USA > Massachusetts > Hampshire County > Amherst > Historical review. One hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the First Church of Christ in Amherst, Massachusetts. November 7, 1889 > Part 8
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view. The country around was as beautiful then as now. But the town itself, the buildings, public and private, the streets, the open grounds, were only such as were at that time to be everywhere seen in our country towns. There were numerous neat and substantial homes, of the plain style of a former generation ; but not one tasteful edifice-such as we see now on every side-from the factory-like range of barracks on College Hill to Mt. Pleasant on the North. A short strip of pavement lay on the two sides of the square corner near the hotel, where the business of the population centered ; and else- where were simple gravel walks, more or less carefully kept. The common was a rudely fenced field, wholly uninviting to the eye ; while the streets were too apt to be littered with loose papers and other rubbish. (I heard an eminent gentleman, who lived among you a few years ago, and who had traveled far and wide,-the late Admiral Green,-pronounce Amherst the most attractive town in every respect that he had ever known. He would hardly have said so then. )
I, of course, inherited my brother Colton's church and society. The church had its full quota of four deacons, Messrs. Luke Sweetser, Simeon Clark, Moses B. Green and Josiah Ayres. The two last named had been recently chosen, and it was one of my early duties to set them formally apart to their office with public prayer. It was my happiness to be associated with them officially through my whole pastorate, and to find in them always judicious counsellors and cordial friends. With Mr. Sweetser, the upright merchant, the sagacious citizen, the earnest christian, my relations were during that period and to the end of his life, of an especially warm and cordial nature ; and in his house I found a home, whenever duty brought me here in ater years. The junior deacon, Mr. Ayres, the popular janitor of the college, died at the very close of my ministry, and almost my last public duty here was to conduct the service at his funeral.
The church membership fell somewhat short of 300. Among its pore prominent members were, Gen. Mack, the living presentment- is it seemed to me-of a Puritan of the olden time, with integrity and godly-fear stamped on every feature, who to my regret survived only year or two after I came to know him ; Dea. Leland, already well advanced in years, and approaching the end of his useful life ; Mr. ogEdward Dickinson, the strong, high-minded, public-spirited citizen, whom all honored and trusted ; Mr. Lucius Boltwood, conservative, lear in his convictions and true to them, candidate of the Free-soil arty for years for the Governor's chair, which he would have filled
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more worthily than some who have reached it; Mr. John S. Adams, the intelligent, kindly book-seller, whose store was the head-quarters of the literary society of the town ; and David Parsons, (as everybody called him, son of the second pastor of the church, quiet, shrewd, ingenious, whose bright wit made his carpenter's shop a place of hardly less attraction in another way ;- not to add to these names those of the "honorable women," whose good sense and christian worth adorned their respective homes.
The old customs had not all passed away. It was one of the odd experiences of my first years in Amherst, to see our venerable brother, Mr. Carter, (whom you laid away to his rest only a few weeks ago), rise in his pew under the south gallery, in his almost life-long capacity as town clerk, just after the afternoon congregation had assembled, and before the worship began, and read in not too loud a voice "the intentions of marriage" of parties contemplating forming that rela- tion, while all ears were intent to catch their names. It was not very long, however, before this custom was superseded by the more agree- able usage that now prevails.
