USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Annals of King's Chapel from the Puritan age of New England to the present day > Part 21
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2 The author of a recent biography of one who was foremost in the stormiest agitations of the time, has made the mis- take of embalming the sneering misjudg-
ments of Dr. Peabody's motives, which were as unjust as they were ungentle, and which chiefly hurt the reputation of him who has allowed imputations on a good and true man's honor to stain his page. See letter from Theodore Parker to Millard Fillmore in O. B. Frothing- ham's Theodore Parker : A Biography, P. 411.
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ready enough to proclaim all they think and feel? Who of us is in danger from too great silence on these subjects ?
" I do not introduce such discussions here, then, not because I think them unimportant, or that I do not have convictions respecting them, or that I do not habitually propose to make such convictions known and to act on them in such ways and at such times as I may judge to be useful ; but because I think it better for those whom I see here from Sunday to Sunday - these persons, the aged and the young, men and women ; persons who have other sources of information on such subjects - that this place should be kept apart from the strifes of the hour, should be associated with thoughts and habits of wor- ship ; that they who enter here should, by the associations which silently gather within the shadow of these arches, be reminded of peace- ful, kindly thoughts towards man, and of a common devotion to their Maker. I hope there are many other hours and places consecrated to the worship of God, but at the least let this be so. The world and its passions, the interests of the day, and even the great social interests and questions of the time, so far as they are connected with parties and with passions, occupy at least their proportionate share of time and thought. That our own hearts may preserve their faith, that the interests of society may have a permanent basis, that philanthropy and humanity may have a continuous life, that the interests we value may have a solid founda- tion, the first thing to be cherished is religious reverence ; and to this end let this place be preserved as a place sacred to the worship of the Most High. Let it be a fountain in the weary and heated waste, where we may meet as brethren in the worship of a common Father, and where in the peacefulness of the hour our better and kinder thoughts and our holier purposes may gain refreshment and strength."
In regard to the question whether he had been bold enough on questions of public concern, Dr. Bartol wrote, -
" Anxious myself on this point, I must say, in my humble apprehen- sion, groundless was his doubt."
And Mr. Weiss adds : -
" I call to mind that his constitutional cautiousness, when brought out by the subject of slavery, was the cause of much misrepresentation and a violent imputation of unworthy motives to him. . . . But it is as fool- ish to suspect a pure, sensitive, and disinterested character of an unworthy motive as it is to attribute the darkness to the stars. A more sweet and sanctified spirit than Mr. Peabody has not lived in these latter days. . . . And his cautiousness was as unprompted by calculation as his reverence. He expressed everywhere and upon all subjects the simple sincerity of his mental and spiritual state." 1
1 " Ilave you read or seen what Peleg He travelled with him in Europe, and Chandler wrote and thought of him ? wrote one year after his death a second
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THE MINISTRY OF EPHRAIM PEABODY.
Gentle and generous in his judgments of others, he was yet gifted with an almost unerring insight into character; and that winged the arrows of his public speech straight to his hearers' deepest needs. " He had much of that one of the Apostolic gifts, the discerning of spirits. . . . He weighed men in scales of diamond delicacy, and a ponderous beam."1 One of his best friends in this Parish said of him, that " he saw through him and preached at him." It was not through scholarship that his influence came. He was not a profound student: his health and his work made that impossible, though his thirst for knowledge made him fill his mind with the best light from books and from other men. But his influence was due to his simplicity, self-abnegation, purity, and transparency. A little girl who was brought once to this church to hear him, when her mother asked how it seemed to her, said, " It made me think of the beauty of holiness."
The severity of Dr. Peabody's mental and moral rectitude was lighted up by the gift of a poetic sensibility, which in his earlier years he freely indulged in his writings. In later years, though he strove to repress this gift with an excess of care, he fortu- nately could never wholly subdue it. To his own mind, his verse was only the pastime of an idle hour. As he wrote (1852) in his Poem at Bowdoin College: --
" No poet asks your ears: but as a brook May catch some sunlight in an opening nook, My slight memorial lines I fain would dream May take a consecration from their theme."
But when, in his free hours, he was moved to such expression, his poetry flowed with genuine sweetness and power. This was especially the case in the beauty and freedom of Naushon.
