USA > Illinois > Kane County > Geneva > Fifty years of Unitarian life : being a record of the proceedings on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the organization of the First Unitarian Society of Geneva, Illinois, celebrated June tenth, eleventh and twelth, 1892 > Part 1
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11
Fifty Years of Unitarian Life.
-
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY
Class
Volume
Book GR8f
ILLINOIS HISTORICAL SURVEY
1
١
FIFTY YEARS OF UNITARIAN LIFE.
LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.
Grerted 1848.
-
1
1
1
1 . 9
1
1
U
Fifty years
()f
UNITARIAN LIFE.
BEING A RECORD OF THE PROCEEDINGS ON THE OCCASION OF THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE FIRST UNITARIAN SOCIETY OF GENEVA, ILLINOIS, CELEBRATED JUNE TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH, 1892.
LIBRARY DIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA
EDITED BY T. H. EDDOWES, FRANCES LE BARON, GEORGE BRAYTON PENNEY.
PRINTED BY THE KANE COUNTY PUBLISHING CO., GENEVA, ILL. 1892.
288. 077323 GR8f
Ε.Ε.
3C Ja ' 12
Editors' Preface.
rab 18 Ja. 12. Burnham. 75
All, Historical Survey
HE celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of a Unitarian Society in the West is not an event of such common occurrence that it should receive only passing notice. The moral and spiritual significance of such an occasion comes with such stimu- lating force to all who are fighting the battle of freedom for mind and soul, that it has seemed to many who were present at the semi-centennial exercises of the Geneva Society that the spirit of the occasion should be perpetu- ated in some enduring form, and it was in response to the expressed wish of members and friends of the Society that the publication of this volume was undertaken.
The work has grown on our hands and instead of presenting a few pages of matter of purely local interest we feel that in this little volume we are making a unique contribution to the literature of the denomination, with a value far exceeding the limits of local association and personal reminiscence, for in these pages may be traced the evolution of a typical Liberal Church.
We have been greatly aided in a somewhat difficult
203104
viii.
Editors' Preface.
task by the friends who have kindly furnished and revised manuscripts, and especially are we indebted to Rev. W. W. Fenn of Chicago for the manuscript of his sermon on "Some Religious Changes in Fifty Years" which properly stands at the opening of the book and by its breadth and catholicity interprets the spirit of the anni- versary occasion. For drawings of the church and par- sonage we. are indebted to Mr. S. Nelson Abbott and to Miss Grace D. Long, both of the Society and we would also acknowledge the service rendered by Mr. Chas. B. Mead of the Kane County Publishing Company, who not only took the contract for the work at a figure which precluded profit but has given his personal attention to details.
The absence of some very familiar names from the Historical Sketch, which will perhaps strike some readers unpleasantly, was unavoidable. The time allowed to the paper was limited and many honored names were to have been mentioned at the afternoon session by a speak- er who was at the last moment prevented from attending. A letter had also been promised from Col. Jno. C. Long of Chicago, touching upon the army life of Mr. Conant, but owing to a press of other matters Col. Long was una- ble to furmsh it.
With the large faith that has made this record possi- ble we give it forth to the circle of friends and relatives of the Geneva Society and to the larger world which it may, perchance, here and there reach.
T. H. EDDOWES,
FRANCES LEBARON, GEORGE BRAYTON PENNEY.
GENEVA, November, 1892.
Contents.
I. SERMON-Some Religious Changes in PAGE.
Fifty Years, -
1
II. Order of Proceedings, 21
III. Address of Welcome, 22
IV. HISTORICAL SKETCH,
:
Organization, -
23
Personal, -
1 - 28
Church Building, - 39
Pastorates, . , - 47 -
By the Way, 51
V. Anniversary Hymn, - -
57
VI. Character Sketch of the First Pastor, 58
VII. Dedication Hymn, -
VIII. Incidents and Reminiscences, -
76
75
IX. , Random Reminiscences, 84 -
X. Memories of Early Days, 88
XI. COLLATION-Responses and Letters, -
94
A Cambrian Prophet, 95
A Man without Guile, 96 Other Pioneers, 100 - - -
4
2.
Contents.
