join in all the expressions of respect
and love for one whose long and faithful ministry has earned
the esteem and confidence of all who know him. Beside this,
Dr. Furness and I alone continue in the ministry, of those who
were classmates in th® Divinity School and, I think, in College.
Give my love to your pastor. I need not wish him a happy
old age. That blessing is assured to him by his fidelity to his
convictions of truth and duty through life.
Very respectfully,
Calvin Lincoln.
Cambridge, January 5th, 1875.
Gentlemen : I received your invitation to be present at the
observance of •the fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of your
pastor, Dr. Furness* It would give me great pleasure to attend.
But I do not feel at liberty to be absent from my regular duty
so long as would be required.
No occasion of the kind so significant has occurred for many
years. For fifty years Dr. Furness has stood at his post, and
manfully defended the cause of what he deemed Divine Truth
and Divine Right. He has never failed to hold up the highest
standard of private and public duty. He has made no abate
ment from the truth in his utterance of it, nor deformed it by
an immoral spirit. For fifty years he has been an untiring
student of the life of Jesus Christ in the four gospels, seeking
�87
to bring to light the reality of that life, the internal evidence
of the truthfulness of the original record of it, and the moral
grandeur and spiritual beauty of the life itself. He has followed
in no servile spirit, but with original force of thought, his great
teacher, Mr. Norton, from whom, differing in many things, he
caught the impulse to this line of inquiry, this work of love, in
which his merit has been unique, his service one never to be
forgotten. To this it may be added, with Bini versal consent,
that his living example has been in harmony with the great
subject of his studies, and has done as much as that of any
minister to show the worth of the officwaf spiritual instructor
to a generation too ready to distrust those whoMbxercise it.
Though not many years younger, I have the habit of looking
up to him, and he is one of tho^ntjrgn whom inspiration and
strength have flowed into my soul
needed.
I am, brethren, yours in Christian fellowships with thanks
for your kind invitation, and MilEannatMbwith you in all
that belongs to a most memorable occasion.
Oliver Stearns.
Roxbur^j Mass., January 7th, 1875.
Dear Sirs : I very much regret that the state of my health
forbids my being pres e® at the commemoration, not of the
close, thank God! but of the close of the first fifty years of the
ministry of Dr. Durness. I regret it not only on account of my
personal affection for the minister, but because it has been a
ministry eminently after my own heart, one th®I admire ex
ceedingly. What I know of it is derived onlv from glimpses
and intuitions, and will be filled out and corrected by the fuller
face-to-face knowledge of the
It has looked to me
at this distance as a ministry of a mild and quiet type, as of one
that doth not strive nor cry, neither doth any man hear his
voice in the streets. Other ministries have been more effective
as the multitude measures efficiency, dealing with larger crowds,
using more complex agencies, and touching society at more
numerous points of interest and with intenser action; but within
its own sphere St has dealt with a profoundness, and fidelity not
elsewhere surpassed with the soul’s greatest interests, uncom
promising in its absolute loyalty to truth and right, always
taking the highest ground, always elevated and elevating,
�88
always searching, quickening, soothing, sanctifying to heart
and conscience, a lifelong dispensary of Sermons from the
Mount.
The specialty of this ministry, it seems to me, has been the
unfolding of the personality and character of Jesus of Nazareth.
I do not believe there is a pulpit in Christendom that has done
so much to penetrate the heart and life of the Master to its
inmost depths, and open its riches to the sympathies and ac
ceptance of men, as that Philadelphia pulpit for the last fifty'
years. Every shade and turn of thought, every gleam of
emotion heavenward and earthward, all the sweet humanity
and grand divinity of that wonderful soul, have been discerned
and delineated there as never elsewhere, I think, and dwelt on
with all the earnest zeal and affectionate faith of a disciple, and
all the enthusiastic appreciation of an artist—dwelt on almost
too exclusively one might think, were it not done by one who
knew how to draw all living waters from that one well, and
bring up all the gold and gems of the moral and spiritual uni
verse from that one mine. I have no doubt this has been done
in this case, so far as any single mind can be comprehensive
and all-sided enough to do it.
The ministry which you commemorate has been singularly
self-conta^ed, that is, has been carried on apart from all official
and organic connection with other ministries, without denomina
tional bonds, with no outside ties except those of a fraternal and
genial spirit. I sympathize with the characteristics of Dr.
Furness’ ministry; my own has been conducted on a similar
plan, though I fear with less fixedness of principle, and less
consistency»©f action. Most of our brethren will call this our
fault, our limitation. Well, they are the majority, and must
decide that point; only I am sure they will have the charity to
own that we, being such as we are, could do no otherwise.
You of Philadelphia do not need reminding; but I want to
express my own appreciation of the manner in which the ministry
you celebrate has all along been adorned, refined, deepened, and
broadened by literary studies and artistic taste and culture,
bringing to that ministry contributions, or rather an aroma
and innumerable subtle and sweet influences from all realms of
spiritual beauty and fragrance and sunshine.