This delicate play of imagination shows itself in the illustra- tions which he could not wholly banish: thus he said, in his Installation sermon here, -
"To make a catalogue of duties is not the best way of insuring their performance. They are but the line of foam on the beach, which shows how high the tide rises, but does not make it rise. There must be a principle beneath the rules."
notice. He loved and appreciated his childlike purity and his wisdom : 'wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove.' . . . I wish you could see some of Mr. Chand- ler's letters about him ; he speaks of his
keen sense of humor, of which you make no mention." - From a private letter to Mr. Foote. - EDITOR.
1 Dr. Bartol.
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And when, at rare intervals, he gave play to his descriptive power, the picture was a poem. To illustrate this quality we copy here a fragment from his sermon after returning from Europe : -
"They rise before the backward-looking thought, . .. the cities of those centres where our modern civilization struggled upward through a thousand years of storm and conflict. Or great rivers descending to northern and to southern seas, rivers bridged over by history, . . . rivers whose waters flowed through the gloomy forests of the north, or descend- ing towards the south mingled their murmurs with the first cadences of modern song ; . . . or that southern land, .. . its belt of shore studded with shining towns, and that wondrous sea where the very sails seem to slumber as if charmed into repose in the harmony of water and shore and sky. Or following the great procession of history, the central re- gions of the same land, where you by degrees become conscious of a new existence ; where it is not only a new world but you yourself who are transformed ; where the beauty is not in Art solely, nor temple, nor hill, nor stream, nor sky ; but where in all and over all hovers the element of the Beautiful, blending, reconciling, and harmonizing all, - beauty shining from the sky, and reflected from plain and hill, from ancient ruins and cultivated fields, and trickling in the music of every peasant woman's voice as she laughs amid her labors, and an atmosphere in whose transparent and crystal folds it seems as if no cloud or stain could have ever hung. . . . Or that Alpine centre of the world, . . . where, high above the vexed and troubled earth, the great peaks sit enthroned in eternal calm amidst their silence and their snows."
But the exquisite grace of his fancy found its fullest play in his conversation, where his wisdom and humor blended like warmth and light in a summer's day. To copy again from the characterization of Mr. Weiss : -
" It was a continuous, unpremeditated overflow of clear, sparkling, gentle waters. It appeared as if his mind, having filled up with its natu- ral variety, quietly let it ripple over the margin of his lips. . . . It was not a talk, but a release of ideas. . . . Facts from books, from travel, and from human life, bright touches of personal character, sensible re- sults of experience, were all in this escape of his mind's fulness, with a grave mood occasionally passing over it as from the shadow of a tran- quil wing. How willingly he let the mirth of others break into his laps- ing talk, and what a pleasant repartee would come, after just a moment's hesitation or lingering over the act, like the occurring of ripples in a serene course. But his mind seemed most naturally engaged in the equable diffusion of its own surplus, to deposit golden instruction and suggestion quietly by the way, not to leap wide in flashes, nor to settle in deep pools. His conversation was the autumn harvesting of a tempe- rate zone ; and his preaching was a more elevated conversation."
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THE MINISTRY OF EPHRAIM PEABODY.
