USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Gloucester > Exercises at the 50th anniversary of the Evangelical Congregational Church, Gloucester, Mass., Nov. 18, 1879 > Part 5
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Take this church to illustrate this point, if you please. Fifty years ago, the consecrated seven whose names we read laid down their lives for it. They were perseented. They were beset. They were perplexed continually. And these things had not entirely disappeared when I came here. They were a good deal like a speckled bird in the wilderness. The old Orthodox church, over there, men said ; men came in and would say, why, this is the old Orthodox church ; we don't want to stay here. Well, let that go. The simple point is this. What has been the result of the labors of these seven, beginning over there, for these fifty years ? It was indicated in the report to-day. This brings us back to the standpoint. He that does not remember history will remain a child.
I thank God for the day that we see. I thank Him for the rain He sends to-day. Some one has said it is just like the day
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the church was organized. Well, that is a kind of wise arrange- ment, perhaps, of Providence. And my reply to such proposi- tions is, it is the little drops of water and the great drops of God's providence that fall upon us, as they used to fall during the ten years I was with you. I can go along through these pews here and indicate what providential event occurred in that family, and that family. Where is that gray-headed man, that strong man, intellectually, socially, and in every way ? Where is he? Where is that mother, that godly, exemplary mother? Where is that beantiful flower of the family? You had one right here, next door to you. I was there not long ago. One of the most beautiful creatures I have laid eyes upon in this sinful world, beautiful in form, her eye as clear as a seraph's, showing every indication of true greatness and womanly grandeur and loveliness. But she has gone. The mark was upon her even then. I said to the mother, when it rains let it rain. Whether it be the little drops of water that come tinkling down close over this desk, or whether they come in these blighting events of His providence.
Now there is just one simple point, my friends, in this matter of looking back. You tell me these things are old, as old as Panl or Abraham ; that these are old doctrines. Why don't you talk about the old rocks and the old sky and the old stars? Are they not old, too? There is a curious sort of fascination about this sort of talk. It is put beautifully in the finest-written magazine articles, by the most asthetical writers of the day. My brother, don't you suppose God loves now just what He did before man was made? I think so. Don't you suppose He hates the same thing He always hated? Yes. There is one thing God cannot chimge, says Aristotle, and that is yesterday. That is past. It is a fact. The Almighty cannot change it. There is something, then, that is better than noble resolves, it is deeds that are done for God. They cannot be changed. God cannot change them. Man can- . not change them. What a basis we have to rest on, as individu- als, as a church of God. I do not wonder the beautiful declara- tion is made that the gates of hell shall never prevail against the elect of God, the chosen in Christ Jesus. This is the reason, they that love Me I love. They that love Me I have loved before the foundation of the world. Nothing shall take them out of My
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hand. I will keep them in the way of everlasting life, for I love them. The query for me is, as an individual for whom God has made this provision, how have I repaid it ? Finding then the con- ditions natural, simple as the sunbeam that rests upon me, I will fly to Him even as the bird to the window from the covert or the storm in its wrath. It is good sense. It is true philosophy. It is God's gospel. Then you ask me what is the difference between one religion and another. Look back fifty years. Where do our friends from whom we came ont stand? I ask the question with all courtesy and in all kindness. Many of them I loved when here. I carry them about in my memory to-day. Where are they to- day as a power in the community for righteousness, for truth and salvation ? The question will answer itself.
