USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Roxbury > Eliot memorial : sketches historical and biographical of the Eliot Church and Society > Part 2
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Another, also a poet and able advocate of temperance, was Mr. Samuel G. Goodrich, known so widely as “ Peter Parley," a very gentlemanly and valuable acquaintance, and a singularly entertaining writer. He was the author of one hundred and seventy volumes, of which millions, literally millions, of copies have been sold. So popular were the
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genuine books in England that multitudes of a spurious article attributed to " Peter Parley " found currency. The daughter of Mr. Goodrich, a superior young woman, joined the Eliot Church in 1842.
Kearsarge Avenue perpetuates the memory of the naval steamer which sank the confederate cruiser Alabama (June 19, 1864), in command of Commodore, afterwards Rear Admiral, John A. Winslow. In honor of that achievement, the avenue on which his house stood received the name it now bears.
Roxbury has a name in the missionary world. Samuel Newell, a studious boy in the family of Mr. Ralph Smith, then living at the head of Pynchon Street, received encour- agement from Mr. John A. Lowell, an uncle of James Russell Lowell, and prepared for Harvard College when Dr. N. S. Prentiss was master of our Latin School. He was the first graduate of Harvard who became a missionary of the American Board, embarking for India, February 19, 1812. With Gordon Hall he engaged at Bombay upon a Marathi New Testament, in 1817, which, however, was not published until 1826. Dr. Prentiss took great interest in Newell. When the young missionary came to the house of his in- structor for a farewell call, he found a plank extending from the hall door to the doctor's office. Walking across that he made a misstep and planted his foot on the fresh-painted floor. Whenever that floor was re-painted in subsequent years the doctor would not allow the footprint to be oblit- erated. Newell died of cholera, 1821, and was buried in the
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English cemetery at Bombay. In 1853 I searched unsuc- cessfully for his grave.
But the Roxbury name most extensively known through the Christian world is that of John Eliot, the Apostle of the Indians. More lives of him and more sketches in volumes of collective biography - between one and two score, some in foreign tongues - have appeared than of any other mis- sionary. Among sundry current inaccuracies relating to Eliot are these : for example, that he devoted himself almost exclusively to the Indians, and that they were of the Iro- quois group; whereas for more than half a century Eliot was a faithful pastor of the First Church; and the Red Men for whom he labored were quite distinct from the Six
Nations. That so early in the wilderness days of New England he should, from no human suggestion, master a barbarous language, one of the most difficult then known, reduce the same to writing, and introduce into it the sixty-six books of our Sacred Scriptures; that his philanthropic labor among savage tribes, and his preaching in their uncouth tongue should result in numerous christianized settlements · known as " Praying Towns," and this while he ministered to a growing congregation of intelligent English people, has no parallel in the history of sixteen hundred years. His first sermon to the natives was the first Protestant sermon in any North American language; and his Indian Bible the first printed in this new world. A perfect sample of the book now commands not less than one thousand dollars. At the end of his Indian Grammar is found the noteworthy sen-
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tence, " Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything." "Welcome joy!" were Eliot's last words at the age of eighty-six, May 20, 1690. Robert Southey pro- nounced him "One of the most remarkable men of any country."
CHAPTER II.
LOCAL ORTHODOXY AND LIBERALISM.
THE Eliot Church was organized about the time (1834) that the Unitarian controversy in Massachusetts culminated. Universalism was also then becoming more aggressive, and taking an organized form. Germs of the noteworthy de- velopment of liberalism, so called, had existed for a long time. The preaching of Whitfield and other earnest evan- gelical men, the writings of Edwards, Bellamy, the Tenants, and men of kindred spirit, the Great Awakening, and later revivals served for a time to check development. But after our war of the Revolution, amidst the spread of French infidelity, and amidst the decay of religion, such as usually attends or follows war, the leaven of Arianism and Socini- anism, which had been introduced as early as the middle of the eighteenth century, worked with less restraint. It was, however, many years before public avowal became at all common in Boston or elsewhere in the Commonwealth. Silence regarding distinctive evangelical truths, the usual early policy of errorists was, for the most part, maintained in the pulpit. The first church this side of the Atlantic to take a formal stand on the Unitarian basis was the earliest Episcopal church in New England, King's Chapel, now Stone Chapel, Boston. That occurred in 1785. James Freeman, grandfather of the late James Freeman Clarke,
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had explicitly avowed Unitarianism, and, in the absence of sufficient outside sympathy, he received ordination at the hands of the Vestry. The transition of the First Church, Roxbury, from its Calvinistic attitude to Liberal- ism appears to have taken place at the close of the eighteenth century and the first years of the nineteenth. The convention sermon, by Dr. Eliphalet Porter, pastor of that church, was among the earlier public disclosures of a change which had been quietly going on in this neighborhood.