Shall I dare in such a letter as this to make allusion to the
way that looks to me so felicitous, in which the church in the
�89
sanctuary has been supplemented by “the church in the house?”
To my eye and my remembrance the home in Pine Street, and
the church on Locust and Tenth, in the hospitable, genial, cheer
ful, affectionate, and ever gracious spirit that pervaded them
both, were always the counterparts and archetypes of one an
other, each reflecting what was best and brightest and holiest
in the other.
Though this long ministry has been characteristically so quiet
and even and suave, it has had epochs and aspects, or one at
least, of the kind, in presence of which the earth is shaken, and
principalities and powers are prostrated. We may have doubted
the wisdom and necessity of the course taken by our brother;
but we cannot fail to recognize the sublime moral grandeur of
clear and strong conviction® adhered to and acted on, with im
movable persistence, at all risks and at all cost, and though the
heavens fall. We should be blind B>t to discern there the stuff
of which martyrs were made, and the spirit that bore the meek
and gentle Jesus to his cross.
Perhaps my mind has dwelt more on the jubilee from the
fact that if all had gone well with me, I should have been the
next among the liberal ministers, so far as I know, to have been
entitled to such an occasion for myself. I have had my nine
lustra, and if the tenth fail why should I complain ? I can still
rejoice with all my heart in the well-earned honors and happi
ness of my well-beloved friend and brother in Philadelphia.
Very truly yours,
George Putnam.
106 Marlborough Street,
Boston, January 4th, 1875.
Dear Sirs : I am deeply indebted to you for the very kind
invitation to be present at the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Fur
ness’ settlement. I regret to say that I cannot leave my work
at that time.
I am sure that you have reason to thank God and take courage
as you look back upon the half century. Dr. Furness has served
nobly both in Church and State, and has done much to show
that the two are indeed one.^ My warmest wishes accompany
him as he enters upon his green old age, which surely lacks
nothing that should go along with it. May he have the out12
�90
ward strength, as he is sure to have the inward desire, to speak
to you and for you these many years.
Gratefully and sincerely yours,
Rufus Ellis.
Portland, Maine, January 4th, 1875.
It is with great regret that I find myself unable to accept
your kind invitation to be present at the fiftieth anniversary of
the settlement of the Rev. Dr. Furness.
During the whole of that fifty years, and it embraces all my
life excepting the seven years of infancy, I have had near rela
tions and friends among the parishioners and lovers of Dr. Fur
ness, so that my interest in the occasion is almost personal.
But I am obliged to be in Philadelphia a fortnight later, and
cannot possibly spare the time for both journeys.
With the most cordial congratulations for both pastor and
people, and the hope of many happy returns of the season, I
remain,
Very respectfully and truly yours,
Thomas Hill.
Cambridge, Mass., January 2d, 1875.
Gentlemen : I am very sorry that I cannot accept your kind
invitation to be present at the fiftieth anniversary of the settle
ment of Dr. Furness as your minister.
The fact of so long a pastorship is itself noteworthy in these
days of change; but, in this case, we have all a special right to
be sharers in your joy, since we have received our part in the
fruit of your minister’s labors during these fifty years. Dr.
Furness has set an example, rare in these days of divided and
superficial work, not only by his devotion to a single parish
during so long a period, but also by his consecration to one
chosen line of thought. He selected the noblest theme and
gave his life to it, and made us all his debtors. With thanks
for your kind invitation, and congratulations for minister and
people,
I am, yours very truly,
C. C. Everett.
�91
Boston, January 9th, 1875.
Gentlemen : Since I heard that your jubilee was proposed I
have hoped to be able to be present, but I am, at the last moment,
disappointed. I think our friends in Philadelphia must under
stand that they are only a very small part of the multitude of
people who are grateful to Dr. Furness for the labors and the
love of his wonderful life. So soon as we who were then
youngsters found out how he preached, we used to say we would
walk fifty miles barefoot to hear him, if there were no other
way to enjoy that privilege. But even more than the preaching,
it was the reading of the books, and the living picture which
they gave us of the Saviour’s life, that set us on a track of
preaching and of thought wholly new.
Let me congratulate the congregation on his health and
strength, and pray express for a multitude of us our love and
gratitude to him.
' Truly yours,
Edward E. Hale.
Dorchester, Mass., January 10th, 1875.
Gentlemen : I have delayed replying to your letter of in
vitation to be present with you on the 12th instant, because,
while my very earnest desire was to accept it, and my heart
spontaneously said “yes,” there were circumstances making it
questionable whether I could. Those circumstances, I am sorry
to have now to say, have decided for me that I must deny my
self the hoped-for pleasure.
I can do no less, gentlemen, than express to you, and those
for whom you act, my sincere thanks for this thought of me in
such connection, and for including me among the friends of
your minister who were considered worthy to be gathered
around him on such an occasion.
Though I can hardly believe that my presence would add
anything to the enjoyment of it, I think no one will enter more
heartily than I should into all that belongs to it for memory
and sentiment and affection and benediction.
