USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Somerville > History of the First Universalist Church in Somerville, Mass., illustrated : a souvenir of the fiftieth anniversary, celebrated February 15-21, 1904 > Part 3
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There are two ways by which we can most thoroughly appreciate our privileges and blessings. There may be others, but two are essential to that appreciation. One is by being deprived of them, according to the poet's line, "Blessings brighten as they take their flight."
It is a sort of paradox, perhaps, to say we sometimes live too near our friends really to know and appreciate them; when they are gone we know them better. A mountain cannot be seen in its magnificent proportions by standing at its base. It needs the perspective. So our blessings often need this perspective in order that they may be more fully compreliended and appreciated when they go or are taken from us. That is one way. The other way by which we come more thoroughly to know and appreciate these blessings is by earning them, and especially if we sacrifice and perhaps suffer in the attainment.
Inherited wealth is not so thoroughly appreciated by those who come into its possession as by those who earn it by hard toil and persistent endeavor.
Now, friends, you and I and the world have come into the possession of a great inheritance, one of the richest ever bestowed upon the race. It is the inheritance of our Universalist faith. No one who does not read the story of how it came into existence as our organized church, can fully appreciate what a blessing it has been to the human mind and heart. But, like all great move-
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ments and reforms-and certainly this is one of them- it came not but through that much tribulation by which people are enabled to enter the kingdom of God.
The blood of the martyrs has ever been the seed of the church, and the seed of great reforms. Garrison, as an abolitionist, was led through the streets of Boston with a halter about his neck. Lovejoy was shot. The Wesleys were mobbed, as Methodists. Massachusetts banished Roger Williams the Baptist, and we flogged and hung the Quakers.
Our fathers and mothers also suffered from this intense prejudice, bitter persecution, and absolute hatred because they believed in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men.
My memory goes back to something of this attitude of the public, for I was born and brought up in my father's home, a Universalist clergyman of the earlier years of our history, and as a boy I heard it talked about.
And those of the younger ministry and younger lay- men know but little, only as they have read, of the almost hand-to-hand fight in which our fathers were engaged. They toiled, and we have entered into their labors. Every inch of ground had to be persistently disputed, and then to keep it the soldiers of the great salvation had to stand upon the field with their armor on, and their spiritual weapons sharpened for the conflict.
Those were days of controversy, and sometimes of. even fierce dispute. That to uproot the errors of men should have been sometimes construed into personal at- tacks, and that this should have drawn upon them the ill-will and the slanders of the bigots, that they writhed under the severe castigation, and sought in the retalia- tion of personal abuse what they could not answer by argument and reason cannot be thought strange by those familiar with the religious history of the world. It needed just such stalwart blows as were struck by those of the earlier time of our church. It needed such men
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as would not move timidly to their work, or carefully measure the rod with which the folly, and the bigotry, and the almost unscrupulous opposition was chastised. It needed just such sturdy pioneers to go into the wilder- ness and hew down the forests, and make plain a high- way for the Lord. It needed just such men to clear the fields, and put in the breaking-up plow, beam deep, and tear out the roots, and turn up the furrows to the warm sunshine, in order that others might follow and harrow and sow, and weed and reap, and gather the harvest into garners. It needed the work of pulling down and laying the foundations that others might build thereupon, that in after years the sound of the hammer might be heard in the construction and rearing our holy temple unto the Lord.
You young people of to-day are living when the rough corners of the old theology against which they so manfully battled have been broken off, and its harsher features softened.
There is one thing you may be assured of, that it re- quired no little courage in those early days of our church to face this opposition and this social and religious ostracism.
In one respect there has been quite a revolution in the habits of men and women. Then few women dared to venture into the assembly where there was Universalist preaching. It is the men who more largely keep away" from church-going to-day, and the women who attend.
But this timidity was not entirely confined to the women. Many men fought shy. Let me tell you of an instance that occurred a little beyond my remem- brance in the beginnings of our society in Cambridge- port, where I ministered for fourteen or fifteen years.