Meanwhile, a spiritual quickening became manifest among our churches, from 1797 onward. Evangelical Christians began to arouse. Religious interests, both local and remote, were taking a deeper hold of men's hearts, and were leading to combined efforts. Missionary societies, Bible societies, as well as magazines for promoting such institutions and a higher spiritual life, were started. Re- striction upon the previous indiscriminate exchange of pul- pits commenced. The frank and decided stand taken by Dr. John Codman in accepting a call to the Second Church, Dorchester, which was organized January 1, 1808, entitled him to a grateful and enduring veneration. He made known seasonably and in written form his religious beliefs. So fully was it done that no one could mistake his position regarding the doctrines of grace, some of which had begun to be publicly controverted. " I have made this communi- cation, my dear Christian friends and brethren," he declared, "to prevent any misunderstanding between us; I wish you
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to know the sentiments of the man you have chosen to be your pastor." The parish in their written reply stated that his communication was received "with pleasure and general satisfaction." At the time of Dr. Codman's installation it was therefore perfectly understood what were his reli- gious views. Dr. Channing preached the ordination ser- mon, an excellent and not unevangelical discourse. Because of "multitudes perishing in their sins," he would "direct men to the cross," to "the Son of God expiring, a victim on the cross; " he spoke of "a world of sinners perishing with the most loathsome diseases," of "heaven gladdened by the tidings that a sinner has repented," and of its being possible that a minister might "die self-deceived, and, with those whom he has helped to destroy, hear the words, 'Depart with them far from me into everlasting fire.' 'O scene of agony !'"
The same year (1808) Andover Theological Seminary, an obvious need and designed expressly to be a bulwark of the evangelical faith, was opened. The next twelve- month saw Park Street Church, Boston, constituted, and on the avowed basis of a "decided attachment to that system of the Christian religion which is distinguishingly denominated evangelical, more particularly to those doc- trines which in the proper sense are styled doctrines of grace."
Such distinctive declarations and ecclesiastical pro- ceedings administered a rebuke to defection from the faith once delivered to the saints. The cry of "schism,"
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LOCAL ORTHODOXY AND LIBERALISM.
" exclusiveness," " illiberality," "bigotry," was awakened. Another year goes by and the American Board of Missions was formed (1810); but neither among its original corpo- rators nor during the first fourscore years of its history was any known Liberal or apologist for Liberalism elected to membership. Our pioneer foreign missionaries, Hall and Nott, had hardly arrived at Bombay (1813), and sent to Sir Evan Nepean, the Governor, a remonstrance against their being ordered out of India and compelled to embark for England, when there appeared in London an ordinary book, Belsham's Memoir of Lindsey, in the usual course of publication. It attracted little attention in England. But a pamphlet made up wholly of extracts from the book came not long after from the press here in Boston. The extracts were taken from letters of ministers this side the ocean to their friends in the mother country. These served to present a view of " The Progress and Present State of the Unitarian Churches in America." Never did a quiet little production lead to more stirring results. Whatever may have been the motives and policy of previous comparative silence here at home, this refluent wave from England proved the precursor of a high tide of excitement. A reve- lation was made. Earnest discussion began in the pulpit, in the periodical press, and in pamphlet form. Vehemence of debate did not always duly respect the demands of Christian courtesy. It was both amusing and painful then, as it has been since, to note opprobrious charges made by Liberals against the Orthodox. Even a leader so eminent,
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ELIOT MEMORIAL.
so revered and idolized as Dr. Channing could sometimes indulge in reprehensible language. Eighteen hundred and fifteen found him so far advanced from 1808, at Dorchester, on the down grade as to impute a grave delinquency' to Jeremiah Evarts, who, on the score of sterling character, balanced self-possession, and candor, was inferior to no man in the community.