Your minister seems very near to me as he is very dear. My
acquaintance with him dates back to his boyhood. He is most
intimately associated in memory, as he was in fact, with those
nearest to me of my early home, whose love for him I shared;
�92
a love joined with admiration for his dispositions and gifts.
They are all gone to whom I allude; and the more tenderly for
that does my heart, as if hearing their love with its own, em
brace him and this occasion.
And the feelings inspired by those earlier memories towards
him whom in this occasion you so deservedly honor have been,
I hardly need say, continually deepening, as I have followed
him through his life since, and seen the promise our hearts
cherished in him unfold towards a-fulfilment so beautiful and
rich.
Most heartily do I congratulate the members of his society in
the privilege they have enjoyed in him whose very presence has
been a benediction, and whose life, in its simplicity and sanctity
and humble heroism and self-devoting fidelity, has given such
empowerment to his words, and won for them such place in
many hearts beyond those who have been the immediate re
cipients of them.
Much more is in my heart to say; less I could not, in justice
to myself, and as a fitting response (the most so in my power to
make) to your very kind invitation.
If I may be allowed to add what is so wholly personal to my
self, I would say that the memories which connect myself with
your church as being the first I ever preached in, forty-one
years ago, and the memories of those of it who so kindly re
ceived me (so many of whom have passed away), have deepened
my desire towards an occasion of such varied and touching
interest. With the prayer that heaven’s blessing may rest upon
minister and people,
I am, respectfully yours,
Nathaniel Hall.
Baltimore, Md., January 5th, 1875.
Very many thanks for your kind invitation. I havea wedding
on the night of January 12th, which I fear, as I have not, so far,
been able to postpone or advance, will prevent my going to Phila
delphia. I have not given up all hope yet. I wish to assure
you of the great pleasure I would take in witnessing the celebra
tion of an event, so marked in our common history, and so full
of inspiration to a young man like myself, and I hope that
beautiful life which has so blessed you through these years,
�93
may be spared to repeat, in your midst, that old story, which
he has made so living, of God’s great mercy and love made real
in the divine life on earth. With greetings and congratulations,
I am most truly,
C. R. Weld.
St. Louis, January 4th, 1875.
Dear Sirs : Your kind invitation to be present at the com
memoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Furness’ settle
ment in Philadelphia was to-day received, and I wish for my
own sake that I could accept it. But my engagements here
are such as to make it impossible for me to leave St. Louis, and
I must be content to stay at home. Dr. Furness was one of my
earliest friends and guides, to whom I have always looked up
with sincere affection and respect. He officiated at my mar
riage with the best woman that ever lived, and I associate him
with all the purest happiness and success of my own life.
William Henry Furness : For fifty years of faithful service,
the brave and consistent advocate, in good report and evil re
port, of Freedom, Truth, and Righteousness : May his last days
still be his best days.
I remain, very truly yours,
W. G. Eliot.
Chicago, January 26th, 1875.
Gentlemen : When you sent me an invitation to be present
at the fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of my dear friend
and yours, I felt sure I should be able to come. My youngest
boy had been sick then for some weeks, so that I could only
leave him a few hours at a time, and for the most imperious
reasons. But on the Saturday he was so much worse that I
had to telegraph I feared I could not leave him at that time.
There can be but few reasons in a man’s whole lifetime so
strong as mine was then for coming to Philadelphia, but the
poor little fellow begged I would be with him through a very
dangerous operation the surgeons had to perform on the day I
should have been with you, from which we were not sure he
could rally.
Pardon me for touching with this private sorrow your ex
�94
ceeding joy, and accept this for my reason why I have not
written sooner.
I did not want to intrude these things at all even into the
blessed after-taste of your festival. But as it seems to me no
man on the earth could be so strongly drawn to that festival as
I was, from any distance, I cannot say another word until you
know the whole reason why I was not with you.
For my debt of gratitude to Dr. Furness takes precedence of
my love for him asone of the truest friends a man ever had,
and as my peerless preacher of “ the truth as it is in Jesus,”
some years before I emigrated to America, my soul clove to
him as I sat one day in a little thatched cottage in the heart of
Yorkshire and read “ The Journal of a Poor Vicar.”
I never expected to see him in the flesh then, but I remember
how I cherished that exquisite little thing among my choicest
treasures ; read it over and over again; spoke of it to other lads
of a like mind with my own, and got a worth out of it I had
not then begun to get out of sermons.
I knew also, when I got to Philadelphia, that I could hear
my man preach if I wanted to, and made out where the church
was; but I had been taught from my childhood to give such
churches a wide berth, and had not the sense to see that the
well, out of which I had drawn such sweet waters in England,
must still be flowing with some such blessing in America. So
that mighty movement that ended in breaking the fetters from
the slave, had to break mine, and then it was not very long before
I stole into theltdjhurch one dismal Sunday night, when being
good Unitarians, all but about a dozen of you, you had your
feet in slippers on the fender.
It was not a sermon, but a talk about Jesus; and how he
washed their feet, and what they saw, and what he said, and
how it all came home to the preacher; but as I went home I
thought, as so many have done time and time again, if that is
Unitarianism I am a Unitarian.
