USA > Massachusetts > Bristol County > Fall River > History, annals and sketches of the Central Church of Fall River, Massachusetts : A.D. 1842-A.D. 1905 : with portraits and views > Part 10
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My last sermon as retiring pastor of the Central Church, Fall River; was preached April 30, 1882, twelve years and six days from the day when I entered the pulpit for the first time.
The years had changed the church; had changed the location and building; the congregation had changed, oh, so much; the church membership had changed. If I remember rightly, three hundred and forty-five had come into it, and about two hundred had gone from it. But the Bible and the gospel had not changed. I preached, on that last Sabbath, from Philippians 3: 16. I said then, in closing my pastorate, " The early pangs of a decision to leave you have been
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mitigated by your generous ' Godspeed,' and by many personal remem- brances,- by the generous action of the Society last Friday evening [the gift of one thousand dollars], for which allow me, friends, one and all, to thank you. I am glad to go with the feeling that with warm hearts you will occasionally welcome me back to this pulpit, and I shall see your faces, as the faces of friends that can never cease to have peculiar ties. You will take a deep interest in my welfare, and follow me with your prayers, and you and the pastor of your choice will be the objects of my special prayer and effort. May God bless you."
These were the opening and closing sermons of the pastorate. Be- tween them was much of history.
We laid, " relaid," the foundations of this church, - literally and spiritually on a " Rock": the one " rock of foundation," the his- toric immovable granite beneath the city, that shall endure until the elements again dissolve with fervent heat: the other " Rock " was the historic, spiritual, historic because spiritual, Christ who, as Dr. Thurston said in his answer to your call, was He " who holdeth the seven stars in His right hand and walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks." The foundation stone was laid for this church in July, 1874; the first Sabbath service was held in this house in Decem- ber, 1875. Between the two dates, burdens were rolled upon us, in shrinking incomes and financial disturbances and losses, of which we did not dream when we started to build; so that really the Sabbath of farewell to the dear old church, and the Sabbath for the dedication of the new, was one of the dark times in your history, and the begin- ning of bearing burdens that well nigh crushed us for a whole decade. God be praised, even for the burdens.
I think we learned something in the school of burden-bearing, although some of you wished on that Sabbath morning, when we took our seats in the new church, that it had never been builded. You have since, however, seen new evidences of the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living; nobody can better appreciate the burden of those years for a church than a pastor; but a more loyal set of men in a church I never knew. We stood together, because we could not stand apart, and that was all there was of it - we must stand. I love this church! Who shall love if I do not? To twelve years of its most eventful history my whole heart and strength were given. Dr. Thurston used to say, " I cannot endure the thought of burying some of my people." He did not live to bury them; but those who grew up with him, or were a little in advance of him, began to knock
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at heaven's door after I came. Many of them said farewell to me, and I followed them to the grave; I received their children and grand children into the Church. Who shall know this people if I do not? I had almost said, I know them as well as they know themselves. I know their power. There have been days when it would seem to an onlooker, as if the strong individuality of this Church would tear it in sunder. These men have been, and are, accustomed to command. But give them their say; let them talk out; let them think strongly as they see strongly, until they reached conclusions, and those con- clusions I have usually found were weighty and powerful conclusions you could trust.
Why has this Church prospered? Why does it prosper? First, its foundations were laid on Christ. Creeds! I am not sure, if you made forty of them, you would get a better one than the first. Second, it had able men in its first membership. It had a start. Faults! Yes; but what church has not? Strong men have often strong faults as well as strong virtues. But set the faults of such men as Dr. Durfee, Colonel Borden, and Deacons Earl and Kilburn, and later names, in the light of heaven yonder, and all you can see is " the Lamb as the light thereof." Third, a noble leader in the formation period of the Church. Dr. Thurston was a man, a wise man. He had the nobility, the moral discernment, the conviction, the sympathy, the great heart, the magnetism, the eloquence of a leader. It takes them all to make strong churches, - and he had them all. Fourth, this Church has always had room to grow. It has moved with the great interests of the city. Fifth, it has moved with the command, "Go ye into all the world." It has loved, I hope it always will love and rest upon, the Gospel of the Son of God. So will its future be assured. God bless you and bind you to your present pastor with loving bonds!
