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 3
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nous also on this continent, was beginning to be manufac- tured by similar processes in Europe; but the material whether imported from India or from America, was too costly for universal use. Two years later, Eli Whitney was born in a neighboring town, almost within the sound of the Worcester meeting-house bell ; and he, at the age of twenty- seven [1798], invented the machine which separates the fibre of cotton from the seeds. But little did he then dream of the results which were to come from his cotton-gin. No human mind could have conjectured, sixty-five years ago, that in consequence of that invention, taken in connection with others, cotton would become a power in commerce, in politics, in the counsels of diplomacy, in literature, in morals, and even in religion - would be proclaimed a king - would even be worshipped as a god sitting in the temple of God - would domineer with growing insolence, till at last, in the height of its power, it should fall as other tyrants fall, and, instead of defying God and man with its impiety, should thenceforth be counted among the humblest of God's crea- tures, and should minister with due tractableness to the universal welfare of mankind. The plant which in conse- quence of Whitney's invention has been for a time the great support of slavery in its cruelties and its insolence, is now becoming, in the farther development of consequences from the same invention, a powerful auxiliary of liberty and of the world's progress. Having gained its dominion by be- coming a necessity of the civilized world, it is losing that dominion to-day, for the very reason that the civilized world cannot be without it, and will not be enslaved by it. The demand for it in the markets of the world is even now begin- ning to work for the opening of Africa to a new and civiliz- .. ing commerce, for the development of new industry and of
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a better civilization in India, for the establishment of new commercial relations and mutual dependencies throughout the globe. As the first century, since 1763, has demonstrated the power of cotton and slavery, so the coming century is to show the power of cotton and liberty ; for liberty at last has snatched that mighty instrument from the grasp of slavery.
Other illustrations of what the century has contributed to the progress of the civilizing arts, and of man's dominion over nature, crowd upon us. Think how much successive inventions have done, within the last hundred years, for the art of printing. Think how the art, which for more than three hundred years after the date of its invention, made no considerable progress, has found new methods and new enginery, till it is now multiplying and cheapening books beyond all calculation, inundating the world with periodical issues of innumerable sorts, and making the newspaper, with its assorted and accumulated intelligence from all quar- ters of the globe, a daily visitant in millions of families. The science of chemistry had not been born in 1763. Twenty years later, a few experimenters in France and England, and in some other countries, were just beginning to be successful in their exploration of mysteries which had formerly been left in the keeping of quacks and jugglers. But what con- tributions has chemistry made since then, to the world's riches, and to the resources and results of industry ? What has it done for agriculture and for the manufacturing arts, multiplying and diversifying the products and increasing the facilities of labor. One single achievement of chemistry - now so familiar to us that it has ceased to be a wonder - would not have been credited if predicted a hundred years ago, unless the prediction had been attested by a miracle :- Almost all the cities of the civilized world and in our own
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country how many villages and even isolated dwellings, are illuminated at night by a method which in former ages would have seemed more marvellous than magic. Sub- stances have been utilized, and have become great staples of commerce and manufacture, which, a few years ago were worthless. The India-rubber gum, now applied to innumer- able uses, and recognized as necessary in a thousand ways to human comfort, had grown, and exuded, and slowly decayed in tropical forests, ever since the creation of the world ; and nobody had known what it was good for. But Charles Goodyear, of Connecticut, about thirty years ago, devoutly believing that God had not made such a substance in such quantities for nothing, humbly resolved that, God helping him, he would find out what it was made for; and then with the enthusiasm of a prophet and the patience of a martyr, pursued his researches under the depressing force of poverty, and continual disappointment, and contempt, and reproach, and imprisonment for debt, and keen domestic grief, till at last nature betrayed her secret to him, and the world was thenceforth the richer for all his years of labor and of sorrow. Railways had never been imagined at the close of the old French war, nor for a long time afterwards, but railways are less wonderful to us than a good turnpike road would have been to the builders of this house; and such rates and distances of locomotion as devout and learned men in the year 1800 would hardly have thought possible even in the millennium, (there being no distinct chapter and verse of Scripture to warrant the idea) seem to our young people as much a thing of course as a horseback journey at the rate of thirty miles a day seemed to their great-grand- parents a hundred years ago. Nay, a generation is already growing up, in whose eves the magnetic telegraph, flashing
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its messages a thousand miles with instantaneous communi- cation, and reporting to us in the morning what happened yesterday in California, is no more wonderful than the mag- netic needle pointing northward ; and to whom the photo- graphie art, scattering its exquisite pictures through all our dwellings,
"Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallomorosa," -
seems as little to be astonished at as the reflection from a looking glass.