But the preaching was deeper and more serious than that More and more he strove in it to present the simple, definite principles of Christian living, unadorned and even bare. A few weeks before his death, he said: "I have got tired of rhe- toric, even in speeches. I want no man to come over me with his words. I prefer the plain prosaic bread of truth, no matter how dull and simple. The truth ! We have got finally to stand upon it; and I thank no man for trying to glorify or hide it by his rhetoric." In the words of his near friend and classmate,1 Dr. Putnam, -
" He was always an impressive preacher ; but, not being largely en- dowed with those subtle gifts of constitutional temperament that consti- tute natural eloquence and a born orator, his reliance for effectiveness was upon the authority of the divine word he proclaimed, upon the eternal majesty of God's law, the unspeakable preciousness of His love, and the instinctive responsiveness of the human heart and conscience to that law and love. And his further reliance was upon what he was ut- terly unconscious of, the apostolic gravity, simplicity, sincerity, and weight of his own presence and character. This gave a charm and a power to whatever he said, though he knew it not. 'He wist not that his face shone.' " 2
The sum of all his preaching, as he committed it with dying lips to his friend, to bring to this place as his farewell message to his people, was this: -
"Tell them," he said, "tell them from me, that as I love them I de- sire nothing for them in comparison with this, that they be individually, decisively, consistently Christian, in mind and life. Tell them I say it from within the shadow of the grave, and in view of the eternal world. Tell them - as I woukl, but cannot - how important I deem it that the children and youth of the Parish should be early trained in the system- atic knowledge of Christian principles. Tell them to lean with entire confidence and unreserve on the authority of Christ as the revealer of God. The natural creation," he said, " reveals but half of God. The pitiful, the tender God, the Father, such as we all want to fly to, - whom such poor weak ones as I am, at least, cannot do without, - is only re- vealed, and is truly revealed, by the tender and pitiful Christ. [Then, looking where on the wall a little moss-covered cross and a picture of his early home hung from the same nail] . . . O my friend, depend upon it, no theory of human life can stand which leaves that out, the Cross ! " 3 1
1 In the Harvard Divinity School. The class of IS30 included also Dr. Stephen G. Bulfinch, Dr. George W. Hosmer, and Rev. John T. Sargent.
2 Memorial Sermon preached in King's Chapel, December 7, 18 56, by George Put- nam, p. 10.
3 Ibid., pp. 11, 12.
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The same care which had guarded the beautiful building that had come down to the Proprietors of the church as a trust was faithfully continued, as the Vestry records abundantly show. In March, 1847, a plan was proposed for ventilating the building by an opening in the centre of each of the groined arches of the gal- leries, - a necessity which could hardly have been felt under the old methods of heating, by which the air was not vitiated as in later improvements. January 27, 1848, authority was given to consult Dr. Morrill Wyman as to the effect of opening a large ventilator in the centre of the ceiling; and in March the experi- ment of ventilating by an opening in the rear of the organ loft was ordered, it being understood that, if this should be found objectionable, the other expedient of an opening in the ceiling should be resorted to. This was done before March 1, 1849, when satisfaction was expressed with the new arrangement. In April, 1847, it was voted to train ivy and vines on the north and east walls of the Chapel; but that softening grace of many a building in the Old World is coy to yield a like charm under New-England skies. In June, 1847, it was voted to point the outer walls of the church, at a cost of not over $450. In Novem- ber, 1846, the hot-air pipes of the furnace were replaced with copper. In April, 1849, a furnace was ordered for the west end of the building, costing $243.14; the next November, another at the east end, costing $211.95; and in February, 1856, a brick floor and repairs were made in the cellar, at a cost of $507.00. In 1852 a new carpet was ordered for the gallery stairs, and the telegraphic fire-alarm was introduced. In the same year one of the very few changes which have been made in the interior of the church was authorized, the Wardens being empowered to alter the Clerk's desk to a pew.1
1 Cf. ante, p. 470, note. The change was not made till after May 1, 1859, when the Proprietors authorized Mr. William Amory to thereby enlarge his pew (No. 82), he agreeing to restore the Desk upon request of the Parish.
The following letter is of interest in this connection : -
April 22, 1872.
MY DEAR MR. FOOTE, - My mother has often told me of her childish dread of passing the old pew [No. 42] which used to stan.I where the Soldiers' Monument now is. She had more than once heard the clanking of the prisoners' chains in this pew, as she hurried past on her way to the gallery stairs. The poor fellows were brought to the Chapel
to hear their last sermon before execution. My aunt, Mrs. W. I.yman, remembers the same thing ; so I think that there can be no doubt of the fact.
I remember as late as 1840 the old negro pew perched up on the wall to the west of the organ ; and I can see now the round, staring eyes of the little Nigs looking over the pew edge down on to us white folks, as we went first down the gallery stairs. I wish the two old pews had been left.
Yours most truly, FRANCIS BROOKS. Rev. H. W. FOOTE.
The " seats intended for blacks were ordered to be removed " July 20, 1844.