Hosea Ballou and others perhaps who were settled in Boston would go out for an evening service to Cam- bridgeport, where service was held in the schoolhouse. It is a fact that it was a matter of curiosity, as well as fear,
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that took possession of some people. They got the idea that there was a sort of performance indulged in. And people would gather on the outside of the building and creep up and peek in at the windows.
One Monday morning, after there had been a service, one of these curious and timid ones met one of our people. "What sort of a play did you have last night?" he inquired. "Play?" said our good Deacon Coolidge. "Play! Oh, yes, I think it was the play of 'The Forty Thieves,' for I saw about that number looking in at the windows."
I want to remind you, friends, of the priceless inherit- ance you possess in the faith for which this church stands,-a faith that has done more in the last century and in these last fifty years to vindicate the ways of God to man than any other ; a faith to which all the Christian churches are indebted for the broadening and sweetening of their faiths until it would shock the sense of justice to hear in any Protestant church the old doctrine of divine vengeance preached, that frightful nightmare that held human souls in the bondage of fear, and drove sen- sitive men and women into despair, and even to insanity -the thought that God had ordained and foreordained that the greater portion of mankind should be doomed to a hell of literal fire and brimstone forever and ever. What a change has been wrought since the earlier years of our church, when that hydra-headed dragon was very much in evidence. Yes, in the time of my earlier ministry it had not ceased to seek whom it might devour. And didn't we put up a good fight in those earlier years against such horrible thoughts about God? And didn't we enjoy it, too, as much as the Rough Riders enjoyed . the battle of San Juan Hill, when it is said the leader called out to the soldiers as they were going into battle, "Give them hell, boys!" We didn't say that ; it was the other fellows who said that. We said, "We're going to knock hell out of you," and we proceeded to do it.
Be glad and rejoice that you belong to a church that
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has had a providential mission assigned it, and is fulfill- ing that mission, and working its sweet way into hearts, and homes, and churches, and governments, and the thrill of the divine faith in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and in the assurance that life and death God's mercy underlies, is being felt, and is bearing fruit in all the land. It has broadened the thought of God and of human destiny with the process of the suns. It is the only faith that sets forth a divine government that really governs and triumphantly succeeds. A faith that was once despised and held in disrepute even fifty years ago is welcomed to-day by so many hopeful and loving hearts. And this is the story our church is telling to the Christian world :-
"Once in a golden hour I cast to earth a seed, Up there came a flower, the people said a weed; To and fro they went thro' my garden bower, And muttering discontent, cursed me and my flower. Then it grew so tall, it wore a crown of light, And thieves from over the wall stole the seed at night. They carried it far and wide by every town and tower, Till the people cried, 'Splendid is the flower!' Read my little fable,-he who runs may read, Most can grow the flowers now, for all have got the seed."
And we, you who have wrought in this church are so glad now that in such abundant measure we have been planting the seeds and others are plucking the flowers.
And now, friends, as you look back over the fifty years of the history of this church in this city, what forms you might summon of those who have worked here and loved and sacrificed. What a throng gathers here to-night! Fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, little children whom you laid away with the flowers, pastors whose lips were touched with divine fire. If you will, they may be a part of this gathering, and join in this service, and lend added meaning to this semi- centennial celebration.
J. WALTER SANBORN
C.A. KIRKPATRICK
JOHN F. NICKERSON
ARTHUR WGLINES
C.
IRVING SMITH
A.A.WYMAN
THE DEACONS - 1904
ANNIVERSARY SERMON " The Vitality of Religion "
Acts xix .: 20: "So mightily grew the word of the Lord, and prevailed."
In trying to measure the real progress of any particu- lar period, the last and greatest question that may be asked will require that an exhibit be made of the growth of the age along the lines of the immaterial, the intel- lectual, the spiritual. The things of earth that the world holds most precious, lands, houses, inventions, machin- eries, gold, silver, and all the rest, must of course be taken into the account, but those possessions which moth and rust corrupt and destroy cannot rightly be regarded as the highest glory of the time, or as the surest and saf- est signs of the forward movement of humanity.
