USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > North Adams > Addresses and papers presented at the Diamond Jubilee, 1827-1902, May 11-14 (First Congregational Church of North Adams) > Part 13
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SEVENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY
After the death of Mrs. Belle Hunter Chase, Mrs. Charles H. Ingalls held the office of treasurer until 1879. Since then the secretary has also performed the duties of treasurer. In October, 1877, the society became an aux- iliary of the Berkshire branch. Mrs. Martin was the second president, followed by Mrs. Munger in 1878. At this time Mrs. Williams became secretary, and for several years gave the reports of the meetings, bringing inspiration and help always.
Mrs. Merriam gave faithful service in the same office, with great devotion and special fitness.
And then Allie Porter, one of our youngest members ; her willing spirit and bright and happy face will always be a pleasant memory to us.
In 1894, at the annual meeting, Mrs. J. C. Goodrich was made president, and Mrs. J. P. Coyle vice-president.
We have only mentioned a few of the women who have been faithful, earnest workers in this society; there are many others, for the membership has increased.
From 1878 to 1902 we have sent to the branch treas- ury $3183.27. We have contributed to schools and for the support of missionaries in China, Japan, India, Turkey and Mexico, and our studies of these countries, with the aid of maps which have been given us, have been inost interest- ing. We have a library containing thirty volumes.
This year our society has been happy to make life members of Mrs. E. A. Harrison and Mrs. J. C. Goodrich- an expression of love and appreciation for their prayerful, devoted efforts for many years in this branch of our church work. The present officers of the society are: President, Mrs. Herbert E. Wetherbee; vice-presidents, Mrs. E. M.
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Harrison and Mrs. F. J. Merriam ; secretary and treasurer, Mrs. John A. Rice.
And now at this seventy-fifth anniversary of our be- loved church, we are glad to report a "Cradle Roll " just forined in connection with our auxiliary. The children, our most precious gems for our Diamond Jubilee. May they help to bring the light to earth's dark places, and in the years to come know the joy of being "co-laborers with Christ."
The Christ stands before us and says "Come to me." You say "Must I?" He answers "You may." He will not even say "You must." You may and duty loses itself in privilege.
CRADLE ROLL, ORGANIZED APRIL 29, 1902.
Eleanor Spruill, Christina McLeod Ritchie,
Robert Keyes Thompson,
Stanley Booth Illingsworth, William Wesley McDonald, James Macdonald Memmott, Ruth Harriet McMillin
William Allen Newton, Herman Locke Carlisle,
Frederick William Memmot, William Wallace Richmondt, Alice Jones,
Stuart Brookings Carlisle,
Helen Aldrich Jones,
George Robert Chilson,
Francis William Warren,
Margaret Coyle Barber, Norman Lafayette Millard, Alice Maud Hayden,
Matthew David Lowrie, Franklin Henry Whitney,
Eleanor Christie Merritt,
Elizabeth Naomi Leitch,
Margaret Anna Whitney,
John Palmer Leitch, Arthur Leitch,
Durant Hunter Richmond Wallace E. Brown,
Margaret Wardrop Cousins, Charles Howard Lewis,
Helen Kean Cousins,
Raymond Cutler,
Lois Crum Macphail,
Howard Gillies.
Mary Quackenbush Richmond.
Extracts from Address on Congregational Liberty.
ANNA L. DAWES.
I am to say a few words to you upon our heritage of freedom, Congregational Liberty. More than three score years and ten have written themselves into the living epistle of this church, but still it is young with an immor- tal youth. A song of praise sounds in all our ears. The joy of today is the joy of freedom, but not as in the ancient jubilee a joy of freedom after bondage. Rather it is the joy of children gathered in the Father's house, to tell over the things which the Lord hath wrought for three gener- ations, to rejoice in the good hand of our God. This festival comes to a church of the order of freedom, whose name gathers up the fellowship of saints, and whose rule and order is liberty. It is with overflowing joy we give thanks, in an atmosphere compounded all of freedom. The silver trumpet rings out clear and full with a song of praise -the sound of them that triumph, the voice of them that feast. For on the posts of your doors is written Congrega- tional freedom, and over your altar shines the promise of Christian liberty.