Did the controversial writings of that period contain a more unfounded statement than this, " He [the learner] is told to listen to Christ; but told that he will be damned if he receives any lessons but such as are taught in the creeds." 2 His party did not then, and still less does the denomination now, regard Dr. Channing as a theologian, properly so called. Without having a very well-defined sys- tem he appears to have been an Arian.3 It would seem that some who were equally or yet farther removed from the orthodox position continued to fail of avowing frankly where they did stand.4
The existing generation is less familiar with the re- ligious history of this neighborhood during the first half of
1 " It is a feeling as if I were degrading myself by noticing the false and injurious charges contained in this review." Letter to Rev. Samuel C. Thatcher. 2 Remarks on Creeds, Intolerance and Exclusion.
3 " Dr. Channing was in doctrine an Arian, believing in the pre-existence of Christ, and assigning an efficacy to his death over and above its moral influence." Dr. Wm. Ware in American Unitarian Biography.
4 " There was, I fear, a good deal of intellectual and social cowardice, a good deal of shameful silence and verbal ingenuity, if haply the reproach of believing such good things of God as those of the Universalists, might not come upon the Unitarians, or be taken away." Chadwick's Old and New Unitarian Belief.
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LOCAL ORTHODOXY AND LIBERALISM.
the present century than with its civil history in the second half of the last century. Lexington, Bunker Hill and the Siege of Boston have ample place in our school books. The condition of things at that period, especially in Eastern Massachusetts, cannot be understood, nor will be even imagined without a glance at two conspicuous events. Neither does charity require nor do truth and honor allow silence here. Instead, however, of an adequate statement, the merest epitome is all that present space will allow. Of the two events having special significance in the revolu- tion then taking place, one was the capture of Harvard Col- lege by the Liberals, as they were pleased to call themselves. The atmosphere of that institution from being Calvinistic had become Arminian, and a religious lukewarmness verg- ing upon indifference prevailed. The President and some of the Faculty sympathized with anti-trinitarianism. In
1805 Dr. Henry Ware took his seat as Hollis professor of divinity in the College. It was well known that he had sided with the Liberal wing. But no attempt had been made for a year to fill the chair which by the death of his predecessor became vacant, till two deaths of evangelical members of the corporation gave opportunity to fill their place with Liberals. Strenuous opposition to Dr. Ware's appointment was naturally made. All knew well that the College had been established and previously maintained in the interests of Puritanism. The chair of theology was founded (1723) by Thomas Hollis, the occupant being required to " Profess and teach the principles of the Chris-
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tian religion according to the well-known confession of faith drawn up by the synod of churches in New England." The governing authorities have probably never had a more embarrassing problem before them than the task of making that transfer to Unitarianism appear to have been an honor- able transaction.
The other event, noteworthy for certain exasperating results, was the famous Dedham case. Upon the first elec- tion of a Unitarian minister at Dedham a majority of the church members withdrew, retaining naturally the church records, communion furniture and whatever pertained to them rightfully as a church. The Supreme Court of Massa- chusetts decided (1820) that " When a majority of the mem- bers of a Congregational church separate from the majority of the parish, the members who remain, although a minority, constitute the Church in such parish, and retain the rights and property belonging thereto." The view taken of this by multitudes of right-minded, well-informed men in New England was that flagrant injustice had been committed. Among pertinent, vital facts are the following: From the outset of colonial times the church had been regarded and treated as an independent body in admitting and dismissing its members, electing its officers and controlling such prop- erty as belonged to itself. The church always chose its pastor, never admitting a right in the parish to impose a pastor upon the church. The earliest church of the Pilgrims was organized before they set foot on Plymouth Rock. The church in Rowley came as a corporate body from Yorkshire,
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LOCAL ORTHODOXY AND LIBERALISM.