Looking, then, over this half-century of life that our church in this city has enjoyed, looking back over the larger history of our country and of the race during this wonderful period, the great questions to be asked are such as these: What has been the fortune of religion? To what extent has it prospered? Has faith advanced or receded? Have the noblest instincts of the heart widened and deepened? Do men believe more earnestly in the higher and finer ideals of society and of the spirit? Now, in seeking to pass judgment upon these years, ac- cording to these high standards, there is one fact that must be kept in mind, and that is that the value of any given gain in almost every field of human activity and experience depends in great part upon the number and strength of the obstacles and difficulties which have been met and overcome. . An army may march a hundred miles through the enemy's country without a particle of opposition presenting itself; but that achievement is as nothing compared with a single mile that is won at some strategic point stubbornly defended and yielded only at
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the last. In times of strife and stress, how often we say that if we hold our own we are doing well, justly declar- ing that the simple maintenance of the old position and power is in reality growth and progress!
This occasion, then, gives us our subject for to-day : The vitality of religion as tested by the changes and ex- periences of the past fifty years.
What we want to bring into clearest light is the fact that religion and faith have during this half-century been on trial as perhaps never before since the morning of Christianity ; that they have been tested and tried as by fire, and that Burke's penetrating reflection that man is a religious animal has been abundantly verified in the history of these five decades during which some of you have worshipped together as an organized church. During this time the political, intellectual, and religious events have been of such capital importance that the age stands alone and supreme in the annals of mankind. And every one of these events has deeply and profoundly affected faith and the spiritual life of man; every one of them has moved and violently disturbed the very foun- dations of the creeds and dogmas of the fathers, and with every upheaval and readjustment in thought the cry has been that God was being destroyed, that religion, morality, and character had received a fatal blow.
Probably we do not fully realize the tremendous trans- formations through which the thoughts of men passed in the last half of the nineteenth century. It might justly be characterized as a period of war; long and bit- ter have been the conflicts between the hosts of the old and the new, between the past and the present. It is not too much to say that you who have lived during the last two generations have witnessed the clash of the spirit of twenty or more centuries with the spirit of the twentieth century, and you have beheld the banner of victory planted surely and permanently with the army of modern thinkers and believers.
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Taking now the wide survey, we see three and pos- sibly four great major facts of history that no discerning eye can easily escape. First, that stupendous struggle in America known as the Civil War; then the rise and progress of the scientific method in the pursuit of truth, and the new theories and doctrines that arose and gained world-wide acceptance as the result of the use of this method; in the third place, parallel with and, to some extent, the outcome of science and evolution, we see the birth of what may very properly be called the new Bible ; and lastly, and nearest to our day of all, we cannot fail to note the deep flood of materialism and commercialism that has swept through and over the national life of the new world and out to the far corners of the earth. These I take to be the great, imperial facts of the last half- century,-the Civil War, the rise of science, the birth of the new Bible, and the marvelous growth of the commer- cial spirit.
And the central lesson that we want to draw from a brief study of these epoch-making events is that each and every one of them with almost cyclonic force affected the faith of man in the unseen, and that after the first effects of these political and intellectual convulsions had passed, that eternal and inevitable faith of man in God, in good- ness, and in heaven rose with a new purity and a greater glory than it had ever known before. Therefore, for this reason, above all other reasons, this period must be re- garded as the grandest in the history of the race. Never before had religion or faith to face so many and such mighty forces that at first sight seemed to be antago- nistic, if not wholly fatal, and yet religion and faith have come forth from the conflict stronger than at the beginning, having won to their ranks many of those who were counted and who indeed counted themselves as the enemies of Christianity.
