USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Dorchester > Fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of St. Mary's parish, Dorchester, 1847-1897 > Part 8
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ANNIVERSARY DINNER
OF THE
PHILLIPS BROOKS CLUB
HE Phillips Brooks Club of St. Mary's Church celebrated the Fiftieth Anniversary of the organization of St. Mary's Parish by a Dinner at the Hotel Brunswick, Boston, on the evening of October 11th, 1897. After dinner the President of the Club, the Rev. W. E. C. Smith, Rector of St. Mary's, said : -
Before we begin the regular exercises of the evening it is neces- sary, and at the same time a pleasure, to hear the report by our Secretary, of the last meeting.
Mr. Ruggles read a characteristic report of the previous Dinner of the Club.
The President then spoke of the conditions of the religious and Church life in the city of Boston, in the year 1847, mentioning sonie of the distinguished leaders of religious thought, and indi- cating possible influences in Church and State which gave character to the time. After a song by Mr. Townsend, the Rev. Mr. Smith, who, as President of the Club, acted as Chairman of the occasion, introduced the first speaker of the evening, the Rev. Mr. Drown, second Rector of St. Mary's Church.
The Chairman : - I am very sorry that Dr. Porter is not with us to-night, to tell us of the earliest years of Church work in Dorchester. He said, yesterday, that he might not be able to be
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THE REV. W. E. C. SMITH.
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St. Mary's Parish, Dorchester
present. We have with us, however, the second Rector of St. Mary's. It gives me pleasure to be able to call upon the Rev. Mr. Drown to say a few words to us.
ADDRESS OF THE REV. EDWARD L. DROWN.
I hardly know how to address my audience : Mr. President, Members of the Phillips Brooks Club, and Parishioners of St. Mary's, Dorchester (I believe that takes in all), - After the lapse of so many years, at no place could I be made to feel so at home with my old people as at a dinner table. The good people of St. Mary's, in my days, always believed in the power of good dinners ; that a well-fed Clergyman could preach better because he was well taken care of. .
I want to speak for a moment of the people whom I met when I came here. I came to St. Mary's, Dorchester, in the spring of 1853. I have the names of some of them down here, but I am afraid I cannot read them in this dim religious light. There was Col. Clapp, James Jenkins, Robert Richardson, Charles Stimpson, Mr. John Clark, Capt. Sumner, Edward Howe, Capt. Charles Emery, and others I have forgotten. Those were the first ones that made the Vestry. I met yesterday two representatives of all those who met me in the spring of 1853 - two individuals as representatives of those families. I would like to speak of every one of them. I will speak simply of the two representatives I met.
A truer, better, more godly man I never knew than Col. John P. Clapp, a man for whom we could thank God in all humility ; a man who loved his Church as dearly as he loved anything on earth ; a man of whom the words of the Psalmist are literally true : " I was glad when they said unto me, We will go into the house of the Lord." His memory is very precious to me. His son could have no richer legacy than the memory of a father of such purity, simplicity and firmness of character.
The other family whose representative is here to-night, and under whose hospitable roof I slept the first night that I ever passed in Dorchester, is that of Capt. Charles Emery. How well I remember them all. The first child I ever baptized was Julia Chester Emery, a household name throughout the American Church ; and how well
a
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I remember Mary, so thoughtful, so mature, so womanly beyond her years ; everybody knows the honored name she now bears, Mrs. A. T. Twing, - a name as dearly loved and well known in China and Japan as in this, her New England home. Then there was little John. I remember dining at Capt. Emery's. John came from behind the door and said to me, " Mr. Drown, will you step out into the hall a moment ? I want to ask you a question." I went out ; then he looked up, that little boy six or eight years old, so earnest, so pathetic, and said I, "What is it, Johnnie ?" " Mr. Drown," he said, " won't you please show me how to make a ser- mon ?" Well, it was child-like, and yet the tears came into my eyes at once. I said, "Johnnie, I can't show you to-day, but God will show you one of these days how to make a sermon, I am sure." And out in his Western home the Spirit of God found him and called him to the ministry of His Church. How it all came back, as some years afterwards, in the Mission rooms in New York, when Dr. Twing took out a few sermons which John had sent on for his loving and helpful criticism !
