USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Milton > Two sermons preached in the First Congregational church in Milton, on the 15th and 22d of June, 1862, and suggested by the centennial celebration, on the 11th of June, 1862 > Part 1
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Gc 974.402 M642mo 1727498
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01145 6123
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/twosermonspreach00mori_0
K. L.
TWO SERMONS>
PREACHED IN THE -
First Congregational Church IN MILTON, MASSY ON THE 15TH AND 22D OF JUNE, 1862,
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AND SUGGESTED BY
THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, --
ON
THE 11TH OF JUNE, 1862.
By JOHN H. MORISON, D. D.
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BOSTON: JOSEPH G. TORREY, PRINTER, 32 CONGRESS STREET. 1862.
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PREFACE.
These are not historical discourses. The strictly historical part of our Centennial Celebration was ably treated by Hon. James Murray Robbins, who understands thoroughly every thing that relates to the town, and whose father and grand- father filled a most important place in its history. What I have attempted is to awaken an interest in those who have gone before us by exhibiting as I might, in two sermons, some of the characteristics of the place, illustrating what I had to say by very slight biographical sketches. I have thrown. into the form of notes a few other facts, of little interest to strangers, but which may have a meaning and a value here. There are very subtle chains of association which bind togeth- er the generations of those who live in the same neighborhood, and make them from first to last, one living organization, so that something of the same spirit flows through and animates them all. We have as little of this personal identity as any com- munity that I have known. And yet there is a sense in which it does exist, and these discourses are given to the friends who have kindly asked for them in the hope that in some small way, they may help to connect us more closely with those who have gone before us, and lead us to look forward with new interest and increased efforts for their improvement to those who shall come after us to dwell amid these beautiful works of God when we are dead.
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SERMON.
ONE GENERATION PASSETH AWAY, AND ANOTHER GENERATION COMETH .- Ecclesiastes 1 : 4.
I PROPOSE to dwell this morning on a few considera- tions suggested by the recent Celebration in this town. We, --- those who are and those who have been resi- dents in this place, - have met together during the last week with appropriate services to commemorate our history for the past two centuries. As I was lis- tening to the instructive and excellent discourse that was delivered here, the first thing that struck me was the similarity of features that marked the history and character of our people from the earliest settlement of the place. One generation has passed away, another has come. Those born here have gone to distant places, and strangers have entered into the homes which they left. Very few homesteads are occupied now by the direct descendants of those who first set- tled here, and yet the marked characteristics of the people are to-day very much what they were half a century or a century and a half ago. The town is not and never has been one community. It is made up, and from the beginning it has been made up, from
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nearly all the classes of society that are to be found in the State. During the last sixteen years, at every election, I think, the vote in this town has pretty fairly represented the vote of the whole State, so that when the vote of Milton is declared, we know very well what is the vote of Massachusetts. Nearly all interests, professions and pursuits are represented here in just about the same proportion to each other as in the State. This gives us, and from the beginning has given us, a various, and in some respects a heterogen- eous population. We have fewer things in common than is usual in a small town. We are less compactly united. We have less a feeling of interest and pride in what relates to the town. A single fact will illus- trate what I mean : The second officer in command of the great army now at Richmond - a man of dis- tinguished military ability, who two weeks ago to-day, in the battle at Fair Oaks, by what seemed almost an im- possibility, did more perhaps than any other man to save the fortunes of the day, was a Milton boy, - the son of Milton parents, and educated in our Milton schools. But I doubt whether there is another town in the United States, where such a fact would be so little re- garded, and where on a public occasion like that of the last week, so little notice would be taken of a son so distinguished, and at this moment holding so im- portant a post.
