USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester > Historical discourse at Worcester, in the Old south meeting house, September 22, 1863; the hundredth anniversary of its erectiion > Part 2
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Some things remain unchanged. "One generation pass- eth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever." Through all that century of years, nature has moved in circles without progress. Year by year the seasons have kept their order; and the vicissitudes of our New England climate, vibrating from almost Arctic cold to almost tropical heat, are just what they were in the year 1763. A hundred times has winter covered the streams and
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lakes with massive crystal, and spread the marvellous beauty of the snow over field and forest, vale and hillside. A hundred times the snows and ice have melted in the breath of spring, and vegetation has renewed itself in verdure and bloom. A hundred times the sultry summer has brooded over the hills and warmed the. deepest valleys. A hundred times has summer ripened into autumn, and then
"The melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere."
yet ever cheerful with the garnered harvest and the feast of the ingathering. The sun that shone upon our fathers' fathers shines upon their graves, and pours on us from the same deep sky the same exhaustless flood of warmth and splendor. The new moon, waxing night by night to com- plete its silver round, and the full moon waning till it dis- appears behind the sunrise, are the same as when the workmen on the Worcester meeting-house, a hundred years ago, measured the months from June to December. Nature, in its countless eyeles, makes no progress. In its perpetual changes it is perpetually reproducing itself. Its mutability is the steady operation of immutable forces. The record of the rocks, confirming the testimony of the most ancient revelation, testifies indeed that, from one geological period to another, creation was progressive; but nature cannot create. Since the Creator rested from his work and saw that all was good - since man stood upright on the earth, the image of his Maker - progress belongs to the history of man and of God's dealings with mankind. Nature to-day, is just what nature has been ever since the creation was completed. "The sun ariseth, and the sun goeth down and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth
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toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea ; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again." "The thing that hath been, is that which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun." In the sciences of nature, and in the applications and uses of physical science, there is progress - for science is human and enters into human history ; but the facts of nature are as old as the creation. The nature even of man remains unchanged through all human generations; but history is the record of something else than the mere going on of nature, and therefore it is that history never repro- duces itself. In proportion as man, by that proclivity to barbarism which came with the primal apostacy of the race, is brought down to the level of mere nature, and is governed like inferior animals by nothing else than natural laws and impulses, history becomes impossible ; for each suc- cessive year and each successive generation repeats its predecessor. History concerns itself not with the uni- formity and necessary laws of human nature, but with events that spring from man's intelligence and voluntary power, with the ever-changing condition of man in this world, with the diversified influences which act on human character and human welfare, with the vicissitudes of the ceaseless conflict between good and evil, with the growing dominion of man over the powers and resources of nature, with the moral and religious ideas and the political institu- tions which elevate or depress nations ; and the basis of its unity, the essential dignity which makes it differ from a record of the weather, must be found in the fact that, consciously
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or unconsciously, it records the development, from age to age, of God's august providence over the human race, and of his work of making all things new.
What sort of people were they who assembled under this roof on the 8th of December, a hundred years ago ? They spoke our English language ; they read our English Bible; they worshipped in the name of Christ; they held a system of religious doctrines essentially the same with the system held by those who now worship in their places ; the congre- gation of 1863 maintains its identity with the congrega- tion of 1763. But they prayed, and read, and spoke with phrases and pronunciations which are now antiquated, and which could hardly be repeated without provoking a smile. They dressed according to their means and their several stations in society, like decent and christian people - at least they thought so; but if we could see them to-day, just as they were apparelled that day -the men with breeches and cocked hats, some with great white wigs, some with clubbed hair, some with pig-tails -the women with many grotesque deviations from the fashionable cos- tume of our day - the sight would be to us astonishing. The most well dressed gentleman in the congregation, or the most fashionably attired lady, would hardly be present- able anywhere but at a fancy dress party, and even there would be greeted with laughter; just as that thanksgiving congregation a hundred years ago, would have been over- whelmed with wonder, and would have lost their go-to- meeting gravity, if by some second sight they could have caught a view of this assembly dressed in the fashions of to-day. They came to meeting, some walking in family processions from one house and another along the village street, others on horseback from the farms - many a wife
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riding behind her husband on the pillion, many a damsel behind her father or her brother, probably none in any wheeled carriage other than a farmer's wagon. They met for their Thanksgiving at the call of a proclamation which ended with, " God save the King." In their publie worship prayers were offered for the King and Queen and royal family. Their singing was in tunes which with rare excep- tions are now long obsolete, and was performed without the aid of organ, flute or viol. The sermons to which they ordinarily listened, were in length, in style, and to some extent in matter, such as would be tedious to a congregation in these days. The most superficial view suffices to make us feel that, for better or for worse, there have been great changes in the world since this "Old South Church," as it is now called, was the new meeting house in Worcester. Three generations have passed, and where are we ?
