USA > Connecticut > Contributions to the ecclesiastical history of Connecticut > Part 9
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But this is off my track. I shall be pardoned, however, I trust; for I was pressed by an internal force which would not be resisted. I return to my subject. The church of which I am giving a brief historic sketch, as the first established in the State, has been distinguished for its stability, peace and harmony. So far as I can learn it has never been agitated or disturbed, but in a single instance, since its formation, by any serious controversy or dispute either about doctrine or disci- pline. The case of difficulty referred to occurred in the early history of the church, and was occasioned by a dispute upon some ecclesiastical topic between Mr. Stone and the ruling elder, relating, it is thought, to the qualifications for baptism, church- membership and the rights of the brotherhood. It was of long continuance, and of wide spread and disastrous influence. Cot- ton Mather, in his quaint style, remarks " that from the fire of the altar there issued thunderings and lightnings and earthquakes through the colony." He says also, that the true original of the misunderstanding was about as obscure as the rise of Con- necticut river. It is known, however, that Mr. Stone's ideas of Congregationalism bordered more on Presbyterianism than those of most of the first ministers in New England. His sententious definition of Congregationalism was, " A speaking aristocracy in the face of a silent democracy." From this it would seem not unnatural to infer that the schism referred to had in it a spice of Presbyterianism, and this perhaps was one reason why it was so long continued and so hard to be cured. However this may be, it is good to know that this is the first and only difficulty of any importance that has existed in the church to disturb its peace for more than two hundred years. And I am happy to be able to say that, during the almost forty- two years I have been with the people as their minister, they have never by any associated act or movement of theirs, given me an half hour's uneasiness. Were I to assign the cause of this long continued union and harmony enjoyed by the people, I should say that, under God, it has been owing to a spirit of mutual concession; to the fact that none have assumed to dictate or to rule without the consent of others, and that when the majority have decided a question, the minority have been ac- customed peaceably to acquiesce. The church has ever be-
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lieved in revivals of religion, and owes all its prosperity to these oft repeated visitations of heaven's mercy. The ministry of Mr. Hooker, while in his native land, " was crowned with wonderful success by the Holy Spirit." Multitudes under his preaching became the subjects of renewing grace, many of whom removed to this country and were the founders and first members of the church of which he and Mr. Stone were con- stituted pastors. After its removal from Cambridge and estab- lishment in its present location, signal were the displays of grace in the midst of it. An early writer referring to this period, exclaims :- " O, that converting glory, which did then appear ! Multitudes were converted to thee, O Zion !- Multi- tudes, multitudes were converted to thee, O Hartford ! to thee, O New Haven ! to thee, O Windsor!" Passing over the inter- vening period during which there is evidence that the church was frequently blessed with revivals, we come to the ministry of my immediate predecessor, Dr. Strong. He was ordained in 1774. The first twenty years of his ministry were compara- tively unfruitful, owing in part to the disturbed state of the country, occasioned by the revolutionary war, and in part to his own deficiency in fidelity and devotedness to his work. But the last twenty-two or three years of his life, witnessed a great change in him and in the fruits of his labors. A con- verted man, it is believed, before this, he now experienced what seemed a second conversion, and his ministry was in de- monstration of the Spirit and with power. He lived to witness four revivals among the people of his charge. Large numbers were added to the church, among whom were many leading men in the community; and the general tone of religion was greatly elevated and advanced in spirituality and power.
In 1818, I was called to take charge of the church, since which it has been my privilege to witness nine special seasons of revival among the people, the most remarkable of which was in 1821 when nearly two hundred were added to the church during the year. As the result of these revivals the church has been largely increased in numbers, and I trust also in spirituality and fruitfulness unto God. Three colonies have gone forth from it, since I became its pastor, to form other
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churches in the city. It has sent eighteen* young men into the ministry, once of its membership, and nurtured and trained in its bosom. It has borne a comparatively generous part in sus- taining and promoting the cause of home and foreign mis- sions, and the various other benevolent operations of the day. Its contributions (including the congregation, ) in aid of these objects have amounted for the last twenty years, to from six to eight thousand dollars annually.