Letter of Greeting By Rev. Eldridge Mix, D.D.
WORCESTER, MASS., November 9, 1892. FALL RIVER, MASS.
TO THE CENTRAL CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH,
Dearly Beloved,- With all my heart I give you GREETING and congratulation in view of the event you are to celebrate the coming Sabbath. FIFTY YEARS of church life! How much that signifies! It is the planting and nurture into vigorous life and growth of a little
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twig, as it were, of the one living and true Vine, which becomes in itself, in a subordinate sense of course, a vine with its own fruit- bearing branches in the person of its several members. For so, it seems to me, we are at liberty to think of any single church of Christ, who said of himself to his first disciples, "I am the true Vine, and my Father is the Husbandman."
Your growth during this childhood period of your history - for what is it but that, when you think of the centuries of existence and continuance that belong to a true church of Christ? - is something well worthy of your grateful remembrance and review. You have indeed taken deep root, not only in Christ Jesus who is your only source of life, but in the soil where you were set in the start, the com- munity of which you are an integral part. You have risen up out of it, in a beauty and grandeur even of externals, that are an abundant proof of inward life and vigor. For what is the outward but the natural expression of what is within? It was the faith of the fathers and mothers who founded the church itself, that fashioned the splen- did structure in which you worship. It was their beauty of character which gave itself expression in its becoming adorning. It was their love for the Lord himself, that lives in this memorial of it, to lead you to a like self-devotion.
Nor less has this inward spiritual life found expression in the work they wrought for others' salvation. Their missionary spirit, prompt- ing their organized and self-denying forth-going into the highways and byways of the city, to bring in the lost and outcast to sit down with them at the gospel feast here spread, has made for itself a noble record in the multitude of such persons rescued and redeemed, and inade heirs with themselves of an eternal inheritance, into which many of them have already entered. While doing this work for the Master, in behalf of those at their very doors, they did not forget to go forth also at his bidding, by their fervent prayers and liberal offerings, into all the world, " to preach the gospel to every creature."
Nor have you, their descendants, been unmindful of their good examples, as I rejoice to bear testimony from personal knowledge as your pastor for a season. You have nobly taken up the burdens they were compelled by unforeseen circumstances and by their death at last to leave upon the Church, and have lifted them off altogether. You have entered into their labors also, and have continued their evangelistic enterprises with commendable zeal.
So these Fifty Years furnish abundant reason for the greeting and congratulation, which I offer you as a pastor's tribute to your worth
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and worthiness as a church. You yourselves will, I am sure, feel called upon to record with grateful offering of praise to God, your thanks to him for the treasured past, in which so many memories of his goodness are garnered. And from this remembrance of other days, you will no doubt gather renewed strength and courage and hope for the days to come, and for the work you have yet to do.
For you of the present generation are to be makers of the future of this Church, as they who are gone were makers of that in which you so greatly rejoice. If the past has been the childhood period in the history of the Church, then you now have to do with it in its youth. That, too, is a formative period of immense significance in relation to its oncoming future. What has hitherto transpired are but the beginnings of its life and growth. The question, therefore, for you to solve, is that of forming and fixing these good beginnings into settled and permanent habits of church life and activity. May the faith and faithfulness of your fathers be the very fiber of your further growth and development! May love like theirs be the very life blood of your church life! May their zeal in the service of the Master be perpetu- ated and intensified in you!
You have a splendid opportunity for carrying on to a magnificent result the progress of this church now intrusted to your hands. Few churches in our land have a finer or fairer field for fruit-bearing service. Few are better equipped in externals. Few have greater resources at command. You are in the very heart of a great and growing popu- lation peculiarly in your reach and touch. You have a fit temple of the Lord in which to gather the multitude for his worship. God is giving into your hands an abundance of wealth for use in his service.