Letter from Robert Collyer, -
-
102
Early Women, - 105
The Original Geneva, -
-
106
Poem-Fifty Years,
107
Letter from Rev. Jno. R. Effinger, - 108
Letter from Prof. Samuel Clarke, 109
Cui Bono ? 110 -
A Living Saint, 112
Response, 113
114
The Illinois Conference, 114
Letter from Rev. Jas. H. West, -
117
Freedom of Thought and Speech, 120 - Woman's Relation to Religious Freedom, 122 The Literary Value of the Liberal Faith, 124 The Centennial Celebration, 125 -
XII. CONGRATULATORY LETTERS.
1
From Edward Everett Hale, D. D. 128
66 Marie L. Lamb, -
-
129
" Thomas Moulding, -
129
66 C. A. Philips, 130
Hon. J. C. Sherwin, - 130
66 Col. Jno. S. Wilcox, 131
6 Paul R. Wright, -
131
XIII. Sunday School Session, -
-
133
XIV. Historical Chapter, - -
135
XV. Sunday School Memories,
:
-
-
139
-
XVI.
The Parsonage,
-
-
145
Letter from Rev. Chester Covell, -
Illustrations.
I. CHURCH BUILDING, Erected 1843, (Drawn by S. Nelson Abbott.)
FRONTISPIECE
II. AUGUSTUS H. CONANT, -
Page 59
III. THE PARSONAGE, -
-
144
(Drawn by Grace Long.)
1
1
1
"Love, labor, progress !- this the constant story That God in Nature speaks: Love, labor, progress !- this the tireless glory Of the Eternal weeks!" .
-
fermon.
"SOME RELIGIOUS CHANGES IN FIFTY YEARS. " PREACHED AT THE OPENING OF THE CELEBRATION, FRIDAY EVENING, JUNE' 10TH, BY REV. W. W. FENN,
Pastor of the oldest Unitarian Society in Illinois, the Church of the Messiah, Chicago, organized in 1836.
TEXT :- The Way of the Lord is Strength. Prov. 10-29.
MONG the most suggestive phrases in He- brew literature are those which imply that there is a way of the Lord, that there are paths in which the Almighty walks? & Primitively these expressions carried a significance quite different from that which we find in them, conveying merely the notion that there were certain spots which the Gods liked best to frequent; but as under the lead of the Prophets belief in a purposeful God bent on righteousness develop- ed among the Jews, "the way of the Lord" came to have an ethical import which insures it a permanent place in our religious vocabulary. For us, the way of the Lord is the path along which humanity, quickened and guided by the indwelling God, has moved and is moving towards consummate holiness; he is walking with God who is ad- vancing toward the perfect manifestation of truth and
ROIS
2
Some Religious Changes
love; he is working with God who is striving to bring men into the realm of spiritual facts and under the sway of spiritual forces, for thus God walks and works. Hence it behooves us, individually and corporately, to "consid- er our ways" that we may know whether they are the way of the Lord, whether our progress is in the track of advancing humanity. Amid the congratulations and re- joicings of this anniversary occasion, this serious duty should not be overlooked, for no greater blessing could come to pastor and people out of these days of reminis- cence and communion than the settled conviction that this church in its teaching and practice has been walking with God. "The way of the Lord is strength."
"Thy way, O Lord, is in the sanctuary." It is in the church, or rather in the impalpable but very real "Christian consciousness" of the community, that we may seek most confidently and find most easily the course of the spirit. Therefore, complying with a request from one of the members of your Committee, I ask you to consid- er with me this evening some of the changes that have come over religious thought and life during the past half century, that we may discern if possible the general di- rection of . movement. To-morrow, others shall speak particularly of this church and its history, but to-night we are to establish the criterion by which the work of the church must be determined. Our duty to-night is to dis- cover if we may the way of the Lord, to-morrow it will become apparent, I trust, that that has been also the way of this church.