Such is a brief historical sketch of the First Church estab- lished in Connecticut. In many respects it may be put down as a model church. And yet it is far, very far removed from the scriptural standard. It has faults, many and great faults, which, if I thought it would do any good either to it or to other sister churches, I would be just as frank to name as I have been to speak of its virtues. The millennium has not yet dawned upon it. Indeed it is far from having come to that spirituality and fruitfulness in its membership and communion which I trust it will attain at some future day. Being the oldest church in the State, it is somewhat too staid and un- bendable in its habits. It is perhaps too much afraid of Young America, and is not sufficiently aware that the best way to guide that fast youngster is not to stand off at a for- bidding distance, but to come near, lay a soft hand upon him, and go along by his side speaking kind words and gently hold- ing him in with a flexible rein. The church has always seem- ed willing to let me do very much as I had a mind to do ; but I have not found them just as ready as I could wish to come forward and help me, especially in occasional religious nieet- ings, and other active labors. I have often complained of this to them, as they do very well know-and I have hoped that there has been some improvement of late in a free out- flow of feeling and speech, and active co-operation, one with another and with the pastor. Still there is great room for progress in the matters here referred to as well as in many others that might be named. But I must say of the old first church in Connecticut, as Cowper said of his native Old Eng- land : " With all thy faults, I love thee still." And I account it
* Besides these, seventeen others, though less directly trained in the church, have passed from its membership into the ministry.
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the greatest joy and blessing of my life, that I have been per- mitted to serve the church as its pastor so many laborious, but very happy years. And now as I look to the end of my course- not distant I know, and see the river before me on the shore of which I have parted with so many of my dear people, the loved members of my church, as I clasped them by the hand and bade them farewell on their way to heaven, it gives me new joy to think that I shall ere long cross the same stream, and through grace, as I humbly hope, shall go to join them in the celestial city, and with them rejoice forever in the presence of God and the Lamb.
THE MISSION OF CONGREGATIONALISM AT THE WEST.
BY REV. T. M. POST, D. D., ST. LOUIS, MO.
MR. MODERATOR :
I have interpreted my call to this historic commemoration as a recognition of the fact that Western Congregationalism is a part of your history ; a colonial offshoot and exponent. As in the triumphs of ancient Rome, representatives from the frontiers and outposts-from 'Thrace and Germania, the Euphrates and the Nile-swelled the pageant of the ovation, as exponential of the expansive genius and aspirations of the empire ; so your sons from beyond the Mississippi are invited here to-day as represen- tatives not of imperial, but of evangelical aspirations, stretch- ing to the Pacific. I have supposed it the expectation of that call that I should speak of the relations of Congregationalism to that new world where my manly life has been spent. In so doing, I design to speak, not by way of arraignment of those differing from myself-among such are my true brothers, both in blood and in the Gospel of Christ-but, fraternally conce- ding to them the same right of judgment I claim for myself, I design to look simply to the logic of our position as Congrega- tionalists. All that I would say is the evolution of a few great principles which I can do little but barely state on this occasion.
And, first, I may certainly assume in this presence that Congregationalism is a distinctive, substantive entity, not a mere accident, prejudice, caprice, or custom, commutable into something else at pleasure ; but an individual essence, trans- latable by no synonym, and having characteristic principles, peculiar either in kind or in degree and extent of working, found- ed on Scripture and the nature of man.
I do not believe that those distinctive principles of church polity for which our fathers in the seventeenth century separa- ted from other Non-conformists, in that conflict which shook down the English monarchy, and those which they so much prized as the great gift of God to them in the wilderness of the
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New World-I do not believe these distinctive principles are mere unsubstantial illusions or prejudices.
I will premise, morever, that as these principles lie not within the domain of feeling, but of logic, and are not the creations of feeling, nor to be assumed or laid down at its behests ; so a plea to charity as against their entertainment or assertion is en- tirely alien and irrelevant. Charity has her own beautiful sphere ; but she cannot make or unmake facts or principles, cannot mend or mar an argument, is no solvent or solderer of logic. Charity worthy the name can live only with clear self-consciousness and ingenuous self-utterance, and, till the millennium, certainly, with variant opinion.