If, therefore, in your joy and gratitude and thanksgiving, you will but gird yourself anew with his strength, and govern all your action by his holy will, and guide your devising of plans by the finger of his providence, and above all seek to be filled with his Holy Spirit, this dear Church will, in the future, prove itself worthy of its honored past. You will, in your day and generation, conduct it safely through its youth to a maturity of power, of stability, and of permanence, which shall insure centuries, it may be, of vigorous life, and ever- growing fruitfulness.
Wishing you great joy and gladness in your anniversary service, I am,
Very sincerely yours in the fellowship of Christ,
ELDRIDGE MIX.
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Poem - "Memories" By Mary L. Whelpley Towle
Tho' long an exile from the house which seemed to me God given, Tho' from its feasts and sacraments my life has long been riven, I now return in memory, responsive to your greeting, To worship in your sacred courts, the while our spirits mecting.
The fervor of those days long gone, when at your altar kneeling Comes back with retrospective joy, the old-time love revealing. But in your ranks I do not see the old-time faces beaming, Else would my heart pour forth its joy, unfettered by this seeming.
Where are the saintly ones I knew, whose footsteps did not falter? With whom I knelt low at His feet, whose love became our altar? What of the young and strong, whose lips oft touched as if by fire, Became responsive to the hands which moved the sacred lyre?
Oh! where are they with whom I oft quaffed at the living fountain? With whom, transfigured, I have knelt upon the sacred mountain? While fain to catch once more the sight of faces which I knew, A long procession seems to pass before me in review!
Sweet spirits, beautiful on earth, more beautiful up there! We question not how fair may be the garments which you wear, Knowing that in His likeness you beheld the day of dawning, And that, when we have overcome, we'll meet you in the morning.
NAPA, CALIFORNIA, October 30, 1892.
Letters from friends and former members were received and read in whole or in part: from M. Elizabeth Gardner, a former original member, now of Lyons, Iowa; Samuel B. Hussey, a member joining March 4, 1843, and now living in Meriden, Conn., in the eighty-eighth year of his age; Rev. William N. T. Dean, pastor of the church in Oxford, Mass .; Rev. Alexander McKenzie, D.D., and others.
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Address of Rev. William J. Batt at the Semi-Centennial of the Central Church, November 13, 1902
Brother Pastors, Brother Chairman, Members of the Committee of Arrangements, and Friends, - Although under very great obligation for the privilege of attending this happy and sacred Festival, and for the honor of participating in it, I am nevertheless embarrassed in taking my place on the program. I came here under the impression that the addresses of the final service of the day were to be somewhat informal and familiar.
We have had the finished and elaborate discourse of the morning by our pastor, and this afternoon the faithful and touching histori- cal paper, so beautifully read, as well as ably prepared, and the ex- quisite poem by Miss Holmes, which was sufficient of itself to give character to the service, and the other reports and papers put together with great research and painstaking. And now, with some con- sternation, I am persuaded by various signs which have attracted my attention since I came into the pulpit, that the same elaborate preparation has been made for this evening. But while I have nothing written, I am very grateful for at least this, that my heart still treas- ures, as it always will, not a few of the rich memories of the earlier years in the history of this dear Church.
A large number of former members of this congregation have been unable to come to this Jubilee for various reasons. Although in spirit they are here, they are not here in person. And I have thought that I could do no better, having the privilege which they would gladly have embraced if they could, than to bear a few words of testimony for certain classes of those who have been much in my mind to-day.
And first, I would like to speak on behalf of the boys who may be said in a general way to have found their start in life in this congrega- tion some forty years ago. No doubt the people here now are in every way worthy of their predecessors, but I can testify personally to the former days, and I wish to say that it was especially characteris- tic of the leading people in this Church, at that time, that they took particular interest in the boys and the young men of the congregation. It would perhaps be somewhat hazardous to call names, for where would the catalogue end; but you will permit me to mention, for instance, those two men who were always in their places both morn- ing and afternoon, and whom everybody knew as our trusted leaders. There was Col. Richard Borden, great hearted and benevolent. He
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was not a man of gush, it is true, and yet whenever a boy had gone to him with an errand that commended itself to him, how his face was illumined with light and feeling! What a smile was his! . And what a great warmth came into his expression at such a time!
