USA > Connecticut > New London County > New London > The First Church of Christ in New London : Three hundredth anniversary, May 10, 17, 31 and October 11, 1942 ; 1642-1942 > Part 3
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Three Hundredth Anniversary
ideals in a world organization should have been accepted and adopted by Mohammedans, Hindus, Buddhists and Confucians and rejected by the United States of America, the very nation which gave birth in international relations to the Puritan dream of a world commonwealth of nations. We are today, however, recognizing the sad blunder of our Senate in rejecting the covenant of the League of Nations as we see our soldiers, sailors and air men take their departure from our shores to fight once more on foreign soil, to correct with their blood, the sins of the thirty-nine men who signed the round robin pledging themselves to vote against the ratification of the covenant of the League of Nations. If there is anything sadder than the action of the Senate it has been the lamentable exhibition made by so many Christian people in their visionless quest of peace and goodwill by seeking extra legal and extra political methods of attaining these ends. What can be more pitiable than to find Christian leaders make pilgrimages to Lausanne, Edinburgh, Oxford, Jerusalem and Madras in quest of world brother- hood and ecumenicity when they might have expended their energy in supporting the many economic, social and political Christian prin- ciples which men of all the major religions of mankind have been striving, for nearly twenty years, to realize at Geneva, Switzerland. Such a great experiment as the League of Nations, and its auxiliary organizations makes most of what we hear, see and read about the Kingdom of God at Church Conferences seem thin, colorless, pale and anemic.
It may seem like a far cry from the days of Richard Blinman, John Winthrop, Jr., FitzJohn Winthrop and Gurdon Saltonstall who represented the beginnings of a new civilization in the North American Continent to the discussion of such complicated questions as those of international law and diplomacy and a world religion; but distance in time and space and difference in magnitude are incidental matters when we come face to face with eternal principles such as those upon which the Christian faith is founded. As we confront the future we may do so on the same principles and policies as those upon which our church was founded, namely, the law of reason, toleration and humanity. We are, however, living in a new day which demands a new approach to the problem of Christianity. Every church in Christendom must face the absolute necessity of building a world religion. To do this, Chris-
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The First Church of Christ in New London
tian people will find it necessary to adopt the procedure so well stated by Professor William Ernest Hocking of Harvard University, in his recent book "Living Religions and a World Faith." I cannot now take the time or space to give you his entire argument; but perhaps I can give you in a few words a clue to his position as to the way a world religion can be evolved. Professor Hocking unquestionably believes that Christianity is eventually going to be the religion of the world; but it is unready for such a role at present. We are unready for various reasons; to begin with the Christian church is still divided as to organi- zation, its dogmatic, theological assumptions are founded on ancient categories of thought so that one finds controversy on all the tradi- tional doctrines of the Church. Christianity today has no universally acceptable, clear, logical conception of its nature, and therefore is not in a position to work successfully with the other major religions of mankind in effecting such a synthesis as is necessary if we are ever to have a world faith. Professor Hocking is not nebulous when he dis- cusses the need for a synthesis of all religions. If such a synthesis is to be legitimate, it means that each religion must possess individuality, organic unity and consistency, that is, it must have a recognizable being and character of its own; what it adds must not be extraneous and what is thus entertained must be consistent with what is there. Obvi- ously Professor Hocking visualizes a long, historical process in which Christianity must attain a consistent knowledge of itself, must establish definite contacts with the other religions, work with them to discover what is highest and best in each, for it is here that religions tend toward unity, and finally to discover wherein Christianity has a unique position to fill as perhaps the keystone in the arch of religious truth and experience.