We are free born. "The Jerusalem which is above is free which is our mother." Vet this liberty becomes but a vain boast unless we stop now and then to see what it means. What does it do for us? What have we learned in these seventy-five years-which yet were years of ser- vice, not of servitude-of the value of this our birthright?
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I have wished that we should use this season to con- sider some little corner of our great opportunity, lest we sell our birthright for pottage mixed at larger hearths. For it is only too true that of late, in our happy liberty, we are day by day forgetting our opportunity, making haste to barter our freedom from very carelessness. Over and over we make the gate of liberty a way of entrance for alien methods and foreign ideas. We need to learn a reason for the faith that is in us, and swear a new loyalty to its altars, upholding its banner with new strength.
Thus there is a special fitness in considering at such a time as this what it means to be of the Pilgrim faith, and in rejoicing over some of its opportunities. Three ways in which this freedom exhibits itself have become so familiar we have forgotten their very existence-Method, Thought, Fellowship-and it is in these terms that I would consider it. It is in the light of this three-fold freedom that each Congregational church stands out in such sharp outline. It is this individualism which makes this church loom so large. In Method, in Thought, in Fellowship it has shown forth the way of freedom, the high thought, the communion of saints. A living branch, the life of the Vine clothed it with ever new beauty and hung it with the purple glory of the fruit.
As you have walked in the way of freedom, the nurs- ing mother of your thought was liberty. How have your ministers made this pulpit count for freedom till, a city set upon a hill, its light has shone over the whole world, wit- nessing from its beginning through every decade to truth, righteousness, the Father's love, to the Apostolic succession of saints, to the freedom of the faith, the brotherhood of man, the spirit in the world; witnessing today with elo-
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quent words to the constant and perpetual manifestation of God, and with more eloquent life showing Him forth unto His children.
And in the web of life woven by this whole commun- ity, this church freely served in a gracious fellowship. In laborings oft, in watchings constant, in all that befell the Kingdom of God instant in season, a long roll of men and women have stood in this place as good servants of the Master who shall find His talents grown one hundred fold.
I would speak to you of the church, not of religion. Religion is of all times and all churches. But today we speak of the church, the church which expresses this re- ligion and is the body of Christ; the church which gives love its opportunity to become deed; turns faith into the life of the Spirit. The actualization of religion is given us by the church-outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace.
The church means more to women than we always remember. We are oppressed with the narrowness of life. Beyond our control it falls to us to be concerned with de- tails, and bricklaying was never inspiring even for temple walls. But the methods of the church are applied to great problems, her thoughts go on high emprise, her fellowship widens with the seas, and breaks all barriers. As scholar in the school of spiritual life, as individual thinker, as apostle to the world, the church gives woman her oppor- tunity. What woman does for the church is of little moment. It is what the church does for her that we need to consider-her open heaven, not her treadmill. What does it not mean, then, when the church comes to her with no rule of life, no scheme of thought, no barred fellowship, but in the freedom of the Spirit opens every way to the
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Infinite, through every spiritual affinity and human fellow- ship leading to the Divine, in that perfect freedom which is the privilege of children.
See how the heavens opened to the women who count- ed themselves of the company of Jesus. Think of Mary, companioning with angels and arch-angels; of Elizabeth and Anna, severe and saintly prophets of a new earth and a new heaven ; of her, an outcast, who exchanged the ways that lead to death for the immortal holiness of the saint ; of that mother whose ambitions for her sons widened unto the thrones of God; of the Gentile woman whose faith served to batter down the immemorial walls of race, and of the sisters whose perpetual grace it is to have furnished the Lord Christ with friendship. Where shall you find more diverse beginning, where so great a common glory grown therefrom, through Him who made these women gates of single pearl in His New Jerusalem ? New thought, new life came richly to them all, and in their footsteps we still walk, following our Lord in His great fellowship.