It was no doubt a little thing for Dr. Durfee to take a boy into his sleigh and give him a bit of a ride, possibly the only one he would have that winter; but when he was driving by with his beautiful horse and beautiful sleigh and told the group of little fellows on the side- walk to get in, it was a piece of heaven to us. How the horse flew! And what a joy there would be in our hearts, when by and by, landed not too far off to find our way home again, we returned to tell the exciting story! This may have been a little thing for him, but the kindness of a little thing of a moment may give a boy a stimulus for a long season.
The reception he sometimes made for us at his mansion in the summer time; how delightful it was! how magnificent his parlors seemed to us! That mansion to this day is for me the type of a beautiful palace, with which, after all these years, I involuntarily compare every costly house I see. I visited Chicago and Minneapolis but a few days since, and was struck by the diversity and modern beauty of their architecture. But even in Lincoln Park, looking upon the residence of Mr. Potter Palmer, my mind involuntarily said, " It is not so pretty as the doctor's; but of course they could not expect that." A score of elaborate structures now stand upon his grounds, but, all together, they cannot replace the old-time beauty of the man- sion that was taken down.
And those grapes he brought in for us, out of his fairy hot-house. A grape Now would need to be as large as the moon Looks, in order to SEEM as large as those seemed to us. And oh, what an exquisite color! and they were so luscious that we could only wonder why such a flavor could not last longer.
One day, in the large vestry of the old Central Church, somebody told a boy that he had been chosen assistant librarian. Now, that may seem to you a very small thing. I do not know how our young governor [Wm. E. Russell] felt after the very remarkable results of the balloting, the other day; but I doubt very much. whether he could have been more elated than that boy was, when the surprise dawned upon him that he had been made assistant librarian in the Central Church. And if all the archives of this ancient Commonwealth were opened at once, and all the treasures of Massachusetts from Plymouth Rock to the present time had been shown to the governor, I doubt if
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he could have been more interested than that boy was, as he took his key and opened the library, still with some sense of awe as if he were searching things too great for him, and examined the impressive con- tents of that little apartment, all of which was hid under the west side of the vestry desk.
These things seem to be very small, I repeat; but I know that the kindness that was behind them, the care of the older people for the boys, their christian and most exemplary appreciation of whatever they could find in the boys, had something to do with whatever those boys were able to accomplish afterwards. And in the name of those boys and young men, and as one of the least and humblest of them all, I want to return thanks to-day on their behalf to this dear Church.
Now, Mr. Chairman, please let me allude again to a particular class. I refer to the young people who began their religious life here in those days. For them, also, I would bring in a word of thanksgiving. What this Church was, and its dear pastor and working members of forty years ago, to those who might be called young christians,- certainly they were immature enough,- what this Church was to them, I cannot adequately tell. I have brought with me this evening this little book,- " Clarke's Scripture Promises." That book has been among my treasures now forty years. Wherever I have been and whatever work I have been doing, that little book has been in my library or upon my study table under my hand. I turn with deep feeling to this fly-leaf, and read here the handwriting of the giver ; his name is not here; he did not write it on the leaf; he did not need to; he has written it on our hearts and lives. But he wrote my name here and added "From his Sabbath-school teacher, March, 1852." As I recollect, the other boys of the class all received one at the same time. Dear Mr. Hale Remington died in his prime. He left a strong impress upon this city. He was a very busy man. I sometimes won- der how such a man as he, had patience to keep at the work of teaching a class of boys, year after year. But I know this also, that what he did of religious work, as the Lord sees, may have been the most fruit- ful part of all his honored life. A great many of us, if we could all speak here to-night, would join together in our tributes to this be- loved man.
