USA > Iowa > Dubuque County > Dubuque > Semi-centennial celebration of the First Congregational Church, of Dubuque, Iowa, May 12th and 13th, 1889 > Part 6
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In July, 1882, Rev. C. E. Harrington, of Concord, N. H., was called and began his labors the next month. The in- stalling council met December 12th. Mr. Harrington en- tered upon his work with great zeal which soon began to tell upon the success of all departments. The audiences soon showed an increase of attendance. Especially was this true of the evening audiences. Part of the time new means acces- sory to those usually employed were successful in crowding the house from evening to evening, so that hundreds, who were not in the habit of church attendance, heard the Gospel message. The average of attendance increased from 128 to 441. The weekly meeting showed a like gratifying growth. The attendance at the opening of Mr. Harrington's ministry was forty-five and reached at times one hundred, before the three years of his pastorate closed. The membership of the Church at the time of the annual meeting of 1884 was 260 with forty-one absentees. At several communions there were accessions of numbers by profession of faith, especially at the January communion of 1884, when sixteen came into the
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Church. There seems to have been a steady religious in- crease. No communion went by without some accessions. The record shows sixty-four accessions, of which fifty were on profession.
December 12, 1884, being the 40th Anniversary of the vote which changed the government of this Church from the Presbyterian to the Congregational form, the event was cele- brated with especial exercises. There was a reminiscence meeting at which, among other interesting parts, a long and valuable letter from Dr. Holbrook was read.
In April, 1885, Mr. Harrington resigned, and in May the Council met which dissolved the pastoral relation, that he might accept the call to the First Church in Keene, N. H., of which he is still the Pastor.
Rev. C. O. Brown was called from the pastorate of the First Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan, June 24, 1885, and the call was twice renewed. He entered upon his duties the first Sunday in January, 1886. God blessed us with a gracious refreshing following the first week of prayer which we spent together, and the March communion witnessed twenty seven accessions by profession of faith.
The house was sadly in need of repairs, and the old bell had been cracked since the night following Lee's surrender. We resolved to attend to these matters and we did so. Dur- ing the month of May the upper part of the house was new- ly frescoed and painted and other repairs were made. A new Clinton H. Meneeley bell of the best quality, weighing with its furniture nearly or quite 4,000 pounds, (or five times as much as the former bell) was purchased. It was hung in the tower in the month of July, 1886. It speaks for itself. You have all heard its voice. The total cost of improve- ments was a little less than $3,000.
Another revival was enjoyed in the early winter of 1887, followed by large accessions.
In the month of February, 1887, at a union meeting of this Church and the German Congregational Church held in this
Hex Simplot Ung Luluque.
GERMAN CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, CORNER 18TH and JACKSON STREETS. DEDICATED, OCTOBER, 1888.
Size, 45x75. Brick, stone-trimmed. Capacity, exclusive of pariors, 500. Cost with lot, $12,000.
room, which was addressed by Pastor Ficke, Superintendent Albrecht, and the writer of this sketch, the initiatory public movement was made which resulted in the erection of the fine new structure now owned and occupied by our German brethren. Prior to this time the Pastor of the Ist Church had
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conducted a correspondence to bring about this meeting with this end in view. Our brethren greatly needed the new build- ing. The old one was crowded, especially by the Sunday school. The growth in all departments since the new was oc- cupied shows the wisdom of the movement. The history of it cannot be told here, except to say that the pastors of the Ger- man Church and this Church together canvassed the city for funds and found so ready a response that plans were en- larged, so that the total cost was nearly $12,000, whereas we did not think of exceeding $7,000 at the outset. Dr. Hol- brook was providentially in the City in time to lay the corner stone in October, 1887, and just one year from that time the Church was dedicated free from debt. It is thoroughly mod- ern in all of its appointments; has an auditorium and Sunday school room opening together, making a seating capacity of 500, and parlors over the Sunday school room. The Congre- gational Union furnished $1,000 of the funds. The First Church contributed over $1700 to this worthy object.