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Among the earlier changes that speedily followed (I will not say, that were owing to) my coming, was that which was made in the music of our public worship. I found a choir of ten or fifteen singers in the gallery under the leadership of Dr. Woodford, with an orches- tra consisting of a bass-viol, a violin and a flute ; the latter played, I think, by Mr. George Cutler ; I do not remember who played the for- mer. I am not competent to criticize the merits of their music. But the congregation were growing ambitious of something more modern ; and a move was soon made, and successfully carried out, to procure an excellent organ .- as it was then regarded,-at what was for those days a very heavy expense. Its introduction gave univer. sal and very great satisfaction. tant west the (as the half- tilate at lea It wa the p such
The cause that occasioned the delay of my final settlement not continuing, I was installed as pastor on July 19, 1854, by a council of which Dr. Woodbridge, of Hadley, was the moderator. From the experiences of other candidates before other councils at the Doctor's hands, I had fully expected to have my theological beliefs thoroughly overhauled, and perhaps sharply antagonized, by him, in his character as the famous local champion of rigid orthodoxy. But to my aston ishment he skillfully evaded all disputed points, and I passed the examination without a single "condition." I had asked my honored relative and old college tutor, President Woolsey, of Yale, to preach
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the sermon, and he had promised to do so, but found himself-as the time drew near-unable to be absent from his college duties. There- upon, I had recourse to Dr. Leonard Bacon, of New Haven, (so well known through New England), who kindly consented to render the service. Dr. Cleveland, then of the First church in Northampton, was on the council, but had no part in its public exercises assigned him. He therefore asked to be excused from further attendance, giving as his reason that "it was unnecessary, as he knew that the bacon that would be furnished was always well cooked." A smile of amusement at the rather rude jest lighted up the grave faces around, all save Dr. Bacon's own, who sat with countenance as grim and utterly unconscious, as though no such person as Dr. Cleveland were on the planet.
I was settled on a salary of $900. a sum that meant more then than it does now,-determined on, as I was told, as being what the college Professors were then receiving. Those gentlemen-good and worthy men that they were-had some of them been brought into very close quarters indeed, not many years before ; and counted themselves happy when their compensation reached the amount I have named. Unfor- tunately for me, the ideas of the congregation as to what a minister was worth, did not advance as fast as the estimate the trustees of the college put on the services of its instructors ; and these gentlemen consequently grew rich more rapidly than I did !
It was not very long after this, that the society took another impor- tant step forward, in building its very neat and comfortable vestry west of the church for its business and social meetings. Previously, the Sunday evening worship and the weekly prayer-meetings were held (as my brother Colton no doubt well remembers) in the basement of the church itself, a most uninviting room, low-ceiled and dark and half-subterranean ; so that our removal into the light, airy, well ven- tilated and comfortably seated new edifice, was an occasion (to those, at least, who attended the meetings) of hearty mutual congratulation. It was as great an improvement on anything we had known before, as the present beautiful room in which you are now privileged to hold such services is upon the one we valued so highly.
The year 1857 will be well remembered by our elder citizens, as one of national distress from the depression of business. That period of great outward disaster was followed in '58, not altogether strangely, by a correspondingly wide-spread awaking of earnest religious feeling, pervading the churches with great power. In this healthy spiritual
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movement we were, in the mercy of God, permitted to share freely ; and the happy result was a numerous ingathering of converts, young and old, into our fellowship, adding in every respect to the church's strength. A consequence, not at the time anticipated, followed not long after. Among the new candidates for church-membership were many, to whom the phraseology of our confession of faith-theolog- ical, antiquated, clumsily expressed-was hardly intelligible ; and there arose (I scarcely recall now how or with whom it originated ) an inquiry whether it were not a suitable time to recast both creed and confession, and, without changing their doctrinal significance, to bring them into a more easily understood and more useful form. The ques- tion was then with us a novel one. The proposal naturally met with strong opposition from some of our more conservative members, attached to the creed (as it stood written on the fly-leaf at the end of the pulpit hymn book ) because it was old, and they deemed any meddling with its time-honored terms, a crime little less heinous than sacrilege. The discussion that ensued at times grew warm, and seemed even to threaten serious division in the church. But the reasonableness of the proposed changes,- which were not violent or fundamental, - by degrees commended itself to the great majority of the members, and the minority had the good sense and good feeling to waive their objec- tions. The proposed alterations were made, and peace was preserved. In a later pastorate still more extensive changes of the same general nature were made, on which, it seems to me, you are to be congratu- lated.
I have found among my papers the records of the charities of the church, for four years of my ministry, from '54 to '57 inclusive ; and it surprises me to read for those years respectively the footings of $1,072, $988, $1,001 and $810 ; which impress me now as showing- for those times-a very creditable spirit of christian liberality.