These superficial views, then, lead us to graver thoughts. Let us remember more deliberately some of the great changes in which the century has marked its progress. In so doing, it is necessary for us to think first of the contrast between now and then in the political conditions and rela- tions of our country ; for the political history of a country is the frame in which local history, and all the history of opinions, of morals, and of religion must be set, in order to be seen aright.
Our ancestors on this continent had a country of their own from the date of their migration hither. As soon as they had put the breadth of the Atlantic between themselves and their ancestral island, they felt that this was their country. The feeling grew when the first tree of the primeval forest fell before them - when in their first dwell- ings they established their domestic altars - when first their
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ploughshare furrowed the soil - when first their harvests ripened in the sultry air. The feeling that they had acquir- ed a country of their own, became more tenacious at every stage of progress in the formation of their civil institutions. It gained new strength and distinctness from every session of a court, from every new precedent in the administration of justice, from every act of legislation. When they made their arrangements for public worship - when they met in their Sabbath assemblies - when they began to see in each settlement the meeting-house rising in modest dig- nity among their homes - the feeling that they had ob- tained a new country, was more and more hallowed by religion. Every birth, every wedding, every sod upon a new grave, added to the sanctity of the feeling. They recognized the tie of a common allegiance which bound them to their kindred in the mother country; they claimed the name of Englishmen, and acknowledged the king of England as their king ; but from the day in which Winthrop and his fleet sailed westward - nay even from that carlier day in which the pilgrim church at Leyden planned its sublime enterprise - they never admitted the thought that their New England was to be merely an extension of Old England, or was to be colonized and governed in the interest merely of the English people. From the first they regarded this as a distinet country to which they had trans- ferred their citizenship. Under their charters from their king, or without reference to any'charter, they claimed and exercised the right of self-government as political communi- ties. The aspiration for a complete and distinet nationality was inseparable from the design of their migration hither. At the same time they recognized willingly their colonial relation to the country from which they came. They were
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English, and their new country was New England. Old England - not Great Britain, but England only - was the native seat of their language and their race. Their country was not only included, like Scotland and Ireland, among the dominions of the English king, but was more intimately related to England than to any other of his kingdoms - though they never regarded it as subject to the legislation of the English Parliament.
One incident of their relation to their acknowledged sovereign was that they were involved in all the wars of England, and especially in the frequent wars between Eng- land and France. There was not only a New England on this side of the Atlantic, but a New France, also, which was intended to become a colossal Gallie empire in America. Between England and France there was a constant rivalry for dominion on this continent. In four successive wars during a period of about seventy years, our fathers were › made to feel their dependence on their king and on his British subjects for protection against the power of France. The last of these inter-colonial wars ended in the treaty of Paris, which was signed on the 10th of February, 1763, and which extinguished all the pretensions of France to any territorial possessions on the continent of North America. It is not easy to conceive with what joy that treaty was received in all the English colonies, and most of all in New England, which had suffered most and longest from the proximity of the French power in Canada. For a hundred and fifty years it had been a question, often debated in war as well as in the conflicts of diplomacy and the councils of ambitious statesmanship, whether these vast regions of the temperate zone in North America should be French or English in language, in the genius of their civil institutions, .
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and in religion. For more than half that period every Indian outbreak on the frontier, every savage atrocity of rapine and slaughter, had been imputed, whether justly or unjustly, to the influence, direct or indirect, of French traders, French emissaries, or French Jesuits. Through more than the life time of two generations the growth of the colonies in territorial expansion, in wealth, in popula- tion, in all civilized and civilizing arts, had been hindered by a series of exhausting wars, in which the sacrifices of treasure and of blood were far more disproportioned to the resources of our fathers, than all the sacrifices demanded in the present conflict are to ours. When the Treaty of Paris, signed and ratified, was duly published in America, the joy was universal. Never in our history had so terrible a con- flict been brought to a termination so triumphant. A new era of peace and progress had opened. No wonder that immediately after the proclamation of that peace, the people of Worcester felt themselves able to build a new and stately house for the worship of God.
