USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Lynn > Celebration of the 275th anniversary of the First Church of Christ : Lynn, Massachusetts, Sunday, June ninth nineteen hundred seven > Part 3
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Probably most of the preachers, as well as the theolog- ians, since the time of Him who said, " Of such is the king-
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Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary.
dom of heaven," have reserved a way for the positive sal- vation of infants even when they could not make it a logical part of their system. There have been two general ways of providing for their salvation consistently with the doctrine of total depravity. Some have said that the merits of Christ avail for them without any preparation of their own. Some have believed that they are saved through a certain "unconscious and unspoken" faith that they possess. Dr. Watson in his Institutes (Vol. II, p. 57), admits that infants share in the whole curse, physical death and eternal damnation; but claims that they are saved from the latter according to Romans v, 18. The present universal belief in the salvation of infants refers for confirmation to the words of Jesus in Matthew xix, 14.
In view of these facts, it is an indication of ignorance and credulity to ascribe the teaching of the horrible doc- trine referred to, either to Dr. Cooke or to his theological associates.
The fourth period of our theological history began with the coming of Dr. James M. Whiton, in 1865, and extends to the present day. It must be characterized as a time of variety and liberalness in teaching. If you will look through the catalogue of any ordinary theological library, you will find abundant evidence of the scholarship and eminent influence in the world of thought that character- izes the successor of Parsons Cooke, whom we are favored to have with us this morning.
Although I have never seen Rev. Walter Barton, who was pastor twenty-five years ago, I have learned from his writings and from the reminiscences of some of our
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Address - Rev. George W. Owen, A.M.
members, to love him both as a Christian scholar, and as a faithful minister. I have not time to mention later names which are familiar to very many and do not need discussion. I would like, however, to bear witness to the many evidences I have found to the Christian spirit of my immediate predecessor, and to say that in many ways my work has been easier because of his unselfish and conscientious labor for the kingdom of Christ. These later pastors have been strong, earnest, faithful men and into this noble succession of pastors anyone might be justly proud to be counted worthy to enter.
During this later period, the church has in general been prosperous, especially when allowance is made for the pe- culiar conditions under which its work has been done. The removal of the old families and the constant fluctu- ation in the newer population, have called for heroism and self-sacrifice. We can reverse the old adage and say, "Like people, like priest;" for during the first three periods the average pastorate was of about sixteen years' duration. During this later period, the pastorates have been about five years in length. Twenty-five years ago, in his histori- cal address, Walter Barton said that in the year 1877, there were more admissions to membership in the church than there had been in any previous year so far as the rec- ords show. There have not been received a like number in any succeeding year, but the faithful workers of this church may be encouraged to know that during the latest three years of its history, more members have been received than during any other period of three successive years. "Showers of blessing are good, but a steady rain is bet-
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ter." We are not simply looking backward but for- ward.
The development of thought in our own church which I have discussed, has been a part of a larger development of thought in the Christian world. Beginning with the as- cendency of the church of Rome there was a period in which supreme authority was lodged in the church. Be- ginning with the time of the Reformation and covering most of our own local history, was a period when the seat of authority was found in the Bible. In the later period, in which we are living, the basis of authority is shifting from the church and from the Bible to the realm of the individual conscience. There are certain historic facts recorded in the Bible which will never be outworn, but in the realm of truth the authority of the Bible is found only when it is recognized and approved by the individual con- science. We are depending more in these days upon the present Spirit of God working upon the heart and mind of man than upon any crystallized expression which that Spirit has made in the past and which is subject to differ- ent interpretations.
We have lost the vindictiveness of the earlier teaching. With complacency and even with joy we can see other churches prospering and see the kingdom spreading even upon a doctrinal basis slightly different from our own. We have learned not only tolerance, but brotherliness. While we are only one church now instead of the only one. yet we are the mother of many and the sister of all others.
The cause of this better relation is largely in our differ- ent attitude toward truth. We do not claim to have
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Address - Rev. George W. Owen, A.M.
reached the summit. We are still on the hillside, but we believe that we are farther up than were our ancestors. We recognize that others may be still further up than we. We realize, also, that some may be lower down, but we are on the hillside struggling upward and our horizon is still enlarging. We do not mentally circumscribe all truth by the limits of our present horizon.
We celebrate not simply a culmination but a promise, and while we devoutly say, "These all died in faith," we can also say, "God having provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect." While we look backward and "see what God hath wrought," we also look forward and believe that He "is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us." " Unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations forever and ever. Amen."
