USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Hartford > Centennial memorial of the First Baptist Church of Hartford, Connecticut, March 23d and 24th, l890 > Part 8
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In the current literature of the day, Robert Ellsmere sits paralyzed and speechless before the Sphinx of Ger- man philosophy, which mocks at his devotion to human- ity, unsettles his faith, fascinates him with a depth of learning and logic which he can neither answer nor make use of, and drives him from his holy vocation.
John Ward, preacher, whose iron-clad Puritanism for- bids all philosophic or scientific investigation which threatens his creed, shrivels his soul to the compass of a religious fanatic and a domestic fiend, reflecting nothing which bears resemblance to Christianity, but shows us a mistaken idea of Calvinism without Christ- ianity, and drives a faithful wife from his door for the
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discipline of her soul, because she cannot understand his creed.
Scientific sceptics place the theologies of modern times in the same class with the mythologies of ancient Greece and Rome, and deny everything which cannot be demon- strated by philosophy, nor analyzed by chemistry.
Professor Tyndall even proposed to test the efficacy of prayer, by a contest between prayer and medicine, in the wards of a public hospital.
From Voltaire to Ingersoll, like the "crackling of thorns under a pot," we have seen repeated assaults made upon the bulwarks of Christianity without success.
They have demonstrated the errors and the folly of the British Parliament in fixing by public statute the precise day of creation and the chronology of the world, which is no part of the Scriptures. They have demon- strated that all claims made to the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures are without foundation or authority. But who cares? Christianity is not dependent upon any of these things, nor yet upon any of the creeds or doctrines which have been invented by men.
Christ said to Matthew "follow me;" and he arose and followed him. These two words were Matthew's creed. They were enough for Matthew, and they are enough for all who come after him. On these two words, obedience to the command, Christianity has stood, and will forever stand.
We celebrate then not merely the survival of this particular church for the full period of an hundred years, but the survival of the Christian religion, which is the greatest boon to our common humanity, and the greatest
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of all powers for the present and future happiness of mankind.
Let us hope, then, that when this church is called upon to celebrate its next centennial, it will be able to rejoice in the complete union of all Christian believers of whatever sect, creed or denomination, for the pure and simple work of extending the blessings of Christianity to all men.
Let us hope that all sectarianism, and all differences of opinion, will disappear in the presence of the Lord's table, so that no ministering servants of God will then spread a table in the name of the Lord and presume to deny or fail to invite any of his children to the sacra- ment, lest by so judging they may themselves be judged. Even Judas was invited to be present at the last supper. He was unworthy, and known to be unworthy, but no one shut the door against him. He ate the passover, betrayed his Master, and then went to his own place. It is not pleasant to think that a modern Judas .like his ancient prototype may dip his hand in the dish and be- tray the innocent blood, but the church has not been made a tribunal for his judgment before the fact.
If, then, I am thus found to be a dissenter from some of the tenets of our own church, I am not a seceder, and I propose to stand by the brethren, if they will let me, until they are converted, or until I am converted, of which event there seems to be very little hope of success on either side within the time left to us by the tables of mortality. For a genuine hard-shell Baptist, despite all arguments, will insist upon his point, even though it leads him into deep water.
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HON. JAMES G. BATTERSON.
Why is it, may we ask, that the religions of Brahma, Mahomet and Buddha, still stand in the presence of Christianity? Is it because the simple truths of the New Testament have been weighed down with dogmas, doc- trines and creeds, which have grown out of the sectarian, party spirit of Christianity? Is it because the inventions, the imaginations and the pride of men, have supple- mented the primitive methods, until man-made rituals and doctrines have supplanted the original methods of the New Testament?
Christianity is not the religion for a sect, nor yet for a race, but for all mankind. And it only needs to be puri- fied in the original crucible, and separated from the additions of men, to become the religion of the world, even as the waters cover the sea.
The extermination of slavery as a pseudo-christian institution has been accomplished within the century which we now celebrate, and in that we recognize the leaven of Christianity. It required the use of the sword which Christ prophesied to his disciples, but it has made an highway for those who bear the olive-branch and preach the gospel of peace.