The relations of my ministry with the gentlemen of the college fac- ulty, beginning with the eminent bnt very modest President Hitchcock. and afterwards much more intimately with President Stearns and the different professors, were always of the most friendly and pleasant kind. Never did they refuse me any aid which-as was not seldom the case-I had occasion to request.
Family considerations again seemed to render it my duty, in 1860. to seek a more genial climate for my household, and I offered my resignation of the pastorate in that year, to take effect on the 10th of August, seven years from the time of my entering on its duties. The
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church and society granted my request for release, with kind express- ions of regret and good-will.
May I add (in closing these imperfect recollections of a pleasant ministry long past by, the survivors of which have already come to be comparatively few in number), as an expression of my personal interest in the prosperity of this now historical church, a single stanza from a hymn we used to sing in the old days of "Watts and Select," but which is now seldom if ever heard ?-
" May peace attend thy gate, And joy within thee wait, To bless the soul of every guest !
The man that seeks thy peace, And wishes thine increase, A thousand blessings on him rest !"
NOTE. On page 80, nineteenth line from the bottom read Dr. Woodman.
LEMMER
BY REV. HENRY L. HUBBELL, D. D.
Ordained April 24, 1861, Dismissed April 4, 1865.
Unable to be present, to my great disappointment, at the interesting exercises of your one hundred and fiftieth anniversary, I am requested to speak by letter. Though pressed with other duties, my love to the church is such I cannot refuse.
It is a rare privilege, granted to but a few, to start a stream of organized influence and activity perpetuating itself in a community for one hundred and fifty years. This honor belongs to the founders of this church which has become the mother of other churches, and a College, shedding its light even into foreign lands.
Next to starting, is the honor of continuing, directing and enlarging such organized influence and activity in the service of Christ and his civilization. It is this, my friends, which gives us all an opportunity to honor the founders and join in the celebration of to-day. Each of
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us entered into the life and work of this church in a way peculiar to himself and each has done his own individual work, because God never duplicates his servants or their services.
My own entrance and continuance in the life and activity of the church, has for me some points of very special interest. Here I began my ministry. I came fresh from Andover Theological Seminary, counseled to come by Prof. Phelps, also by Prof. Park, who had lived among you while he was Professor in the College and commended the church very highly.
By this church I was ordained to the Christian ministry and installed your pastor, April 24, 1861. Prof. Phelps preached the sermon. The examination before the Council, except one point, I remember dimly, but most impressively the ordination with " the laying on of hands," enjoining on me a ministry to the Master and a service to you that, in the measure in which I sought to fulfill it, seemed to rise above my reach more and more. Here I began new experiences, new relations, new cares, new prayers, new affections for those I sought to serve, prayers and affections that abide to this day.
In this church, too, I found one, who, as I esteemed it, more than doubled my services to you and more than doubled my life in all that made life worth living.
Besides these new things which never become old, we began our common service to the Master, at a new epoch of our country's history and under very distracting conditions for purely spiritual work.
Ten days before I came, President Lincoln issued his Proclamation for 75,000 men. Had not Seminary advice checked me, I should have asked of you release, and joined the army. But I came. I found the air filled with the sounds of war and the rumors of war. The recruiting office was in the street. In a short time, sons of the Faculty, members of my congregation and one of the Professors had enlisted. The whole community was stirred with the preparations and the excitements of the approaching conflict. After Bull Run we knew not how long it would last. We dreaded what we feared. At first, not all the church was in sympathy with the uprising of the people. The majority were, and ere long we were substantially one in the great struggle for national life and liberty. We sent out our quota. We saw them, with others, march proudly away under the dear old flag, keeping time to the inspiring music of war. In imagi nation we went with them, through the streets of the great cities, through the towns and open country, into camps at the front.