As a matter of fact, Hocking's entire position in regard to the place of Christianity in the world today is not destructive of the historic past; but rather a carefully worked out philosophy of the way our reli- gious faiths can have a new birth of freedom by apprehending the real magnitude and dimensions of the problem it confronts. His idea of the relation of Church and State is substantially that of John Winthrop, Jr. and Gurdon Saltonstall, though of course he has developed his thought more elaborately and in detail. We are in one of the greatest creative eras in world history. In forming conceptions of our Christian
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Three Hundredth Anniversary
faith on a universal scale we cannot succeed by laying down any for- mulas or by following slavishly the categories of theological thought of the past. The spirit of Puritanism is that of freedom and it cannot ultimately be imprisoned within narrow, circumscribed limits of church polity or theology. Hocking is the modern prophet of the new age of Puritanism which lies ahead of us. He does not say, "Thus saith the Lord," as did the Hebrew prophets of old, but he does give us prin- ciples in the quest of which all the highest and best potentialities of the Christian religion are set at liberty without definite limit of scope or magnitude in their operation. Church polities and theologies will come and go with the passing years, but the universal, rational prin- ciples of Hocking's philosophy of the Christian religion and civil polity in relation to the new age will remain a challenge to our faith and action when the First Church of Christ in New London celebrates the four hundredth or five hundredth anniversary.
In conclusion let me say that we believe that the spirit of the Puritan Revolution is an indestructible moral and spiritual force in the world; but let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that it has become an established fact in history. Puritanism is still in an experimental stage in spite of all its achievements during the last four hundred years. Never have the words of Abraham Lincoln uttered at Gettys- burg during the Civil War been more significant than today when our country faces a Second World War. "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil (world) war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war." The success of all that has been achieved by Puritanism in the past depends, in the present world crisis, upon the United States of America, which holds the central position in the universal history of mankind. The success of the United States depends upon the support of the war effort of our national government by the Christian churches of America, and finally upon the success of Christianity in building into our national life a sense of our divine mission to create a world commonwealth of nations, depends upon the growth of a universal world religion for humanity. Let us then, as we reflect this day upon all that the founders
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The First Church of Christ in New London
of the First Church in New London have transmitted to us, engrave upon the tablets of our memories these further words of the great Emancipator, "It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced."
THE TERCENTENARY CELEBRATION (1642-1942)
SUNDAY EVENING, MAY 10, 1942 AT 6
RECEPTION AND DINNER AT THE PARISH HOUSE FOR ALL MEMBERS OF THE PARISH
Following the dinner, informal greetings were brought to First Church from the ministers of the daughter churches, as follows:
1. The Rev. Gurdon F. Bailey, First Congregational Church, Stonington, Conn., organized 1674.
2. The Rev. Frederick W. Walsh, First Congregational Church, Groton, Conn., organized 1704.
3. The Rev. William L. Muttart, Montville (Conn.) Congrega- tional Church, organized 1722.
4. The Rev. Malcolm K. Burton, Second Congregational Church, New London, Conn., organized 1835.
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(H. W.F.)
INTERIOR OF PARISH HOUSE - 1942. MEETING PLACE OF CHURCH SCHOOL AND OTHER CHURCH ORGANIZATIONS.
The First Church of Christ in New London
THE TERCENTENARY CELEBRATION (1642-1942) SUNDAY EVENING, MAY 10, 1942 AT 8
ORDER OF SERVICE
PRELUDE: Solemn Prelude from "Gloria Domini" T. Tertius Noble
CHORAL INVOCATION Burnell Surely the Lord is in this place. This is none other than the House of God, and this is the gate of Heav'n. Surely the Lord is in this place.
INVOCATION AND LORD'S PRAYER (Seated)
ANTHEM: "Except the Lord Build the House" Gilchrist Except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it. How amiable are Thy dwellings, O Lord of Hosts. My soul longeth for God. Yea even fainteth for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God. Yea the sparrow hath found her an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, even thine Altars, O Lord of Hosts, even thine Altars, my King and my God. Blessed are they who dwell in Thy House. They shall ever be praising Thee. Except the Lord build the House they labor in vain that build it.
SCRIPTURE READING: Psalm 96 from Sternhold and Hopkins-The Psalmes of David in Meetre-1562. Commonly known as the Old Version Psalter and widely used in the New England Churches in the 17th and early 18th centuries.
The Rev. Edward M. Chapman
1. O Sing ye now unto the Lord, a new and pleasant song: For he hath wrought throughout the world, his wonders great and strong.