Our Sunday school work has prospered. The regular at- tendance of the home school has increased. In addition two branch schools have been organized. Of these the Summit school, at the head of Julien avenue, which has a very inter- esting history that cannot now be rehearsed, already has an attendance two-thirds as large as that of the home school. It was organized nearly two years ago as a Union School and turned over to us at the close of the first year. It is officered and the teaching force mostly supplied by the young people of this Church, many of whom have been with it from the first and who manage its affairs most efficiently. In the near future a building must be provided for its use as the one now occupied is uncomfortably crowded. *
More recently a smaller branch school has been organized on Southern avenue, which is doing a much needed work and which will grow to something larger in the future. The num- ber of Sunday school scholars now under our charge is over five hundred. But in order to complete this brief sketch
* See Appendix.
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of our Sunday school work, I have anticipated somewhat.
In the fall of 1887 this Church united with others in calling Major D. W. Whittle to conduct a series of revival meetings, which resulted in great quickening and blessing. The meet- ings continued four weeks in the various churches. The last two weeks the evening meetings were held in this room. Twenty-nine persons united with us at the January commun- nion following.
This brings us to the present anniversary year, 1889, which has certainly been memorable in the history of divine blessings which have been so richly poured out on this Church.
The attendance at the prayer meeting which is the ther- mometer of the Church has constantly almost filled the room and has sometimes run over into the class rooms, reaching frequently to 225 or 250.
During the month of February a series of meetings was inaugurated, the Pastor preaching each evening. Almost immediately the blessing from on high came upon us and there were conversions each evening. At the March com- munion there were fifty-three accessions, but the interest was still unabated and Evangelist L. P. Rowland, of Grand Rapids, Mich., was called in to assist the Pastor. He re- mained two weeks, preaching and conducting meetings for old and young with great acceptance, and with precious re- sults. Of the forty-six who united with us yesterday fully twenty-five were brought to Christ under his labors.
The benevolences of the Church have prospered also. The total amount for the past three years (including all branches, woman's societies, young people and Sunday school), is $5,257.32. The total membership of the Church at the pres- ent time is four hundred and forty-nine, fifty-eight of whom are absentees. The number received during the present pas- torate is two hundred, of whom twenty-one were by letter.
I have given this full account of the present condition of the Church in the assurance that those who know its past, would desire to know particularly of its affairs as they are
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now. In closing this sketch we may reflect upon several in- teresting facts:
I .- This Church has been a mother of churches. The two Presbyterian churches of this city were colonized from it and the New England Congregational church of Chicago, received nearly a third of its original membership and its first Pastor, Dr. J. C. Holbrook, from this Church.
II .- This Church has been a mother of Ministers. Scat- tered through the records are accounts of ordaining councils, called from time to time to send forth of its young men into the ministry. I believe that those who have been members of this Church and who now are or have been in the ministry is fifteen. Three of these are missionaries.
III .- In an early day this Church bore its part in the mat- ter of education within our Commonwealth, and elsewhere assisting to lay the foundations of Iowa College, which has grown to be the leading institution of Iowa. At a later day its Pastor became the financial agent of the institution at a critical time in its history. This Church was also interested through its Pastor in founding of the Chicago Theological Seminary.
IV .- This Church has a good record in all matters of reform. It stood well to the front in the great anti- slavery agitation. When many pulpits were silent to their shame, this pulpit gave forth no uncertain sound and its utterances on that great reform were felt throughout the Northwest. In later reformatory movements it has not been silent. In the great temperance agitation, which is the gravest reformatory question now before this Nation, it has spoken from time to time, by more than one Pastor and will continue to speak as occasions offer. And when the full and final victory comes, as come it will-for in God's providence there is an Appomattox awaiting the destroyers of homes even as there was for American slavery-we will crack another bell over the result, if God permits us to see it.
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V .- This has been a Church of revivals. It has won its membership, under the blessing of God, from the world. Its record shows that but for revivals of religion, the Church would have been dead and plucked up by the roots long ago. More than three-fourths of its present membership were con- verted in revivals, and the records show that even those who have come into it by letter have been prompted thereto in seasons of revival interest far more largely than at other times. Revivals have saved to the Church those who would otherwise have forgotten that they had any letters, and many who had long neglected them. In the light of the history of this Church the arguments against revivals and the discus- sions as to their advisability, look very small.
