USA > Connecticut > Contributions to the ecclesiastical history of Connecticut > Part 12
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The churches in that connection have been a sort of seed plot for the West ; and subjected to a constant drain from emi- gration. Yet they have lived and flourished. They have been the lights in their own region, and have done their part in originating and sustaining the Christian and benevolent enter- prises of modern times, both domestic and foreign. The best evidence that a machine is adapted to any end-is to be found in the fact that it successfully accomplishes the end in question.
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Consociated Congregationalism, thus judged by its fruits, challenges our approval ; but Mr. Moderator, I think the ra- tionale of its successful working may be explained.
Consociation is a mixed body-in which the clerical and lay elements exist in equal proportions. It is a permanent body on the same ground. Its discretion is limited-its powers be- ing defined, and its duties specified. Its mixed character, being composed equally of laymen and clergymen, is at once a check and protection to both parties. Neither can easily infringe upon the rights and'privileges of the other. Then the specula- tive wisdom of the clergy and the practical experience of the laymen both come into useful play in all matters of interest that come before the Consociation.
The permanence of the Consociation on the same ground where its action takes effect is a very important circumstance. An independent Council may be packed in reference to the ob- ject for which it is called ; a Consociation cannot be. A Coun- cil has no permanent existence, and consequently no character to maintain. Its decision having been given, its members dis- perse in every direction never to meet more. It is soon out of sight, and out of hearing of any trouble that its proceedings may create.
Consociation, on the contrary, has a permanent existence ; it has a character to sustain for intelligence, impartiality and con- sistency. The members of it are to remain in the vicinity of the place where the action takes effect ; they are to see and hear the results of that action, and to be held in a degree re- sponsible for them. Still further, the pastors and representa- tives of the churches know that their decision in each case is to be put on record-that it will be a rod in pickle, a precedent to be applied in their own case, should occasion arise. Who that knows anything of human nature can doubt that these circumstances will tend to produce caution, deliberation, and ยท fairness ? Then Consociation is not left to unlimited discre- tion ; not merely to the common law of usage and undefined customs. Its powers are defined, its duties are specified, and it acts under a constitution that has been framed and accepted by the churches themselves. The moral authority of their decis- ions is thereby greatly enhanced.
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I have found Consociation also eminently conducive to mu- tual acquaintance and sympathy among the pastors and churches embraced in its limits. They are often summoned together- they become acquainted with each others state, condition, in- terests, duties, and the best means to be employed to promote the great cause of the Lord. These matters are discussed, good feeling is elicited, and judicious plans are struck out and adopted-and executed. We recall the good men that have preceded us, we anticipate those who are to come after us, we are stimulated by our recollections of the past, we are an- imated with hope for the future. (Here the Moderator of the Association said-Your time is up!) Well, then, in my judgment, Consociation is a precious legacy of our ancestors, and I pray God, it may be transmitted to the latest generation of our posterity.
THE LESSONS OF OUR DAY AS SUGGESTED BY THE LEADING AIM OF OUR FATHERS.
- BY REV. SAMUEL WOLCOTT, PROVIDENCE, R. I.
MR. MODERATOR :
I am present at this festival as a son of Connecticut-a rela- tionship which has always seemed to me so near akin to the family connection, that the two have been scarcely separate in my heart. As such, I feel an interest in her churches and in the history of Congregationalism within her borders, not merely as embraced in the graphic delineation which a mas- ter's hand has sketched to-day-the rise and the decline of that Consociationism, which is such a favorite with the respected speaker, who has just preceded me; but also as embodied in the forms of that earlier and broader Congrega- tionalism, which came to Connecticut with her first churches, and will be found, I trust, abiding with her last. Thus com- prehensively viewed, what collection of churches in our land comprises, in its records, a more complete exhibition of the ele- ments which, through a protracted and eventful period, have entered into the very constitution of a civil society, and made the history of a community memorable, than this? What were the history of Connecticut, without this history, and God's hand therein ? The heroic days of this Commonwealth, the days when her direct influence in the national confederacy, of which she was one of the smallest members, was almost un- surpassed ; when her Trumbulls, and Griswolds, and Ells- worths, and Shermans were her representative statesmen, and Washington leaned upon her counsels in the cabinet, and her armies in the field-those days, with all their fruitful achieve- ments, had their root and growth and fair development in the faith and polity of her churches, here represented. Through the combined instrumentality of the school, the college, and the sanctuary, were molded by these churches the characters that adorn her historic eras.