And now, as I come to say a word about Mr. Thurston, my feelings overwhelm me. Mr. Thurston was honored with the Doctorate [of Divinity] for many years, but in the early part of his life here, the more familiar name for him was Mr. Thurston. Mr. Thurston brought religious truth down to the comprehension of boys in a wonderful
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way. I was born into the old "Stone Church," and I remember dis- tinctly the little infant schoolroom there. The comparative smallness of its floor-room made its height seem to us little folks almost oppres- sive. I remember the Scripture mottoes on the plainest kind of cardboard, hung up far beyond reach on those lofty walls, yellow with age. I remember distinctly the indescribable and almost awful man- ner of Dr. Fowler, as he used to come into that room to see that everything was going right. Everything had to be right in his church, for he was a born bishop, if ever there was one.
Our idea of religion was very crude. I remember, one morning, Mr. Robert Remington - was there ever another man just like dear Robert K. Remington? Robert, then living in my father's family, coming in to breakfast one morning before going to the store, and saying within my hearing, that a certain girl belonging in his set, of a most honored name, and whom I have seen in this house to-day, had the evening before " confessed her sins." That was the expression used at that time, where we might now say "risen for prayers," or " gone to the inquiry room." I had not yet risen from bed. But as I heard the great news through the partly opened door, I knew the substance of its meaning, and immediately felt that I, too, wanted to be a christian. So I turned my face toward the darker wall (the window of the room looked westward, down upon Deacon David Anthony's yard) and tried to confess my sins. I named over all I could think of before the Lord. The list was not very long; and yet, the shortness of the catalogue was my grief, for I knew that for every one I had remembered, there must be a multitude that I had forgotten. So I hoped that God would have mercy upon a little boy who could not remember how many wrong things he had committed, and gave up the effort. But I have thought since, that if I ever chose the path to the Promised Land, it was that morning. I was at that time in the Episcopal Sabbath school. But when afterwards that church was temporarily closed, and I commenced coming to the "Central," although I had the best of homes and the best of parents, I was yet in need of instruction.
How well I remember the evening of Mr. Thurston's installation. My father brought me down with him through the storm, after closing his store late, and we took seats at the rear end of the church, on the west side of the west center aisle. I see Mr. Thurston now, as he stood up in some part of the exercise on our side of the pulpit, perhaps to receive the charge to the pastor, or for some such part of the service. He was always careful of his appearance in the pulpit. He looked finely that night. His hair was black, and his eyes were very bright. He
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wore a dress coat. I see now the fullness of it at the waist. He stood there self-contained, perfectly composed; and yet, beneath the modesty of his quiet demeanor, there was something in his bearing that expressed the fact that he knew he was coming to Fall River, and to the Central Church, in the power of the Lord God Almighty.
The preacher in his sermons brought the gospel within the compre- hension of boys. I want to say that of him to-night, as a matter of personal testimony. In the summer of the year 1849, he preached a sermon on the words "There they crucified him." If his sermons are preserved, that sermon no doubt will be found now, with the entry upon it, preached in the Central Church at that time, -the place of the crucifixion, the crucifiers, the crucifying, the crucified. One of the boys was a clerk on South Main Street, a few months that summer, and all that week he went around repeating that discourse to himself.
What Mr. Thurston was in time of revival (and he believed in continuous revivals and in special revivals both), those who remember him well know. What wonderful scenes that dear old vestry, with its iron pillars and lamps clamped upon them, often witnessed! Mr. Thurston did his revival work by himself very largely; he sometimes preached almost every night in the week, and his preaching, as I remember it, was commonly written preaching. I suppose now that he must have been very tired. But it never occurred to me then that he could be. I never saw anything that looked like it. How tender, and how unspeakably solemn his appeals were! At the close of those meetings he would invite any who wished to do so, to retire for personal conversation to his study, which opened from the north- east corner of the vestry. Sometimes that room was full of persons standing all around its circumference, while perhaps a few of the older ones might occupy the few seats with which the room was furnished. Mr. Thurston went around and kindly spoke a helpful and solemn and very gracious word to every one. I think the beautiful and apprecia- tive sketch of him, read this afternoon, did not speak particularly of what he was in the inquiry room. Possibly those who wrote it did not know. They could not have known, unless they had been there. But of all the remarkable things about this man, I think one of the most interesting was his aptness, his earnestness, and his power in the inquiry room.
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