We glory in the large-heartedness of Congregationalism. Long may she wear the honor of catholicity so ably vindicated for her here this day. But certainly this claim to catholicity and charity is not to be vindicated by the abnegation of her own distinctive essence or self-assertion. Our system surely is not so catholic that it is nothing. That which produces such beautiful charity, certainly has no right to carry charity to the extent of suicide-to the destruction of the distinctive individ- ual life-principle that bears a fruit so fair. Charity must not quench the fountain of charity. We may not reason in this wise : "Congregationalism glories in producing a spirit which seeketh not its own but another's good. Therefore let us give it up." We may sacrifice interest and feeling, but never truth and principle. We may die for a brother, but we may not for him suppress a truth or enact or utter a falsehood. If, there- fore, the logic of our position and principles demands of Con- gregationalism a policy of self-diffusion, let not her attempt at duty, due to herself and her Lord, be paralized by that song of the Lotus-eaters to which she has so long listened ;- charming her energies to sleep, by an abuse of the beautiful and blessed name of charity to a mere good feeling, which melts into itself all logic and all distinctive principle and all conscious individ- uality.
Let not these arguments for the extension of Congregation- alism be met by mere deprecation of denominationalism, or by mere pleasant words of the beauty and blessedness of brotherly love. If in the alembic of charity all distinctive organic prin-
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ciples exhale, and nothing is left but a catechism and a kindly feeling, ready to melt into any order that may be presented, the quicker our individual existence is abandoned the better ; we have no right to be. If this adhesion to our church-order can- not abide in the strongest Christian love, then its existence at all is an offense. Our cherished principles are merely prejudice- nothing more ; when we feel right they disappear.
But if our church order stands with us on the only ground on which it is entitled to stand at all-as embracing peculiar principles and forces adapted in their working to glorify Christ and save men, then the stronger our love for Christ and our brethren, the stronger our attachment to it will be.
Self-diffusion, Congregationalism owes to her own principles and to her own life. To limit a principle to geographic boun- daries is to destroy it. This denies its universality-its foun- dation in the nature of things and the Word of God; and to deny this is abnegation of its own existence. Self-diffusion is the prerogative and duty of Truth. To deny it expansion is to slay it. As well hope to maintain the life of a tree while cutting off its lateral branches and roots. To assume that Con- gregationalism may not live beyond New England, is fatal to its abiding in New England ; and would necessitate ultimately, as a logical and natural consequence, a contest for the right of your Association to exist in the state of Connecticut.
Again, such diffusion is due to the West. Whether we con- sider vastness and resources of territory and prospective pop- ulation, or energy of civilization, never since Christianity strove for the possession of the Roman empire, or the barbaric world in which that empire sunk, or since the Reformation wrestled for the supremacy of Christendon in the sixteenth century-never has so mighty a game been presented, or one staking on its is- sue such vast results for the kingdom of God, as that now wa- ged by divisive and antagonistic, social and religious forces, for the rising world of the West-never one with necessity more urgent, because of the rapidity of the step of Destiny. While every form of belief and misbelief, from Mormonism to the Papacy, is looking to that world as its quarry, shall the religious order of the founders of our nation alone be excluded ? The cry that this order is unfitted to the West is, in regard to
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large portions, at least, of the West, sheer, indolent, and hos- tile cant ; unsupported alike by facts, philosophy or history. All these indicate a peculiar adaptedness of it to that field.
It is due, again, to the history of Congregationalism in the past, that her children should carry her institutions Westward ; that that church-order, which has been the chief social arch- itect of your commonwealths-than which the sun shines on no fairer in all its course-should be introduced amid the plas- tic and organic forces in the genesis of the new states in the West. Her past protests against her exclusion from the future.
But if self-diffusion be a duty, how shall this be effected ? There are two methods. One extensively adopted in the past, is the interpenetration of other denominations with her own ideas, by surrendering her own distinctive organization, and merging herself in them. But whatever we may think of the expediency or the ingenuousness of this procedure in the past, its time is gone. The reactionary spasm is on all the great ec- clesiastical systems. The tendency everywhere is to a more stringent ecclesiasticism. Compromises are repelled and re- sented.