Thus we come to the close of this sketch of things done and lived in this Church for fifty years. And it is but a mere " sketch." The life itself can never be written. The laugh- ter and tears, the songs of praise, the shouts of triumph, the humiliations of defeat, the revivals of religion, the ingather- ings, the removals and the deaths-ah! volumes are hidden here which will never be written on earth.
During these fifty years, the fair soil of these prairies has been claimed first by the territory and then by the State of Iowa, and the Sac, Fox and Sioux Indians have given way to the growth of a great Commonwealth among the fairest of the fair, now numbering nearly two millions of people, with beautiful cities and villages, and with rich farms, with churches, schools, colleges and ample charitable institutions.
(The writer of this "Sketch" is indebted to Rev. J. C. Holbrook's " Historical Address" (1860) ; to an historical paper by Rev. Julius A, Reed; to various man- uals of the Church and to various persons who have furnished facts both in writing and by conversation.)
APPENDIX TO HISTORIC SKETCH. - OCTOBER 7, 1889.
When the Pastor made this reference to the need of a building for the Summit work, he had no idea that the com- piete fulfillment of his desire was so near at hand. At the Reminiscence Meeting, in the afternoon of the day on which
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this history was read, a movement was begun looking to the organization of a company of young people, to be known as " Esther League," who should undertake the work of grad- ually accumulating a fund for the needed building. But a happy circumstance hastened matters. In the latter part of June Mrs. Edward Langworthy, whose daughters, Mrs. Fannie Gibbs and Mrs. Pauline Rood, are teachers in Summit school, proposed to the Pastor, that she would pay for the foundation of the needed building, up to the sum of $500, pro- vided the enterprise could be undertaken at once and pushed to a speedy completion. The proposition was accepted at a meeting of the persons who subsequently became the Build- ing Committee and Superintendent E. J. Steinbeck, at the Edward Langworthy residence on the evening of July 1, 1889. Work, both on the building and for the raising of additional funds, was begun the following week, the officers of the First Church having heartily endorsed the enterprise. The corner stone was laid Sunday, August 25th, the Home School and German Congregational School being present with the Sum- mit School, in all nearly or quite a thousand people. At this
THE SUMMIT CONGREGATIONAL BUILDING. Corner Delhi and Allison Streets. Dedicated 1889.
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date, October 7, 1889, the building is finished on the outside, and is nearly finished inside.
It is of brick, stone-trimmed, 40x60, corner tower; capacity, 450, including gallery; has folding doors, making five rooms for classes, all opening together into one audience room; cost, including lot, $3,800, which is nearly raised, so that the prospect is that the building will be dedicated in a few weeks without a dollar of debt. Of this sum Mrs. Edward Lang- worthy contributed $500. "Esther League" raised $165 at an entertainment on the Finley estate, where the building is located. . The canvass for the balance has been made by the Pastor. The Building Committee consists of Rev. C. O. Brown, Mr. Forrest Langworthy and Mr. John Adams, Su- perintendent of Summit School. Congregationalism is there- fore now represented in Dubuque by three fine brick build- ings.
MONDAY FORENOON, 11 O'CLOCK.
After the reading of the Historical Sketch the audience arose and united in singing:
"O, God beneath Thy guiding hand, Our exiled fathers crossed the sea,
And when they trod the wintry strand With prayer and psalm they worshiped Thee.
" What change! Through pathless wilds no more The fierce and naked savage roams :
Sweet praise along the cultured shore Breaks from ten thousand happy homes.
" Laws, freedom, truth and faith in God, Came with those exiles o'er the waves, And where their Pilgrim feet have trod The God they trusted guards their graves."
After the hymn, Dr. Lyman Whiting gave an address on 'Congregationalism in History," which for striking and original expression is rarely equalled. It was frequently
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interrupted with bursts of laughter and applause, its quaint humor and telling facts being irresistible. So were the doctor's manner and delivery.
CONGREGATIONALISM IN HISTORY.
REV. LYMAN WHITING, D. D.