The physical discoveries and the accomplishments of science during the same period, have multiplied the means and increased the power of truth a thousandfold. The fetters have been stricken from the image of God, and placed upon the wild forces of nature, which are subdued and made to obey the voice of man. The mad lightnings have been harnessed to a wire, and made to carry swift messages over continents and under the waves of the ocean, annihilating both space and time. The
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steam-engine, and the iron-clad fleets of the sea, are made to gather and distribute from zone to zone the products of all lands. The great circle of the earth is traversed in a few days by an unattended maiden as a matter of pastime, and our daily newspapers make record of current events in all nations. The hemispheres, the islands of the sea and all the inhabitants of the earth, are being linked together for a common purpose. And now while we celebrate, let us indulge in the hope that the conflict between science and religion may be recon- ciled, and not driven still further apart by the false as- sumption that the truths of one are not the truths of the other. Dr. Shields has happily expressed the hope " that science will not offend the oracle it would consult by an irreverent spirit, and that religion will not repel the in- telligence it would claim by any irrational process."
It will be for coming generations to continue the great struggle for the triumph of truth. It will be theirs to reap from the good seed which has been sown, and they will have an abundant harvest if they cultivate all fields which are watered by the fountains of science, and ripened in the sunlight of righteousness.
I find my subject altogether too large for my time, but it is a first-class beginning for the coming century. I am not able even to touch the interesting theme which covers the social and political results of Christianity. It is enough to say that the subjection of the church to state government failed with the experiment of Constantine in the third century; that the subjection of the state to church government failed with the experiment of Gre- gory the VIIth upon Henry the IVth in the tenth cen-
HON. JAMES G. BATTERSON. 137
tury; that the union of church and state failed with the Puritan conflict and the experiment of the English Par- liament in the sixteenth century, in its effort to build up the kingdom of God by violence and bloodshed.
The Revolution of 1688, which dethroned the Stuarts, gave to England constitutional liberty and the Protest- ant religion. The act of toleration, which followed in 1689, gave protection to all non-conformists who could subscribe thirty-five and a half of the thirty-nine articles.
Dr. Schaff shows us that although Puritanism " failed as a national movement, it was not in vain, for it pro- duced statesmen like Hampden, soldiers like Cromwell, preachers like Howe and Owen, dreamers like Bunyan, hymnists like Watts, commentators like Henry, and saints like Baxter."
It was reserved, however; for Roger Williams to emancipate the church and make it a pure democracy. And to him Gervinus, the celebrated German Professor, pays the deserved compliment of being the leader and founder of this great movement. Gervinus says: "There was founded in Rhode Island a small new society upon principles of entire liberty of conscience and the uncon- trolled power of the majority in secular concerns. These institutions have not only maintained themselves, but have spread over the whole union. They have super- seded the aristocratic commencement of Carolina and New York, the high-church party in Virginia, the theo- cracy in Massachusetts, and the monarchy throughout America. They have given laws to one quarter of the globe. And, dreaded for their moral influence, they
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ADDRESS OF THE HON. J. G. BATTERSON.
stand in the background of every democratic struggle in Europe."
Nothing is more interesting in the eventful history of the church than the remarkable extent to which great and good men have suffered their minds to become warped by religious prejudice.
Richard Baxter, the pious author of "The Saints' Everlasting Rest," verily believed that converts admit- ted to the church by immersion would not live out half their days. He, therefore, declared it to be a "sin, which is akin to murder, for it would surely induce apo- plexy, lethargy, palsy, phthisis, debility, colic, convul- sions, spasms, fevers, and the whole catalogue of hepatic, splenetic, pulmonic and hypochondriac diseases, of which there is enough already. In short, he exclaimed, it is of no use except to dispatch men out of the world who are burdensome to society, and to fill up the church- yards." If Baxter was right, the applicant for life in- surance should be promptly rejected, if the medical examination discloses baptism by immersion.