2. With his right hand full worthily, he doth his foes devoure: And get himselfe the victory, with his owne arme and power.
3. The Lord doth make the people know, his saving health and might: The Lord doth eke his justice show, in all the heathen's sight:
4. His grace and truth to Israell, in minde he doth record; That all the earth hath seene right well, the goodness of the Lord.
5. Be glad in him with joyfull voice, all people on the earth: Give thankes to God sing and reioice, to him with joy and mirth.
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Three Hundredth Anniversary
6. Upon the Harpe unto him sing, give thankes to him with psalmes: Reioice before the Lord our King, with trumpets and with shalmes.
7. Yea let the sea with all therein, for joy both rage and swell: The earth likewise let it begin, with all that therein dwell.
8. And let the floods rejoice their fils, and clap their hands apace: And eke the mountains and the hils, before the Lord his face.
9. For he shall come to judge and try, the world and every wight: And rule the people mightily, with justice and with right.
HYMN 61: Our God, Our Help in Ages Past
LITANY OF COMMEMORATION:
Professor Paul F. Laubenstein of Connecticut College.
Minister: Almighty and everlasting God, before whom stand the spirits of the living and the dead, Light of lights, Fountain of wisdom and goodness, who livest in all pure and humble and gracious souls: For all who have witnessed a good confession for Thy glory and the wel- fare of the world; patriarchs, prophets, and apostles; the wise of every land and nation, and all teachers of mankind:
People: We praise Thee, O God, and bless Thy name.
Minister: For the martyrs of the holy faith; the faithful witnesses to Christ of whom the world was not worthy; and for all who have resisted falsehood and wrong unto suffering and death:
People: We praise Thee, O God, and bless Thy name.
Minister: For those, who, suffering persecution for righteousness sake, left land, home and kindred to brave the perils of the deep and the hard- ships of an unknown world that they might worship Thee according to the dictates of their own conscience:
People: We praise Thee, O God, and bless Thy name.
Minister: For all who have labored and suffered for freedom, good govern- ment, just laws, and the sanctity of the home; and for all who have given their lives for their country:
People: We praise Thee, O God, and bless Thy name.
Minister: For all who have been one with Thee in the communion of Christ's spirit in the strength of His love; for the dear friends and kindred, ministering in the spiritual world; whose faces we see no more, but whose love is with us forever:
People: We praise Thee, O God, and bless Thy name.
Minister: For the teachers and companions of our childhood and youth, and the members of our household of faith who worship Thee now in heaven; for the grace which was given to all these; and for the trust and hope in which they lived and died:
People: We praise Thee, O God, and bless Thy name.
Minister: For our own beloved church, for its noble history, for its distin- guished ministry, for its witness to the light as it is in Christ Jesus, for its part in the spread of education at home and abroad, for its
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The First Church of Christ in New London
devotion to the cause of human liberty, for the contribution it has been privileged to make to the life and development of this state: People: We praise Thee, O God, and bless Thy name.
Minister: That we may show ourselves worthy of the glorious heritage committed to us, that our fathers' trust in Thee may be ours also, and that with them in spiritual community we may fight the good fight of faith in these our dark days:
People: We beseech Thee to hear us, O God.
Minister: And that we may hold them in continual remembrance, that the sanctity of their wisdom and goodness may rest upon our earthly days, and that we may prepare ourselves to follow them in their upward way: People: We beseech Thee to hear us, O God.
Minister: That we may have a hope beyond this world for all thy children, even for wanderers who must be sought and brought home; that we may be comforted and sustained by the promise of a time when none shall be a stranger and an exile from Thy kingdom and Thy household: People: We beseech Thee to hear us, O God.
Minister: In the communion of the Holy Spirit; with the faithful and the saintly in heaven; with the redeemed in all ages; with our beloved who dwell in Thy presence and peace, we, who still fight and suffer on earth, unite in ascribing -
People: Thanksgiving, glory, honor, and power unto Thee, O Lord our God.