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ANNIVERSARY HYMN.
To the tune of Duke Street .- (Hatton.)
(Written for this occasion by the Pastor.)
Hail! Ancient Church! by God's own hand Led on through generations long;
Herald of truth in Freedom's Land; Thy hallowed age but makes thee strong.
For fathers, founders, faithful, all, So loyal to thy destiny. Who here have raised the Gospel call, Our grateful song to God shall be.
Majestic as the rolling sun, We see thy providential way;
Thy hallowed history 's but begun; Still grows the lustre of thy day.
Thou, Guardian of this Church, O God, Keep us united, pure and true; The way of faith our fathers trod May we in loyalty pursue.
God of our fathers, God of grace, O make us loyal to their fame! When we shall see Thee face to face May future ages bless our name!
FOURTH MEETING HOUSE. After Front Steps Were Removed.
In the summer of 1856, the gallery was extended, pew doors removed, gas intro- duced, walls and ceilings frescoed, and new vestry made under south-easterly portions of the building.
In 1865 mahogany pulpit lowered and its doors removed. In September, 1869, addition built at rear for new organ, mahogany pulpit removed and small black walnut pulpit now used in vestry placed on a platform. Blinds and sashes removed and stained glass substituted.
Destroyed by fire commencing at 5 P.M., December 25, 1870.
ADDRESS-RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT.
Rev. JAMES MORRIS WHITON, Ph.D., New York City, Pastor 1865-1869.
O N ANNIVERSARY days we naturally recall the past. As I look into your faces, above them seems to hover a vision of that utterly different congregation before which I first stood on this ground. I recall their custom of standing through the prayers, and of facing toward the door while singing the last hymn, as if the minister had said, " Arise, let us go hence."
The city I recall is scarcely a third as large as this of to- day; the country has more than doubled in population since then, and eight States have added their stars to our flag. The Nation, a world-power now, courted by all and fearing none, was then just emerging victorious from a struggle for its life - the President of its Confederate foes having been taken prisoner on the day I became your pastor.
Immense the contrast between then and now! Im- mense even in the homeliest matters.
Think of paying, as then, 50 cents a yard for cotton cloth, 50 cents a pound for butter by the firkin, $2.00 a pound for breakfast tea, and so on, out of a salary of $1800 with a United States income tax deducted.
At such a time it is the good wife on whom the burden bears heaviest. She is the savior of the situation.
Well, the Union is worth far more than all it cost us.
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A great transition had then been just accomplished. The design of the framers of our National Constitution in 1787, to make "a more perfect Union," was finally real- ized in 1865, when discordant States had been hammered into an indissoluble Nation on the anvil of civil war. An- other great transition, not political but theological, was then approaching, but we did not know it; we realize it now.
The last three decades of the nineteenth century wit- nessed a greater intellectual change than any period since Luther's time. The new idea of the unvierse, which Copernicus introduced in 1543 by showing that our earth is flying through the heavens, instead of the heavens re- volving round the earth, as all had supposed, was matched before this house rose from the ashes of its predecessor by the new idea that Darwin gave of man, as physically de- scended from ancient animal forms, instead of being cre- ated by a fiat of Almighty power 6000 years ago, according to traditional belief.
Darwin's epoch-making book was published in New York so recently as 1871. This made havoc of an import- ant part of the current evangelical theology - the doc- trine held since the fifth century, that the sin of Adam had involved all mankind in ruin. The biological doctrine of evolution was consequently denounced by theologians as "infidel" and "atheistic." The result was what hap- pened to the bull that bore down against the locomotive. The good men who quoted Scripture against biology are now classed with the good men who quoted it against the new astronomy. When Henry Ward Beecher showed
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Address - Rev. James Morris Whiton, Ph.D.
Plymouth Church that the new science of biology required him to reject the orthodox doctrine of the poisoning of the human race, so to speak, in its cradle, certain ministers crowded him out of their fellowship in the New York and Brooklyn Association. That happened so recently as 1882; now it reads more like ancient history, so far have we gotten past that sort of thing. In fact, before 1895, the so-called New England Theology, a mitigated form of Calvinism, had "perished from off the face of the earth " - I quote the words of its sympathetic historian in a re- cent book.