It is not merely for the sake of an impressive contrast between the present and the past that I refer you to these facts, but rather for the sake of demonstrating the progress which Christian civilization has made within the last hun- dred years toward the promised restoration of man's dominion over the riches and the powers of the natural world. There is a grand significance in these facts as related to the future. If we hold that barbarism came into the world with that apostasy from God which degraded man from his original lordship over nature - if, kindling with the prophetic hope that glows alike in the Old Testament and the New, we hear Him who sitteth on the throne pro- claiming along the course of time, "Behold I make all things new "- if, in fellowship with prophets and apostles, we see all arts, all sciences, all commerce, all civilization, all improvements and alleviations in the condition of mankind, subordinated and made subservient, in God's providence, to the moral and spiritual renovation of the world - if we see in all these things not only the effect of Christianity infused into the life of nations, but the arrangements which God is making for the universal prevalence and glory of his king- dom in the hearts of men - we cannot but be conscious of a
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deep religious awe as we think of the changes which distin- guish the century since 1763, above all 'other centuries, as the period of advancement in the sciences of nature and in those inventions by which the riches and the powers of nature are made available for the welfare of mankind.
If now, remembering the changes to which we have adverted, we imagine to ourselves again, the congregation which worshipped under this roof on the 8th of December, a hundred years ago, another view of the contrast between them and us, arrests our thoughts. I have no time to speak in detail, nor you to hear, of the progress which our country has made in wealth within the last hundred years. Yet you will allow me to detain you on this topic for a moment, because here too are facts and principles prophetic of the future.
What was the aggregate wealth of Worcester- the tax- able property if you please - as compared with the popula- tion, in 1763? And what is it in 1863? But Worcester, it may be said, is exceptional ; it has suddenly grown into a city and must not be taken as a specimen. Look, then, at a larger area. What was the aggregate wealth of Massachu- setts as compared with the population, a hundred years ago ? And what is it now? Or, taking a still wider view, what was the average wealth of every man, woman and child in the thirteen colonies, a hundred years ago ? And what is the average wealth of every man, woman and child in the thirty-five United States to-day, after all the destruction wrought by this stupendous civil war? I make no answer to these questions. Let it suffice to ask them. The statis- ties would be dry and wearisome. The questions them- selves, without any consultation of statistical tables, over- whelm us with the contrast between the riches of the
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American people now and the poverty of our fathers three generations ago. Any attempt to express the difference in sums of money would simply bewilder us.
But there is an easier and more satisfactory way of con- ceiving the difference. Think again of the people who came together in this house on the day when it was first opened for the celebration of the thanksgiving. What notions had they as to the necessaries and ordinary comforts of civilized life ? What sort of houses did they inhabit ? In what style were their houses finished and furnished ? What did they eat and drink, and wherewithal were they clothed ? How much tea and coffee, and how much sugar did each family consume in a year ? How many silk dresses, new and old, were there in town ? How many families were there that had ever thought of aspiring to the possession of a carpet ? Doubtless there were in some rich houses costly sets of china, but how many families were there that drank from pewter cups and ate from wooden trenchers? How many wheeled carriages were there in the whole town, and of what description ? How many people were there who had ever carried an umbrella, and how many girls that had ever heard of a parasol ? How many pianos were there in the town, or spiunets, or guitars, or other instruments of music additional to the drums and fifes that had so lately learned to play Yankee Doodle in the conquest of Canada ? Spinning wheels -- the large one for wool and the little one for flax -were in every inventory of household goods, and in the outfit of every bride ; but where was there a sewing machine ?