To us of the New England churches this freedom to choose and to think and to feel has become so common that as I have said we do not always count its worth; the freedom of method in the church is to us so thoroughly the habit of life that we forget its meaning and its value. We forget that we are free to express our own life, that no pre- sent exigency or custom of other environment can be made to fit the body of our growing. Too frequently we forget the dignity of our calling and that freedom does not always mean freedom to change. In this restless time it is often a liberty to stand still. In eager haste we have sometimes given up the old in this fancied freedom, and forgotten that each of our Congregational habits is a stone in a
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memorial pillar. The children of our churches do not know why deacons serve, nor what protest lies in a simple sacrament, nor the grandeur of a long prayer, nor the unique glory of the teaching sermon. We have a way in these and other things-our own way-I plead for its remembering.
Freedom of thought means a Gospel to the mind, and that-that chiefly-is the Congregational glory. By all the light that broke on John Robinson, by the magnificent severity of Cotton Mather, by the grandeur of that will which Edwards invoked, by the clear faith of Horace Bushnell, we are bound to find the truth for our own time. Thought is our birthright; for us, children of light and leading, there is a high and solemn duty to men's thinking, a duty belonging to the liberty of our way, and not to be lightly forborne. Other churches may seek the wanderer in different fashion, we are bound to reason with him; other folds may worship in splendid ritual, ours must seek an open communion with the Almighty ; other pulpits may develop the Christian man through his work, we must teach him. It is for this we are sent. And by this token we must with courage face the unknown truth, with sin- cerity welcome the unwelcome idea. We may not shrink from any new interpretation or draw back from any path of investigation. But reverently, vigorously, with a firm hold on what is still good-and only that-we must go be- fore the army of God, in the very van of progress, for this most difficult, most disheartening and yet most inspiring of all duties, the discovery of new truth, the trying of the spirits to see whether they be of God. The safety of truth, the vital power of thought, the right of the single con- science-these things are ours-ours as a church-ours
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every man and woman of us. To this end we must not hinder any development, must seek all help. So we may rise on the equal wings of faith and love to the very foot of the throne.
Again as a method and thought, so in fellowship, it is for us to go on to perfection. We are of one family with him who calls God Father; whether he names that name in narrowest word, or in vaguest philosophy, him we wel- come to the household of faith. Nay more, we seek every- where, in all lands and all classes, for these our brethren. We believe in the Holy Ghost. In such high and holy fashion do we hold this our Trinitarian faith that we seek and find our God in every revelation, and would fain open the blind eyes of our brethren to Him who stands every- where in their midst. So it is that we come to the darkest missionary field, with a consuming zeal, for there we meet and make known our God; and so it is that where the clashing classes turn perplexity into discord, we work with our Master in courage and hope. To every heathen of the slums, to every pagan of the land of darkness we hold out the hand of a brother. The free children of the truth find in him, not alone the child of God, but the indwelling Spirit, and count him the brother of today, the saint of an eternal tomorrow.
The children of the Pilgrim name are free only that they may serve. In the olden time the servant who went forth on the Day of Jubilee came back to serve. Of his own choice, in the midst of the great gladness, with joy in his heart, he gave himself up to his Lord for service. And with the mark of the listening ear they marked him. So by the listening ear are we marked servants of the Highest. Where our Master calls we walk with ready step in the un-
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tried path; when our Lord speaks we listen, eager for the new truth ; where our Christ dwells we go to serve Him and His children. And thus in method, in thought, in fellow- ship, we are free to serve, and rejoice with the great shout that for so many years we have kept the faith, and in solemn covenant pledge ourselves to more loyal devotion for all the years that we and our children shall live upon the earth.
The Woman's Home Missionary Society
MRS. DAVID A. ANDERSON
The existing organization of the Woman's Home Mis- sionary Association came into being in the autumn of 1882, and at the instigation of our beloved Mrs. Munger. Many of us had just been stirred by the thrilling address of Miss Sibyl Carter, then one of the teachers of the New West Education Commission, and the time seemed ripe for the formation of a society that should help to further such work as hers.