Choir: * Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
*To the tune "St. Mary's"-from Prys' (Welsh) Psalter, 1621, and the Bay Psalm Book, 1698 edition.
PRAYER: Chaplain John Warner Moore, United States Navy
ANTHEM: "O Hear Thou from Heaven" from "Gloria Domini" Noble
For text, see morning program
HYMN 440: Faith of Our Fathers
ADDRESS: Lieutenant-Governor Odell Shepard, Ph. D., Litt. D.
ANTHEM: "Blow Ye the Trumpet in Zion" Woodman
For text, see morning program
BENEDICTION
POSTLUDE: "Marche Religieuse"
Guilmant
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Three Hundredth Anniversary
Tercentenary Address DELIVERED BY LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR ODELL SHEPARD AT THE EVENING SERVICE, MAY 10, 1942
THE THREE HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY OF THIS FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST in New London is an occasion which you have done well not to ignore even in the present hour of strain, danger, and catastrophic change. Just for the reason that all the world about us is now moving at an ever-accelerating speed toward destinies unforeseen, you do well to glance back, today, across the ten generations of men that have come and gone since your venerable church was born. While the present crashes and crumbles about us, and while we look forward through the dust and din striving to catch some glimpse of that which is to be, it is well to look backward also to the rock whence we were hewn and the pit whence we were digged. By means of that backward look we may learn what we have been, and, therefore, what we now essentially are. And, by seeing what we now are, by reviving the proud memory of all that our fathers have handed down to us through these three hundred years, we shall discern more clearly just what it is that we are now determined, in spite of foes without and foes within, in spite of weakness and unfaith and loss of vision, triumphantly to defend and to maintain.
A Church such as this is a deathless and ageless thing. Like all other living organisms, it alters with the years and adapts itself to changing circumstance; but the thing about it that moves our ephemeral hearts and minds to a sense of awe is the quiet persistency with which, through all its manifold changes, it remains, like of the soul of man, one and the same. This Church is like your beautiful River Thames that comes flowing down to us out the dim old Indian years and goes pacing silently onward into the misty centuries, overhearing the tran- sient noise of our forges and looms and hammers, bearing our boats of peace and of war on its bosom, glassing the stately and crowded bridges we throw across it, and yet remaining the same fresh and pristine stream that it was three hundred years ago. At any one moment of its being one might say that the River is made of the numberless water-
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The First Church of Christ in New London
drops it contains. But those water-drops are forever flowing down to the sea, and the River remains itself. So this Church, through the channel of which many thousands of lives have flowed, remains today as a channel for thousands of lives to come.
New London's First Church of Christ was already fifteen years old when New London received, by an Act of Connecticut's General Court, its present name. It is older by several years than the Town itself. It was already eight years old when it was first planted here by the long silver street of your River in the place then variously called Towawog, Nameaug, Pequett, Pequod, and Pequot. This Church was organized as a congregation not here on the bank of the Thames but a hundred miles to northward, in the town of Gloucester, Massachusetts. That town and this Church came into being at the same time, by the same Act of the Massachusetts General Court. In the beginning the Town of Gloucester was the Church, and the Church was the Town. The Church was organized and incorporated in May, 1642, and before the thirteenth day of that month. At that time there was not yet any organized settlement of white men on the present site of New London.
At the time of its organization the Church had already a minister, the Reverend Richard Blinman by name, who had been driven from his parish in Wales, some years before, because of his refusal to con- form to the ritual and doctrine of the English Established Church. In other words, he was a Puritan, in the full and highly honorable sense of that grossly abused word. By his emigration to the western wilder- ness he showed that he was willing to forego worldly comfort and safety in the interest of those things which he rated immensely higher -liberty, to wit, and a clear conscience, and the right to speak his true mind about things present and things to come without fear or favor. He was a man, in other words, who put first things first and did not even try to serve both God and Mammon. He had a mind made up. He knew what he believed, and his belief did not stop short of action, utter devotion, and the cheerful sacrifice of all that the sensual, the shallow, the timorous, and the merely prosperous and respectable man holds dear. If that be "Puritanism" then let us have more of it, here, now, in America, Connecticut, New London. If that be the true mean- ing of "Puritanism" then let us take this stone which has been rejected almost with scorn and contempt by our more recent builders and make
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it once more the very head of the corner !