That year 1763 is a cardinal year in the annals of our country. Indeed, our national independence might be re- garded as taking its origin from the Treaty of Paris. The people of these colonies were thenceforth no longer depend- ent on their king for protection against their ancient and most formidable enemies ; by their own valor, and by the voluntary and lavish use of their own resources in their own defence, they had contributed largely to the extension of his dominions ; they had measured and improved their own military qualities and capabilities by comparison and co- operation with British regulars; and for these reasons they were more able and not less ready than at any former period to assert their hereditary rights against all attempted en-
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croachment from the mother country. Doubtless they had no expectation of any early conflict with Great Britain on the question of their rights, for just at that time the feeling of loyalty toward their king, combined with the feeling of a fraternal relation to the English people, was naturally stronger and more general throughout New England than ever before. But while the extinction of the French colò- nial power had lessened the dependence of the colonies on Great Britain, it had also inspired the British government and the ruling and trading classes of the British people with exaggerated expectations of dominion in America. Immediately after the conquest of Canada, and even before that conquest had been confirmed by treaty, a formidable scheme for bringing these colonies under the legislative power of the British Parliament began to be unfolded. In the third year after the Treaty of Paris, the passage of the Stamp Act through the forms of legislation at West- minster roused the continent to a determined purpose of resistance, and called into being a Congress of the colonies. In the twelfth year of the same era, a second Congress uttered in behalf of the colonies a solemn and unanimous declaration of their rights, and assumed, as the representa- tive body of the American people, the function of address- ing the king and the people of Great Britain with words of free and bold remonstrance. One year later, the contro- versy became a war; blood was shed at Lexington, at Con- cord, and at Bunker Hill; the Continental Congress created a continental army; and George Washington was Com- mander-in-chief. In the fourteenth year, the Congress of "The United Colonies " declared the dissolution of the tie that had connected these colonies with the mother country, .and with a faithless king; the Declaration of Independence
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was given to the world; and the' thirteen stripes, with the " new constellation " in its azure field, became the banner of the Union. Just at the close of the fifteenth year, France publicly recognized the independence of the new republic; and as if in vengeance for the loss of the hopes that had been extinguished by the treaty of 1763, that powerful nation entered into an intimate alliance with the revolted colonies of her ancient enemy. Before the twentieth year had been completed, the plenipotentiaries of Great Britain, and those of the United States, subscribed at Paris a treaty of peace, establishing the independence of this nation. Six years afterwards, in the twenty-seventh year of the era which began in 1763, the Federal Constitution, that marvel of political wisdom, had been framed and ratified; and the Colonel Washington of " the old French war " was inaugu- rated the first President of the United States of America. In the fortieth year (1802), the empire of the new republic, originally bounded by the Mississippi on the West, while a foreign power held and controlled the mouth of that great river, was enlarged by a peaceful acquisition, which gave us the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean for our western limit, and established the power of the Union, without a rival or a partner, over the "father of waters " from his icy head-springs on the border of the frozen zone to his outlet in the climate of perpetual flowers. At the close of the first half century, from 1763, those former colonies to which the treaty of Paris had unconsciously secured a virtual indepen- dence, were in the midst of a second war with Great Britain, a war provoked by the insolent aggressions of that power on the rights of neutrals and the freedom of the seas. I need not remind you of more recent events in our political his- tory ; nor of the territorial acquisitions by which our empire
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has been extended over a wider area than the Roman cagles ever traversed. Yet, as we recollect to-day what Worcester was, and where it was, when, in the impulse of hope and enterprise, which went through New England from the con- quest of Canada, the timbers of this house were framed and raised, a hundred years ago - as we think what New Eng- land was, and what America was when first the people met for praise beneath this roof - we cannot but be awed at the strides with which the world's history has been marching, and especially at the progress of history as related to our own country. Nor is there any halt in that majestic march. What may have seemed to some the portents of utter failure and dissolution, are to a wiser faith the signs of progress. Our country, ever since it began the conflict for its indepen- dence, and even from an earlier period, has carried, as if in its vitals, a perilous disease. With that disease the vigor of its life has struggled, and we to-day are at the crisis. A civil war more stupendous in its proportions than any that the world has ever seen before - a war in which the art of war has armed itself with new enginery of destruction and of defense - a war which, without involving any other nation, disturbs the commerce, the industry, and the politi- cal hopes and fears of the civilized world - is the crisis of that long disease. Nay, if the crisis has been doubtful, the doubt is passing by. The vigor of our national life has van- quished the disease, and slavery, so long our national infirm- ity and shame, is passing away forever.
The thought of this great war upon our soil, and of the changes which it has developed in the art of enginery of war, leads naturally to another topie illustrative of the difference between the world in which we are living, and the world as it was when this house was set on its foundations. Let us
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think of the contrast between then and now, in respect to the dominion of man over the riches and forces of nature. It is a maxim of the religion for which this house was built, that man as created in the image of God, was created for dominion over the material world, and was charged not only to replenish the earth, but to subdue it. Nor does the Chris- tianity of New England, the religious faith in which God is worshipped here, refuse to acknowledge, that in the con- summation of that renewing work for which God came into the world in the person of his Son, the idea of man's rightful dominion over this visible world, with all its riches and all its capabilities of ministering to human welfare, will be com- pletely realized. In this respect the century, since 1763, is distinguished above every other century on the roll of his- tory.