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The lesson of the hour is obvious to us all, and the simple narrative which has been rehearsed in our ears is its best en- forcement. It will be conceded by all who are familiar with our annals, that for the agencies which have advanced and eleva- ted us as a people, and for the results accomplished which con- stitute our distinctive crown and glory, we are mainly indebt- ed, under God, to the views and aims which brought our fore- fathers to this land-to the tendencies impressed upon our ear- ly life and forming character, upon all our sentiments and habits, by their cherished principles. And this admission in- volves another, viz : that in a faithful adherence to the course on which the favor of heaven has so manifestly rested, and which has been fraught with such signal benefits in the past, we shall find our continued safety and permanent prosperity.
This gathering, then, is designed to remind us of the lead- ing object which governed the men who sought their homes in this land and planted these churches and gave tone to our his- tory, and to bring us into fresh sympathy with the spirit which animated them. Nor can we be too often reminded of the truth, familiar as it may be, that the ships which brought over the Pilgrim Fathers did not convey to the savage coast of New. England companies of trading adventurers, or individual emi- grants, seeking each a separate and selfish end. They brought the household, with all its dependent members, the aged and the young, and with all its dear and sacred ties. They brought the civil government in an organic form, with its writ- ten constitution and its appointed officers. They brought the Christian church, with its simple, scriptural polity, its covenant, its sacraments, and its pastor and teacher. The vessels which bore to their several destinations the early colonists of New England, eame freighted-with what ? With social, civil, and religious institutions.
In the quiet and venerable churchyard of the ancient town of Windsor, rest the mortal remains of that company of Pil- grims, already described, who traversed the unbroken forests of Massachusetts, and accomplished, with untold hardships, in a weary fortnight, a journey which may now be made with ease in four or five hours. Some of them had left in the Old World homes of comfort and affluence, but they cheerfully
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shared the toils, privations, and perils of the way ; and on reaching the banks of the River, they gratefully welcomed the common termination of their earthly journeyings.
" They thought on England's fields of green, Nor wept that Ocean rolled between, But praised the Lord their guide, whose hand Had brought them to their promised land."
Along those smiling meadows they reared their humble dwellings ; on that swelling upland they built their sanctuary ; in that lone cemetery they made their graves. Beneath a monument, the tablet of which has been piously renewed, sleeps the dust of the learned and sainted Warham, their be- loved and venerated Pastor. On another monument which has happily escaped the ravages of time, is inscribed the name of a worthy fellow-pilgrim,* one of the first Magistrates of the Colony. Around these are scattered the rude memorials of others of the company, men and women, who left the shores of England together in the spring of 1630. Here, undisturb- ed by the noise of the loaded trains which thunder daily along the iron track by their side, startling with strange echoes that sweet and sacred solitude, they rest, pastor and flock, where two centuries ago they laid them down together, in the joyful hope of an associated rising on the morning of the resurrec- tion. But the bond of this tender relation, as has been stated here to-day, was formed before they left their native land. Af- ter their passage had been engaged, they were granted the privilege of assembling in an apartment of the new hospital at Plymouth, and forming a church organization. They came as such, with their confession of faith and covenant, and enjoy- ed church ordinances and pastoral ministrations on shipboard. It was not a company of individual passengers-it was a church of Christ that crossed the ocean in the good ship which brought them over. And other companies, that were not dis- tinct organizations, were actuated by the same principles and purposes ; they all came to plant permanent institutions in these wild solitudes which had been reserved for the purpose-the only spot in the world where such institutions could have a fair trial and room for full expansion.