It is certainly to be hoped that Baxter's prognosis of " the everlasting rest" was based on better evidence and a wiser judgment than his fear of death by coming into bodily contact with cold water.
Let it be ours then to celebrate the emancipation of the church from the tyranny of the state, and the eman- cipation of the state from the tyranny of the church.
Let it be ours also to celebrate the emancipation of Christianity from the tyranny of the saints.
ADDRESS
OF THE
REV. JOSEPH H. TWICHELL,
Pastor of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church, Hartford.
Great and blessed in the church is the office of memory. This we feel on all occasions like the present when what to us is a long past comes up in review in the light of the divine and spiritual elements that mingle with our human life, and when in consequence those affections that are most refined, most sacred, most precious, most enduring, are quickened to an unwonted degree and as- sert their incomparable sway over our spirits. We see that the ministry of Christian memory supplements the ministry of Christian hope, and is sweetly blended with it.
Memory, anyway, is full of service to us. It is one of our wisest teachers. How does it winnow the contents of experience, separating the wheat from the chaff! When old Jacob, about to die in Egypt, turned his eyes back over the course of the years behind him, two things, you will recall, emerged upon the vision of his retro- spect. "God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz, in the land of Canaan, and blessed me." That was one. "And (he continued) as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan, in the way, when yet there was but a little way to come unto Eph-
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rath, and I buried her there." .
. That was the other. God's mercy and domestic love. They only remained. All the rest was unsubstantial, evanescent. Memory, too, is a chief defence of the religious heart against its fears. It is the handmaid of faith. It was so in the ancient days. "O, my God (cried David), my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar." It is so in the gospel age. " Having eyes see ye not, and having ears hear ye not; and do ye not remember?" said our Lord to the disciples while he was with them. And departing he made his dying bequest to them and to the church forever, the sacrament of memory. Nor, though St. Paul had it for his principle in one sense to forget the things behind, and to reach forth unto the things before, did he ever cease to keep in mind the man he knew of who was once caught up into the third heaven.
But there is a gift in the hand of memory that I think a festival in Zion like this at which we are gathered brings into peculiar prominence, viz., the gift of what we may call the power of transfiguration. What do I mean by that? This. That out of the past, as it is un- covered by the reminiscence that is characteristic of such a celebration, out of its history, its many histories, out of its reopened record of the men and women, and of the events of former generations, there arises a light that shines upon the present, and that shining upon the pres- ent puts another and a better construction upon it, clothes it with another and worthier, yes, and juster aspect than that in which we are wont to see it.
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REV. JOSEPH H. TWICHELL.
It is easy for us to discern the evil face of our own time. There is no institution of society whatsoever that viewed from the standpoint of a contemporaneous ob- server, does not disclose features of blemish and infirm- ity whereby it is inevitably more or less discredited. Nor is the Christian church any exception to this rule. Rather it affords in the very nature of the case the most conspicuous illustration of it. All her points lie open to scrutiny, and are emphasized by the ideals she professes and proclaims. And none are so sensitive to their ex- posure, none perceive them so clearly or feel their re- proach so keenly, as her own children. She is our dear mother, and we love her and believe in her, but we cannot help often being ashamed of her.
But, as I have said, she is not the only example of the same. One who judges the republic of these United States mainly on the evidence of to-day's politics, as we are always tempted to do, will find himself thinking, and not without some reason in appearances, that it is a poor affair. It is when on Memorial Day we return from decorating the graves of ten thousand heroes who gave their lives that the government "of the people by the people for the people might not perish," or when we pause to survey the annals of the century that has elapsed since the inauguration of the nation's first president, or when we go with the multitude to dedicate the Pilgrim Monument in Plymouth; it is, I repeat, when the horizon of our view is on that wise extended so as to cause what is to be contemplated in the light of what has been, that we say, "Great is this republic of ours, and glorious, the best government under which men
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live, the best the world has known!" And that is an instance of what I have termed the transfiguring power of memory. Who will deny that it gives a true sight?