Yes, it is " in history " and is likely to stay there. A small humble history you may call it if you like; only two or three hundred years with a name at all; a kind of colony or mission at first, sent off from the great Christian isms then in the world. About all the house-room it has ever had, until quite lately, was scanty and grudged quarters in Britain, and until a little time ago just the New England end of the grand scroll of the American Union. Small territory; small enrollment, com- pared with others, and small pretensions, too, or parade or her- alding has it ever had. Never has it got for itself a pope; not a heirarchy, bishop or even a ruling elder. It is just as much without " lords over God's heritage" as was that original foun- dation body of Christians around Jesus Christ, and which his holy apostles perpetuated and planted over the known world of their day. Neither does it build huge cathedrals, prelatic palaces, star chambers or any order of church courts, and it can't show even a blue and gold coat of arms, or as much as a standard button-hole badge. Among all the goodly sisterhood of the Christian churches, she is the only one not having any beads, brooches, ecclesiastical trinkets or millinery. Some have pitied her destitution of these things, and at one time, she was blamed and even brought before judges and bishops who had prisons and very dreadful punishments as penalties for neglect of them. Vestments and rituals and hierarchies could not be made to take the place for her of St. Matthew's eighteenth chapter. " In history" indeed this humble "daugh ter in Zion" has some place and part in the world's history
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not shining and courtly, but one of life and of service. In Eng- land one can find deep traces of her infancy and early years in the records of noisome Newgate, the Fleet, and the Clink, where such royal souls as Barrow, and Greenwood, and Bunyan, were kept "clapped up close." At one time "three aged widows" were in prison, and uncounted others obeyed star- chamber and Lambeth commissions in like manner. There's a little patch of ground in London known in history as Smith- field. It has stains upon its soil, such as only human blood can give. Sir William Sautre, a heroic minister of Christ, first of a nameless host, was there burned at the stake, a wit- ness for Christ and conscience. From that dread Aceldema, Rev. John Rogers, over whose picture in the flames, with wife and children looking on, all of us who had a New England primer often wept; and scores of the Puritan faith went up thence in the " firey chariot."
But that "field of blood " was a seed-plat, wherein the Congregational seedling was tested and proved fit for a place in the garden of the Lord.
The Puritan flight to Leyden and thence to America; the wondrous " compact " in the Mayflower's cabin, and " freedom to worship God," is a short chapter, but it had the germs of a history whose scroll now covers a Continent. Forty-five years after the first Congregational Church had opened the book of God, in the New World, to whosoever wanted to read and obey it, and had spread its Communion table to any confessing follower of Jesus Christ, that cyclone of church tyranny "the Act of Uniformity" smote England. By its one "fell swoop" three thousand godly ministers were swept from their pulpits. The choice for them was between preaching personal faith and repentance as the only way to be saved; or a priesthood to do the acts of faith for souls and to carry on the worship of God by semi-popish rituals. Church and home might be torn from them, but from the word of God and Christian conscience they could not be forced. Many of these outcast ministers fled to New England. Graduates of the Universities, scholars and
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trained preachers they at once gave to the ministry of the New World a worth and rank with the father land, and infin- itely better, gave a martyr-piety and heroic wisdom which gloriously planted " Churches without a Bishop, and a State without a King."
Got here :- What rights in history can they claim ? Listen: In the scant cabin of the Mayflower on the IIth of November, 1620, a scrap of parchment was overwritten with what they modestly named a "Compact." It is of about two hundred words, and in part reads: " By virtue hereof we do enact, con- stitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and officers, most meet for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience."
Here's the first free State constitution, the germ of after colonial formations; then of the Confederacy of the thirteen United States founding this national government; and will you note forty-one men put their names to this Compact; and just now as the Nation is athrob with joy over a hundred years of the Republic's life-time, four new sovereign states have just come into the great National " Compact," making a State to each man in the little ship's cabin, and one to spare. Forty- one Pilgrim exiles there! Forty-two radiant stars sparkle to- day in the vast horizon of Freedom's firmanent, "the home of the free and the land of the brave."
Do you call that history ?
What next? Church and government planted, a dozen years go by, and a strange extravagance sets in. These "base and despicable Puritans," as an English bishop in gen- tle courtesy, styled them, must needs have a college! A college? Why had they not better build some more decent abodes for themselves to live in? They began a college at Newtown, now Cambridge. So poor were they, that a sheep from one, a nine-penny piece of cotton cloth, and a pewter mug from others, are recorded gifts for this college. It has had some richer may be, not costlier gifts since.