Neither time nor desire will permit us to enter with any fullness into the religious effects of that Titanic
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struggle of the early 'sixties. There can be no doubt, however, but that the cause of real religion was helped rather than hindered by the war, although at least one of the great dogmas of the Christian faith was badly shat- tered as the result of that five-years' ordeal. Any such all-absorbing and critical movement as that war must of necessity have greatly lessened the opportunity for re- ligious forces to carry on their work. Homes were broken up, churches were depleted of men and means, and the whole thought of the people centred on political and military matters, rather than upon the things of faith and God. But the law of compensation ever moves with silent and majestic order to its great ends, and, all in all, the trial of the finest life of the nation in the awful fires of this desperate clash of arms was of inestimable value, for from it all faith in the great essentials of religion arose with an added purity and power. We may well believe that the contention of many is right, that one of the unplanned, but most blessed and beneficent, results of the war was the weakening of the doctrine of everlast- ing punishment ; it took just some such tremendous trial to disabuse men's mind of that barbarous and terrible dogma, so firmly rooted had it become in human thought. Here were multitudes of men rushing to ex- posure, suffering, and death for country, freedom, and unity, who had never made any profession of religion, who had not complied with the historic and creedal con- ditions of salvation. These men, strongest, and bravest, and finest of the nation, laid down their lives for abso- lutely unselfish purposes, and yet, according to the tenets of the traditional belief, they must go away into endless punishment. The heart, the intelligence, and the conscience of a grateful people recoiled from the idea, and from the moment that their faithful service was fully appreciated, the dogma of an absolutely hopeless future for them received a blow from which it could never re- cover. The creeds, the church, religion were tried by
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this fire, and real religion came forth purified and glorified.
But a severer test of faith invites our notice: faith as affected by science and evolution. At the beginning of the last half of the nineteenth century, the theological world was resting quietly and comfortably in the con- sciousness of the strength of its teaching and prestige. For the most part, the Roman and Protestant churches held complete dominion over the mind of Christendom. They were the custodians of all truth, their systems of doctrines, differing in detail, all rested upon the same great philosophy of history. You know the general out- line of it all. Some 6,000 years ago man was made per- fect ; the race sinned in Adam's sin; the calamity and crisis were so great that God came to earth in the person of Jesus and died for men, to satisfy himself, and man's participation in this priceless grace depended upon his open and formal profession of Christ; those who made this profession were endlessly blessed, all others end- lessly cursed. The Bible was literally true; not one single mistake did it contain, and the most vindictive words of warring kings were of equal value and authority with the sublime passages of the Psalms, of the prophets, and of Jesus. The world was obedient and quiet, when suddenly, like some profound disturbance in a clear sky, a book appeared that was to start an in- tellectual movement that in the end was destined to give a new birth to the human mind and shake creeds and faiths to their final foundations, yea, even to completely destroy some of the foundation stones upon which faith and religion were supposed to rest.
It was in 1859 that Charles Darwin gave the world his "Origin of Species," and it was from then that the scien- tific method began to be applied and men began to rely upon the method and believe in the results that it re- vealed. Can we wonder that the theologians were alarmed beyond measure? Here they had been teaching
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this theology for centuries: Man created perfect a few thousands of years ago, he has fallen from his glorious estate, the whole history is in the Bible, and so on to the completion of the system. But Darwin and his co- workers and successors for a quarter of a century, Wal- lace, Spencer, Lewes, Haeckel, Huxley, Tyndale, Fiske, and all the rest, interrogating nature, brought a report as different as night from day. Man created perfect ! No, far from that; rather, the evidence is that for a pe- riod reaching through ages and aeons this animal we call man has been climbing and struggling up to his present exalted position. The world a few thousands of years old! Absurd; deep down in the valleys of ancient East- ern rivers were imperishable records that made a new book of Genesis and furnished the facts for a new chro- nology that makes the conclusion unescapable that man existed thousands upon thousands of years before the time that the church fixed as the hour of his creation. Humanity fell in Adam in the garden of Eden! Not for a moment does any evidence present itself leading to such a faith ; "progress is the law of life," and always has been. And then the theologians saw that if there had been no fall, there was no need for the sacrificial service of Christ in any artificial sense.