When again I met my author and preacher at the house of my
friend, Edward M. Davis, it did not take long for my gratitude
to grow into love. He was positively the first minister of the
sort we call “ ministers in good standing,” except Mrs. Lu
cretia Mott, who had not tried to patronize me, and put up the
bars of a superior social station.
If I had been his younger brother, he could not have been
�95
more frank and tender and free of heart and hand. I suppose
he never thought of it for an instant, and that was where he
had me, or I should have put up my bars. For, in those days,
I guess I was about as proud as Lucifer. So, it was a great
pride and joy in 1857, to be invited to preach in his pulpit,
while he went off to marry another son in the faith, Moncure
D. Conway, to be the guest, for that day, of your minister’s
family, to have Mrs. Furness and the children treat me like
a prince and a preacher all in one, and to have a glorious good
time altogether, as any man ever had in this world.
Being good Unitarians again in those days, at least half of
you ran off to hear Brother Chapin in the morning, who was
preaching somewhere round the corner, just as my people run
now to hear Brother Swing when I am away, and have to sup
ply with some man they never heard of. I have never quite
forgiven Chapin for preaching there that Sunday.
But Annie Morrison was there, and the very elect, who are
always there, and on the next Sunday, when I preached again,
the rest were there, and the glory of the Lord seemed to me to
fill the house, and so your church is to me one of the most
precious places on earth. I came to it as the men of Israel
went to Zion, and all these years have but deepened and purified
my love for the good old place. Where I first heard the truth
which met at once my reason and my faith, and where, within
a church, for the first time I felt I was perfectly free.
And so it is, that I dare not write down the sum of my love
for my friend and his family, as 1 could not have told it if I
had come down. I feel I am under bonds not to do it; I can
only hint at it.
He got used to blame in the old sad days, when he could not
count such hosts of lovers and friends outside his own church
as he can now, but he will never get used to praise. Some men
don’t. I must say, however, that I do not see how I should
ever have made my way into our blessed faith, had he not opened
the door for me; or found my way to Chicago but for his faith
that I was the man they wanted here ; or done anything I have
ever been able to do half so well, but for his generous encour
agement, or found my life at all so full of sunshine, as it has
been so many years, had he not given me of his store.
Now and then, the ways of God do visibly strike great har
monies in life and history, and this perfecting of the circle of
�96
fifty years in the ministry of my dear friend, is one of the har
monies of life. He has seen the travail of his soul for the slave,
and is satisfied.
He has lived through the days when the majority of Uni
tarians were content with being not very unlike the Orthodox,
into the days when the Orthodox are not content, if they are
not very like Unitarians, and he has done one of the heaviest
strokes of work in bringing this resolution about.
And he has lived to prove to those of us who may wonder
sometimes, what is coming when we have preached to our
people a few more years; and it gets to be an old story, how a
man may preach right along, just as long as he can stand, and
then sit down to it as Jesus did on the Mount; grow better all
the time; win a wider and truer hearing at the end of fifty
years than he has at the end of twenty-five ; and then, when he
is “ quite worn out with age,” may cry, “ Lord, now lettest thy
servant depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes
have seen thy salvation.”
Surely yours,
Robert Collyer.
�97
The following extracts are taken from the Liberal
Christian and Christian Register :
“ On Tuesday of next week, January 12th, there will be a
very simple celebration of a deeply interesting occasion. It
will then be fifty years since Rev. Dr. Furness was installed as
pastor of the First Congregational Unitarian Church in Phila
delphia. Next Sunday the venerable pastor will deliver an
appropriate discourse. Tuesday he will receive callers at his
house, and in the evening therecwill be a meeting at the church.
Brief addresses are expected from friends, whose homes are in
Missouri, Illinois, Maryland, NeiB, Yor^j, and New England.
“ At the installation^^; the 12th of January, 1825, Rev. Wil
liam Ware, of New Yo^, aged tflfent^fevayyears, offered the
introductory prayer and read from the Scriptures ; Rev. Henry
Ware, Jr., of Boston, aged thirty years, prfegghed the sermon,
mostofwhich we intend torepringpext week; Rev. Dr. Bancroft,
of Worcester, in his seventieth year, offered the ordaining prayer
and gave the charge ; and Rev^Ezra’jj'. Gannett, aged twentythree years, gave the fellowship of the chUBches and offered the
concluding prayer. Dr. Furness himself wasBisiffigaty-two years
old, having been graduated at Harvard College when he was
only eighteen. None of those who took the prominent parts in
the service are now living pH^Kirth. Dr. Gannett and the
Wares, though then in all the strength and promise of their
early manhood, have followed good old Dr. Bancroft to the
heavenly home.