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THE MINISTRY OF EPHRAIM PEABODY
The custom of burial beneath the church, inherited by the Society from its English ancestry, had been regulated as far as the Parish could control it in April, 1828, when the " Strangers' Tomb " was closed. This tomb occupies the space beneath the church tower, and while the sexton had the given perquisite of interment in it, it was remarked that this tomb never became full. In 1854 all else was done that could be done without interfering with the rights of the private owners (who were, in many cases, not members of the Parish), in regard to repairing and regulat- ing the use of tombs. They were " closed with brick and the wooden doors removed; the cellar floor was also laid with brick,"1 to prevent the annoyance from dust which penetrated through the floor into the church above.
Meanwhile, the church became enriched with memorials of the dead. In February, 1853, the Vestry authorized the erection of a tablet to the memory of Thomas Newton, by the descendant who has recorded his name on the monument ; 2 in November, 1854, they authorized another to the memory of Samuel Appleton,3 to be erected by his executors in conjunction with the Vestry ; and in October, 1856, the monument to Hon. John Lowell + was authorized.
In February, 1848, the Church suffered a loss by the retire- ment of Hon. Samuel Atkins Eliot from the Vestry, after a service of twenty-one years, and from the practical control of the music, to which he had given a character which long rendered the Church pre-eminent in the city for the religious taste and feeling of its services. In returning "the keys of the organ and church doors which have been in my possession, as committee on music in whole or in part, for twenty-one years," Mr. Eliot expressed -
" the wish to retain the control of the manuscript music belonging to me, as I have collected it from various sources, and it has constituted a large proportion of the music peculiar to our Church. The associations with it are of deeper interest to me than they can be to any one else, having relations to both of the two last ministers, whose labors have been so valuable and delightful to the Church, especially to the last, and to two young associates whose uncommon musical talents and excellent char- acters were lost to us before they were fully developed."
The greater part of the choir had been associated with Mr. Eliot in these services for many years.5 Mr. Eliot sang the
I Vestry Records. See p. 619, post.
2 The inscription is printed in full, ante, i. 182.
8 See p. 535, post.
See p. 466, ante.
5 Mr. and Mrs. Henderson had sung
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ANNALS OF KING'S CHAPEL.
bass, and although much engaged in public duties, had allowed nothing to interfere with his regular part in the services of the Church, even going from his place there, on a memorable occasion, to quell the " Broad Street Riot" while Mayor of the city. The Vestry expressed the feeling of the whole Society in voting -
" That the Warden and Vestry hear with very great regret Mr. Eliot's wish to resign his charge of the music of the Chapel, which he has had for more than twenty years ; during which time the music has been dis- tinguished for an appropriateness, solemnity, and beauty which we believe to be unequalled by the music of any choir with which we have been acquainted." 1
After Mr. Eliot's withdrawal from this charge, the Society was fortunate in being able to give it into the hands of Dr. George Derby, who retained it (by his own wish without compensation), to the great satisfaction of the congregation, until Easter, 1856, when he retired from its direction. In February, 1853, the Vestry had voted to convey to him their " cordial thanks for his valuable services, by which the music has been conducted with the good taste and nice adaptation to devotional expression for which it has been so long distinguished," and on his retirement they presented him with valuable books, as an expression of regard.2
In speaking of Dr. Peabody's own work as Pastor of this congregation, notice should be taken of his admirable plan for a course of " Christian instruction in the Church." To quote his own words, -
there for twenty years, Mr. Whiting for nearly fourteen years, and Mr. Comer had been organist nearly seventeen years. The young men alluded to were David Carter and John D. Labree.
It was at this time (February, 1848) that Mr. Martin Smith resigned the office of Sexton, after an incumbency of thirty- six years.
1 Mr. Eliot died January 29, 1862. Mr. Foote preached a memorial ser- mon in the Chapel on February 2 fol- lowing. - EDITOR.
2 Dr. Derby was the brother-in-law of Dr. Peabody. His services during the war and as Secretary of the Massachu- setts Board of Health will be long re- membered. In connection with the ser-
vices of the Church, he later recalled a little incident : " When taking charge of the choir, I was regarded as a radical in music, and the elderly people feared shocking innovations. On looking over the music-books left in the choir by my predecessors, I found it would be neces- sary to buy more to complete the sets. These books were known then, as now, by titles borrowed very often from in- struments of music referred to in the Bible;" he told one of the church offi- cers " that to organize our choir properly it would be necessary to buy four ' Tim- brels,' three ' Psalterys,' and two or three 'Shawms' and ' Modern Harps.' He was terribly shocked until I could explain that these were not instruments, but books."