God give you wisdom, therefore, members of this elnich, and my beloved brother pastor. Keep your eye over your shoulder. Do not be ashamed to look back. Men say, Mr. Thacher, yon are beyond the dead level of fifty ; you are an old man : it is natural enough for you to look back. Would to God that you were in this regard like me, some simple things excepted. Hold on to the grand, immutable, unchangeable things of God as revealed in science and history. Every development made by every scientist, while he thinks it is tearing down the kingdom of God, is working most nobly for the upbuilding of His kingdom. The man that understands history and philosophy, and reads his Bible, and com- muines with God, sees this. You young members of the church, it touched my heart when my brother, in the address of welcome, said you whom I left as babes here, ten years ago, were maintain- ing your integrity as Christian soldiers, and doing valiantly under the Captain of your salvation. Do not be afraid of looking back. When taunted of being slow and old-fogyish, keep your eye on principle. Do not give too much credence to that sentiment, hope. By itself, it is of no value. May God bless yon. When you come to celebrate the centennial of this church, Deacon Bacon and my- self and others will be up there, participating with you, in the higher, sweeter, more glorious enjoyments, where we shall study history to all eternity, with an eye clear and a heart single to the glory of God, and we shall be satisfied when we see him face to face.
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ADDRESS, REV. O. T. LANPHEAR, D. D.
It has been said that love is omnipresent, where it is founded upon truth, and it binds together all those who love the truth, wherever they may dwell. They may labor in separate fields, and far remote from each other, and yet their hearts are bound together by this principle. So that they who love Christ and serve him here, in this city, feel a glow of pleasure when they hear of the success of the ministers of Christ, over across the sea, East or West, because their hearts are bound together in one common in- terest. And we may apply to the fellowship which is founded on this love of the truth, the lines which were composed for a very different purpose, showing that the true principle has no limits in its influence,
" No pent-up Utica contracts our powers, For the whole boundless universe is ours."
This applies to Christian love, and this was what came out in the claim of that last utterance of your former pastor, by which he spoke of fifty years to come, and pictured himself and friends, passed on to unite with that part of the family of Christ in heaven, and yet continuing to sympathize with that part of the family that lives and labors on the earth, as pictured by the apostle himself. It is because of this fellowship of love, as John philosophically puts it, more beautiful than any poet, "Our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son."
It gives me great pleasure therefore to speak for a few moments of the fellowship by which this church is connected with the Essex South Conference. This morning, this old church was spoken of as a Christian ship. I come for a brief moment to speak of the relation of that ship to the thirty-two others in this Conference, having the same sails, moving by the same inspiration, having run up at the mast-head the same flag. Twenty-one of these ships were formed before yours was launched, and eleven of them have been launched since.
The Conference as now organized came into being but a little before the organization of this church, namely in 1827. But then, fellowship existed here prior to fly organization. There was the 7
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Essex South Association of Congregational Ministers, which has held its existence from 1717. And beyond that association was christian, fraternal love, binding together the ministers and the churches of the colonies, and thence down to the present honr, so that christian love is no recent form, put in motion by organiza- tion. It does not exist as the result of organized institutions, but is itself an everlasting, all-powerful principle. It gives birth to institutions and organizations, to fellowship in the churches of Christ, and holds them in their orbits as the law of gravitation holds far-off Sirius in its orbit, and controls every other planet, star and sun as well.
The history of this Conference carries us back to the early times in the history of the colony. If I recollect right, the Tabernacle church in Salem was the first organized in this Conference, in 1629, two hundred years before the organization of this church. The First church in Lynn came next, organized in 1632. . Then followed the church in Wenham, in 1644, and so onward, with no very long interval between them, were the churches organized oue after another. The last church but one organized preceding this was in 1755:
I wish here to speak of the remarkable fact in history, of great significance when we learn the canses that led to it, that from 1755 to 1829, a period of seventy-four years, there was but one church organized in this Conference. That was the Dane Street church of Beverly, organized in 1802, going out from a Unitarian body, the old church having become Unitarian, and passing through struggles similar to those encountered by this church. It is the church of which I am to-day proud to be called the pastor, which took its position in the line early in the history of that great move ment for the truth, twenty-seven years before this church was or- ganized.