“ Dr. Furness was installed a few weeks before the ordinations
of Rev. Drs. Alexander Young and Samuel Barrett. Th<aservices were reported in the first numb^ of thdjpecond volume of
the Christian Examiner, and in the fourth volume of the Chris
tian Register. It was four months before the organization of
the American Unitarian Association. James Monroe was Pres
ident of the United States. Boston had been a city only three
years, and had about fifty thousand inhabitants ; New York had
about a hundred and sixty thousand, and Philadelphia about a
hundred and forty thousand. It was the same year in which
the first public railway in England was opened, the passengers
being drawn by horse-power, although locomotives were soon
introduced. It was five years before Dr. Putnam’s settlement
13
�98
in Roxbury, nine years before Dr. Lothropwas called to Brattle
Square, ten years before Rev. N. Hall became junior pastor of
the Dorchester First Parish, and twelve years before Dr. Bartol
became Dr. Lowell’s colleague. Dr. Bellows, aged ten years,
and James Beeman Clarke, fourteen, were school-boys. Rev.
E. E. Hale was scarcely old enough to go to school, and Prof.
C. C. Everett had not been born. It was less than half a century
since the battles Lexington and Concord, and Thomas Jeffer
son and John Adams did not die until eighteen months after
wards. President Grant was then two years old.
“ During the whole of the last half century Dr. Furness has
remained faithfully at his lonely post. He has had no colleague
and no very long vacation, we believe. In addition to his pul
pit work he has written some admirable books, besides trans
lating others. Great changes have occurred in public opinion.
Eight years after the beginning of his ministry in Philadelphia
the American Antislavery Society was formed in that city.
He did not join it immediately, but before long he enlisted in
the ranks of the abolitionists, and neither blandishments nor
threats ever caused him to desert from the forlorn hope of free
dom. For many years, when almost every other pulpit of that
great town., so near the borders of Slave States, was dumb
concerning the national sin, Dr. Furness’ silver trumpet gave
no uncertain sound. Whoever might come, and whoever might
go, he was resolved to be |aithful to the slave. The despised
and rejected champion®of liberty were always sure of his sup
port. When Charles Sumner, struck down by the bludgeon of
the slave power, needed rest and healing, he sought them in the
neighborhood and society of Dr. Furness. Together they visited
the hill country, and mingled their congenial spirits in high
discourse of truth and righteousness. We are glad that at last,
with grateful ears, our venerated brother heard liberty pro
claimed throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof.
To know that he contributed to this blessed result must be the
grand satisfaction of his life, more precious than any pride of
authorship or professional success. His whole soul must respond
to Whittier’s declaration that he set a higher value to his name
as appended to an early antislavery declaration than on the
title-page of any book. ‘ I cannot be sufficiently thankful to
the Divine Providence which turned me so early away from
�99
what Roger Williams calls “ the world’s great trinity, pleasure,
profit and honor,” to take side with the poor and oppressed.
Looking over a life marked by many errors and shortcomings,
I rejoice that
“ ‘ My voice, though not the loudest, has been heard
Wherever Freedom raised her cry of pain?
“ But while Dr. Furness must look back with profoundest
gratitude upon the great triumph of justice which he helped to
secure, he cannot be indifferent to the theological progress which
has led to wide and cordial acceptance of many of his dearest
opinions. Once he was one of a small number of Humanitarians
associated with a great majority of Arians. Now the Arians
are nearly extinct, and the divine humanity of Jesus is almost
orthodox Unitarianism. No other individual has done more
to bring this about than the Philadelphia pastor who has made
it the study of his life to understand the spirit and to portray,
in glowing yet truthful tints, the matchless character of the Son
of man. He has been well entitled ‘the Fifth Evangelist.’
None of the ancient narrators ever lingered so fondly over
every trait of him who was touched with a feeling of our in
firmities, and made perfect through suffering. He has rendered
the sympathy of Christ so actual and available that it is a
familiar help to thousands of tried and lonely human souls, to
whom traditional dogmas could give no comfort or strength.
“ We have heard that Dr. Furness is about to retire from the
professional responsibilities which he has borne so long and so
well. It will be a richly earned repose, and yet we cannot
endure the thought that he is to desist wholly from preaching
while his eye is undimmed and his natural vigor scarcely
abated. We heard him last summer with rare satisfaction and
delight, and we wish he could be induced to speak oftener at
our general gatherings. We have thought a great many times,
and perhaps we have said so before, in these columns, that,
owing largely to force of circumstances, Dr. Furness has borne
too close a resemblance to Wordsworth’s Milton whose ‘soul
was like a star, and dwelt apart.’ It is too late now for him
to be in the slightest danger of becoming too social or gregarious.
We wish, most heartily, that he would sometimes meet with
the thousands of our laymen and the hundreds of our ministers
�100
to whom he is personally a stranger, never seen, and never
heard, and yet they regard him with affectionate gratitude and
veneration which it would do them good to express, and not
harm him in the least to receive. Let us fondly hope, then, that
at the semi-centennial celebration of the American Unitarian
Association, or at the next National Conference, we may hear
from this beloved father in our Israel some of those words of
wisdom, truth, and beauty which it is still his mission to speak.”
—Christian Register.
'
“ Philadelphia, January 12th, 1875.
“ It is safe to predict that not even the powerful attractions
of the National Centennial Exposition will call to this city as
many of our UnitaSwn clergy as gathered here to-night to cele
brate the semi-centennial of the settlement of Dr. William H.