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THE MINISTRY OF EPHRAIM PEABODY.
"In giving religious instruction, it is assumed at the outset that it relates to a supernatural religion. It is assumed not only that the visible and invisible worlds are connected, but that in some way, and of neces- sity in supernatural ways, their relations have been revealed. . . . We teach the Christian religion. We assume it to be authoritative. . . . We do not feel called upon to prove from the light of Nature that each thing which Christ said is true, but assume that His saying it is sufficient evidence of its truth. . . . The object is, to train up a child as a Christian from the beginning."
In conformity with these principles, he laid out the course of teaching. Young children were to be taught chosen hymns and passages of Scripture, till they became a part of the mind itself. From ten to fourteen they were to be carried through a careful course on the history and biography of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, and of the geography, customs, etc., which illustrate the history or instructions of the Bible. In the Advanced Department (from fifteen years up- ward ), they were to pursue a course of instruction on practical religion, personal duties, Christian Doctrine, and on the history of the Christian Church. Mr. Peabody was interested to improve the Sunday School teaching not only in his own Church, but beyond it, and took a considerable part in the preparation of a series of text-books, among the most satisfactory that have been used in Unitarian churches.
It fell to his lot to speak of many who had passed from the company who heard him into the world of spirits, and to impress the enduring lessons from many faithful and true lives. He felt the seriousness of the great change. "Let it stand," he said, " a dread, mysterious image, half buried in the sands, yet ever pointing upwards, and welcoming with strange music the rising of the sun. Its silence is sublimest speech. They mistake the order of Providence and the nature of man who strive to make death an unimportant thing." The congregation to which he preached contained not a few of the men and women who have given Boston its character,- upright, honorable, public-spirited, firm in their convictions in religion and in politics, the natural leaders of the community. Of such it was easy for him to speak out of the intimacy with which he knew them. In merchants like Patrick T. Jackson and Robert G. Shaw and Samuel Appleton, it was not the worldly success but the personal qual- ity which he made prominent in his discourse. When he spoke of Rev. Dr. Francis Parkman (the father of the historian), who was his parishioner, it was not to dwell on his clerical promi-
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nence, but rather on his charity and goodness of heart, " the beautiful quality which led him to give an unfailing, respectful attention to those with whom the world had gone hardly." When he spoke of jurists, like Judges Charles Jackson and Samuel S. Wilde, it was not to pay formal respect to their high office, but to make clear the lesson to be drawn from their fidelity in service and their judicial integrity.1 As a part of our own record, we subjoin brief notices of a few whose names and lives have thus been made a part of the history of King's Chapel.
We have already quoted from Dr. Greenwood's memorial dis- course on John Lowell,2 - son of the eminent jurist of the same name, who, as a member of the Massa- chusetts Constitutional Convention in 1780, procured the insertion of the article by which slavery was made impossible there- after on the soil of this Commonwealth, and was appointed by Washington, in 1789, Judge of the Circuit Court, of which he was made Chief Justice by President Adams in 1801. In an address at the dedi- cation of the "Lowell Grammar School" ARMS OF LOWELL. in Roxbury, Nov. 10, 1874, Dr. George Putnam spoke of several other members of the family in terms which may be copied here : -
" Another son of Judge Lowell, Francis Cabot Lowell (1775-1817), was recognized in his time as having been chiefly instrumental in intro- ducing the cotton manufacture into Massachusetts as a leading branch of industry. By his mathematical and inventive talent, as applied to the construction and improvement of machinery, and by his energy, courage, and sagacity in business affairs, he organized at Waltham, in connection with Patrick T. Jackson, the first extensive and complete cotton-mill in this State, - a bolder and more difficult undertaking at the time than can now be easily conceived. Accordingly, when, soon after Mr. Lowell's death, which occurred in 1817, Mr. Jackson, together with Paul Moody and Nathan Appleton, projected our first great city of spindles, on the Merrimack, considering that it was Mr. Lowell's genius and successful efforts that had prepared the way for their gigantic enterprise and ren- dered it feasible, they gave his name to the new municipality.
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