Why was this? Because Calvinism represented God's work of redemption from sin as a reconstruction of the humanity that was supposed to be spoiled by the sin of Adam. Accordingly it fell before the new science, which has taught us to regard divine redemption as a con- structive work, carrying forward from the origin of man- kind the evolution of the spiritual humanity, which in the ages to come shall exhibit in perfected man the image of his Father, God. The result to real Christianity has been as if painted stucco had been scraped off from white marble on which it had been overlaid. The real Christ in the glory of his divine humanity has been revealed to us as our Elder Brother, who saves us through our imitation of him.
In that collapse of the theology which, forty years ago, was supposed to be as enduring as the sun, other factors, of course, helped, chiefly the critical study of the Bible, but of this there is no time to speak. I only observe that the great transition from mediæval to modern ideas of man
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as related to God has been practically accomplished, at least in the Congregational churches. Sharp the contrast in the theological situation and its burning questions then and now! Nowhere is it sharper than right here. It is hard to realize now that the great question raised by the Council that examined me as to my qualifications for a pas- torate here was the moral state of new-born infants. For in 1865 this church was still standing, with a few others like minded, for even an older type of Calvinism than that of the now defunct New England theology. There was unwillingness to have any pulpit exchanges with Methodist neighbors. There was unwillingness to have any profes- sors from Andover Seminary preach in the pastor's vaca- tion, because that institution was suspected of insufficient orthodoxy. To say that a man might not be soundly or- thodox as to the Trinity and yet be saved, was thought dangerous doctrine. A far cry it is to such an attitude, but that was only forty years ago.
But let us honor those who were true to the light that was in them, however dim, and live up to our own convic- tions as they lived up to theirs.
The church of that day used its intellectual and spirit- ual equipment well. During my pastorate, 1865-1869, it received nearly a hundred new members - forty-eight of them on confession of faith. The church of to-day, with the same spiritual and a better intellectual equipment, is capable of even better results.
From this backward look we turn to the forward. We have seen that the church was nearing a great transition,
Address - Rev. James Morris Whiton, Ph.D. ' 55
and knew it not. To-day it is facing, nay, already enter- ing another great transition period, and is more or less con- scious of the fact. Only those can be unconscious of it who do not read and think.
The past transition was theological, from mediæval to modern conceptions of man as related to God. The pres- ent transition is sociological, to more fraternal conceptions of man as related to his fellow-man in society. The theo- logical transition accomplished an intellectual reform in the readjustment of dogma to science. The sociological transition has a moral reform to accomplish in readjusting the relation of the individual to society, and especially the relation of the strong to the weak. The former issue was mainly within the church itself; the present issue is between the church and the masses outside, who cry for social justice, and watch to see what sympathy their cry arouses.
As soon as the Civil War ended, a period of marvelous material expansion began. For many years all social in- terests were profligately sacrificed to individual rapacity for wealth. This is now in a fair way to be curbed by long-needed laws. But quite apart from the enormous rascality which has necessitated the general house-cleaning now going on in Federal, State, and City governments, there are grave inequities, no less iniquitous, of which our social system must be purged, or Christianity must suffer disastrous defeat.
When the laborer's wages cannot procure a sanitary home for the cradle of his babes; when his children have to be taken from school to earn their bread; when their
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mother has to give herself to the factory rather than to her family; when industry destroys more lives than the battle- field, the contrast between such conditions and the splen- did opulence to which they minister evidences that many humble producers of wealth are denied their economic rights, and that social justice is set aside.
On one side the scientific economist testifies that it is really so. On the other side, while conditions are, on the whole, better in Massachusetts than in other States, and in Lynn than in many cities, yet everywhere in Christendom are economic wrongs and little brothers disinherited. These look to the churches as the professed moral leaders of the world, and as bound to plead their cause.
What should the church do but imitate her Founder? He dealt with the great problem of human need on this principle: first, the natural, then the spiritual, as Paul has phrased it. Through his ministry of help to natural needs he made way for his spiritual uplift. First he healed, then he instructed. But we have reversed this; have put the spiritual first, neglecting the natural; have been content with preaching righteousness to those that needed first to experience its practice.
The church that shows herself concerned for " the square deal" of full human opportunity for the humblest private in the industrial army will not lack response to her gospel of the Eternal Life. As in Jesus' experience so the church will find that saving deeds must open the heart to saving truths. Look at what the church is doing in China and India to-day. We see the medical missionary by his cure of bodies winning entrance for the evangelist in the cure
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Address - Rev. James Morris Whiton, Ph.D.
of souls. Do we not seem to hear the Master's words, "Go thou, and do likewise"?