And Theresa, - how well I remember her as a child, and what that one family did for the Church. The benediction of God upon a Christian home ! We hear a great deal in these days about the higher religious life. God bless everybody who is trying to find it. We hear of Sisterhoods and Brotherhoods, and may God bless them all ; but the holiest spot on earth is a Christian home, where God is known and honored, and the holiest relation that man or woman can hold is the relation of fatherhood and motherhood ..
Well, this is a sample of the families I first met. They have long since passed away. May perpetual light shine upon them !
Let us take the next generation, and notice some of the names that follow in the next few years. First came Daniel B. Stedman. I would love to talk about him all the evening. Then Martin L. Bradford, and Dr. Stedman, and William W. Page, loyal, godly,- a true Churchman ; then Henry J. Gardiner, not much of a Church- man himself, though always attending Church, but his family was very dear to me, and my dear child, in Paradise long since, bears the name of Mrs. Gardiner. Then came Daniel Sharp, son of the old' Baptist divine of Boston ; Shelton Barry, son of Dr. Barry, a
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noted teacher in Jersey City, and others. They all came in a few years, and what a change they wrought in St. Mary's Church ! When the Clergy exchanged with me, they used to be astonished at the long line of carriages waiting for the congregation, more than filling the sheds behind the church,- nearly all young men in good business. The money that supports the Church as a rule does not come from accumulated capital; it comes from men who are earning money. All of these flocked in upon us. It was wonderful how fast they came.
In 1858 we thought St. Mary's Church was to be the great Parish of the Diocese, outside of Boston, and there were special reasons why we flourished. In the first place, while there was no suspicion of the loyalty of the Church to the Union, and while there was no coming into it from any sympathy with the South, there was an utter sickness in men's minds in regard to political preaching. The newspapers were full of it; every lyceum lecturer was talking about the great question and the coming struggle, and it was not interesting, it was not helpful to go to Church and hear all that talk diluted, weakened. The people heard so much of it during the week that they wanted something else on Sunday, and they came to the Church for her splendid Service and for her preaching of the Saviour of the lost.
Then the second great influence that helped St. Mary's at that time was the attitude of the Boston Rectors towards suburban Parishes. Forty or fifty years ago, if a man moved out to Dor- chester he severed his connection entirely with the Boston Parish. I remember a family moved to Dorchester, and after being out there a while I spoke to Dr. Vinton about his parishioner there ; "Not my parishioner," and I was told he now belonged to my Parish. I remember when Martin L. Bradford came, and Dr. Randall said to me, "I don't know how the Church of the Messiah is going to live without Martin L. Bradford, but our loss is your gain." They actually refused to have anything to do with them after they lived in Dorchester. We always said; " If people are going into the suburbs, there is no single suburb of Boston that can compare for beauty of location with Dorchester. They will all come here."
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I want to say just a word more upon another subject. It was in St. Mary's Church, as you all know, that I presented Phillips Brooks for confirmation. His uncle was a parishioner at that time. Phillips Brooks was then out there, and he was confirmed in St. Mary's, Dorchester. The young stripling, I see him now, and I hear his voice as he preached some of his early sermons in St. Mary's, all giving indications of genius, and yet awakening doubts as to what line his genius would fall into. There were no visions that came to us then of what that young man was to be to the Church in Massachusetts and the country. There were no visions of that scene, the like of which none of us ever saw, when Trinity Church was all too small to hold the mourners, and the Service had to be read, part of it, in Copley Square. None of us. had the vision of those strong Harvard students in their home at Cam- bridge, thousands of them standing with bowed heads and weeping eyes, mourning their friend, the inspirer of their lives.
It was in this Parish of St. Mary's that Dr. Huntington, now Bishop, was first introduced to the Clergy of the Diocese. It was at a Convocation and Daniel Sharp had invited us to dine with him. Dr. Huntington had just become a candidate for Orders : - I invited him to accompany me, and he came. I introduced him to the Clergy of Massachusetts, and I remember as if it were yester- day his opening words, "I heard that it was so, and I find it is true. I heard they were all brothers in the Episcopal Church, and I find them so." It was his maiden speech.