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Sanitary and Christian Commission services, by speeches and votes, by sympathies and prayers, we stood by them when on guard in the cold storm and beneath clear, sunny skies, on the long, weary march and the bloody field of battle, in hospitals of pain and prisons of " hatred and famine " and when, between the contending lines, life was slowly ebbing away,-but who can count up their sufferings ! In yonder cemetery lies the precious dust of some ; the dust of others, equally precious, sleeps in unknown graves in the land they made free.
In the summer heat of 1864 I had the privilege of being your repre- sentative to our brave men at the front. In the preaching-places, by the bedside of the sick, the wounded and the dying, I told these men who sent me, and endeavored to cheer and comfort them by pointing them to Jesus Christ. In due time the struggle was over. Law and iberty triumphed.
Though the period for this struggle was not the best for promoting 'evivals or proposing church improvements or new lines of church work, yet, during it, God blessed us with an increase of Spiritual life with frequent accessions and one or two special refreshings among the young, whose lives and services are to-day blessing this and other hat churches. I cannot but refer to some, conspicuous in their influence, while I was pastor, who have preceded us into the Silent Land. There were Deacon Sweetser and Edward Dickinson, Esq., each in IT'S rk. heir way leaders, good men and true. Lucius Boltwood, Deacon Green, Mr. Carter, Mr . Sidney Adams, and other prominent men come non before my mind as worthy of special mention for what they were ind did.
There were also women in this church and congregation whose aithful services have earned them a good degree and an honorable nention in the records of this church; such as Mrs. Mack, Mrs. William Cutler, Miss Esther Cutler and many others.
In many ways the life of the College touches and advantages the fe of the church. Perhaps, to no one in the church is the College of hore profit and pleasure than to the pastor. He feels the impulse of is intellectual and spiritual activity. I am sure I felt it and to your dvantage. The College Professors never failed to help when asked. There were two to whom I felt specially indebted and of whom I asked elp, perhaps oftener than others, because of our personal relations. Ine was Prof. Crowell, now standing in the front rank of scholars and achers, the other was Prof. Seelye, now the distinguished President f the College, than whom no man can be a truer friend. I can bear
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personal testimony that both Pres. Stearns and Pres. Seelye felt a genuine interest in the prosperity of our church. One day, Prof. S said to me that he looked on our church as the mother of the College, and he felt as he spoke. Fortunate has our church been in the friends and influences immediately about it.
Good as is your past, your future may be better. God's work is growing larger, year by year, and His grace is sufficient for every demand. May it be the privilege of yourselves and those who come after you to do that enlarging work and to be filled with that ever enlarging grace, till He comes. I can ask for the church no greater success nor for its workers any greater reward. .
Lake Charles, La., Nov. 27, 1889.
ADDRESS
BY REV. JONATHAN L. JENKINS, D.D.
Became Acting Pastor Feb. 17, 1867, Installed Sept. 24, 1868, Dismissed Feb. 5, 1877.
(An incomplete report, but substance of the thought.)
One good thing about the memory is that it does not remember. I seems to be controlled by natural selection. It retains what it likes It ejects as well as keeps. This prerogative it uses in the care ( what is disagreeable. This the memory shuts out. It is astonishin how soon we forget a pain, when the pain has stopped. It is becaus the unpleasant, the painful drops out of remembrance that the pa: wins a glory from being far.
It must be that during my life of ten years here disagreeable thing happened. It is even possible that I myself did not please every body. And it is quite certain everybody didn't always do wha pleased me. What may have been does not now concern us. O
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concern is with what is remembered. And the memory of my life here is the memory of a long, pleasant day with bright skies overhead and its hours filled up with delightful companionships.