Let us consider a moment that space of seventy-four years. How came it? It was in that period when that cold chill was wafted over from the mother country, born in part of Arminian- ism and in part of Sociuianism, which crossed the water and under- took to defeat the truth, as held by the Puritans, even as Armin- ian subtlety in the British Court undertook to defeat Puritanism in the old country. In 1629, when the first church in this Con-
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ference was organized in Salem, Charles I. being king, called into his service as his counsellors those noted Arminians, Laud, Neal and Montague, for the purpose of putting down all those things in the kingdom which had arisen by virtue of Puritan instruc- tion and doctrine. The result was, as you know, that in a few years Charles I. lost his head at Whitehall, and a reaction came, and Puritanism gained the ascendency, to lose it again in the Restoration. Out of these times, Soeinianism concocted over the water the scheme to send here her emissaries, who sought by arti- fice and intrigue to bring false doctrines into these churches and uproot the doctrine our fathers came here to establish. As in this case, there was your sainted PARKER, and others, who stood up in resistance to it, ready to leave the church, ready to sacrifice prop- erty and social standing to stand for the truth ; so in Beverly, there were the DIKES, and the TRASKS, and the LOWES, and the LOVETTS, and others, ready to leave property and standing and influence, and give their lives and their sacred honor and their property, rather than bow down to any such influence ; you know the history all over the State.
How has progress for the truth been carried on? I am speak- ing of the force of fellowship; the comfort which these saints found in fellowship with each other in the truth. They had a good basis of truth to stand upon, and therefore felt the power of affection linking their hearts with each other in Jesus Christ. They stood strong and prevailed. Their watchword was Christian fel- lowship in Christ. As compared with that, we remember the watchword of those people who came over here to turn Puritan teaching aside. Their watchword was toleration. What is the difference between fellowship and toleration ? What said tolera- tion ? You Puritans are too bigoted. Can't you allow men to believe what they please? Deacon Parker, we don't preach the divinity of Christ, but you can tolerate ns. Yon need not move out. But, say these men, such toleration is contrary to the fel- lowship of the truth as it is in Jesus, as we hold it. We have fellowship one with another.
What has been the course of toleration? Those who moved upon the Puritan party, calling them bigots, because they would not tolerate what seemed to be very small departures from the
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truth, have been called upon to tolerate again and again, step after step, till toleration as it is practiced to-day among that class has carried them down from that comparatively high point ocen- pied by Channing to the low place of materialism.
That is just what our fathers said at the commencement of tol- eration. If we begin to tolerate, we do not know where we shall stop. We will not tolerate any. With Paul, they cried, " If any man preach any other doctrine, let him be aceursed." There our fathers took their stand. That is why the doctrines they owned here half a century ago, the love of the truth, as broad, as strong, as true as when this church was first founded, has gone ou here for the last fifty years. That is why the other party has gone on like a ship unmoored, without tackle, without guidance. They say so themselves.
So here are these ships, twenty-one of them launched before your goodly ship, eleven of them since. Men may tell about its being the only mission of Unitarian churches to secure toleration, and that the time has come when this mission has ceased, because tol- cration has come among the Orthodox churches. But it is only with the eyes of egotism that they can see any such impression made upon the old doctrine. It stands where it stood two hun- dred and fifty years ago, when they launched that good ship in Salem, where it will stand when you have completed your century, or two centuries, if you maintain this fellowship for the truth, which is a fellowship with God the Father and with the Son, be- cause the affection which holds the good ship to the throne of God by that line of fellowship is like a ship whose anchor flukes take hold of the immortal rocks.
Let this occasion inspire you and inspire us to sail onward. though there be stormy seas that beat abont the ship, as we sail onward, nearing the haven of eternal rest. Presently, one after another, these good ships, freighted with Christian truth, Christian love, Christian doctrine and Christian power, shall. land in that beautiful haven of rest where there are no more storms.
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ADDRESS, REV. GEORGE L. GLEASON.