Not even the most casual observer can fail to discern a wide difference between the church as it is now and the church as it was fifty years ago. Although one had never heard a sermon or been inside of a church, he might -guess even from the externals of church architect-
⑈
In Fifty Years. 3
ure that the uses of the building had altered. Church edifices nowadays are evidently designed to be less formal, inore social, home-like and inviting than they were fifty years ago. If, now, one compares the interiors of two churches, one built fifty years ago and the other just com- pleted, the change is even more apparent. In the one case we should probably find only a large barren audience roomn, while in the other we should certainly see parlors and a kitchen, possibly also a reading room and a stage. As Brooke Herford has said, the proverb "As poor as a church mouse" was coined before kitchens had become an essential part of church architecture; nowadays church mice ought to be as plump and sleek as old time ecclesiastics con - sidering the debris after our church festivals and fairs. And so the interior of the church deepens the impression made by the exterior that a change has come over our ideas as to the function and place of a church in the community. Then, even Sunday schools were not in full favor and the multifarious social activities of the modern church liad not come into mind. Similarly, we may see how the place- which a preacher is expected to occupy in a church has un- dergone marked alteration. Instead of a box-like, gloomy pulpit, stilted way above the heads of the congregation, there is now only a low platform with modest reading desk. The preacher of to-day must show the iron and clay of his makeup as well as the head of gold and shoulders of silver which formerly were alone visible over the enclosing and concealing pulpit. The Scripture reads "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh my help"-not, I will lift up mine eyes unto the pulpit. In many a country church the Scripture used to be literally fulfilled when the youngsters, and some of the older folk, too, turning away from · the preacher droning away overhead, looked up through the unshaded, small-paned windows to the distant
-
1
4
Some Religious Changes
hills and drew from that quiet vision of beauty help which the pulpit denied them. One can not repress a suspicion that much of the stiff-neckedness for which our ancestors are sometimes blamed, and deservedly, perhaps, may be traced to those high pulpits which obliged them to hold their heads in tilted constraint during interminable sermons, till it is no wonder they got a permanent crick in the neck because of it. And who can blame them for being straight- backed considering the pews they had to sit in. The de- cadence of the skyey pulpit signifies that the preacher no longer speaks as from some inaccessible height of wisdom and sanctity which his people cannot hope to attain, but from their level; he no longer thinks of "preaching down" to his congregation.
In one of Homer Wilbur's screeds prefixed to the Bigelow Papers Lowell suggests that the visual angle made by a ray of light coming from a high pulpit to the eye of an auditor is such as to induce somnolence. The real reason, however, why people go to sleep in church is be- cause they have no vital interest in what the preacher is saying; yet perhaps this real reason is not unconnected with the fanciful one proposed by the erudite pastor of Jaalam, for when a preacher draws near to his congre- gation and preaches to them eye to eye, it is inevitable that he should be led to speak of subjects in which they are interested and in a style which carries home. One se- cret of the effectiveness of the best modern preaching is that the preacher has got near enough to his people to "see the whites of their eyes." The speech of the street is becoming the speech of the pulpit that the thought of the pulpit may more promptly become the thought of the street. If a preacher to-day is so old-fashioned as to say -"My hearers"-the probability is that he might more truthfully say-"My slumberers;" they are absent-minded
5
In Fifty Years.
1
if not absent-bodied. The thought of the pulpit is cast in a style vital and not conventional, real and not formal, suggestive rather than authoritative, And this implies that the thought of the pulpit is not quite what it used to be. Topics that were once the staple of pulpit discourse are now rarely alluded to Your pastor is not half so much interested in the past of Israel as he is in the future of America; he deems it far less important to show that God could harden Pharaoh's heart and still be just and loving than to thunder into the ears of modern Pharaolis of lust and greed -"Let my people go;" he is not so firmly convinced that Jonah could live in the whale's belly, as he is deter- mined that present-day children of God shall not live in vile tenement houses; he will not seek to convince you that Baalam's ass spoke to the ancient prophet, but he will seek to open your cars to the appeal of the entire brute creation for sympathetic protection and kindness. The ideal of the modern sermon is perfectly given by Pres. Hyde of Bowdoin College in the current Forum. "A young preacher," he says, "once read me a sermon filled from beginning to end with abstract propositions about the proper relation of the soul to its inaker. When he had finished, I said to him, that is a first rate sermon of its kind, but for every sermon of this kind, you ought to write one of the other kind. 'What other kind ?' he asked. Why, I said, this is all about the way to save a soul. The other kind of sermon should show what use to make of the soul after it is saved; how the saved soul should behave in the home; how it should do business: how it can make the community happier and better; how to ful- fill the duties of husband or wife, of father or son, of neighbor or friend, of workman or employer, of owner of wealtlı, of holder of office, of citizen or patriot." That "other kind" of sermon is indeed almost the only kind
-
6
Some Religious Changes
that is preached in the foremost pulpits of America to-day and I hope it will not be declared fanciful if I suggest that nothing else could ever be preached, except from a pulpit far removed from a congregation. The change from pulpit to reading desks marks a change in the quali- ty of sermons. A sermon can no longer be a narrow, shallow rivulet of an idea meandering aimlessly through flowery meads of rhetoric, it must be a mountain brook of fresh thought directed to the doing of the world's work. When the preacher came down from his factitious elevation to the level of his fellows, pulpit utterances ac- quired the human touch, became practical, clear, direct, and couched in the ordinary speech of men.