Another mode, that of distinctive assertion and organization, alone is left us. We must advance under our own symbol. And it is better thus. The West loves boldness and frankness. Other denominations appear with generous and explicit self-as- sertion. Why not the sons of the Pilgrims ?
But what means shall we employ to this effect ? Shall we or- ganize a system of crusade and aggression ? Shall we have but one idea? Shall we advocate an impracticable, factious course in our emigrant members ? Do we exalt the church above Christ ? Order above life? No, by no means ! The great means is that duty which every system owes to itself, self-indoctrination ; the interpenetration of our own body with a more distinctive, appreciative, grateful self-consciousness. We need to understand better the principles of our own sys- tem ; to be taught in our homes and sanctuaries, our theologi- cal schools, and by our religious press, its characteristic excel- lencies ; its beneficent relations, social and religious, to truth, brotherhood, freedom, life, and power. Our great policy is self-instruction. Our weapons are ideas. Our mode of self-
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diffusion is self-consciousness. We have no great ecclesiastic arm by which to reach into vacant realms and map them into ecclesiastical jurisdictions, and frame outlines into which com- ing people may shape themselves. Our reliance is on ideas implanted in the minds of our sons and daughters. If there are enduring principles in our system, and we expect poster- ity to abide by them, our children must be taught what they are ; not to estimate them as the Gospel, or as paramount to Christian life or love ; but to hold them in their true rank, and their proper relations to these interests, and cleave to them for the sake of these interests, and these only. I urge this point, because this duty seems to have been falsely estimated and stu- diously neglected. In order to cooperation with other ecclesi- astical systems, and to facilitate transition to them, we seem purposely to have ignored the principles of our own, till we have well-nigh forgotten it has any, and it stands with us as a mere matter of conveniency, custom or prejudice.
Now, not as against charity, but for the sake of charity, of peace, and of sobriety of thought and feeling, all this should be changed. These can abide permanently only with a clear and comprehensive appreciation of principles, a distinct discernment of their proper limit and consequence, and their due relation and proportion. A system dimly self-conscious, or held merely in prejudice, passion, or custom, is of necessity exposed to the alternative of fanaticism and ultraism on the one hand, or of formalism and indifferentism on the other-an indifferentism extending ultimately to other things than forms of church or- der. Its adherents must defend it ignorantly, or abandon it with many hazards to character, ever arising from abandonment of what is clearly inwrought in the past with our moral and religions sentiment and practice.
Again, the want of indoctrination, and the sending of your children westward with their church institutions-if borne with them at all-labelled " Things indifferent," breeds a strife of tongues and much uncharitableness. If they cleave to these institutions as matters of principle, they incur suspicion and re- port as factious and impracticable agitators, troubling the church for mere forms and punctilios. Their attempt at practical as- sertion of their principles, is resented as stolid or schismatic ob-
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stinacy ; and often by none more than by those from your own body who, under our past policy of ignoring our distinctive principles, have easily fused with other ecclesiastical systems, and consequently cannot appreciate the difficulties others may find in pursuing the same course. Hence the most bitter op- posers of our polity are found among those nurtured in its bo- som, educated by its charities, and deriving much of the energy and excellence of character they possess from the influence of its institutions. I do not at all question their conscientiousness. For their position and opinion are the natural consequences of our past policy. But obviously it is for the interests of peace that this policy of self-ignorance should not continue. A dis- tinct self-consciousness will teach us when, how, and to what extent we can cooperate with other denominations, and thus save from the irritation of false expectations and misunder- standings and attempts at impracticabilities. There are pri- mary differences of organic principles between us and other denominations, which, leaving us the power to do something in common, make other things impracticable. If two neigh- bors have distinct principles of architecture, while they may beneficently unite in many things,-in constructing roads, bridges, and various improvements of a country,-yet clearly if they attempt house-building in common, they incur the hazard of a quarrel. If, for instance, one wishes a circular and the other a rectangular edifice, they cannot compromise by attempt- ing to build a square circle or circular square ; nor will it relieve the difficulty to invent some comprehensive misnomer that may embrace both styles under one term. Nor will it make for peace if one thinks to enter into his neighbor's house and knock off the angles till the rectangular becomes circular, or crowd the curve into angles till the circle becomes a square. Such attempts at unity breed sharper discord in the end. On many things they can beneficially and pleasantly unite ; but in house- building only for temporary shelter, and with the understand- ing that each, when strong enough, may without impeachment build his own edifice and in accordance with his own taste. So in regard to different churches at work in the West; similar distinctness of self-consciousness and self-assertion should for the interests of peace mark their relations to each other.