Some deliberate recollection will be necessary before we can comprehend how slow had been, through all preceding ages, the progress of man's dominion over nature. Certain inventions essential to civilization are, of course, older than the dawn of history - such as the art of writing, the art of making cloth from wool and from certain vegetable fibres, the use and fabrication of metals, including the reduction of them from their ores, and the art of navigation in its earliest rudiments. Certain tools are older than history -such as the axe, the plough, and the spindle; and certain mechanical powers - such as the lever and the screw. Other inven- tions, less ancient, are yet so old that their date cannot be ascertained - such as the pump, and the simple machinery by which the power of falling water, or of the wind, was applied to the work of turning a millstone for grinding corn, and far older than either, yet later than the flood, the art of making glass. But how slow had been the progress of inven-
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tion through all the ages of ancient civilization ! How slow the progress of knowledge! and especially of the application of knowledge to practical uses, for the common welfare of mankind ! . The ancient civilization which fell in the fall of the Roman empire, was more inventive of luxuries for the few, than of conveniences and comforts for the many. In its tools and implements of labor, and especially in its con- trivances to increase the productiveness of human labor, by subsidizing the forces of nature, it was poor. . It could build, in its imperial magnificence, temples, palaces, aqueducts, which are even at this day the wonder of the world. Its sculpture too was such as modern art admires and imitates, with hardly a hope of equaling it. But it had no contri- vances to facilitate the processes and aid the efficiency of labor, to cheapen and multiply the ordinary comforts of life, or to cheer and adorn the homes of the lowly. The new civi- lization which slowly arose from the ruins of the old, began with no new inventions, and no new subjugation of nature to the service of man. But in that new civilization there was a new force, derived from the fresh vigor of the northern races who had conquered the Roman power, and were learn- ing to appropriate the arts as well as the riches of the empire they had conquered. The Christian religion, modified in- deed, and deformed with superstition, yet not wholly neu- tralized by the mixture of error, was working like leaven among the nations that had received it with their conquests ; and thus the new civilization began to be, in distinction from the old, a Christian civilization.
Yet it is only within the last hundred years, that the dis- tinctive character of the Christian civilization, as related to the physical condition of mankind, has been clearly devel- oped. When the first worshipping assembly was gathered
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in this house, the age of those inventions which characterize our civilization, had not yet begun to dawn. The progress of knowledge and of art, since the downfall of the Roman empire, had contributed only a few inventions to alleviate the burthen of human labor, to multiply the comforts of human life, and to extend and establish man's dominion over nature. What were the chief of those inventions in more than a thousand years of history ? The invention of gunpowder had given to mankind a new force, not only for destruction, but for a thousand peaceful uses. The inven- tion of clocks and watches had been substituted for the more awkward methods by which the ancients measured and marked the divisions of the day, and had contributed to the advancement both of astronomical science and of the art of navigation, while at the same time it had been ma- king men feel the value of the hours and the virtue of punctuality. The invention of the telescope had given a new character to astronomy and a new impulse to all science. The mariner's compass had made it possible for ships to strike out boldly into unknown seas, to discover unknown lands, to sail around the globe, and by giving an indefinite enlargement to commerce, had contributed indefinitely to the riches of the world. When this house was built, the art of printing, without any material improvement since the age of Guttenburg, had been slowly demonstrating, for about three hundred years, the possibility of a universal diffusion of knowledge. The physical sciences, as inaugurated by the author of the North organum, had hardly begun to yield their fruits in practical contributions to the uses of human life; and science and industry had not yet learned their legitimate relations to each other. The world had not yet found out, what is now so widely understood, that in the
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sciences of nature every discovery has its use in some prac- tical invention.
But how rapid has been the progress of discovery and invention since this house first received under its roof a worshipping assembly. At that very time Arkwright, in England, was toiling to perfect his spinning machine, which four years afterwards became successful, and begun to be a power in the productive industry of England. The inven- tion of the steam engine having been long in progress, be- came a fact in 1765; but what the steam engine was to do in the world -to what infinitely diversified uses it would be applied -not even the genius of Watt, the final inventor, could have conjectured. In 1783, John Fitch, of Connecti- cut, exhibited an abortive steamboat on the. Delaware, at Philadelphia ; but it was not till 1807, that Robert Fulton, of Pennsylvania, after many years of toilsome and baffled endeavor, succeeded in converting the dream into a reality, and launched upon the Hudson a vessel, which was actually propelled by the steam engine, and which stemmed the cur- rent from New York to Albany in thirty-three hours ; but if any man even then had predicted the results of that inven- tion as they exist to-day, he would have seemed insane to men of common sense. A hundred years ago, Franklin had already made the discovery [1750] which identified the elec- tric spark with the lightning, and had applied it in his inven- tion of the lightning-rod ; but what else was soon to be dis- . covered in the same direction, what . other identities then unsuspected would soon be brought to light, and what results were to come of such discoveries, none could dream. A hundred years ago the nations of Eastern Asia had been clothed through immemorial ages in cotton fabricated by the simplest processes of manual labor ; and cotton, indige-
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