USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > Historical sketches of the West Parish church, Andover, Massachusetts, 1906 > Part 4
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town, where most good could be rendered and the best fruit garnered. We can never cease to be thankful for Brechin Hall, for the Soldiers' Memorial Hall and Library, for Abbot Academy and for his own last gift of twenty thousand dollars to Phillips Academy.
And yet the service he rendered to this church out- weighs in our hearts, today, all these gifts of great mun- ificence. It was his daily life among you ; his humble walk, his simple piety, his perfect faith, his unfaltering trust, his abiding loyalty to the truth he loved, and his unswerving fidelity in all that pertained to the Gospel of his Lord and Savior. This it was that lent a charm to his life and gives a fragrance to his memory. His God was his mother's God and the old Scottish theology passed through her life into his as iron into the blood. I have in my possession, as a treasured keepsake, the Bible won by a successful examination before him in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. It was the way he took, year by year, to get the Bible and the Bible doctrines into our young minds and the sweetness of them into our hearts. With all the splendid equipment of this church in its separation from the South, it could certainly not have been sustained through these seventy years, without the faithful and generous support of himself and those who have loyally followed in his footsteps.
That may well be said of him which Professor Park once said of his brother : " He is in no small sense a great man who can make a large fortune. He is a greater man, however, who can make a fortune and keep it. But greatest of all is the man who can make a for- tune and keep a fortune and give a fortune away." He was deacon in this church lacking two years of half a century and no act of his I am sure was ever known to cast a shadow of reproach upon his sacred office. From the scene of his labors and his trials ; from the field of his struggles and his triumphs; from the charmed home circle in the midst of dear ones and from surroundings
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that his own fine taste had made all-beautiful, he went up to meet his Savior and the loved ones gone before. It may well be the prayer of this church he loved so well, that in the day of final reunion, the desire of his heart may be gratified, and that the large family he gave to earth may be given to him again in heaven an unbroken circle, so to dwell in the joy and the blessedness of the eternal year. I do not forget that this church has sent into the field three ministers, who bear loving testimony to the faithful nature of this Christian home.
Rev. George Mooar, D. D., upon whose head when a lad Dr. Jackson laid his hand in baptism, was for a term of years the faithful and successful pastor of the South church. Upon the organization of the First Congrega- tional Church of Oakland, California, he became its pastor, where he wrought a glorious work for God, until called to the Pacific Theological Seminary where he has filled the chairs of Church History and Systematic Theol- ogy for six and twenty years. He is one of the pro- foundest minds on the Pacific Coast. I look up to him as to a father in the Lord, because of his faithful in- struction in the class-room and for the encouraging at- tention with which he has followed my poor ministry. This West Parish church is preaching the Gospel through him and them who have come under his instruction, to the dwellers in Africa and China, in Mexico and on the mountain frontiers of California and Oregon.
Rev. James G. Merrill, the son of our former pastor, for a goodly term of years was pastor of a church in Davenport, Iowa, filling another important charge in St. Louis with great acceptance until called to Portland, Maine. Like his beloved father, he has had great influ- ence with the young and his sermons to children are possibly, not excelled by any preacher.
Your historian, the third and last of your boys to enter the ministry was for nearly seven years pastor of the First church, the old Pioneer church of Sacramento, California ; he was for three years over the First Church.
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As we look back this morning across the years we are bound to confess that God has not been in all our thoughts. But he has been in some of them. If I am not surprised at the grand outline of the "father of his country " as I see him standing the first head of this American nation, it is because I have seen him on his knees in the snow at Valley Forge and I know the fine- ness of the steel that God has tempered.