Some of our churches have rediscovered this primitive way, and are entering it successfully. For doing the same this church needs no better precedent than its own history. Here I recall the fact that, just before the old house burned, it was opened for the first of a series of meetings, which had to be continued elsewhere through the winter of 1870-71; the object of which, as planned by the pastor, Mr. Joseph Cook, was to offer a free platform for the discussion of economic and other problems of special interest to operatives in the factories of Lynn. Such a precedent seems a clear call to this ancient church, to couple with its primacy of age in the Congregational brotherhood a pri- macy of effort to revive throughout its sphere of influence this truest imitation of Christ in his way of winning men's hearts to his religious lessons by his ministry to their nat- ural needs. It is the plain rule of common sense, that if we would draw men to interest themselves in what inter- ests us, we must first show interest in what interests them.
Twenty-five years ago it was my privilege to assist in the celebration of your quarter-millenial anniversary. I treasure the remembrance of it. I prize the opportunity, again mine after the lapse of a quarter-century, to honor the bond of personal interest which links me to the church that initiated me into the cares and comforts of the gospel ministry. Twenty-five years hence, when its three hund- redth anniversary shall be celebrated, though I shall not be here, some of you, surviving then, and looking upon
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surrounding conditions much changed from the present, will recall the anticipations I utter to-day of the transition period we are entering.
The prospect is not cloudless. Trustworthy readers of the signs of the times utter grave warnings. In the book advertisements for this month I find such titles as "Chris- tianity and the Social Crisis," "The Church and the Chang- ing Order" - books by eminent Christian teachers.
The social suspicions and strifes that are rampant be- tween the "Haves" and the " Have-nots" are the inflam- matory symptoms of moral unsoundness in our social order. Lawlessness afflicts the land, and many are the prophets of evil. Whether such clouds are to burst into the tornado, or to melt away into the blue sky, depends now on the fidelity of the church of God to her supreme trust - to secure his righteousness between man and man, and in every man, both in social and in private life. Of this we see auspicious omens. In many a pulpit through- out the land the old prophetic fire is already kindled against wrongs that have grown rotten-ripe for judgment. A revival of the public conscience seems to have begun.
Only let there be no half-way work for social righteous- ness. Then, twenty-five years hence, men shall look back on the monstrous evils that corrupt American life to-day, somewhat as we look back on the legalized barbarism that brought forth its fruit in " bleeding Kansas" and the battlefields of the Civil War.
To-day is a day for us here to gird our spirits for the earnest but peaceful struggle that shall issue in a purified democracy, and in that ideal Commonwealth in which every altar of human need is served as an altar of God.
READING OF SCRIPTURES.
Rev. GEORGE W. MANSFIELD, Lynn.
Deuteronomy IV.
I. Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers giveth you.
2. Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.
3. Your eyes have seen what the Lord did because of Baal-peor: for all the men that followed Baal-peor, the Lord thy God hath destroyed them from among you.
But ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are 4. alive every one of you this day.
5. Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it.
6. Keep therefore and do them: for this is your wis- dom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.
7. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for?
8. And what nation is there so great, that hath stat-
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utes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?
9. Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul dili- gently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life; but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons:
10. Specially the day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.
II. And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness.
I2. And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no sim- ilitude; only ye heard a voice.
13. And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tablets of stone.
14. And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over to possess it.
15. Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves, for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire:
16. Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female.
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17. The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air.
18. The likeness of anything that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters be- neath the earth:
19. And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath di- vided unto all nations under the whole heaven.
20. But the Lord hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt, to be unto him a people of inheritance, as ye are this day.
ADDRESS OF WELCOME. C. J. H. WOODBURY, A.M., Sc.D. Chairman of the Anniversary Committee.
IN COMMEMORATING two and three-quarters centuries of continued existence, this church, unchanged in de- nominational faith and site, celebrates an event which is not vouchsafed to any other church in this country.
The change which denoted that indication of modern civilization in appreciating the advantages of specialized skill, appears to have been first shown by the separation of town and parish; a momentous step in advance in Ameri- can history, which left the one to attend to the functions of civic government, and freed the church from the burden of secular authority, so that it could infuse its beneficent in- fluences over a wider scope, thereby acting with greater force in leading mankind towards better lives.
History is frequently presented in such condensed narra- tive that merely names and dates are impressed on the mind, to the exclusion of far more important relations of movements to each other, and of their influences upon events which follow even at great distances.
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