A group of women whose names have always been as- sociated with missions met for this purpose at the home of our sainted sister, that mother in Israel, Mrs. A. E. Bab- bitt. Among them were Mrs. Jas. T. Robinson, Mrs. A. P. Butler, Mrs. T. T. Munger, Mrs. W. W. Freeman, Mrs. Edwin Thayer, Mrs. Shepard Thayer, Mrs. Wm. Martin. Other names were soon added to our list. Mrs. Jewett, Mrs. Hunter, Mrs. Goodrich, Mrs. G. L. Rice, Mrs. Barber and others "of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. " Mrs. H. G. B. Fish- er was elected president, Mrs. Babbitt vice-president and the junior member was elected secretary and treasurer. Mrs. Fisher's residence was out of town so large a part of the year that she could rarely meet with us, so within a year from that time Mrs. Jas. T. Robinson was elected president. Her beautiful prayers and deep, Christian per- sonality blessed our circle for a long time. She was suc- ceeded by Mrs. Martin, whose leadership proved a great
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source of strength, and the inspiration of her bright, Chris- tian character still cheers and strengthens us, when we sometimes meet at her home for our inite box opening.
Mrs. Arthur Robinson has also served us as president ; then Miss Dora Barber, and then our own Mrs. Coyle lent the help of her cheerful and broad Christianity to the office for a term of years. Now we have Mrs. W. S. Garland for president. In the early life of our society we had an hour for our meetings in the midst of the sewing society's after- noon, but when the sewing became so imperative that there seemed to be no time for us, we withdrew, and held our monthly meetings by ourselves on Fridays at Mrs. Bab- bitt's, "where prayer was wont to be made." Early in Dr. Coyle's pastorate, however, when the Tuesday afternoon meetings were regularly established, we gladly consented to take one of the Tuesdays of each month for our home mis- sionary meeting and this has continued until the present time.
During our first year we became auxiliary to the Woman's Home Missionary Association of Massachusetts and we have done most of our work through that society.
We have sought to be of use to the home missionaries who are doing our work on the frontier, to whom we have sent barrels of clothing, reading matter, etc., first trying to discover their needs and then buying, to meet them, as good articles of wearing apparel as if for ourselves, sometimes sending money for a new little organ for the struggling church. We have sent scholarships to western colleges- money to build parsonages, in order that precious lives need not be sacrificed by reason of exposure in illy built houses in cold climates.
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We have sent scholarships to Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee, and barrels and barrels of clothing there and to other colored schools in the south. Our voluntary offerings at monthly meetings would not have been sufficient for all this, so we have sometimes when having a definite object in view made definite requests for aid from persons not in the habit of attending our meetings, and we have record of many a generous response to such appeals from persons who realize with us that our relationship to our purse is not that of ownership, but of stewardship.
The smallest amount raised in any one year was $10.00, the first year of our existence; the largest was $545.00, in 1896. This sum is only part money, and part the value of barrels sent. The total sum raised and dis- pensed up to 1902, money and value of barrels together, amounts to $3189.00. "These are our sheaves !" Perhaps of few of us would the Master say, "She hath done what she could," but we have sent our prayers with our pennies, and when our offerings have been smaller than we wished we have rejoiced to remember that He who could so multi- ply the few loaves and fishes that thousands might be fed, has still such power that in His hands our small offerings may be so multiplied that they may be made the means of bringing blessing to many.
And so we still mean to go forward in the spirit of the Master, with undiminished zeal, with undaunted courage, and with love for mission work all over the wide, wide world ! And in His name we are trying to help save America to save the world !
The Woman's Association
MRS. ROSCOE L. CHASE
The desire to bring to all a more perfect understand- ing of the various parts of the church work led to the or- ganization on September 11, 1894, of The Woman's Asso- ciation.
Its components were naturally all the societies in the church carried on by women.
The aim was to promote unity of purpose and in- creased efficiency of effort. Meetings are held quarterly and reports are given from each society of work accom- plished during the three months, and of hopes and plans for the future.
The association appoints the flower committee and aids the pastor and Sunday School superintendent in any social or relief work which is required.
Since organization the association has had four presi- dents-Mrs. Geo. W. Chase, Mrs. J. C. Goodrich, Mrs. A. E. Richmond and Mrs. C. H. Cutting, who is at present in office.