Occasions like the present do more than give opportunity for ndulgence in personal reminiscences. They should bring to mind the excellent work done in the past by the old historic churches of New England. I am a high church man, a high New England church man. The historic New England church is not an institution to be ashamed of. Its works win it praise. It was by its churches that New England was made what it is. It is. to be kept true to itself by its churches, and by the churches which are successors of the churchies originally planted in New England. The ideas embodied in and promulgated by those churches are neither obsolete nor useless now. They seem the very ideas needed in society. The old doctrine that nen can govern themselves without interference from without, is a loctrine that can be insisted upon with profit now. So is the old loctrine that religion is not ceremony or spectacle, but a personal xperience, one that the world has not yet outgrown. Nor again is t wholly unnecessary to insist that religion is of the understanding ven more than of the sensibilities. There is work for the old historic hurches of New England. That mission is not yet accomplished. Occasions like this are valuable that they make distinct the work to ve done, and unite faith in agencies suited to accomplish the work. Be persuaded then, friends, to identify yourselves more and more losely with the veritable church, let it in each generation reveal its trength, and in each generation more perfectly do the work given ; to do.
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LEMMER
BY REV. F. F. EMERSON
Installed 1879, Dismissed 1883.
TO THE FIRST CHURCH AND SOCIETY, AMHERST, MASS. :- DEA CHRISTIAN FRIENDS :
It is with the most sincere regret, and a feeling of disappointmen which I am unable to express, that on account of unexpected dutie which I do not feel at liberty to put aside, I find myself unable to b present with you to participate in the festivities of your one hundre and fiftieth anniversary. As I cannot see you face to face an speak what is in my heart to say, I must fall back upon the pod alternative of sending you a few words of regret and giving a few out of many reasons, why Amherst will be to me one of the mo interesting places in the world, and why I still love the dear old churd which for four years I was permitted to serve. It is nearly seve years since I was dismissed from the Amherst pastorate, but thes years have fled so quickly and my mind has been so absorbed in n labor here, that it seems but a little while since I left you, and shou I rise in the familiar pulpit on Thursday evening, it would be the mo natural thing in the world to give out a text and go ahead with t sermon.
But I know that a different task would 'await me, -a task which would gladly have fulfilled to the best of my ability, had I be permitted to be with you.
Amherst will always be of interest to me because it was there th I awoke to my Congregational consciousness ; for I suppose I w always a Congregationalist, only I did not discover it till I was abc forty years of age. The earliest colonial Emerson was a Purit minister of " The Standing Order " settled in Mendon in 1632. Sir his day there have been many Emersons in the Congregational pulp I suppose it was in the blood. For some unaccountable reason father became a Baptist. It was, however, only a temporary aber tion of the Emersonian mind ; for though I was born in a Bap
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family and rocked in a Baptist cradle, educated in Baptist schools and graduated from a Baptist college and seminary, and a preacher for some twelve years in Baptist pulpits, yet, as chickens hatched under he motherly protection of a duck will not take to the water, so the natural aversion of my earlier ancestors to that liquid element finally isserted itself ;- I pecked my way out of the hard shell of Baptist ogic and stood at last a full-feathered Congregational chick. And it vas in Amherst that with wide-open eyes I looked forth upon my new world of Congregational liberty. It was a triumph of heredity over environment.
It was in Amherst, too, that I came under the altogether quickening ind healthful influence of a New England College town. I was admitted to many pleasant relationships with men of learning, whose cquaintance and friendship was helpful and inspiring from first to Amherst is not of sufficient size not to feel the influence of the ast. college in all its thought and activities of whatever kind. The colonial radition has come down to us that a good minister of Boston in the arly days went down to Marblehead to preach to the fishermen, and le told them that the main business of life was religion. An old salt n commenting on the sermon the next day, remarked in a grumbling one, that the main business of life might be religion up in Boston- probably was-but in Marblehead it was fishing. The main business of Amherst is Amherst college ; and I rejoice that my first work in he Congregational pastorate was in a town that is full of academic raditions and that feels the helpful influence upon its schools and hurches of what may be called a collegiate atmosphere. As I think of the ministers with whom I daily associated aud who were among ny most lenient and appreciative hearers and cordial supporters and telpers, and of the professors, with many of whom I formed relations which were most friendly and helpful, I look back upon my stay in Amherst as a veritable sojourn in a school of the prophets ; a school n which he must be dull indeed who could not find inspiration and elp to keep his working power up to concert pitch.
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