England. The first church in Dorchester came similarly constituted to the Massachusetts colony, and afterwards removed to Connecticut. At the time there was no parish in connection with any one of these. Not till many years after settlements in New England began did parishes come into existence here. " Through all this period the churches not only chose their own ministers, but contracted with them and supported them. They built and owned the first meeting houses and had the power of levying and collecting money for this object." 1 More than twenty years elapsed before parochial power was given to the towns. (1652) The First Church in Boston, for example- gathered in 1630 - for nearly a century "was alone concerned in fixing the minister's salary, and making all pecuniary appropria- tions." 2
At one period (1631-1664) there existed the require- ment of church membership as a qualification for citizenship and hence for civil office. That unwise theocratic experi- ment, however, gave place to a more appropriate arrange- ment. But among facts fundamental from first to last are these be it said once more: Congregational churches had existence separate from congregations, parishes, precincts or towns; by common consent, common law, and at length by statute they had sole right of internal administration, includ- ing the right to elect their own pastor, and to hold property given for church purposes. Those rights they never volun-
I Quoted in Clark's Congregational Churches in Massachusetts, pp. 326-27.
2 Emerson's History of the First Church.
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ELIOT MEMORIAL.
tarily surrendered, nor could they lose them except by usur- pation from without. And yet referring to the earliest New England period, Chief Justice Parker affirmed, " Without doubt the whole assembly were considered the church." Whereas without doubt they were not so considered, unless they - as in a few instances - entered publicly and ex- pressly into covenant relations. Very seldom did they start in that way. The First Church in the Massachusetts Colony, that in Salem, numbered at the outset only thirty communicants, while the congregation, out of which the covenanting body was gathered, consisted of three hundred and fifty persons. But Chief Justice Parker, apparently ignorant of such facts, declared in the Dedham decision, that " A church cannot subsist without some religious com- munity to which it is attached. Such has been the under- standing of the people of New England from the foundation of the colonies."
No voluntary action of the churches ever surrendered their independence so far as concerns the election and dis- mission of their pastors, the ownership of their records and communion furniture; nor had any civil authority claimed or attempted to exercise a right to disenfranchise churches, and to make their very existence a mere annex to a parish. A formal act of incorporation has not always been required to give corporate capacity to a body of men. Under com- mon law, which is general custom, churches possessed the right and exercised the privilege of holding certain species of property, and were thus recognized as corporate bodies.
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LOCAL ORTHODOXY AND LIBERALISM.
" And yet the only circumstance "-so declared the Chief Justice-"which gives a church any legal character is its connection with some regularly constituted Society ;" "As to all civil purposes, the secession of a whole church from the parish would be an extinction of the church."
The obvious injustice of the Dedham decision produced a widespread shock, a shock not confined to religious com- munities immediately concerned. Disinterested men of acknowledged eminence at the bar and on the bench shared in the prevalent surprise and criticism. " In a letter from one of the judges of Maine, received in the year 1829, the writer says, 'The Dedham case was a bold stroke. It astonished me. I first saw it merely touched upon in a Boston newspaper; and in a letter to one of the judges I asked whether the statement in the newspaper could be correct. I told him that I hoped not; for if correct it seemed to me a declaration of war against all evangelical churches.'" ' "
In a letter from a distinguished lawyer in the eastern part of Massachusetts the same year, referring to the Ded- ham case, the writer says: " This strange and unexpected decision, which has shocked the plain sense of good men wherever it has been known, has never been well received or acquiesced in by the bar, or by intelligent lawyers of the Commonwealth. The doctrine by which the decision is attempted to be supported appears to us not less novel, strange and untenable, than the decision itself, and we regard both doctrine and decision in the light of mere
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ELIOT MEMORIAL.
assumption, or - what is quite as offensive - of judicial legislation."