* Henry Wolcott.
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If our privileges and blessings are to be perpetuated, it is most evident that a work is to be done in this generation, sim- ilar to that which our honored ancestors did in theirs, and that this service is to be repeated in coming generations, until our territory is subdued and our population evangelized. The principles and the institutions which were worth transporting across the ocean at such cost and peril, are worth preserving at every cost, and worth transplanting in the newly settled por- tions of our land at every personal sacrifice. The spirit of emigration to our Western States,-now Western, but soon to be Central, and the seat of empire and of destiny to our Re- public-is not to be stimulated as a spirit of commercial spec- ulation and private gain ; but as a spirit of patriotic, philan- thropic, and Christian enterprise, it deserves our fostering care and warmest encouragement. There, as here, must be laid the deep and broad foundations of those institutions which cluster around a living faith, and with which are identified the stabil- ity, purity, and safety of the community. That faith, which is consecrated to us by hallowed memories, and which has been the source and basis of our highest prosperity, we are to preserve and propagate, guarding it alike against the "rampant ecclesiasticism" which would corrupt its simplicity, and the more hateful despotism which would crush its moral life. We are to disseminate it in its integrity, and through it secure, if possible, to the new settlements of the West the same auspi- cious beginnings with the early settlements of the East.
I cannot but think that it is in this field that Connecticut has done her greatest work, reproducing herself in the young and growing West. Within a few years, as I was passing through the thriving towns and villages of northern Ohio, I was constantly and pleasantly reminded of my native State. More than once have I thought of her with pride and gratitude, as I have stood on the gentle ascent which overlooks the most charming scene in Illinois, the site of a college which a band of her youthful students consecrated to sound learning and to Christ, and which does not dishonor its parentage as a daughter of Yale. And she has her memorial in the New England churches, and Plymouth churches, and nameless Christian churches, springing up over all the boundless West, and whose
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filial greetings have reached us here to-day. I deem it worthy of special mention, that she has furnished settlers, good men and true, for that dark " Border Line," along which the stern resolve of Christian freemen, under God, now holds to the an- gry surges of the menacing curse of our Republic the relation of that decree of the Almighty which binds the ocean tides- " Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further."
We have every encouragement to prosecute this good work of Christian emigration and colonization. While colonists and emigrants who have gone forth in the spirit of worldly adven- ture, or in quest of gain, have met with various, and often, adverse fortunes, never, to my knowledge, have they borne with them a principle which was vital, in behalf of which they were ready to dare and to suffer, and failed, sooner or later, to effect its permanent establishment. The history of New Eng- land, from the day that the Mayflower moored in Plymouth harbor, is the glorious witness to this truth. Our own shores are its special monuments ; for our pleasant homes and sanc- tuaries, our dearest possessions and privileges, are the fair pro- duct of that tender germ of freedom, which distressed men brought across these waters, and planted in this solitude, and which has here expanded and blossomed and ripened into forms of social beauty and the fruits of a religious liberty, which is now the boast of our land, and the immortal trea- sure of our age and of the ages. And what is this band- ed emigration of New England Freemen, but the exodus of another Pilgrim Brotherhood, bearing with them the principles of our fathers, and transplanting to the fertile bosom of the far West the perfected institutions of civil and religious free- dom ? May we not believe, that the guardian Power, that brought out of oppression the choice vine that was planted on these coasts, and which has here sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river, will watch over and pro- tect it there, and prepare room before it, and cause it to take deep root and fill the land, until the hills of Kansas and Ne- braska shall be covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof shall wave on the summits of Oregon like the goodly cedars of Lebanon ?