So much, then, for superficial change in the religious life of the past half century as revealed in church archi- tecture and pulpit utterances, and now we must ask whether these are merely superficial or indicative of pro- found modifications in thought and sentiment. It occa- sionally happens that doctrines lapse for a time, which, nevertheless, are still an integral part of the prevailing system and only await an opportune moment for reap- pearance. During such periods, it may seem as if the beliefs in question were no longer held, whereas in reality they still belong to the current theology and are only in abeyance. Consequently what pass at face value for great religious reformations are often only shiftings of emphasis, while the structure of doctrine or polity remains the same. At the present time, for instance, in the so-called Evan- gelical churches, a prominence is given the humanity of Jesus which once would have been deemed subversive and dangerous, nevertheless the doctrine of his deity is by no means denied but is in fact constantly assumed. Are the changes which we have already mentioned and others which doubtless have occurred to you, changes of this
In Fifty Years.
isort or are they evidences of real growth and progress ?
One who compares carefully and candidly the Ortho- ·doxy of to-day with that of fifty years ago, as represented by its leading exponents then and now, will have to con- clude not only that there is hardly a single doctrine which has escaped alteration, but that there has been a radical and all important change in the point of view and method of approach. For the sake of illustration, let us refer briefly to four leading doctrines of Orthodoxy-its thought concerning the Bible, man, salvation and God.
1st. The Authority of Scripture. It was Chilling- worth who said-"The Bible and the Bible only is the .religion of Protestants." The testimony of the Bible was decisive and its judgment final. Theological disputes turned upon the interpretations of texts whose infallibil- ity, when their meaning was ascertained, neither party .questioned. But the leading Evangelicals to-day, men like Briggs, Gladden, Abbott and Ladd, have entirely abandoned the claim of Biblical infallibility, while Prof. Ladd of Yale College, in setting up the "Christian con- sciousness" as the ultimate criterion, seems to have re- 'verted substantially to the Roman Catholic view. Preach- «ers and theologians are not content with proving that a doctrine is Biblical, they deem it incumbent upon them also to show that it is rational or at least not irrational. Nor is this position maintained only by a few heretics in Orthodox circles, who are called leaders merely because they happen to be conspicuous by reason of their heresy. That they fairly represent the acting opinion of the rank and file appears from the treatment that has been accorded the Revised Version of the Bible. Let ine recall a few of the changes in the New Testament alone.
The favorite and only decisive proof text for the doctrine 'of the Trinity-that concerning the three Witnesses-has
8
Some Religious Changes
dropped away without even a note of explanation or apology, and doubt has been thrown upon "the church of God which he purchased with his own blood," as well as upon the identification of Jesus with God in the doxology in Romans. On the other hand, the personalty of the Devil is recognized in the Lord's prayer and it is intima- ted in John 1, 18 that Jesus is called "God only be- gotten." Such changes, and these are but samples, would have been greeted with mingled glee and acrimony a half century ago; as it is, they have been given hardly a passing thought. There can be no question, I suppose, that the movement in Orthodoxy is toward viewing the Bible as literature, open to correction and amendment and by no means as infallible, or even final authority. And if reason is to be applied to the Biblical records, the out- come is not doubtful. As the testimony of Genesis with relation to the six days creation is no longer allowed to invalidate the witness of Geology, so the record of the miraculous birth of Jesus will soon cease to be of suffici- ent authority to overthrow the presuppositions of experi- ence and the contradictory hints elsewhere in the Gospels and Epistles. One is tempted to dwell long upon this changed attitude towards the Bible because of its immense significance, but time forbids. Let me quote, however, a single passage from an unimpeachable authority -Prof. J. Henry Thayer, Prof. of N. T. Greek in Harvard Uni- versity, whose judgment has weight, not only from his ripe and accurate scholarship, but also because he is an Or- thodox in conviction as well as in ecclesiastical standing: "The critics are agreed, " he says, "that the view of the Scripture in which you and I were educated, the view that has been prevalent here in New England for centuries is untenable." The critics have found it so, the people feel it so; silently the change has come, no book or preacher
9
1
In Fifty Years.
has wrought it, but it has come and its influence upon our religious thinking is well-nigh incalculable.