A few years ago I heard George William Curtis in one of his orations as he came back to his Alma Mater, describing a picture that he had seen in England ; a forest road of winding beauty and overhanging trees; an old man and woman hand in hand walking along, both bowed, decrepit, feeble, and their eyes riveted upon a young couple in the distance, buoyant, elastic, with hope in their eyes. They were fascinated strangely, and all at once they realized that they were looking at themselves when they were young; they had met themselves. So to-night, my friends, I have met myself here as I came into St. Mary's Church only twenty-four years of age, bringing my young bride with me from her home in Rhode Island. I have met, to-night, those early friends whom I found
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here, all young, all joyous, young husbands, young wives, and little children around them: Are they all past? No, for friendships were formed in those days which have continued as perennial as the springtime, and as fragrant as the summer flowers; friendships which I know will be resumed and renewed in that better world where there is no change except from glory to glory.
You keep your golden wedding. God's blessing rest upon it. A golden wedding between man and wife has always a touch of sadness. It is the sunset of life ; we know the end is near; not so with the Parish life ; - it is but the close of a day, as when the sun sinks to rest in cloudless splendor, the sure harbinger of a bright to-morrow. God grant to St. Mary's many such bright to-morrows, and when other voices take up the centennial strain, may they say of you, as truly as we can say of those who labored here in years gone by, - " Write : From henceforth, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord : even so saith the Spirit; for they rest from their labors ; and their works do follow them."
The Chairman : - Some years ago, after having been in Europe, I remember the impression which was created in my mind when I stepped into Trinity Church, New York. I had gone into that church just before I went to Europe, and then on my return 1 went into the church again. After visiting those great cathedrals abroad, Trinity Church, New York, which had once appeared so large to me, now seemed quite a small building in comparison.
Our Bishop has been, this summer, at Canterbury, and at the old St. Martin's Church, going back to the time when Ethelbert was baptized; although the structure, as it stands to-day, may not be the actual church of Ethelbert, it is, nevertheless, made up of some of the old Roman stones of the earlier building, and is, in fact, one of the most venerable Church buildings in England to-day ; - the Bishop has been engaged in Services which had to do with a work that began thirteen hundred years ago; and you know last May the Bishop was interested in the one hundredth anniversary of the Consecration of the first Bishop of Massachusetts. A short time before that he had preached, I think, a sermon commemorating the. seventy-fifth anniversary of St. Paul's Church. I wonder how it
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seems to him, now, to be asked to say something about a Church which can only say that it is fifty years old. To us that seems a long time, but to one who has been carried back, in imagination, to a church thirteen hundred years old, it may be this occasion will not have the same importance to him that it does to us, but we like to think that in this fifty years there have been influences exerted whose results are not to be measured by years. It is, therefore, with great pleasure that I ask the Bishop of Massachusetts to speak to you.
ADDRESS OF THE RT. REV. WILLIAM LAWRENCE, D. D.
St. Mary's, Dorchester, represents an excellent type of a sub- urban Parish in this, that the people did not wait for Boston to come out to them, but they bought a lot and built such a church as they could, and worshiped in that until a larger population came. Then they bought another lot and enlarged their church, making it more adequate and convenient. With the changes in the commu- nity, the Parish has changed, although a few of the ancient stock have remained. At the same time the work has gone on, with a deepening sense of responsibility on the part of the people for the uplifting and welfare not only of the Parish but of the whole com- munity ; so that St. Mary's, Dorchester, now, so far from being a suburban Parish, outside of the city, is one of the Parishes within the city, doing its work as a city Church, with its city methods.
It is also a type of a suburban Parish near Boston, in this, that it has been thoroughly American in its Churchmanship; that is, loyal to the Episcopal Church, and at the same time recognizing the traditions of the Puritans and the glory of the religious life of Massachusetts of the last two centuries. Thus the Church, coming among them, has led many of them to her as offering larger oppor- tunities for the expression of the Christian faith and life of England's descendants.