This last question touches the root of the difference. Spinning wheels have disappeared from all families, because all spinning is now performed elsewhere at a cheaper rate
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by water-power or steam-power propelling curious ma- chinery. A hundred years ago, the era of machinery had not yet begun. With a few exceptions, chiefly of a primitive sort, all productive labor, mechanical and agricultural, was performed by animal strength, human and brutal, and with the aid of tools or implements comparatively clumsy. But now - and in this new and free country of ours above all others -- all human industry is supplemented by the giant forces of nature tamed and harnessed for labor. The water wheel and the steam engine are doing what millions upon millions of hands could not have done a century ago in the production of wealth. And not only so, but the strength of human muscles and the deft nimbleness of human fingers are continually becoming incalculably more efficient by the introduction of new mechanical contrivances. The in-
creased production of wealth by the use of sewing machines in families and in all sorts of workshops where stitches are made, if it could be gathered year by year into one great fund, would pay in a few years all the debt which this rebel- lion is imposing on the nation.
Who then can tell us what our posterity will not have seen at the end of another century ? The progress of invention is not yet completed. On the contrary, more minds of high order than ever before are at this moment investigat- ing every possible application of science to the processes of industry and the creation of wealth. Nobody dares to pro- nounce any attempt chimerical, unless it contradicts the known laws of nature. The invention of machinery and of other contrivances in the productive arts has become a recognized profession like civil engineering. Who shall set any limit to this work of subduing the earth and of appro- priating its exhaustless resources ? The superiority of
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Christian nations over all barbarous and semi-barbarous races is to be more and more developed ; and the riches are to be created by which, if we do not misinterpret the reve- lation of God's plan, these nations are not only to be ad- vanced beyond all former experience of what Christian civilization may be, but are to spread the glory and the effi- cacy of the gospel through the world.
And now how shall I speak of the changes which the cen- tury has wrought in the Church of Christ? Permit me to reverse the method which I have ventured to use thus far, and which has not contributed so much as I hoped it would to the brevity of my discourse. Instead of referring to the general history of our country and of the world for the illustration of what has been going on here, we may now take the local history as an illustration of the general. The comparison between the condition and relations of this Church as it was a hundred years ago and the condition and relations of this Church as it now is, may be taken as illus- trating the progress which the universal Church of Christ has made in this country and in all lands during the same period.
Can the Church remain on its foundations-can it retain its faith and its influence - while such changes have been taking place in the condition of the country and of the civilized world ? This Puritan Massachusetts, instead of being, as it was in 1763, a colonial dependency of the British sovereignty, is now a proud free commonwealth, a loyal and equal member of the great Union that spans the continent with its arch of empire. Wars, revolutions, the overthrow of dynasties, and the growth and decay of em- pires, have been changing the map of the world ever since the century began ; and at this moment the civil war which
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convulses our nation is felt through the world. Forces that had no recognized existence a century ago, are revolutioniz- ing the industry of Christendom and the commerce of the world, and are extending indefinitely the dominion of man over material nature. The unprecedented increase of wealth, especially in our own country, is producing a style of civili- zation and a condition of society never known before. The world is seething and fermenting with the effects which such changes are bringing to pass in the habits and opinions, the manners and morals, the aspirations and hopes, of all nations. Many are running to and fro, and knowledge is increased ; the domain of science is extended in every pos- sible direction; and everywhere, as at Athens in the days of Paul, there are many who seem to "spend their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing." How fares the Church in this crisis of history ? Does it maintain its faith and testimony ? Does it retain its influ- ence ? Does it remain stationary amid all changes, like an old hulk moored in the current on which everything is passing by ? Let us try these questions by recollecting some of the changes which this church has undergone since it began to worship under the roof that shelters us to-day.