2nd. The Doctrine of Man. Along with the crumb- ling belief in Biblical infallibility has gone a change in tlie thoughit of man, for concerning the creation and primitive condition of man the teachings of the Old Testament and of modern investigation are irreconcilably at variance. It is taught in the Bible that man was brought into being by a special creative act of God; that he was created holy, but by one act of disobedience lost that holiness and passed into a state of alienation from God, of which physical death is the token, in which all his descendants were in- volved. Upon this Biblical preaching rest the Evangeli- cal doctrines of the fall of man and his consequent inabil- ity to think truly or act rightly until after he has been re- generated by the Spirit. As logical inferences came the belief that revelation and salvation must come from with- out as gifts to an unworthy race and not from within as finest fruits of a perfecting humanity, and the pernicious notion that since the truth of God was alien to the nature of unregenerate man, the "carnal reason" was utterly in- competent as a test of truth. "Credo quia impossibile," I believe because it is impossible. The more monstrous what passed for revealed truth seemed to the natural in- stincts of man, the more depraved those instincts were thereby shown to be.
On the other hand, competent scholars tell us now that man is the consummate product of a long development through the animal world, that his noblest powers so far from being decaying relics of a purer past, are bright- ening prophecies of a glorious future. I need not linger here to point out how this thought of man introduces a totally new point of view and requires a totally different method of approach in our religious thinking, but I would
10
.
. Some Religious Changes
assure you that this new thought of man of which I have been speaking is not the whimsey of a few disgruntled "scientists" animated by "hostility" to the Bible and the church, but is the deliberate conclusion of every living student of nature, qualified to have any opinion at all up- on the subject. In the "New World" for June I find this sentence in an article by Minot Savage :- "In a private letter to myself, dated Oct. 29, 1890, Mr. John Fiske writes, 'I do not know of any living scientific man of any account opposed to Darwinism as a whole, though of course there is, as there ought to be, much diversity as to subsidi- ary questions. '."" Quite apart, however, from scholarly research and opinion, the old belief about man has been practically disowned, as Dr. Hale has shown, by our prac- tice in citizenship and education. As the foliage on the branches of a tree keeps green long after the tree itself has been girdled, so some of the inferences from this discredi- ted theory still persist, though their real vitality is gone. Here again as in the case of beliefs concerning the Bible, the change is due not so much to the publication of any epoch-making book, whether Spencer's "First Principles" or Darwin's "Origin of Species," as to the gradual and imperceptible transformation of popular sentiment. But the change has undeniably come and its effect upon our re- ligious life is central and far-reaching.
3rd. The Doctrine of Salvation. Hitherto we have considered doctrine's which may be classed as speculative and which; while they affect vitally the thought of the church, may have nothing to do with its practical work, but in the doctrine of salvation we pass directly from theory to practice, for from the beginning until now the church has felt the salvation of men to be its distinguish- ing function. If, therefore, the conception of salvation changes, the activities of the church must pass through a
11
In Fifty Years.
corresponding modification. When man was believed to be in a state of alienation from God because of Adam's transgression, and the work of the church was to bring man and God into a state of reconciliation, the idea of salvation was mechanical and the method, by the vicarious atone- ment, was also formal. But with the incoming of the new thought of man, the idea of salvation has become vital. Salvation requires not change of state, but change of character. Sin is not so much an insult to God as a wrong done one's own nature. Hence forgiveness of sins cannot be a merely judicial act, it must be the restoration of the spirit and temper lost in transgression. Hence it would hardly be said now that a man's morality or immorality has nothing to do with his salvation. On the, contrary it is generally held that, to quote a famous Orthodox clergy- man, "righteousness is salvation." From every quarter comes the demand for character and not creed. Even staunch Evangelicals will say sometimes of a man-"He's a good christian,"-thinking simply of his conduct and not at all of his theology. Where the uncouth Evangelist from Georgia cries "Quit your meanness" he is at one with the gentle Quaker poet, who sings-
"To be saved is only this, Salvation from our selfishness."
Consequently the way of salvation is not now presented as of old. That Jesus suffered upon the cross the agonies that the elect would have suffered, but for him, through the unending aeons of hell seems a belief too mnon- strous to be entertained for a moment, yet it was taught once. But that vulgar commercialism has gone forever. That deatlı scene on Calvary, we are told by Orthodox preachers, was designed to melt the heart of man, not to appease the wrath of God; it was a matchless setting fortlı of God's love of man and hate of sin. The death of
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.