There is another point, as one thinks of the money that has been put into the Parish of St. Mary. It may be rather a mundane point, but one that is worth recognizing, for there is a feeling on the part of a great many in the community that Churches are
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St. Mary's Parish, Dorchester
hardly worth the expenditure of money and the freedom from taxation. Now, if we consider the comparatively few thousands of dollars that have gone into St. Mary's Church, into the building, the work, and the Minister's salary, and then if we take that sum and compare it with any of the same number of thousands of dollars that have been spent in Dorchester or in Boston apart from religious work, we realize what an enormous interest the money bears that is put into Church life for the public good and in the uplifting of the character of the people. When one thinks how millions of dollars have been lost in commerce, in railroads, in business, one must recognize from the ordinary business point of view that money put into the Church is economically used, and as a rule is safely invested ; that it brings forth the best fruits in the spiritual uplifting of the people ; that it goes largely into engaging the services of spiritual men, in order that, by their preaching and ministerial offices, they may lead the people, and that those people in their homes may be strengthened in their religious and moral character.
After hearing the eloquent words and reminiscences of Mr. Drown, one feels that what he has to say is commonplace, and in a way modern. It is certainly well that once in a while we should be brought back to remember the sacrifices of those who entered into the first work of our earlier Churches, and into the beautiful characters which have gone toward the upbuilding of many of our Parishes. Sometimes we wonder whether we find the same beauty of character and gentleness in those who are supporting our Churches now. I rather think that we do have the same beauties of character, only expressed in more modern form. Those men were interested in the Church, and gave of their time and thought; and it is one of the satisfactory features of St. Mary's Church, satisfactory to us all, to myself as Bishop, and to the Rector, I know, that the men of St. Mary's in the last ten years have, many of them, given of their time and their best thought to the work of St. Mary's Church and to this Phillips Brooks Club.
The Parish is, as much as any Church in or near Boston, a Parish of men; men who are interested in the Church's welfare ; men who, we believe, give to the community illustrations of such
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spiritual life as St. Mary's will be gratified to remember in the next century.
It is a very great pleasure to come among you, representing to you the Church in the Diocese, and to give a blessing and a hearty God-speed to St. Mary's, Dorchester, for the next half century.
The Chairman : - Mr. Mills, the third Rector of St. Mary's, as you know, died a few years ago. It would have been pleasant if we could have had him with us on this occasion. The work of his ministry was described yesterday, and emphasis was placed upon the value of that long pastorate of thirteen or fourteen years. Mr. Silvester, the fourth Rector, wrote ine that it would be impossible for him to leave his work at this time on account of the consecra- tion of his own church. Perhaps you read in the afternoon paper that that consecration took place to-day, -- a building valued at $500,000.
Mr. Saltonstall told me to-day that he felt that he had said his word yesterday, and that there was very little that he could say in addition. There was one thing, nevertheless, to which there was no allusion in the serinon yesterday, and I am going to take the liberty of mentioning it here. The preacher said very little of his own work at a most critical time. I think of the years after the burning of the church, and before the building of the new church, as the really most critical period in St. Mary's history. If I am not mistaken, after the old St. Mary's was burned, there was a feeling that perhaps it was not wise to undertake to build a new one. Some of the substantial subscribers to the old church had moved away; annexation to the City of Boston had brought about a great change in the character of the Town of Dor- chester, and it looked for a time very dark for the Parish. 1 believe it was largely due to my predecessor that St. Mary's Church was perpetuated in the new building. He not only insisted upon the building of a new church, but he did what very few of us would be willing to do, and what very few of us would be able to do. He went, as we were told by the very slightest suggestion yesterday, "from Bar Harbor to Newport," trying to raise the funds for the new-St. Mary's Church, securing $8,000, which was a large
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percentage of the amount which went into the new building. I would be very glad to have Mr. Saltonstall speak a few words to you concerning the erection of St. Mary's Church.
Mr. Saltonstall said that he had told his story the day before, and did not care to say anything further.
The Chairman : - In the sermon yesterday, mention was made of the ministry of Mr. Silvester in connection with St. Ann's. It was the child of St. Mary's Church. I do not know how it came about, but this child passed into the hands of St. James's and her Rector. It became the adopted child of St. James's. I have been told that St. James's Church is the mother of St. Mary's Church ; that years and years ago, some of St. James's people in Dorchester thought of this new work, and had an active part in the beginning of St. Mary's. We shall be glad to hear what the Rev. Percy Browne has to say to us about his recollections of St. Mary's, twenty years ago, and St. Ann's. I take pleasure in presenting the Rev. Percy Browne, Rector of St. James's Church, Roxbury.
ADDRESS OF THE REV. PERCY BROWNE.
Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen : - I count it a privilege to be permitted to express to you the congratulations of St. James's Church upon the completion of your fifty years of parochial life. Her greeting is emphasized by the fact that she claims St. Mary's as one of her numerous offspring. She has been in her sixty years a prolific mother of Parishes. St. John's, Jamaica Plain, St. Mark's, St. John's and St. Ann's Churches, in Boston, were either founded or nursed into strength by the devoted people of St. James's. It may be that her claim to be the mother of St. Mary's rests only on the fact that in its early years your Parish was re- cruited from ours. But, in any case, you will pardon the claim of a mother who sometimes makes mistakes in counting her numerous children, and who naturally desires to include amongst them one more vigorous and handsome daughter.
In his remarks upon the religious life of Boston during the last fifty years, your President has rightly enlarged this occasion into
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one of more than parochial interest. But he omitted one striking fact; namely, that the Episcopal church in the years in which she was exposed to the suspicion and dislike of this community grew as vigorously as in recent years when that dislike has passed away. Whether or not we can explain the fact, it remains true that although our Church has increased numerically, relatively to the growth of Boston's population her increase has not seemed to keep pace with the growth of the community's good-will towards her, so characteristic of recent years.
Forty years ago there existed within the city's limits Christ Church, Trinity, St. Paul's, Grace Church, the Church of the Advent, and the Church of the Messiah. Soon afterwards, Emmanuel, St. Mark's, and the Good Shepherd were added to the list, and all these Churches had grown into strength long before the Boston atmosphere was cleared of its inherited dislike of Episcopacy. Within the same geographical limits to-day we have to note two places made vacant by the extinction of Grace Church and St. Mark's, a loss not more than compensated for by the few missionary Parishes which have recently come into existence. We have to note also the fact that the surviving Parishes, although vigorous, have not grown much beyond the strength which they attained at the beginning of our half-century. Trinity may be regarded as an exception, but St. Paul's and Emmanuel, even in the full 'tide of their present prosperity, must recognize the great and far-reaching character of the work conducted by Alexander H. Vinton and Frederick D. Huntington in their respective Parishes nearly forty years ago.
This slow growth of our Church in a community which has long since ceased to antagonize it, makes one suspect that Boston's present amiable attitude towards our communion is the result, not so much of appreciation of its character, as of that indifference to all forms of organized Christianity so characteristic of a large section of New England life to-day. The evangelist, Mr. Mills, who is endeavoring to raise the temperature of Unitarianism by radiating the warmth supplied by his former connection with an evangelical denomination, recently said that it was illiberal to care whether one were an Episcopalian or Unitarian, - a statement to
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which he gave a dubious emphasis by the story of a man who, on the eve of his marriage, startled his fiancee by declaring that he could not conscientiously marry her until he had confessed some- thing that burdened his mind. To the agitated lady's inquiry about the nature of the dreadful secret he replied : " I must tell you that I am a somnambulist !" "Do not let that trouble you," an- swered the liberally trained young woman ; "we can compromise ; there is not much difference; if you will come with me in the morning to the Methodists, I will go with you in the evening to the somnambulists."
Let us hope, however, that Boston's kindly feeling towards Epis- copacy is due, not to such indifference, but to an increasing appre- ciation of our Church, which through the last fifty years has, by the presentation of its many-sided and inclusive character, given a larger Church ideal to a community accustomed to denomina- tionalism which expressed but one leading doctrine and method of Christian culture. Certainly, men like Dr. Vinton in St. Paul's, witnessing for what is best in Evangelicism; Dr. Croswell in the Advent, for what is best in Sacerdotalism, and Bishop Hunt- ington in Emmanuel, for moderate Institutionalism, must have led thoughtful minds to recognize in our Church something larger than a sect. Certainly it would have been presented to this commun- ity as a sect if, during the last fifty years, only one type of Church- manship had preached from her pulpits and ministered at her altars. Let us be thankful that our Church in Boston has risen above sectarianism by her free proclamation of the evangelical appeal to the personal soul, by her institutional appeal to the sense of corporate privilege and responsibility, and by the interpreting spirit of Broad Churchmanship seeking to unfold the larger aspects of the Faith in which so many diverse schools of thought find true Catholic unity - the unity of the Spirit.
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