Of course the external and incidental things of public worship are liable to change in changing times. The build- ing itself has been altered. Its foundations, its frame, its roof, and its spire remain. Its architecture, in contrast with the more solid and more splendid structures of the present age, tells us of other days. But the men who built it, after the most approved models of the New England metropolis, with the pulpit window on one side, and with the salient entries at the two ends and on the other side, with square pews and high galleries, with no arrangement for warming
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it in winter and no lecture room, with lofty pulpit and a conspicuous "elder's seat " facing the congregation in official dignity, - would hardly know their own work could they see it now. What would pastor and deacons, and all the gray haired men and women of 1763, have said if, in prophetic vision, they could have seen an organ here ? One of the earliest changes after the completion of this house was in the mode of singing. Is it not written in Lincoln's History of Worcester? A controversy had agitated the . 1
community for forty years, beginning with the question, "In which way the congregation shall sing in future, whether in the ruleable way, or in the usual way "- wheth- er in conformity to the rules of musical art, with life and spirit, and with something of harmony,- or in the drawling and inharmonious method of a dead tradition. From one step of the conflict to another, the obstinacy of the conserv- ative element resisted the impulsiveness of the progressive element. At the end of forty-three years it was voted in town meeting, [May 1769] " that the elder's seat be used for some persons to lead the congregation in singing." Four years afterwards, there was a modest attempt to recognize the institution of a choir of singers, but it was not till six- teen years after the building of this house, that the old tra- ditions were finally and ignominiously vanquished. Three votes in a town meeting, made the record of the victory. " Voted that the singers sit in the front seats of the front gallery, and that said singers have said seats appropriated to said use. Voted that said singers be requested to take said seats and carry on singing in public worship. Voted that the mode of singing, in the congregation here, be without reading the psalms, line by line, to be sung." As if to make the victory absolute, it came to pass, on the ensuing Sabbath,
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that when the psalm had been announced and read as usual by the pastor, a venerable deacon, insisting on his tradition- ary prerogative, begun to dole it out in the old way, line by line, for the singers ; but his voice as he attempted to pro- ceed was drowned by the triumphant choir, and the baffled deacon retired from the meeting-house in tears. The organ was only one remote result of that revolution.
These are only a specimen of the changes in respect to the external things of public worship, which have taken place, . within a hundred years, throughout our country. Church edifices are more convenient and comfortable than formerly, often more splendid, sometimes even luxurious in their fin- ish and their furniture. Church music though often rude enough, is in a state of constant revolution, and aspires to be tasteful and impressive. The order of public worship is getting to be a theme of inquiry and discussion ; and almost every young minister has his own scheme of further reform- ation. Conservative men may do well to ask whether there is not a growing tendency in the Church of all names to make public worship an imposing performance - a luxury -a fine art, instead of simple prayer and praise ; but no- body dares propose to go backward and restore the external things of our worship just as they were in 1763.