1871-REV. LEWELLYN PRATT-1877
The Fellowship of the Church
REV. LEWELLYN PRATT, D. D.
This anniversary ought not to pass without deepening the sense of fellowship and strengthening its bonds. So much is latent and unexpressed in ordinary times that only occasions call out, that it is well to mark distinct seasons and epochs in order to appreciate what really exists. It is so in the family, in the neighborhood, in the nation. We do not know how much of family affection, of neighborli- ness or of patriotism there is till some occasion calls them out. Let unusual joy or sorrow come to any family, and hitherto undemonstrative neighbors flock to testify their interest. Let the country make its call at some great crisis, and patriots spring up on every side. So in church life. In ordinary times the fellowship seems to exist only in name-members of the same church scarcely know each other.
Our tendency is to regard the church as incidental and convenient, not essential; and, contrasting the individual and his personal faith with the outer system-the church- to look upon the church as only an instrument for saving individual souls, to be taken up and used according to the exigencies of individual life. It can be depended upon in certain times of need, and withdrawn from, or not used, when that individual need is not felt. Men naturally de- sire to combine and to cooperate, but the reality, the essence of religion is not to be found in this combination ;
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it must be in the individual soul in its solitary and secret hold upon the life that is given it in Jesus Christ.
Now we admit that personal faith is the essential mat- ter, and that the outward system or organization is noth- ing except so far as it has living, believing souls in whom, through whom and for whom it exists-as in our funda- mental Congregational principle that the church is com- posed of regenerate souls. We make this inner personal faith the root and base of our church system; and in that sense it is primary, and the system secondary and subor- dinate. But is this the right way of looking at the mat- ter-this contrasting of the two, the inward and the out- ward, personal faith and the church, as if they were rivals, different in trend and brought into artificial combina- tion with one another, as if they could exist separately ? We might as well discuss the question which is the more important, the body or the members of the body-they be- long to one great whole, each incomplete without the other.
For what is personal faith ? What is its character and nature ? Is it private because it is personal? Is it solitary because it is individual? Can faith be conceived of as isolated, separated and alone? Can you confine its action to the secrecy of the separate and solitary soul ? In its very es- sence it is union, it is the act through which admittance is gained into a body-the Body of Christ. Through faith the soul is newly begotten, begotten into a family, born of God into membership, communion, companionship, citizen- ship, born into a household, a society, a commonwealth, a kingdom. The soul that believes, that lays hold of Christ, is by that very act introduced into the relationships of cor- porate life. All the figures by which the church is repre-
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sented emphasize this-the vine, the family, the body, the temple. As a branch, the wild and lawless separate soul is grafted into a stock with the other branches; as a waif and orphan, the regenerated one is brought in and made a child of a household-" He setteth the solitary in fami- lies :" as a member detached, it is made an integral and reciprocal part of the body ; as a living stone, now shaped and fitted, it is builded into the holy temple-so that as Paul writes to the Ephesians: though "ye were separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world ; now in Christ Je- sus ye that once were far off are made nigh, so that ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow citi- zens with the saints, and of the household of God, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Himself being the chief corner stone, in whom each several building fitly framed together groweth into a holy temple in the Lord, in Whom ye also are builded to- gether for a habitation of God in the spirit."
Christian faith cannot in its very nature be a solitary affair of the isolated, individual man, it cannot by the necessary law of its being. For its object-God Himself- is no self-contained Being, living for Himself alone; He is the God of love and communion, and the faith that is fed from such a source, which is inbreathed by the spirit of Divine union, such a faith must be social and corporate in its very nature, for it is like its source, and it has a social and corporate character in its very formation. One has said that if you could conceive the soul that is new-created in Christ placed under a spiritual microscope and examined by some scientific eye that was able to read its secrets, it
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would be said: "This is a creature that evidently belongs to a greater whole. Its construction proves that it is adapted to social intercourse, it has in it the ligatures, joints and sinews by which it could be knit into an articu- lated body. It would be possible to suggest the probable structure of that larger body by close examination of this fragment."
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