Our lines have fallen to us in pleasant places. We are attached to the natural features of the town. We love its hills and streams, its woods and meadows, and carry them, wherever we go. in our thoughts and our affections. We are thankful that our children should
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be born and trained up with these beautiful works of God around them. As Gov. Hutchinson, after he had removed to England, is said to have longed and pined for his pleasant home on Milton Hill, and never could find any other spot to take its place in his affections, so, many a native of this town, forced to go abroad and find employment elsewhere, has always turned with loving, longing heart towards this beautiful home of his childhood. And yet it would; perhaps be hard to find, living side by side, under the same local institutions and laws, in a country town, the same number of persons bound together by so slight a com- munity of feeling, or of social intercourse. And so apparently it has been from the beginning. Peter Thacher, in 1681, speaks of the " lamentable animosi- ties and divisions" which prevailed even at that early period. There is, and has been no want of kind feel- ing. Individuals have had their personal friends. - Families have had their ties and their gatherings. But the mere relations of neighborhood have been al- most ignored. In the interest which a community usually takes in its own sons, in the encouragement with which it follows them in a career of honorable exertion, in the sympathy which it feels for them in their reverses, in the care with which it treasures up the memory of their high qualities and praise-worthy acts, this town has been unlike any other town that I have known. And I cannot but hope that the cele- bration of the last week, by reviving the memory of the past, by reminding us how much we have in com- mon and how greatly our social privileges are in- creased by sharing them with others, may do some-
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thing to create and perpetuate the feeling which should bind each one of us, not only to the soil on which he was born, but to the community in which he lives,- leading us to recognize and hold in honor the virtues of its children, and to encourage them with the thought that here at least their good deeds and names will be held in proud and grateful remembrance. Such a community of feeling here, greeting the child when he first enters our schools, watching over him with a kind and almost parental interest, rejoicing in his successes, following him wherever he goes, is among the most grateful and effective encouragements that can be ex- tended to the young. There is something of this feel- ing among us. There are those in whose opening vir- tues and graces we have taken an honest pride and satisfaction. There are faithful ones among us here . whose promise of future usefulness is a joy to many hearts. And there are young men of spotless lives - modest and brave and true - now at their posts of honor and of danger afar off, whom we can hardly think of without a glow of emotion, and a secret prayer for their safety and success.
Our thoughts are naturally carried back to the cle- ments of our New England society. First, there was the Church. The church which came over to Ply- mouth in the Mayflower was in itself a complete and independent organization, and a type of all the rest. According to his words who has said, " Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them," those devout men and women had come together in their Master's name, and bound themselves together by a religious compact which has
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served as a type of our whole civil polity. After the pattern of the church was the town, with its local in- stitutions and laws, a separate and almost independent organization, so that, if it should be cut off, as the Ply- mouth colony was for a time, from all other communi- ties and sovereignties, it might have in itself the right to execute all the functions of civil government. These townships, borrowing their life as they did, in our early history, from the church, are the peculiar feature of our New England civilization. More than three- quarters of the money spent and of the most important legislation of the country is decided upon in these pri- mary meetings of the people, and they alone, self-sup- porting and self-regulating as they are, make a repub- lic like ours possible.
But the town organization is made possible only by the more vital influences which are at work within it- self. Of these, the Christian church has held the most important place. It has been made in no small measure the medium of religious instruction and reli- gious life to each individual soul. Its divine spirit en- ters the school, and makes knowledge a power, not for evil, but for good. It enters the home, purifies its af- fections, softens its asperities, consecrates the marriage ties, welcomes the little child into its bosom, opens its blessed promises to the dying, and lifts up the hearts of the sorrowing by its words of immortal faith at the very portals of the tomb.
Say what we may of the stern creed of our ancest- ors, and its hardening influence on harsh and ungainly natures, it was not all harshness. In the sentiment of reverance which it fostered, in the habit which it en-
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couraged of looking with profound and earnest thought into the solemn and awful mysteries of our religion, in the unshrinking courage with which it accepted whatever it believed to be a divine truth, however severe its exactions, it cultivated some of the sublimest qualities which belong to the human character. Those ancient men who first trod these roads and looked up- on these hills, or gazed off upon the distant waters, carried with them a faith which made the earth the footstool of God's throne, and themselves the chosen servants of God to establish here in the wilderness a divinely ordered commonwealth, rich in all the prom- ises and fruits of holy living.