A minister in those days was like the queen-bee of a hive, who always takes some part of the hive's population with her in every swarming. So the Reverend Blinman had brought with him from Chepstow, in Wales, a part of his old congregation. He brought James Avery, Obadiah Bruen, Hugh Calkin, Andrew Lester, and John Coit-names that are familiar even today in the streets of New London. These men and their families went with him first to Plymouth, then to Marshfield, and then to Gloucester, where they and others of the same good, honest and homespun sort founded their Church in 1642. From Gloucester in the spring of 1651 the hive swarmed again and came, by invitation, to Pequot. The Church has been here ever since-sending out subordinate swarms, of course, into Stonington, Groton, Lyme, Montville, and other places. For two hundred and ninety years it has been the pivot and central pillar of New London, and during nearly half of that long time the Church and the Town have been indistin- guishable.
The first meeting of this Church during its New London residence seems to have been held on the first day of October, 1651. It was held in a barn belonging to a certain Robert Parke and rented from him by the congregation at three pounds per year. This barn was occupied by the Church until 1655, when the first meeting house was completed. The rental money, it appears, was not regularly paid to Mr. Parke and the Town was finally obliged to settle with him by giving him one barrel of pork.
The historic fancy, taking flight across these two hundred and ninety years, comes at length to a little settlement between the River and the forest which is as different from the New London of today as anything we can well conceive. We can scarcely imagine how the inter- minable and apparently inexhaustible forest crowded down upon that tiny village of English people, living in English cottages, wearing Eng- lish clothes, speaking the quick, bold, noble language of Shakespeare. Most of them had been villagers at home, and that was why they built their village here, in the English way, along one winding street by the water's edge. Most of them had been tillers of the soil in the old home, and they were that still, though they were beginning to learn the ways of those who go down to the sea in ships. And they were surrounded
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by a savage people, the most powerful of whom had recently been overwhelmed in the terrible slaughter of the Pequots at Fort Hill, and yet they were still sullen because they had been grievously wronged and many of them had been enslaved. And these English people had left their homes, their friends, all the associates and fond familiar ways of their childhood, forever behind. They would never see their homes again. Breaking loose from an old, settled, and beautiful pattern of society, they were here to evolve a pattern entirely new. As yet they did not know what that pattern would be, but already it was clear that with all their inborn English conservatism and their desire to sing the old song in this new land they would never be able to plant another Old England on this New English soil. A different climate, soil, weather, vegetation, and dangers and toils never faced before, were swiftly making them over into something new in the world. Little by little, though they were English still, they were becoming Yankees. It was one of the most fascinating modifications, when you consider the extent and the speed of it, that history records. Also the swift and tenacious grip that they took on this new land was one of the more astonishing achievements of the dubious twilighted creature called man.
It would be a pleasant and profitable thing, if there were time, to follow these early people in their daily lives at home, in field and for- est, on the River then teeming with fish, and more and more on the Sound and the sea. They lived mostly for work, as though they already knew that they and their descendants had a huge continent to conquer. Their recreations, especially on the Sabbath day, were few and some- what dismal. It was in their time that Nathaniel Mather wrote in his diary: "Of all the manifold sins which I was guilty of in my childhood, none so sticks upon me as that, being very young, I was whittling on the Sabbath day." .. But more to the present purpose is the effort to see them at worship, either in the bare little barn where they first met or in the first meeting house, on what is now called Bulkeley Place. It was scarcely larger than the barn had been, for the congregation prob- ably did not include more than a hundred persons in Blinman's time. It was certainly not heated in any way. The people were called together by the sound of a drum, and the men went to church fully armed. They stationed a sentinel at the door, and in the tower the town watch- man stood on guard during the service. In 1675, at the time of King
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