If I am not surprised when the emancipation proclama- tion sets free our dusky millions, it is because I know that in the solitude of his chamber, when two valiant armies were locked in deadly struggle, the martyr Lincoln promised God upon his knees that if He would give us victory he would let the enslaved go free. If I do not wonder that a handful of farmers and tradesmen met and overmastered the trained hosts of England, it is because I see in vision the little Mayflower riding at her anchor all that first Sabbath day hard by the welcome shore, while the little Pilgrim band, too true to God to violate his sacred day by landing, sing praises and offer prayer to Him who has brought them safely across the deep. Some of this stern integrity we have dropped out of our nation's life - some evils we are introducing that should fill us with alarm. Let us be wise in time. The rivulet upon the mountain side we may conduct into any valley of our desire ; but we shall not dam Niagara as it rushes to its seething plunge nor say to the ocean, thus far only shalt thou come and here shall thy proud waves be stayed. There is much of the old New England past that I would not bring back if I could. But out of that stern discipline ; out of that blessed home life came char- acter firm as adamant and integrity true as steel. I am glad that I was born into a New England home. I am glad that it was a West Parish home. My heart is glad this hour as I look out over these scenes of my childhood days. I love the old stone church and the little school- house yonder across the green.
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I am glad that after so many years upon the Pacific Coast you have let me come to this cherished spot and speak these words to turn your thoughts to past and future. I love these friends and townspeople gathered here. Down yonder across the fields is the old farmhouse where my eyes first opened on the light of day. Every foot of those ancestral acres is dear to me. But let me leave this word with you before I go. If I were to take you to that home that I love so well and were to set apart one spot as above all others hallowed, it would be the little chamber where I was wont to close my eyes in sleep in childish innocence. And could I but lie down, after these many years of absence, within that little room, I think I still should strain my ears to catch the creaking of a door, the soft rustle of a woman's garments and the liquid murmur of a mother's voice as she kneels beside the bed and asks God's blessing on her boy. Ah, mothers of New England homes, you little know what destinies of budding states and springing empires you hold within your arms; what impress your evening prayers are making on the lives of your daughters and your sons ; how the rustle of those robes and the murmur of those prayers will come back to them in after years like the rustling of angel pinions to bear their thoughts away to heaven.
" O State prayer-founded, never hung Such choice upon a people's tongue, Such power to bless or ban As that which makes thy whisper fate, For which on thee the centuries wait And destinies of man.
" Then let thy virtue match the crime, Rise to a level with the time ; And if a son of thine Betray or tempt thee ; Brutus-like For father-land and freedom strike, As Justice gives the sign.
" And unto thee in freedom's hour Of sorest need ; God gives the power To ruin or to save, To wound or heal: to blight or bless With fertile field or wilderness ; A free home or a grave."
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The Ministry of the Reu. James Ti. Merrill By Rev. JAMES G. MERRILL
Y father came to West Parish in the prime of his manhood. He was in his forty-second year. It was his purpose to remain pastor of the church only so long as he could do the full work of the ministry. During his entire professional life of nearly forty years he had the handicap of ill health but so strong was his moral pur- pose, so tender his conscience, so thoroughly did he have himself in hand that he accomplished more than most ministers with robust health. One fact illustrates this. When he laid down his work he had in his possess- ion several sermons that he had never preached. His fear that his chronic ailment might at any time become acute and thus unfit him for adequate preparation for his Sunday services led him to keep in advance discourses that would stand him in good stead in such an exigency.
Father's preparation for his work in West Parish was of a high order. As a college student he ranked among the best in his class, few surpassed him in the Theologi- cal Seminary. He had had the advantage which always comes to a minister of having taught school. He had had a successful pastorate of seventeen years to close which cost both people and pastor a great anguish. Add to these a minister's wife of rare gifts and attainments a very help-meet to her husband and fortunate indeed was West Parish in securing as pastor one whom Dr. Jackson recommended to them and whom he strongly endorsed.
He came to a model country parish. He could have searched in vain far and wide without finding a people equally to his mind with that of West Parish in the fifties, a large and regular congregation, a devout and highly es-
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teemed church membership, an intelligent, self-respecting company of farmers' families with a manufacturer and a few of his employees and their households made the con- stituency of the Parish well nigh ideal of its kind.