And the milder virtues were not forgotten or des- pised. The pastors of this church, from the beginning, were men of gentle, benignant characters. Peter Thacher, who lived near the brook, perhaps a third of a mile back from the spot where we now are, was a man whose daily walk with God was shown more in the graces and charities of a Christian life than in the severe teachings of a harsh and ungracious theology. He was the son of a Christian minister and the father almost of a race of ministers, some of them distinguish- ed for intelligence and wit, but upon the whole charac- terized by a winning gentleness of speech and of life. I love to think of this good man, forty-seven years the minister of Christ in this town, in simplicity and godly sincerity having his conversation among his people, preaching and praying and living among them and for them, burying all the first generation of settlers and almost all of their children-till at length, having grown old in their service, he appeared for the last time
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in the church. " He preached," says Cotton Mather in his funeral sermon, " both parts of the day, [he also baptized two children,] felt more hearty than ordinary, and performed the domestic services, with the repetition of the sermons, in the evening. Upon which finding himself weary, he said, ' we read in a certain place, the prayers of David are ended, what if it should now be said, the prayers of Peter are ended.' It fell out accord- ingly. On the day following a fever seized him, and the next Sabbath ended with him in his everlasting rest."
" In the time of his illness he expressed a most love- ly acquiescence in the will of his heavenly Father, and a soul rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God."
I know not where to find a more beautiful picture of Patriarchal dying than is given of him in his last hour. " Recovering," says Cotton Mather, " out of a short cloud, upon the clear use of his reason, he called for his domestics and for a staff to lean upon. So sit- ting up, he blessed cach of them, and made a most pathetic and audible prayer with them and for them. And then lying down, his last words were the words of a conqueror, and more than a conqueror, ' I am go- ing to Christ in glory.' Thus his purified spirit flew away to the chambers of a Redeemer waiting to be gracious. He died in the calm with which he lived, and expired with no groans but those of one longing to be with Him, with whom to be is by far the best of all."
His successor, John Taylor, was settled here at the age of twenty-five, and died when only forty-six years old. He was evidently a man of mild deportment, and of engaging personal qualities. . I have read his letters written through a series of years, to his father in-
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law, in Portsmouth, N. H. They give evidence of an affectionate, devout and thoughtful man. They are perhaps a little more formal than would be in keep- ing now with the habits of the age, but give no indica- tion of the moroseness or severity which we are too apt to attribute to the clergymen of that generation. He was evidently a Christian gentleman and scholar. His heart was in his work. He loved his people, and rejoiced to labor for their good. The only work of his which is now visible among us - the house which he built and which is still occupied by his kindred- bears witness to his taste. He was cut down in the prime of his manhood. and in the midst of his labors, and was mourned over and lamented by his people as one who had endeared himself to them by his fidelity, and his thoughtful, affectionate care for them.
He was succeeded by Nathaniel Robbins, who was settled at the age of twenty-four in 1750, and who continued the minister of the town for a period of forty-five years, closing his ministerial labors with his life in 1795. From all that I can learn of him, he was a man of a most genial nature, more ready to perform a kind act for a neighbor than to rebuke him for wrong doing, working upon his farm as well as in his study, more intent on the practical duties of our religion than its mysterious doctrines, a lover of peace and concord, and doing what he could to remove all uncharitableness and to promote harmony and good will among his peo- ple. He did not dislike a harmless joke, and was always, I believe, a man of a cheerful, happy disposi- tion, a pleasant companion, and a beloved pastor.