Furness. It is an went to which for some time past many of
his absent friends have looked eagerly forward in anticipation
of its peculiar interestA«gnifi<^nce. Pastorates of fifty years
can never be common, and have rarely furnished the necessary materials for the heartiest and sincerest sort of congratulation.
But here was an occasion of which the anticipations were all of
the pleasantest and most unclouded kind, where everybody felt
that it would be a personal privilege to say a congratulatory
Amen with everybody else, and to say it heartily and sincerely.
Dr. Furness' quiet but intensely individual ministry in
this city of Brotherly Love is too widely known among Uni
tarians to m®ke any merq mention of the fact at all necessary,
but to speak of
and justly would be to write a vol
ume; ample materials Hr which, however, are, we are glad to
say, not wanting. But our word must be only of the event of
to-day.
“ The celebration began, we hear, early in the morning at the
pastor’s house, where he^g® delightwlly surprised by the sweet
carols of children’s voices. In the afternoon a large concourse
of friends went to greet him at his home, where beautiful flow
ers scented the air and smiling faces vied with each other in the
expression of sincere respect and love.
“ This evening the old church is beautifully and richly dressed
with evergreens. Below the pulpit is a solid mass of rare trop
ical plants most tastefully arranged, the whole surmounted by
�101
baskets of the choicest flowers. The most conspicuous features
of the decorations are the significant numbers 1825-1875, worked
in small white flowers on either side of the pulpit.
“The old church is full of the Doctor’s parishioners and
friends, the front seats beingpccupied by the invited guests from
abroad. Among the clergy present we Noticed Drs. Lothrop,
Morison, Clarke, Bartol, Bellows, Thompson, A. P. Putnam,
and Rev. Messrs. White, E. H. Hall, Shippen, Ware, Ames,
Israel, Mumford, Gannett, Chadwick, a®t’.®®s®ral others.
“ Dr. Furness had protested against hispersfljnal participation
in this elaborate and deliberate feasit of Prai,s^,. bisfrl the timely
suggestion that his absence might be^|nterprS$ed as a quiet ‘ bid ’
for unlimited adulation proved too atiMSging lferthe equanimity
of even his modesty, so he came and occupied a retired seat near
the door.
“The proceedings were of the^^^^>lesit'^ttd most informal
kind—a genuine love-feast, with more fullness of heart than of
utterance. Yet there was nrf ladfflaf pleasant, hearty words.
After an anthem, with soloi by the accomplished ^hoir, which
seemed to have been augmented and specially drilled for the
occasion, the Chairman of the C®amittee of Arrangements wel
comed the guests and assembled company, and asked Dr. Mor
ison to offer prayer. After a sopfafto solo, the first speech of
the evening was made by Rev. J. F. W. Ware|(whose father,
Henry Ware, had preached Dr. Fu3FBessM®rdination Sermon.
Dr. Furness then came forward^ bearing two communion cups
which had just been recededasa token .^•'remembrance from
our church in Baltimore. He expressed his pleasure at this
expression of affectionate sym|fet'hy, psfetring, incidentally, to
the peculiar method of celebrating the communioffifin his church,
bread and wine not being partaken of, but being placed on the
table only as symbols of the preci«0&things they stand for.
“ William Gannett, whose father gave the right hand of fel
lowship at Dr. Furness’ ordination, said that this was the
principal reason for his presence here to-night. His modest,
cordial words were followed by others, from Rev. E. H. Hall
and Dr. Lothrop. Dr. J. F. Clarfe thqnWead an original
poem, in which, in strong and eloquent words, he commended
Dr. Furness’ earnest and persistent efforts to present more
clearly to the world the living Jesus as distinguished from the
�102
theological or sentimental Christ. Dr. Bartol and Dr. Thomp
son then added their cordial testimony of appreciation. Mr.
Chadwick read a lovely original poem, full of appreciative
references to some of Dr. Durness’ more distinguished cotem
poraries. Messrs. Shippen, Mumford, White, and Ames, each
said a few words, and Dr. Bellows finished the sweet symphony
of praise with a genial portraiture of Dr. Furness, thanking
the Lord that no amount of culture had in any respect weak
ened the vigorous manhood of his friend, and that God made
him just what he is.
“ After music, and a benediction by Dr. Furness, the large
company separated, evidently deeply pleased by the many
hearty testimonies of the evening.”—Liberal Christian.
“Yesterday morning, at seven o’clock, the pupils of Madame
Seiler, an accomplished teacher of music, and author of several
excellent text-books '(gave a serenade to Dr. Furness and his
household. It must have been a delightful surprise to the
awakened family when the sweet sounds began to ascend from
the hall below, where the singers, according to the RwWe&n,
stood 1 candle in hand,’ and paid this delicate and welcome
complimenMin the good old German style. Between the hours
of twelve and six, hundreds of parishioners and friends called
to congratulate the honored pastor upon the successful comple
tion of his half century of service. Most of the time the rooms
were thronged, and such an array of bright and happy faces is
seldom seen. Anfc®fi?he guests who were present during our
brief stay we noticed the Doctor’s children and grandchildren,
Prof. Goodwin, of Harvard University, and Mrs. Eustis,
daughter of Rev. Dr. W. E. Channing.