I canmot refrain from a grateful recognition of the Provi-
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dence which has assembled us for such a celebration on this spot, combining with the unrivaled charms of the natural land- scape and the pleasant social life that dwells beneath its shades, the associations of a town distinctively Puritan in its origin and history, in which the principles that are dear to us have had an ascendency from the beginning-represented to-day in her sons, appreciated and honored throughout the State, and repre- sented in her model schools and pleasant sanctuaries ; and blessed, early and late, with the special influences of the Holy Spirit. Have we not been brought here to-day, that we may have before us a happy illustration of the legitimate fruits of our system, and an example of the kind of community which it must be our aim to establish across the breadth of our Con- tinent, from shore to shore?
THE CONGREGATIONAL POLITY ADAPTED BOTH TO INDIVIDUAL AND TO UNITED ACTION IN THE CAUSE OF CHRIST.
BY REV. JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D. D., NEW YORK CITY.
MR. MODERATOR :
No careful reader of the New Testament can fail to be im- pressed with these two facts, as comprising the method and adaptation of Christianity as a working system, viz. : The in- tense personality of the Gospel in its instructions, addresses, appeals, commands and promises ; and the spiritual unity and moral co-operation of all who accept it. The feature of indi- vidualism is always prominent. All that the Gospel is, in its blessings, its hopes, its promises-all that the Gospel requires, in its obligations and commands, pertains to the individual soul. Each man renewed in Christ is made a king and priest unto God, and each disciple is commissioned to preach the Gospel to every creature.
Out of this individual, personal union with and resemblance to Christ, arises the moral affinity of all true believers, which draws them together in associations for his service and glory, and combines them for more efficient action.
It is the beauty of Congregationalism, that it combines in their just proportions these two features or elements of the em- bodied Christianity of the New Testament. This polity re- cognizes to the full the individualism of which I have spoken. It looks for the elements of a church to individual souls renew- ed and sanctified ; then it unites these under natural laws of association, with Christ as their common head ; but in the as- sociation called a church, it guards every right, reserves every privilege, of the individual. Moreover, by the very nature of the association-one of equality in power, privilege and re- sponsibility-it developes, in the highest degree, individual character. Now, wherever organic unity is placed first in order, the source of vital power in the organization itself is wanting ; for the vital power resides not in the organization, but in in-
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dividual souls composing that organization, and making it vital through their personal union with Christ, by his Spirit. Ec- clesiasticism, under whatever form, cripples, if it does not de- stroy this power. The moment the church as an organiza- tion, is preferred before the individual as a Christian, the church stands in the way of its own life, and hinders the power of the Gospel. This may be true of the simplest as well as the most elaborate system; for as there may be just as much of formalism in the manner in which the Quaker takes his seat in meeting, as in the bows and genu-flexions with which the stoled priest performs the mass-just as much pride in the Qua- keress when selecting the most subdued mouse-color for her shawl or bonnet, as in Eugenie when ordaining a new fashion for the world ; - so there may be just as much of Ecclesiasticism in the administration of our simple polity, as in the most im- perious Churchism. Indeed our very liberty of association may become a bondage. The tendency to association and to organic action has been pushed in our times as far as it will bear. No man can go beyond me in valuing that principle for all its le- gitimate ends ; but how natural it is for us when we desire to accomplish a particular object, to form an Association for that purpose, and imagine that the thing is done. But this is just like the many patent inventions for perpetual motion, which are perfect in every respect but one-they will not move. How much rhetoric, of which I confess my full share, was wasted over the telegraphic cable ; but just at the moment when we were chaining the sea, and girdling the world, and flashing in- telligence in advance of time, the magnetism oozed out, and the batteries refused to speak. We frame our complicated or- ganizations, nicely adjusted, wheel within wheel, but they stand a gazing stock, or a monument of folly and extravagance ; but when the living spirit enters within the wheels, they move, not with the noise and clatter of human machinery, but are lifted up from the earth, and their noise is as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of a host.