These three ministries reach thro' a period of a
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hundred and fourteen years, and come down almost to to the close of the last century. They witnessed great and momentous changes in the history of our country. Thacher was born in 1651, when we were in the fee- ble and exposed days of our infancy. Robbins was here during the stormy period of our revolutionary history, when his people knew what it was to make sacrifices for their country. It is said that one woman in his parish - a widow - used to sit knitting before her door, by the brook, which still bears her name, when the weather would permit, and asked of any stranger who passed by, " What's the news from the war? I have four sons gone to the war - what's the news from the war ?" One of her sons was Col. another the Lieut. Col. of the 1st Mass. Regiment, while the other two served perhaps as faithfully in more humble capacities. So our fathers lived in this beautiful town, working out the great problem of life each in his own way, serving God according to their light in their day and generation. And it becomes us who have entered into their labors to hold them in. grateful and affectionate remembrance.
There are some points of a more private and do- mestic character which I wish to dwell upon. But that must be deferred till the next Sunday. A word more at this time. I have spoken of the first three ministers of this town. Hardly more than two or three persons are now among us who remember the last of these men. More than four generations have passed away since the saintly life of Thacher was closed by his triumphant death. A large elm has grown from the cellar of the house in which he died. All the men
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and children whom his eyes looked upon have gone. Their children's children are among the generations that have passed away, and no tradition respecting him, except in books, is preserved here in what was the field of his labors for almost half a century. But that death bed scene which I have presented in the dying words of his friend - for his funeral sermon was the last sermon that Cotton Mather ever preached - that victorious faith of his and of those who succeeded him- the inspiration and the fruits of many labors and prayers-lifting them above the world and leading them triumphantly on from things seen and temporal to things unseen and eternal, they speak to us, not of the generations that pass away, but of joys and souls which endure forever. Like those good men we must die. Our very names may be forgotten when the next cen- tennial day shall be commemorated by those who come after us. All that our eyes now look upon will be nothing to us. Shall we not then by holy and faithful living, seek, like them, to secure for ourselves ever- . lasting habitations in the kingdom of Christ. ?
SERMON.
MY SON, HEAR THE INSTRUCTION OF THY FATHER, AND FOR- SAKE NOT THE LAW OF THY MOTHER : FOR THEY SHALL BE AN ORNAMENT OF GRACE UNTO THY HEAD, AND CHAINS ABOUT THY NECK. Proverbs 1: 8, 9.
LAST Sunday I spoke of the social condition of this town in some of the more extended relations, and es- pecially of the church and its doctrines, illustrating the latter part of the subject by slight sketches of the three ministers who came within the first century of our his- tory.
I wish this morning to speak of some of our private and domestic relations. Wherever there are happy and virtuous homes, there, more than any where else, the great purposes of human society and of human life are accomplished.' In these homes woman must ne- cessarily be the presiding and tutelary genius. Not only the softening graces and accomplishments which adorn the character and lend their charm to society come from her, but the hardier virtues, which defend the state and stay off the streams of public corruption that are perpetually making inroads on private morals, .. find their inspiration and support in the training which the young man has first received in the home of his childhood.
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The ablest philosophical writer of the present centu- ry on this class of subjects, Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America. Part Second, New York, 1840,] after asserting [Chap. viii,] that "no free communities ever existed without morals," that " mor- als are the work of woman," and that all travellers who have visited North America, however they differ in other things, agree that morals are far more strict here than elsewhere, the Americans being in this re- spect very much superior to the English, concludes his remarks on this subject [Chap. xii, p. 227.] with this emphatic declaration : " I have nowhere seen women occupying a loftier position ; and if I were asked, now that I am drawing to the close of this work in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and grow- ing strength of that people ought mainly to be attribut- ed, I should reply -to the superiority of their wo- men."
This remark of the ablest philosophical thinker and observer who has ever written on American society and institutions is unquestionably correct, and its truth may be verified in the history even of a little community like this.