“ Last evening there was a driving storm of sleet and rain, hut
the church was packed again. The floral display was equal to
that of Sunday. Among the changes we observed that the
large figures ‘1825’ and ‘1875,’ above the pulpit, were made
of pure white flowers instead of white and red as before. After
prayer by Rev. Dr. Morison, Mr. Henry Winsor, Chairman of
the Committee of Arrangements, made a felicitous welcoming
and introductory speech.
“The first clerical speaker was Rev. J. F. W. Ware, son and
nephew of the young Wares who, fifty years before, had taken
�103
prominent parts at the installation service. His remarks were
full of the warmest affection for Dr. Furness, and the tenderest
allusions to the love cherished for his Philadelphia ‘ brother ’
by Henry Ware, Jr. Agreeably to the request of the com
mittee, Mr. Ware asked Rev. W. C. Gannett to follow him.
Mr. Gannett’s father gave Dr. Furness the right hand of fellow
ship, and Mr. Gannett had just been reading the manuscript
copy of that earnest address, on his way to Philadelphia in the
'cars. His speech was eminently appropriate and impressive.
He was followed by Rev. E. H. Hallflof Worcester, suc
cessor of Rev. Dr. Bancroft, who gave the charge at the in
stallation half a century before, and son of Rev. Dr. E. B. Hall,
who was Dr. Furness’ townsman friend, classmate, and room
mate. After most appreciative mention of the noble labors of
our fathers, Mr. Hall spoke eloquently*<of the peculiar work
which each generation has to do for ’jtSelf and the world. Rev.
Drs. Lothrop, Clarke, Bartolj Thompson, A. P. Putnam, and
Bellows, and Messrs. ChaAwick, ShippenMWhite, Mumford,
and Ames were called upon, and the most of them responded;
but we have no space w*tl®H remarks this week. Next week
wTe hope to find rooni for a report, but now we must content
ourselves with copying from the Bulletin the poems which
were read.
“ Before quoting them, however, we must not forget to say
that Dr. Furness spoke twice in the course of the evening, the
first time acknowledging the gift ®f some communion cups
from the church in Baltimore to the church in Philadelphia.
It was hard to believe that thif graceful and happy speaker,
with as fresh a voice as that of the youngest man heard that
evening, and saying the brightest and merriest things of the
hour, could be the venerMfflpastog whose semi-centennial we
were celebrating ; but we presume that there is not the slightest
doubt of the fact. And we must also remember to state that
among the gifts from parishioners and friends were some elegant
mantel ornaments, and the complete and original manuscript
of Charles Lamb’s 1 Dissertation on Roast Pig.* The Bulletin
says that this unique and interesting present was ‘ secured as a
Christmas gift at a recent sale in London, and handsomely
mounted and bound in large folio form.’
Christian Register.
�104
W. H. F.
“ THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY.”
BY WM. C. GANNETT.
Fifty times the years have turned
Since the heart within him burned,
With its wistfulness to be
An apostle sent of Thee.
Closely in his Master’s tread
Still to follow, till he read,
Tone of voice and look of face,
Print of wound and sign of grace.
Beading there for fifty years,
Pressing after, till the tears
And the smiles would come and go
At the self-same joy and woe-^
Sharing with him shouts of Mad ! ”
When the bold front to the bad
Bent to pluck the “ little ones ”
From the feet of fellow-sons—
Sharing in his inner peace,
But not sharing the release,
He is with us while thglchimes
Ring his “ Well done” fifty times.
Listening boys across the field
Pledge a hope they may not yield :
Are they listening from the air —
Boys who started with him there ?
�REV. DR. FURNESS’ RESIGNATION.
14
�On Thursday, January. 14th, 1875, Dr. Furness sent the fol
lowing letter/<to the Society, resigning the charge of the pulpit
into their hands—
�107
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE FIRST CONGREGA
TIONAL CHURCH.
My very dear Friends : While the measure of health and
strength still granted me demands my most thankful acknowl
edgments, and while I ^jgaMinexpressib wwat.efnl for the re
cent manifestations of your affectionate regMkll
admon
ished by the ending of fifty years of service as your minister,
and by the time of life that I have
only a little
while remains to me at the longest. I am moved, therefore,
to resign the charge of the pulpit into your hands. How could
I have borne it Mog bwM|r your fetjj^^^ManidBsteadfast
friendship ? I recogniz® a salutary discipline in the necessity
which I have been^nde® al 1 EgSaSpars of ^^MjmBIpsaat.ion
for the Sunday sHg|age. It is good, as I have learned, for a
man to bear the yoJke in
and even in middle age ;
but now, when only a fragment of lim^remafes.^jte^^pyould
fain be released from thl^fe Jwhwi neither timp^or custom
has rendered any ligMbdpnan Mm v
With the surrender of the pulpit you will understand of
course that I decline all farther pecuniary support. I beg leave
respectfully to suggest thatjiMsome time«ome the pulpit be
supplied by settled ministers, so that nothing shall be done
hastily in the matter of deciding upon my successor. More
over, for all other pastoral offices, I shall be at your service,
remaining always your devoted friend, and in undying affec
tion,
Your pastor, :
W. H. ^Furness.
January 14th, 1875.