I can see the men who came into church, gentlemen of the old school, they regarded it the proper thing to go to God's house with a decorum that belonged alone to the sanctuary and with an attention to matters of attire quite absent from many rural communities today. The women also were of a high order, not club women, nor fond of society, but well informed and especially so in the truths of God's word. For many years the students of the Sem- inary had taught classes in the Sunday school, and as a result the large number of women who had met from Sunday to Sunday these bright young men eager to im- part the teachings of the brilliant corps of Professors then upon Andover Hill became remarkably apt in bibli- cal lore.
With such characteristics in pastor and people it is not to be wondered at that a happy and prosperous twenty- three years was the fruit of the union begun May first, 1856.
A few of the salient points of these years merit at- tention.
During the period covering this pastorate there was a decided improvement in the property of West Parish. My waggish uncle who used to spend some of his leisure time with us, much of it in the graveyard, used to affirm that when the meeting house was builded a premium was paid to the architect who should present the ugliest possible plan for a church. The tower that surmounted the structure in such a way as to make both it and the church ill-proportioned was a constant eye-sore. Then too the interior of the building was disfigured by stove- pipes running through the entire length of the room and ornamented with tin receptacles that caught the creosote induced by this length of pipe and what a purgatory was
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the front entry with its stoves made red-hot with blazing pine and maple. The side galleries and old-timed win- dows, the straight-backed pews into which the families locked themselves during service, the pulpit an expensive compartment which ·father entered closing the door behind him, these all had a horror of esthetic lines. ' The whole structure reflected the temper of the times when the artistic was well nigh sinful and utility was the only object to keep in view.
The present graceful spire has always seemed to me an inspiration. I do not know who conceived its fine pro- portions, but as it reaches heavenward, to a distance that makes it visible from the different openings of the rural drives about, it is ever a thing of beauty, the projection upon which it stands has made the whole structure ex- cellent in its proportions, while the interior of the church never fails to be admired.
It was during the same pastorate that the vestry was builded. When father came to the parish the prayer- meetings were held in the school house, the front seats in which had no attraction to any who had attained their growth of limbs while its size and proportions defied all the principles which make a room an element of success in a prayer-meeting. The horse-shed question was an abiding problem. Its successful solution involved so .many perplexities that it only passed through the first stages during father's time, subsequent movements mak- ing necessary an appeal to the General Court until the present capital adjustment of the whole matter had been reached. I have often wondered at the grace which pastor and people must have had to endure the wretched deformity of the dilapidated weather-beaten sheds over against the nicely kept church, vestry, and parsonage, such a sight in the region in which I now live would not be so disturbing, to thrifty farmers who kept their prop- erty in the best of trim it must have seemed an insult to heaven.
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Other matters interested the parson. Trees were planted and in the time of dry weather watered as the parson's boys can testify but the triangle near the church with its vigorous elms and maples is an abundant reward for all the labor bestowed.
As a preacher father's highest aim was to do his people good in the house of the Master. He regarded it a sin to preach a great sermon for the sake of its greatness in a homiletical · sense. I doubt whether any of his people knew his real mental grasp, so rarely did he regard it right to put in evidence his scholarship or his literary at- tainments. He spent all his time and strength in the effort to lead the flock away from sin and into the paths of piety and virtue. His pulpit prayers were remarkable. Their fervor and spiritual up-lift are a tradition and blessed memory in the parish today. Members of other churches where he preached on exchange have remarked the same to me. They were the fruit of secret and family prayer of a life marked by close communion with God.
The Prayer meeting was a special delight to my father. He made careful preparation for it. He sought all pos- sible allies especially in the way of music of which he was very fond and in which he was quite adept. There he had great advantage. The West Parish choir in the early days of his ministry was notable, with its violin, cello and flute and the rich voices of its sweet singers, a few of whom still survive, nearly all of them earnest Christians, who were of vast assistance not only in the stately service of the sanctuary but the less formal prayer meeting.