Whenever any organization, however wisely planned, how- ever piously designed, comes to regard itself as indispensable to the cause of Christ, this is a sign that the time has come when it should be dispensed with. The laudation of associa-
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tions or societies, the making these paramount or essential to individual churches, and to the efficiency of individual Chris- tians, the attempt to submerge individualism in mere organiza- tion, argues that the time has come for modifying the principle of associated effort, or for making associations conform to the laws and principles of the New Testament. And here lies the power of our Congregational system. The remedy for an abuse of the principle of voluntary association, does not lie in Ecclesiasticism. That were even a greater evil, for how tre- mendous the pressure, and how corrupting the influence of Ecclesiasticism on the individual Christian life, all history testi- fies. But this system, keeping the individual alive, making him conscious of his rights, and privileges, and duties under the Gospel, supplies the safe corrective for all such evils.
Professor Barrows, in his admirable portraiture of the New Testament polity, said of it, that it had no power as against kings and temporal power. But is this so? Is not the indi- vidual soul, living for truth, greater than the organized power against it ? Is not the simple association of believing, praying men, for the worship of God and the defence of his truth, mightier than church-and-state organization against them ? When Algernon Sydney was condemned by the brutal Jeffries for having written, in an unpublished manuscript, that kings have no right to govern except for the good of the people, and laid his hoary head upon the block, he made his appeal to God and to posterity. Ten years after, the English Revolution answered that appeal. A new dynasty came in at the call of the people. The parliament effaced from his name the attain- der of treason. The liberties of England to-day bear witness that the martyr Sydney was mightier than the House of Stuart. Barrowe, Penry, Greenwood, the noble pioneers of religious free- dom and of our Congregational polity, seemed weaker in their time than the judges and prelates who shut them up in prison and condemned them to the scaffold. But which lives to-day as a power in the world, that persecuting ecclesiasticism of Elizabeth, or that free polity of those heroic souls ? Our brother said also, that this system is weak for wire-pulling. And so it is ;- but it is not weak against the wire pullers. For when they have held their caucuses and laid their plans to tri- umph over individual rights, and to manage everything in their
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own way, men trained in that simple regard for truth and duty, which our system inculcates, bolt up before them some great principle of God's word, some fact of Christian obligation, and in the attempt to pull this down, the wires snap and the wire- pullers fall to the ground discomfitted.
De Tocqueville, who was a most sagacious and philosophical observer of our institutions, remarked that the individualism fostered by democracy tends to Atheism. This may be true of a purely natural individualism. So it may be that physical science and speculative philosophy, apart from religion, with their freedom of investigation and their pride of discovery, tend to Atheism, though I deny that this is the legitimate tendency of any science, and where there is Atheism in science, it is found rather in Pantheistie tendencies, which neutralize or ab- sorb the individual. But we speak of a sanctified individual- ism, which proceeds from God and lives in God, so that the man is nothing in himself, but everything in Christ and because Christ dwells in him. There is no danger of Atheism here, for the whole strength of the individual Christian lies in his humility, and his dependence. And for the same reason, this secures the highest conservatism; for he who has the weight- iest interests committed to his trust, a soul to save, a kingdom on earth to win for his Master, a kingdom in heaven to enjoy as his reward, will not knowingly thrust aside or destroy any- thing that God approves or values or has appointed for the good of man. This sanctified individualism also favors the moral co-operation of Christians under the best forms, leaving them free to choose the time and mode of their organic action. Who has not felt to-day that the men who framed that Platform whose history has been reviewed, were greater than the Plat- form which they made; and that the instrument made for the exigency of their times derives for us much of its value from their characters. Let us go down then, from this glad fellow- ship one with another, from this high and sacred fellowship with the illustrious dead, with a renewed determination to be as individuals, faithful to our times, as they were to theirs ; and to vitalize our churches, under God, by summoning them anew to the highest individual consecration and the most zeal- ous and efficient, because the simplest and the purest united effort for the advancement and the glory of His kingdom.
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THE MISSION OF OUR CHURCHES AS DEFINED BY OUR HISTORY.
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