Very frequently it determines the eyes with which we regard individuals. For a good many years after I came to live in this city, and till a comparatively short time ago, I was accustomed, whenever I was in New York, to call on a man residing there, who was well advanced in age, an invalid and a paralytic. Many were the hours I talked with him. Our conversation usually ran in rather commonplace channels. What he said was nothing in particular. He uttered no very great thoughts, or very noble sentiments. In fact, he was considerably broken in body and mind. Yet again and again, as I sat and looked at him, I would feel myself thrilling from head to foot, as no eloquence could thrill me. For, you must know, he was my old general, Joseph Hooker, and I was recalling other days when I had seen him a central figure in grand historic scenes. I was re- membering mornings of battle and evenings of victory. I was seeing him again enveloped in the smoke of Williamsburg. I was hearing again the cheers of the twenty thousand soldiers of his division which rang to the skies when he rode by that awful day at Fredericks- burg. It would come back to me exactly how he looked ; what a picture of valor he was: how magnificent he ap- peared. These were the things that filled my thoughts, and they transfigured him to me. There is this law of transfiguration. It works by various means and to various effects. But its agent-in-chief is memory, and in its happiest working, religious memory, that sort of
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memory with which this Christian church is in these pas- sing hours walking hand in hand and communing heart to heart, whereby the church is seen to have been, and to be, without controversy, identified with all that is most pure and noble in human experience, the repository and the representative of the most beneficent influences that are the leaven of good in the world's life.
It is some years ago now since I was present at an oc- casion like this in the ancient church of my native town. But I retain a vivid impression of how sweetly and with what power the resurrection of the past with which it was attended caused this reality to appear. There, as here, by one and another speaker, scenes and events long gone by were brought to mind; rich treasures of holy recollection. They spoke of the old pastors and officers of the church, of good men and women, shining saints in their time, but many and many a year sleeping in the dust, and almost forgotten on earth ; of glorious seasons of revival and wonderful works of grace in former generations. "I remember the day, though I was but a child," said one, his voice tremulous with age, " when my father and mother and near a hundred others stood up in this aisle and professed their faith in Christ; and how such an one, who died early in this century, used to talk of the preciousness of the Christian's trust. I shall never forget it. And such an one who was mighty in the Scriptures." And so on. There was a great deal of such remembrance stirring them. As it went on you saw the old people wiping their eyes, and the rugged faces of the farmers relaxing into an unwonted softness. A sacred pathos fell upon the whole assembly. The
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plain, old meeting-house was transformed into a beauty indescribable. It seemed to be apparelled with the splendors of Zion, to be pervaded with the fragrance of those vials full of odors sweet " which are the prayers of saints." God's glory was there : heaven was near. You felt that the history there being rehearsed was great history, of a deep, eternal meaning; that though it con- cerned a lowly and obscure community, there had been an element of the truest dignity, yea, of the truest sub- limity in it, which was, moreover, a present and an abiding element. And this transfiguration was wrought by the fact that the life of that community was then dis- cerned and interpreted in the light of spiritual relations ; in the light of its highest significance. So it is always. So it is here. To this honored and beloved church it is now given to take knowledge of herself, not of what she has been alone, but of what she is as well, in the light reflected upon to-day from the reviewed memories of an hundred years. Upon those memories we, her neighbors in the Lord, congratulate her, that they are of so high and inspiring an import, that she has such a record of the grace of God by which to call them up, and that in calling them up she is compassed about by so great a cloud of heavenly witnesses.
In some of them many of other households of faith are fond partakers with you. For myself, I never shall forget the day when in this place I heard his sorrowing, yet rejoicing, friend and brother, Dr. Rollin H. Neale, pour out above the body of your dear Dr. Turnbull, 'ere it was borne to the burial, and he was dear to us all, such a passionate strain of love and grief and hope commingled
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as I had never listened to before. And the memory the sweetness of which was thus so exquisitely testified was, is, but one of the multitude which are your wealthy heritage and possession. Hither, from far and near like God's angels they are now flocking to you, to breathe benediction upon you and to flood your hearts with humblest, tenderest gratitude.