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But these Puritan Congregationalists had a curious hunger for learning, and one college did not long satisfy them. In a little more than sixty years a second one; Yale at New Haven, was founded. Out from it sprang a third one, about fifty years later. It had a very Congregational-like begin- ning. In Yale's forty-second year, a very earnestly pious student, David Brainard by name, was there. A revival of religion had filled him with outspoken ardors. A tutor in the college of but moderate fervor, had one day offered prayer before the students, about which young Brainard irreverently said, "Tutor W., has no more grace than that chair." He was called before the college rector for that speech. He must make confession and humble himself be- fore the whole college, in the public hall. He wouldn't do it. He had a conscience in telling the truth, that is, was a Con- gregationalist. He was expelled from college. This was in February, 1742, in his third college year. At the next com- mencement, Rev. Jonathan Edwards of Northampton, Massa- chusetts, and Jonathan Dickinson of New Jersey, both former Northampton tutors in the college, sought to have young Brainard restored to his class. The faculty refused. A new college was, thereupon, projected to be in New Jersey.
A characteristic division in the Presbyterian Church, "New Side" and "Old Side," or New York and Philadelphia synods favoring it. It was begun at Elizabeth, New Jersey, Rey. Jonathan Dickinson, of Massachusetts birth, at the head of it. He dying at the end of two years, Newark received the Orphan College and the pastor there, Rev. Aaron Burr, from Con- necticut, was made President, and in 1757, it was moved to Princeton. He dying in that year, his renowned father-in-law. Rev. Jonathan Edwards, was chosen President, and so began Princeton College. In Dr. A. Alexander's "Log College" a tradition is thus recorded: "If it had not been for the treat- ment Mr. Brainard received at Yale, New Jersey College would never have been erected." But these three were not enough. Twenty-five years later, Dr. Eleazer Wheelock of
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Lebanon, Connecticut, and his score of Indian boys have got to Hanover, New Hampshire; are cutting trees and building a school in the forest. And in time Samson Occum, a Christ- ian, educated Indian, was sent to England for funds for it. The Earl of Dartmouth so befriended the young college, that his name was chosen for it.
Look now! In a little more than a century, on a new con- tinent ; yes, in a new world, a grand "Quadrangle" of col- leges, very fortresses of learning, have been planted: Har- vard, Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth, and New England Congregationalists have done it. Three of these have now become Universities, and lead the nation in scholarly culture and true learning.
Then came Williams (1793), then Amherst, and Union College in New York, with its three grand Congregational presidents, and most of you have heard of Wabash, and Knox, and Oberlin, and Beloit, and Ripon, and Carleton, and Iowa, and Tabor, and Doane, and Yankton, and Washburn, and Colorado, and Pacific University, and most wondrous of all, Whitman College at Walla Walla, Washington Territory. Who built and manned all these? A family of churches of fourth rank in numbers, among the goodly households of the Christian name, did it.
In later times, schools for yet higher learning were needed. In 1806-7, Samuel Abbott of Andover, Massachusetts, had drawn a will giving to the Hollis or Divinity Professorship at Harvard College, a munificent addition. Tidings met him in Boston one day, that Rev. Henry Ware of Hingham, would till that chair. He was a "new departure" man of his day, and took the name Unitarian, when that name had found its affinities in this country. Mr. Abbott went home and at once cancelled that part of his will, and then great was his anxiety to know what to do with his money. By and by, "after much prayer and study, it came right down as from Heaven to me" he said, "have a college in which to make ministers."
The world had never seen or heard of such a school; but
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in 1808, Andover Theological Seminary, a stranger in the civilized world, opened its doors. Four years later, Prince- ton took its place beside it, and from these two original theo- logical schools behold the grand households in all denomina- tions.
From Andover have sprung Bangor, Hartford, Yale, Ober- lin, Chicago and Pacific, like schools, and from Princeton an equal number. The wise appreciation by the Presbyterian Seminaries of men of Congregational birth and early training is shown in the choice by them of the persons named below as instructors in Princeton, Auburn, Lane and Union Semi- naries, viz .:
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