Some changes there have been in the style of preaching, and some in the matter of the sermons. To me personally there is something of an autumn feeling in the fact that of the eight successive pastors who have ministered in this house, I have had some acquaintance with all but the first. As for that first preacher in this house, whose death was almost eighty years ago, the preciousness of his mem- ory among his people is testified by the monumental tablet continually before the congregation. In his theological
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system he appears to have been a Calvinist of what was then the old school. The phrase by which the first President Ad- ams described hin, " Though a Calvinist, nota bigot," is high- ly suggestive. He was not of the anti-Calvinistic party which had already become strong in Massachusetts; and on the other hand he was not of the party whose more intense and logical style of Calvinism was called "New Divinity," and who were one and all bigots in the sight of such men as John Adams .. His theory of the Christian doctrines would seem to have been just that which was held at Harvard Col- lege in his life-time. His immediate successor, SAMUEL AUSTIN, was of a different school. The younger Ed- wards had been his pastor and his theological teacher. He was a New Divinity Calvinist, a man of strong opinions on all the legitimate themes of preaching; and his preach- ing was of that sort which permits no hearer to be indiffer- ent. The next pastor, CHARLES A. GOODRICH, and the next, ARETIUS B. HULL, were beloved pupils of the illustrious Dwight, in whose theology the more violent statements and unswerving conclusions which had made the " New Divin- ity " obnoxious to so many minds, were wisely mitigated. Good ministers of Jesus Christ were they, worthy to be loved and reverenced for their work's sake, and worthy to be had in everlasting remembrance. The four that have followed them in this succession are all, save one, among the living. But of their teaching from this pulpit I may say two things : First, they all have held and taught essentially the same system of religious truth - the same revelation of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself -which all their predecessors held and taught before them ; and second- ly, the differences eamong them and their predecessors, in their several ministrations of the one gospel, are a sufficient
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demonstration that Christianity - Orthodox Christianity, if you please -is not a dead and petrified tradition, not a syntagma of hard dogmas that must not be examined and cannot be proved, not an iron cage in which minds that ought to be free are imprisoned - but a body of truth touch- ing the deepest and most vital wants of human nature, and stimulating all sorts of minds to free and manly thought on the most momentous themes that can be brought within the reach of the human intelligence. The modern study of the Scriptures by devout scholars admits and traces out the fact, rarely noticed in carlier times, that each of the Apostles whose writings instruct us concerning the personal charac- ter and human life of Christ and the grace and truth that came by him, received the inspired and inspiring truth into his own molds of thought, and each gives it out to us in his own peculiar forms of conception and of illustration. Thus, in the last analysis of the New Testament Scriptures, we find not only that each of the four Gospels presents the one per- sonal Saviour from its own point of view, and makes its own contribution to the completeness of our acquaintance with him whom to know is eternal life, but also that the con- scious or unconscious crystalization or system of Christian thought in the mind of each Apostle is peculiar to himself. Even so the one Gospel, immutable in its objective reality, is in some degree variously conceived and illustrated not only according to the characteristic genius of different lan- guages and nations, and according to the progress of human thought in the successive centuries of time, but also accord- ing to the idiosynerasies of individual minds. Change in- deed is not always for the better ; and there may be chang- es in the manner and the matter of preaching which seem to be improvements, but are in reality disastrous to the
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interest of truth and of salvation. However it may be with the successive changes since first the gospel sounded in this house, we know that in proportion as the mind of the preacher, filled with the love of Christ and with the sense of things not seen, brings the mind of the hearer into direet communication with the mind of the Spirit in the Scriptures -in proportion as the preacher and hearers learn to in- quire not what the technical words of human wisdom teach in some catechism or confession, but simply what the Holy Ghost teacheth in the infallible record - in proportion as preacher and hearers escape from the habit of interpreting the Scriptures by some human standard, and learn to meas- ure and test all systems of theology by the Scriptures - in proportion as the preaching of the gospel makes men con- scious of their need as sinners and shows them plainly, intelligibly, and practically, what they must do to be saved, - in that proportion there is progress.
In respect to another change there is no room for any doubt among us. A hundred years ago there was only one church in Woreester, and the church stood in an intimate relation of dependence on the town. The duty of support- ing publie worship was recognized by the laws as a political duty, and the town as a political body had a voice in religi- ous and ecclesiastical questions. In a little more than twenty years after the building of this house, a separation from the worship here was instituted on the principle of voluntary association for the support of religious institu- tions ; and in the year 1787 the Second Parish was recog- nized by law. To that second parish let the praise be freely awarded, which it claims, of having inaugurated in the country towns of Massachusetts the principle on which all churches in the United States now stand,- the principle
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