Brethren and Fathers :- It is very befitting that Dr. Lan- phear should present the salutation of the churches, both because he is venerable in years, and has long been eminent in the churches in this vicinity. There is also a degree of fitness in my speaking in behalf of the Ministerial Associations, not so much because I am venerable in years, or can eloquently present their salutations, as that I have been for some years acquainted with the ministers of this vicinity. I have known four generations of ministers con- nected with this church. When I came to Manchester, nearly eleven years ago, Brother Thacher, keen, pungent, sometimes caustic as a preacher, was your pastor. He seemed to me then like a venerable man, and I looked up to him with a great deal of reverence and awe. I thought as I listened to his addresses that he wielded a heavy shillalah ; sometimes it seemed almost a bludgeon. I feared he would at times hit the wrong head, but he was sure to hit. I came to love him as a brother and look up to him as a father. The time came when he felt called to go out from you. I thought then that he ran before he was sent, and I don't know as I have changed my mind. Then followed the genial, upright, devoted Segur. He came from a country church, where he had passed a most successful ministry. I think you did not quite under- stand him, and he did not quite understand you. His pastorate was a short one, and he has gone up to his reward. Yon remember him with affection and esteem. There are two churches, at least, that hold his memory as fragrant as precious ointment He was a noble, devoted, Christian man. Had he remained here long enough, he would doubtless have adjusted himself to the work, and . would have left a record here equal to that made in other places. Then followed the scholarly, earnest, faithful Makepeace. He came here directly from the seminary, without experience, and did for you a good work, when his health called him to go elsewhere. Now the mantle of the great Shepherd has fallen upon the broad shoulders of our beloved brother Clark, and if the noble address he has given this morning is a sample of what he is to do for you in the future, you have found the man for whom yon have been
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'waiting and praying during these years. God bless you in this new relation.
I wish in behalf of those whom I represent to-day to say that we as a body of Christian ministers believe in the truth of God's word. We believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation. I think the min- ters in this vicinity were never more sound in the faith than at the present time. We believe the time has gone by when we are called upon to apologize for the truth, or to defend it. It is not our work to adjust it to science or philosophy. It is ours to pro- claim and promulgate it. It is the truth that is to do its work. Dr. Lanphear has told you that there is a drifting towards the truth on the part of those who claim to be liberal in faith. 1 be- lieve this is true. Men do not want negations. The heart craves the truth. If we put Christ before men, I believe that they will see Him to be the chief among ten thousand and the one alto- gether lovely. They will embrace and love Him. It seems to me the ministers of Massachusetts never were more loyal to the truth, or proclaimed it more faithfully, than at the present time. Again, we believe in the ordinary means of grace, in the preached word, in family instruction, in the Sabbath School. We rejoice that more time and attention are given to religious teaching than in former years. This is a prophecy of good. Not only children, but adults are to become more familiar with God's word. We believe also in the social means of grace, and in the activity of the laity as efficient instruments in building up the churches.
We believe in a permanent ministry. In looking back into past history- I remember something of the history of these churches- you have had two pastorates comparatively long, that of Dr. Nickels and that of our reverend brother who is here to-day. I remember that glorious golden harvest which you received, the result of the faithful preaching of our beloved brother. Parson Jewett, of Rock- port, did a work that will abide. Dr. Crowell, of Essex, Dr. Abbott, of Beverly - the predecessor of Dr. Lanphear- they are the names I hear mentioned. It is not the birds of passage which work for our churches in this regard, the popular ministers who create a sensation for a little time and then move on ; it is those who devote themselves to the service of the ministry, not preach-
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ing themselves, not seeking to draw attention to themselves, but preaching Christ, following him through evil report as well as good, whose work abides.