�108
At a meeting of the Society held in the church Saturday
evening®January 23dSjl871Wt was voted that the following
letter should be sent to Dr. Furness, accepting his resignation,
andiffigBthe Trustees should sign the same oh behalf of the
Society.
�109
FIRST CONGREGATIONAL UNITARIAN CHURCH.
Philadelphia, January 25th, 1875.
Dear Dr. Furness : The members of this Society have re
ceived with sorrow your letter of the 14th inst., in which you
resign the charge of the pulpit which you have filled so long,
with so much ability and so much to their satisfaction.
Although we deeply regret the existence of the circumstances,
which in your opinion have made the step necessary, we ac
knowledge the justice of permitting you to judge freely of the
force of the reasons in its favor, which have governed you in
coming to your decision; and though we feel it would be a
great privilege to us to have the pastoral relation continued
through the coming years, during which we fondly hope you
may be spared to us, yet we acquiesce in the propriety of promptly
acceding to the wish for relief which you have so decidedly ex
pressed both in your letter and verbally to the committee ap
pointed at our meeting on the 19th inst., to ask you to recon
sider your action and to withdraw your resignation. It would
he ungrateful for us to do otherwise, and would show on our
part a want of proper appreciation of the value of your longcontinued labors thus to make what must be to you in itself a
painful act still more painful.
We cannot fully express in words our thankfulness that the
relation between us has remained unbroken through so many
years, and that, though the formal tie may now be severed,
we are yet permitted to see you face to face, to hear your voice,
to press your hand, and to know that you are among us.
For the reasons which you have presented, and because you
so earnestly desire it, because it is our wish to do, at whatever
loss to ourselves, that which will bo most grateful to you, and
thus to manifest in the strongest way wo can our appreciation
of our privileges in the past, and with the hope that for years
�110
to come you may be with us and of us, we regretfully accept
your resignation, and remain, on behalf of the Society,
Your affectionate friends,
Henry Winsor,
Lucius H. Warren,
Dawes E. Furness,
Joseph E. Raymond,
John Sellers, Jr.,
Enoch Lewis,
Charles H. Coxe,
Trustees.
This letter was read at the meeting of the congregation, held
on Saturday evening, January 23d, 1875, was approved, and
the Trustees were instructed to sign it on behalf of the Society
and forward it to Dr. Furness.
Charles H. Coxe,
Secretary.
�INDEX.
PAGE
Preliminary Meetings, .
Dr. Furness’ Fiftieth Anniversary Discourse,
Extract from Forty-ninth Anniversary Discourse,
Commemorative Meeting,....................................... .
Prayer of Rev. John H. Morison, D.D.,
Remarks of Rev. J. F. W. WarM
“
“ Rev. W. C. Gannett,
.
“ Rev. E. H. Hall, flHH
“
“ Rev. S. K. Lothrop, D.D.,
“
“ Rev. J. F. Charlie, D.D.,
“
“ Rev. C. A. Bartol, D.D.,
“
“ Rev. J. F. Thompson, D.D.,
“
“ Rev. J. W. Chadwick, .
“
“ Rev. R. R. Shippen,
.
“
“ Rev. T. J. Mumfor^^JI
“
“ Rev. W. O. Whitey .
“
11 Rev. A. P. Putnam, D.D.,
“ Rev. C. G. Ames, .
.
“
“ Rev. H. W. Bellows, D.D.I
“
“ Rev. W. H. Furness, D.D.,
Letters,
Extracts from the “ Liberal Christian ”
“ Christian Register,” .
.
Poem, by W. C. Gannett,
Resignation of Rev. W. H. Furness, D.D.,
Letter of the Trustees,
,
3
9
28
41
42
44
48
49
51
55
57
61
66
70
72
72
74
76
77
81
83
AND
97
104
105
109
�I
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Exercises at the meeting of the First Congregational Unitarian Society, January 12,1875, together with the discourse delivered by Rev. W.H. Furness, Sunday, Jan. 10, 1875 on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination, January 12, 1825
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Furness, W.H.
First Congregational Society of Unitarian Christians in the City of Philadelphia
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Collation: 110, [1] p. : ill. (with tissue guards) ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Contains index. Includes poem by W.C. Gannett and resignation of Rev. W.H. Furness.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Sherman & Co., printers
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1875
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5366
Subject
The topic of the resource
Unitarianism
Sermons
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Exercises at the meeting of the First Congregational Unitarian Society, January 12,1875, together with the discourse delivered by Rev. W.H. Furness, Sunday, Jan. 10, 1875 on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination, January 12, 1825), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
First Congregational Society of Unitarian Christians in the City of Philadelphia
Sermons