He believed thoroughly in the value of the prayer meetings as a source of spiritual and intellectual growth. Many a young man in West Parish has received a train- ing in the prayer-meeting equal to that which many ac- quire in an academic course. I remember well my father's joy as he told me of an address which one of his deacons made in Tremont Temple, remarking at the
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time that he gained his facility in public speaking at the West Parish prayer-meeting.
Father believed in revivals. Nothing so cheered his heart as the signs of approaching religious interest. His whole being was aroused when there began to be con- versions. No one ever had heard him preach his best who had not listened to him in the time of a spiritual out- pouring. Some of you recall the great revival in Frye village and the part he took in that, a revival that reached men of marked intellectual gifts, who had previously boasted of their infidelity and atheism. The rolls of the church will show accessions which indicate the fact that there were several times of refreshing during his pastorate.
Father believed in Missions. He cultivated the spirit of giving among his people, he practiced it himself. Few people in those days knew more thoroughly the claims of our mission fields and few churches gave more in pro- portion to their financial ability.
Pastoral work was his delight. To know the people in their homes was his joy. To carry their burdens, share their anxieties, enter into their hopes and aspirations, to be ready at their summons to lend a hand and commend their cause to the Father of us all was his constant aim.
He was not content to do merely the work of the min- ister of the parish. As opportunity offered he served his town as a member of the School Committee and as Trus- tee of Punchard Free School, in whose prosperity he took a profound interest. He believed, moreover, in the wider fellowship which was represented by the association and conference to which West Parish and its minister be- longed. Rarely was he absent from these gatherings, and it was a matter of principle with him to do his part in sustaining them.
During the early part of the ministry that I am consid- ering, the times were serious to an extent that the young people of this audience can hardly realize. The great
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anti-slavery debate was culminating in the attempt to elect a President who should stand for human liberty. The Fremont campaign occurred the first year of father's pastorate. Then came the years that led up to the election of Abraham Lincoln. These were followed by the awful civil conflict that made vacant many a chair in the West Parish, the parsonage had its representative in the army, two of the deacons sent forth their boys, the pulpit and the prayer-meeting had no uncertain ring, the cause of the slave was valiantly championed, the duty of the patriot was stoutly told. There is a tradition that so strenuous was the preaching that one or two auditors stalked out of the meeting-house, saying that they would never enter its doors until they were carried in in their coffins. The prayers of the sanctuary seemed like an echo from the days of the old patriot prophets who carried night and day the burdens of their native land.
It was worth everything to have lived and wrought at such a time. No matter how lowly one's life it was counted for or against a vital national issue. To live a self-centred life was well nigh impossible. To shape public opinion fell largely into the hands of the pulpit. To free a race of slaves and save the republic from dis- memberment was in no light degree the mission of the clergy of the North. West Parish had at that time in the sacred desk one who was abreast of his times, made a conscience of his patriotism, who believed that America freed from slavery and secession was the high goal for the patriot and Christian to attain.
And now the time had come to decide the question whether father should lay down or continue the work which he had faithfully performed for twenty-three and one-half years.
Three courses lay before him. One to remain a year and one-half longer and thus round out a quarter of a century of service. This would have been the course which a justifiable sentiment would have dictated. A
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second course was to remain for an indefinite period, so long as he was able to preach at all and do a minimum of parish work. Justice seemed on the side of a decision of this sort. He had given the very best years of his life to the Parish ; it would seem no more than right that the people should refuse to cast him off in his old age, should on the other hand abide in patience under such ministrations as in his declining years he could render them. A third course was to resign at once and bid the parish seek a minister who was in the fullness of his strength.
He left the decision of the matter to me after a full and frank stating of the case.