But if we attempt to go back more than a century, it is impossible to get at the details which are necessa- ry in order to an intelligent and satisfactory treatment of the subject. Examples of domestic virtue live and reign within their own limited sphere. In their ob- scure retreats, as in so many private laboratories. they mould the characters of the young. and thus prepare the forces which are to act on public institutions and laws. A young lad at school in Andover, eighty years.
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ago, saw a poor wretch, publicly whipped before the house in. which he boarded. Other boys very likely regarded the suffering criminal with laughter and mock- ery. The lady of the house, Mrs. Phillips, whose hus- band was one of the founders of Phillips Academy, told this boy that if he lived to be a man and had any influence as a legislator, she hoped he would have that shameful and degrading punishment abolished. Very early in life the boy became a statesman, and one of his early acts was to have that blot erased from the statute book of his native State.
The author of this act happened to be mentioned ; but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, she who has furnished the motive, and is really the originator of the beneficent step that is taken in the onward progress of the race, goes to her grave unrecognized as such by others, and without any suspicion in her own mind of the good that she has done. And the fact that it is woman's province thus to work in privacy, like a fair taper, as has been said. shining to all the room, but casting a modest shadow around herself,-the fact that she should thus be the inspiration of so much that is good to others while she claims so little for herself, is one of the causes which give her such a hold on the affections and the admiration of men.
But those, whose lives are thus spent, leave little for the historian to record. They are satisfied to live un- known beyond their own quiet sphere. What is best in them transfuses itself into those around them and lives on in their lives. The homes which they have filled and cheered with their presence feel that their light has gone out when they die. Their children arise up
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and call them blessed. Grand children retain in their hearts some pleasant memorials of what they were, and perhaps always feel as if a mild and hallowed illumin- ation had passed out of their sky when they departed. But after that no record of what they were remains. The places which knew them and which were dearer to them than to any one else, know them no more for- ever, and transmit to us no glimpse of the lives they lived, as distinguished from the lives of others.
·. Hence it is impossible to illustrate what I wish to say by examples which do not come down pretty nearly to the memory of persons now living. Peter Thacher died a hundred and thirty-five years ago ; and we have quite a distinct view of his character and life. But of the wife of his youth, -.. My dear wife Theodora," as he calls her in the church records, - daughter of Rev. John Oxenbridge, of Boston, and the mother of nine children - we have scarcely any account beyond this inscription on her tomb stone :
MRS THEODORA THACHER Y DAUGHTER 0 OF Y REVP MR JOHN OXENBRIDGE PASTOR
OF Y FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON & WIFE 0 OF MR PETER THACHER AGED 38 YEARS 3 MONTHES 23 DAYES WAS TRANSLATED FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN NOVR Y 18 1697. ℮
We visit the houses that were built during the first century after the settlement of the town. We.see enough there to confute the idea which some entertain that those who built them were persons without taste or
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culture. Almost without exception they occupy sites as pleasant as the town affords, and in their position and architectural finish show a degree of skill and a del- icacy of taste which have hardly been exceeded in our day. Those who dwelt in them had many privations which we know nothing of. The hardships of their lot bore, as they usually do in new settlements, with unequal severity on the women. But they had their delicacies and refinements. On great occasions their garments, which often lasted more than a lifetime, and were handed down as heir-looms from one generation to another, were of more costly materials, and made up with a more elaborate finish, than their successors in the same walks of life now would indulge in. In their social intercourse they were more dignified and stately than our customs would authorize. The differ- ent ranks of society and the tokens of respect due from one to another were more precisely marked out than in our day. If the higher classes exacted more from those below them, they were ready to do more for them in return, and to defend them from the exactions or oppressions of the powerful.
There is no picture of the past so attractive to me as that of a Christian home. In carrying our thoughts back to the early settlers at times when every nerve was strained to meet the physical wants of the day, we see that there was always found a season, not only in the church for public worship, but at home for prayer and religious instruction, and the cultivation of those inward graces which draw together the members of a household by something stronger than the ties of interest or habit, and throw over the opening intelli-
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