The Lord grant that, as the fruit of their holy visita- tion, you may go on in your way and work as a church of Christ in a newness of refreshment and of strength for a long time to come.
ORIGINAL HYMN.
BY THE REV. H. M. KING, D. D. Of Albany, N. Y.
.
O thou, with whom a thousand years Are but as yesterday when past, Our fathers' God 'mid hopes and fears, Their children's God while life shall last ;
We lift to thee our heartfelt praise, Assembled in thy courts to-day, Recall the memories of thy grace, The wonders of thy perfect way.
Beneath the shade of spreading boughs, Made strong and fruitful by thy love, We joyful meet, and pay our vows To thee, who hearest from above.
We praise thee for thy fostering care, Which through a century of years Has given success to word and prayer, And owned and blessed thy servants' tears.
Life, growth and fruitage are bestowed By thy divine and sovereign will ; The past owns thee its gracious God, And hope rests sweetly on thee still.
J. S. JAMES.
ADDRESS
OF THE
REV. J. S. JAMES,
Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Hartford.
THE FUTURE'S DEBT TO THE PAST.
"Fifty years of service in holy things, fifty years of labor for the kingdom of God are complete to-day. We need not wait for eternity to show that the promise to Abraham and Abraham's children, 'Thou shalt be a blessing,' has been fulfilled in you also. Fifty years long you have been a blessing to the church of God on earth; and with you, many look back over this period with prayerful adoration."
With words like these Dr. Herman Cremer dedicates his "Lexicon of New Testament Greek," to his beloved instructor, Dr. Tholuck, of Halle, on the celebration of his semi-centennial of academic life.
They seem fit words with which to introduce the theme of my own thoughts to-day. We have been looking backward to a point of time almost exactly nine years previous to the birthday of Dr. Tholuck, as we have surveyed the twice fifty years of service in holy things and labor for the kingdom of God on earth, com- plete to-day amid so many happy congratulations. It has been a century not without its wanderings in the
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wilderness, its pillar of cloud and fire and angels' food, nor yet without its conquests of Canaan and visions of Pisgah. And the eye of our venerable church is yet undimmed and its natural force unabated.
The words I have quoted are words of loyalty no less than love. Loyalty recognizes obligation. We who stand in this glad hour where two centuries touch, looking into the future big with opportunity, lovingly, loyally recognize our obligation to an honored past.
Above Dr. Turnbull's grave in Spring Grove, a noble shaft of granite stands, erected to his memory by those who sat under his Hartford ministry. The mound is green with well trimmed sod. Through the thirteen years' repose of the form he used to wear, flowers have bloomed around this grave. They were planted and have been tended by one, who is now a mother in Israel, (Mrs. Silas Chapman, Sr.), baptized into the fellowship of this church seven years before Dr. Turnbull began his long and significant service with us. The stone and sod and flowers are tokens of abiding love and loyalty to him, firm as the granite shaft, sweet as the fragrance ascending from the opening flowers. They are symbols also of a still broader loyalty which is glad to acknowledge our debt to the whole century of Christ-like ministrations.
First. Our fathers of this past have handed down to us of the opening future, in this church life of a hundred years, a well marked organic character, a significant church personality. The future owes to the past that we preserve intact each divine element of that character, ours by the mysterious law of church heredity.
.
Few questions in the ordinary problems of life are
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weightier to the average man than the question, Into what family was he born? His family starts him in the world with a helpful momentum or a millstone about his neck. He may relieve himself of the dead weight or despise the birth-right of his opportunity, just as he chooses. They are there to face him, the one or the other. The sins of his fathers will visit him or the shades of his ancestors inspire him. Hereditary char- acter is not peculiar to men. Institutions have it. States have it and transmit it. Churches are as marked as men. Next to coming into the kingdom of heaven, the most important consideration is to be born into the best possible church family. The idiosyncracies of a church may fasten themselves on a young Christian, like the awkward gait of his father. Happy are they who are welcomed into fellowship with a church whose char- acteristics are not idiosyncracies but features of the face of our divine Lord.
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