The course to pursue seemed clear. It was not an hour for sentiment. The physical weakness, although unattended with mental or spiritual decline, was an evidence that even a year and a half of work such as his conscience would compel him to do would be done at the risk of confirmed invalidism on his part and abridged service of the parish. It would afford an opportunity for any one who had not known him in his best days to criticise him as he then was and look upon him as an in- cumbrance rather than an inspiration. The parish, too, had been declining, the men and women who had wrought with him had died, their farms and estates had passed in most instances into the hands of an alien population, congregations had diminished, and financial strength had waned. In the face of such conditions it did not seem best to try to fill out the quarter of a century.
The same reasons decided against a life term of the place. I have no doubt that had father decided to end his days as minister of the parish the large majority of the parish would have stood loyally by him to the end. But he had seen too many instances of men remaining so long as by their last years to undo all that they had done in their best years. He determined to do that which he be- lieved to be for the best interests of the parish and the
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kingdom of heaven, leaving out of account the personal equation in the matter. He had faith to believe that if he did his duty his Father in Heaven would care for him. A faith that was amply rewarded, God having put it into the hearts of two of his parishioners to purchase a home which he and his widow have occupied free of rent for twenty years, and raising up from them other friends and relatives who have enabled them to live in comfort until this day.
By reaching the decision that he did, father closed his ministry with the love and good will of all, and, although he was no longer pastor and moved away from the parish that he might not embarrass a successor in his work, there never was an hour until the day of his death when he forgot the people whom he had so long loved and served. And when the time came for him to die, those who had loved him as their pastor and friend bore his frail body to its last resting place in a choice location in yonder cemetery where it lies among those who had been his co-laborers and friends, many of whom he met when he crossed the river, many more of whom have followed him there. A few of us still abide of those whose lives he so greatly moulded, awaiting the hour when our work is done to go and be with him, and, more than all, with the Master who enabled him to fight the good fight and to finish his course, and who has already permitted him for fifteen years and more to enjoy his reward in the city of gold where sickness and death are unknown and the blessed Master ever dwells.
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A Reminiscence of Orn Happy Years in the West Harish
By Rev. FREDERICK W. GREENE
Phil. III : I .- " I thank my God upon my remembrance of you." ATHEN your pastor wrote me in the summer that you wanted me to make an address at this anniversary reminiscent of my pastorate, I was quite in despair. For I never acquired the "journal habit". As I had no journal, and had as an additional handicap, a very poor memory, I feared that my side of the anniversary would fall flat. But then it occurred to me that of course you did not want a history of the parish during my ten years among you. For you had much better material at hand for that than I could have, to say nothing of men and women fully able to write of it from a much less prejudiced standpoint.
So I concluded that what you really wanted was a little glimse into my thought and heart, that you might see what impressions our ten happy years of fellowship had left there. This I thought my memory was capable of for its specialty is ideas and emotions and though absolutely untrustworthy as to words, dates and figures, it has always served me well in this way. And in what I have to say I shall take the liberty of using Matthew's method of grouping together similar ideas rather than Mark's more direct chronological arrangement. Or, per- haps, I had better say, my arrangement of material will be more like that of Dr. Selah Merrill's lecture upon one hundred things about Jerusalem, going from one group of associated ideas to that standing next to it on the stage of my memory. And I regret that I shall have to use so frequently the personal pronoun in what I have
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to say, for it always carries with it the impression of egotism. But this seems to be a necessary accompani- ment of the autobiographic method, and only the other day I heard some one say of that almost perfect bit of recent autobiography, " The Making of an American " by Jacob Riis, " what a naive exhibition of supreme self- conceit ".
But there are some things I will not deal with, viz : the question of growth as measured by numbers on the roll of membership. Or figures in columns of benevolences. These things have some meaning but they are usually over-estimated. Enlarged membership does not always mean spiritual growth, nor do large benevolences always stand for the development of the church in the spirit of the Master. If I could count the noble motives awakened or the higher aspirations suggested in a few Christian hearts, it would be a better measure of our real growth. For any spiritual gift which I was able to impart for your establishment was quite as much the result of that which you inspired in me as we went in and out together before God, as of any natural ability, and the blessing I received was far greater than I gave.
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