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Again, it is due to the maintenance of Puritan manhood among your children going westward, that they be taught rightly to appreciate the Religious Order of their fathers as the bequest of heroic and martyr ages ; and when practicable, to bear them to the wilderness as the most precious part of their birthright. But contrarywise, to inculcate that the emigrant son of New England should initiate life in the West, by casting away the church order connected with what is most sacred and most cherished of his previous years, must tend to set him on a course hazardous often to virtue and principle.
The abandonment of institutions is liable to draw after it that of associated sentiment and principle, and a dangerous re- laxation of the entire moral sentiment. No people can aban- don what they have in early life been accustomed to regard as sacred, without peril to character. Unless done at the behests of a higher reason and conscience, it enfeebles and demoral- izes. Facility of such transition lias brought reproach on the New England character ; nor has the fact that this has arisen in many cases from conscientious motives, and often-from want of education in our own church system-with conscious- ness of little change save in names, prevented that injury to character accruing to the mass, from the general habitude this induced. This habitude operating on the weak, the ambitious, and the worldly, is wont to betray into a career of moral de- generacy, ending often in apostacy. The whole man ultimate- ly becomes venal ; yielding to the opinions and usages of all ma- jorities. With his inbred love and faculty of gain, and his pe- culiar energy and adroitness of character, he devotes himself, mind and soul, to the "main chance." The result is a type of character which becomes a reproach to the land of his birth, and a by-word in the land of his adoption ; a type of sad no- toriety in the history of the West. For while we are grateful to recognize among the sons of New England specimens of the noblest manhood, in all ecclesiastical connections, or in none ; the most effective and honored agents in various interests, so- cial, commercial, educational, and political ; still we are con- strained to acknowledge among them types of degeneracy pro- verbial for opposite qualities and influence ; that-as the high- est may sink lowest, as the sweetest things corrupt to the most
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acrid of acids, as the most beautiful by degeneracy become foulest, as the holiest become in their fall the most deformed, as the types of bestial life approaching nearest the man, disgust us the more from their carricature of humanity-so amid all types of character wandering up and down amid the melange of Western life, the most offensive and deformed is the faded Yankee. His moral manhood is perfectly blanched out of him. He is ready for any color to strike through him. He slips out of his early life as the serpent from his slough. He has over- come his prejudices, and his principles are all prejudices. His nativity is renounced. He has no longer a manly individuality. His personality is gone. He is vacant for the occupancy of all majorities. He reminds one of the process by which the mas- ters of the mesmeric art sometimes break the will and subdue the personality of their subject. In this process a glittering coin is held up before him, and he is commanded to follow it with his cye. It is waved above, around, below ; but he must keep it constantly in sight. He pursues it with fascinated eye in all its motions, now with upraised gaze, now with manifold contortions of body, chasing the shining charm around him ; now crawling on hands and knees, now peering after it under chairs and tables. By this preparation his independence of will and his personality seem subdued ; and he is now ready for his master's uses. He now feels, sees, touches, tastes, be- lieves as he is bidden. He sees black or white ; shudders with cold or heat ; tastes sweet or bitter ; sings, dances, prays, blas- phemes as the operator chooses ; catching up chips for gold, having glorious fishing with his cane, or smelling the attar of rose from the tobacco box. He is no longer anybody in par- ยท tieular, but anybody you please. He doffs and dons, at com- mand, all personages from General Taylor to the last executed murderer.
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