Is it strange that the leaders of opinion in the church should cry out that all of this was an attempt to dethrone God, and that God was dead, that it was all contrary to . the Scriptures, and that if this doctrine prevailed, interest in religion would be destroyed? They did not under- stand that the word evolution was not a name for a new power, but for a new method, and that there could be an added glory and majesty given to the Creator by an orderly and eternal method in creation. This great Dar- win, called atheist at the first, was honored at last as only England's great are honored; in Westminster Abbey, next to the final resting place of Sir Isaac New- ton, his body was placed, and Cannon Farrar, of the es-
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tablished church, pronounced a noble eulogy in his memory. Such is the irony of time.
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But the thing to hold fast to is that, in this intellectual and theological revolution, the real high and fine faith of humanity was neither destroyed nor impaired. The truth of a saying of Bacon is well sliown in this connec- tion : "Slight tastes of philosophy may perchance move one to atheism, but fuller draughts lead back to re- ligion." As Dr. Gordon strikingly says, for twenty years after Darwin the intellectual world was drunk with evolution, it was the romance and the mood of the time. But now the reaction has come, as it was bound to come ; the great thing in the thought of the age is no longer this new and true method by which God has been working, it is fact of the power behind the method, the intellect and love behind the method. The earlier workers in science may have been skeptical in regard to some of the final facts of the Christian faith, but theirs were only the slight tastes of truth, but the fuller draughts of Fiske and Drummond led men back to religion and to God, and to a nobler faith than the traditions and the dogmas of the centuries ever knew.
We have already hinted at the character of the modern Bible which reverent and consecrated students of the Scriptures have made possible. Our only purpose in turning to it here is to show that, although the old liter- ally inspired book of authority has gone never to return, the great essential ideas contained therein have not been injured in the slightest degree. Rather, belief in God, in freedom and power through righteousness, and in the larger destiny was never so strong as at present. Doubt- less the fathers would have said, in fact they did say, that if it were shown that the old theory of special and me- chanical inspiration was not true, then the most power- ful sanction for the truths and laws and the faith which the Bible teaches has been destroyed. But we have proven that this is not so; the vitality, the inevitableness
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of religion is too great and real to be disastrously affected by any book, or man, or event. We have a different Bible, but man's cry for truth and God is just as impas- sioned and his faith in truth and God is just as strong as before science and scholarship began their noble work.
So, too, it is good to be able to say that the new Bible is speaking to men with a nobler authority than did the Scriptures of the fathers. Its place in the thought and heart of the world is secure. A fuller and truer knowl- edge of its natural history has given added power to its divine message. Not one single accent of God's voice has been hushed or lost. Seen in the new perspective, its heavenly heights of faith, and hope, and love stand out in clearer light above the fogs and mists of doubt, above the wisdom and the weakness of this world. As the supreme revealer of God's will and love, it is counted the most precious possession of all the written words that have ever been given to mankind.
First the war, then evolution, then the higher criticism, and now last, and perhaps strongest of all, the spirit of religion is called upon to contend with the secularism, the materialism, the commercialism of the last quarter of a century. The irrepressible conflict now is that be- tween high and clean social and personal ideals on the one hand, and the power of mammon on the other, and if one were a prophet, he might venture to say that faith, hope, and love are passing through a greater trial and. are being more severely tested than they ever were by any of these forces and changes which we have consid- ered. Just as twenty-five or thirty years ago the great men of the age were scientists, so now the great names of our part of the world, at least, are those of merchant princes, financiers, and politicians. The earlier move- ment was an intellectual materialism, the later is a com- mercial materialism, and there can be little question but that the last is more subtle, more insidious in its work- ings, and more dangerous to the spiritual life of man.
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