Before the Dedham decision there had been cases of like grievous character. For example, in Sandwich the parish by a vote of eighty-three to eighty declared the evan- gelical pastor dismissed, and he was prevented by force from entering the pulpit. Only one-tenth of the church members adhered to the Unitarian parish. The church embracing nine-tenths of the body when their pastor was ejected, was afterwards compelled to surrender their communion furni- ture and all monies in the hands of the deacons. What was deemed virtual spoliation, though having a form of legal sanction, now (1820) went on unobstructed. Not less than eighty-one churches might be enumerated, which, on the basis of evangelical belief, either withdrew or were driven from parishes that introduced a liberal ministry. Their communion furniture and all other property distinctively their own, as well as property of which they were joint owners, had to be surrendered to the Unitarian parish. In some instances the means employed for ejecting an Ortho- dox minister and driving his adherents into exile, were as far removed as can well be conceived from anything reputa- ble. Men who had not been inside the meeting-house for years were induced to come and vote against Orthodoxy. Ardent spirits and kindred inducements were said to be here and there employed.' There were cases not a few in which special incongruity would seem laughable, but for the
1 Clark's Congregational Churches. 300-304.
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LOCAL ORTHODOXY AND LIBERALISM.
gravity of inhering injustice. For instance, in Ashley, the church embracing one hundred and one of the members, being unwilling to sit under Unitarian ministrations, with- drew from the parish. One male member, ninety years of age, and eight females remained with the parish, and under decisions of the court were entitled to the name property, and all rights of the church.
It is gratifying to be able to say that such proceedings as have been referred to would probably not now be repeated, whatever occasion might arise. It remains true, however, that the party, to which numerical and pecuniary benefits inured, has never repudiated the process. They generally find it convenient to say but little about the merits of the original decision and of others based upon it. It is only an occasional instance of rare candor on the subject that we meet with. It should be added that many other parishes, as well as minorities of the eighty-one churches particularly referred to, joined the Unitarian ranks.
But during the period of early discussion and embar- rassing ecclesiastical changes (1810-1835), there was a re- markable and most gratifying development of evangelical energy. The loss of so many places of worship with their hallowed associations, and the loss of so much other prop- erty, accompanied by a stinging sense of wrong, roused a. spirit of sacrifice. Not for over a century had there been such recognition of religious kinship, or such vigorous coöp- eration for the maintenance of evangelical truth. While at. one time there was only a single church in Boston resting
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ELIOT MEMORIAL.
on the old foundations of belief, by the year 1828 there were eight such. Far more churches were formed and more church buildings erected during that than during any other equal period in New England history. The evangelicals organized or re-organized one hundred and ninety-three churches, and built an equal number of places of worship. The disruption of the Scottish church, which took place not far from the end of those twenty-five years, had points of analogy.
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CHAPTER III.
PRELIMINARIES AND ORGANIZATION.
THE doctrinal discussion centering for years chiefly in Eastern Massachusetts clarified our religious atmosphere. Lines of denominational latitude were defined. A spirit of evangelistic enterprise was awakened. The Orthodox were aroused to the requirements of church extension, and the conviction was more firmly settled that the precious faith which had been passing through a fiery trial was worthy of strenuous self-sacrifice. An outward current of population from Boston directed attention to suburban needs, and in no quarter immediately connected with the city was that current stronger than on the Roxbury side. The attractions were obvious. Connection by land, with- out bridge or ferry, had for one thing an advantage. Here, too, were more elevation and variety of surface, more eligi- ble sites for building and landscape-gardening purposes. It was a natural result that in the second and third decades of the present century churches should begin to multiply in this neighborhood. The first pastor of the Universalist Society was installed in 1821.' An evangelical brotherhood,
' PASTORS.
Hosea Ballou, 2d., D.D. July 26, 1821. Resigned, April 28, 1838.
Asher Moore. January, 1839. Resigned, 1840.
Cyrus H. Fay. January, 1841. Resigned, March 26, 1849.
William H. Ryder, D.D. November, 1849. Resigned, January, 1859.
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ELIOT MEMORIAL.
the present Dudley Street Baptist Church, received in 1822 the first of its series of pastors." Some years before this Dr. Ebenezer Burgess of Dedham walked the streets of Rox- bury in company with Rev. Samuel Greene of Boston, in consultation regarding the practicability of an evangelical church here. Ten years later (May 13, 1832) came the St. James' Episcopal Church with fourteen members.2 Simul- taneously a movement began which resulted in the forma- tion of the Eliot Church. At that period a lively church fellowship existed, and conference was usually sought with reference to the expediency and location of new churches. A few Roxbury gentlemen met in the Cowper Committee
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