And then we believe, finally, in looking to the great Head of the church for success. Not to men, not to institutions, not to measures, but to God. You remember the church at Corinth was composed of a great diversity of elements. I suppose the church in Gloucester is not a very homogeneous church. It is natural that you should be composed of persons of differing tastes, different at- tainments and different views. It was so in Corinth. There were the Romans who believed in democracy. There were the Greeks, who were men of culture, of refinement and of philoso- phy - they wanted a minister who would come to them speaking words of eloquence and wisdom. There were the Jews, who be- lieved in forms and ceremonials. Some were for Paul, some for Apollos, some for Cephas, and some for Christ. Paul, in writing to that church, said, "I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase." It seems to me, more than anything else, we need to realize as churches and ministers, that it is God who gives the increase. And my brother here may preach like a Paul or an Apollos, he may be faithful in every good work, and yet if he and you do not look to the great Head of the church you will not have permanent increase. I verily believe, brethren and fathers, that you have entered upon a period of prosperity which is to be large and permanent. God grant that the spirit may be poured upon you in large measure, and that you may go forth beautiful as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem and terrible as an army with banners.
ADDRESS, REV. JOSEPH B. CLARK.
You have seen something of the pride of the old nurse when she meets one of her grown-up children ; how very apt she is to assume that all his manliness and strength are the direct result of her early nurture and training. I find myself here to represent the old nurse of this church. On the day you were born, fifty years ago,
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the Massachusetts Home Missionary Society was in her middle life, thirty-three years old. In the providence of God, this infant in the household of our faith fell into her hands. I am glad you are not ashamed to confess the fact. I feel a little badly, some- times, to find a church sensitive at being reminded that it ever received the benefactions of this society. I protest against this feeling, and against the erroneous view out of which such a feeling springs, that the appropriations of the Home Missionary Society are gifts of charity. They are not charity, save in the highest and holiest sense of that word, never in the common and odious sense. The strong churches feel bound to come to the help of the weak, not merely because they are weak, but for their own protection and self-defence. The strong and the weak together are members of one body, and the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee, neither the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Every member is needed for the building up of the Body of Christ.
If, then, you are not ashamed of our help, we are not ashamed of you and your record. I was casting up the accounts, to learn, not your obligations to us, but ours to you. You were twelve years under our care, receiving from us $2,300, but you have contributed to our treasury, in all, about $3,500. " Does it pay,', it is sometimes asked, "to help the weak churches of Massachu- setts?" Let business men answer that question from your own record, with $2,300 on the debit side with us, and $3,500 on the credit side. On the lowest possible plane, treating the question only as a money question, it has paid, and if we have done you any good by lending a few hundred dollars, which you have re- turned with interest, we are glad of it, and none the poorer.
You have done weil to elevate the names of the seven founders to this place of honor. But I observe that only two of them are men and five are women. Brother Thacher is right when he says "we men are egotists." We call things "onrs." What right have we to call this church " our church ?" Look at the record, at the start, five women and two men. Two years later, the church had grown to forty-one females and only five males, and ten years after the start, while the men had reached thirteen, the women had in- creased to sixty-seven. Your male members in the beginning were two in five. In ten years from the beginning, they were only
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one in five, and yet we call the church our church. Men and brethren, let us acknowledge our obligations to Christian women. Churches do not begin to understand yet how much they owe to the mothers and sisters and daughters in Israel. The two origi- nal male founders of this church could never have succeeded alone. It was the larger body of Christian women at their side, strength- ening their hands and swelling the volume of their prayers, who saved the church. Our Lord himself has taught, by His own ex- ample, the necessity as well as good policy of employing women's aid in the building up of the church. It is full of significance that when He visited Samaria on purpose to plant His church in that place, He first despatched His disciples to buy bread, and when they were gone, He met the woman at the well. He convinced her of the truth of Christianity, He commissioned her to bring her husband to His feet, He made her His chief minister in Samaria, and finally left it on record for the world to read, that many of the Samaritans believed on Him "for the saying of the woman." We do well to study this holy strategy of the Master - and you have done well to imitate it. Let us magnify the power of woman's help in the church. The woman needs to render it ; the church dies without it.
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