USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > Jubilee of the South Congregational Church : November the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and sixteenth, nineteen hundred > Part 7
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ren. "We believe in the Holy Ghost." In such high and holy fashion do we hold this our Trinitarian faith that we seek and find our God in every revelation, and would fain open the blind eyes of our brethren to Him who stands everywhere in their midst. So it is that we come to the darkest missionary field, with a consuming zeal, for there we meet and make known our God; and so it is that where the clashing classes turn perplexity into discord, we work with our Master in courage and hope. To every heathen of the slums, to every pagan of the land of dark- ness we hold out the hand of a brother. We believe that God has made him likewise a man, and that all things are possible to him. Sometimes of late, I have thought that we only be- lieved this great thing of the brown races. But whether that be true or not, we especially, we pre-eminently believe it, and standing shoulder to shoulder with him, we believe in him and we do lift him. So whether it be modern heretic or heathen philosopher or undeveloped pagan, the free children of the truth find in him, not alone the child of God, but the indwel- ling Spirit, and count him the brother of today, the saint of an eternal tomorrow.
In lesser ways then these great passes of the mountain tops, do we find in the fellowship of saints a wide outlook. The daily food of our spirits is limited to no table; the helping of our souls comes from many fountains. We find a duty in every need, our opportunity in any call. And so we of the warm heart, we the sisters of mercy, are fast shaking down the seven-fold walls that a denomination has built, and for all the cries of all the treasur- ies, we will not sell our privilege of the seeking eye or the free hand, as we go down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
For in method, in thought, in fellowship, we are free only that we may serve. In the olden time the servant who went forth on the Day of Jubilee came back to serve. Of his own choice, in
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the midst of the great gladness, with joy in his heart, he gave himself up to his Lord for service. And with the mark of the lis- tening ear they marked him. So by the listening ear are we marked servants of the Highest. Where our Master calls we walk with ready step in the untried path; when our Lord speaks, we listen, eager for the new truth; where our Christ dwells we go to serve Him and His children. And thus in Method, in Thought, in Fellowship, we are free to serve, and rejoice with the great shout that for fifty years we have kept the Jubilee, and in solemn cove- nant pledge ourselves still to keep the faith, for all the years that we and our children shall live upon the earth.
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SAMUEL HARRIS, D. D., L.L. D. 1814-1899
ADDRESS
BY GEORGE HARRIS D. D., L.L. D.,
ON MONDAY EVENING NOVEMBER THE TWELFTH.
Almost my earliest recollection is hearing the question debated at home whether Uncle Samuel made a mistake in leaving his church in Conway to come to Pittsfield. His mother, my grand- mother, whose home was with us, a very pious but a very posi- tive woman, insisted that Samuel should have stayed in his country parish where he was contented and was doing a good work, rather than to go away to take up a new and perhaps doubtful enterprise. My boyish impression was that Uncle Sam- uel had done something very wrong. Soon after he came here my eldest sister came into his family to attend a young ladies' school, the Maplewood Institute, and from her letters and visits home that impression was removed and I came to believe that my un- cle had not made a mistake in coming to Pittsfield. I fancy that when he began his ministrations in this church the services pre- ceding the sermon were not as elaborate and continuous as to- night. Then the custom was to have what were called the open- ing services brief and the sermon long. Now that custom is re- versed and will be to-night. I think however, we make a mistake if we suppose that the music of our churches fifty and more years ago was so very simple. That was before organs were found in most churches, and there was, I think, a voluntary orchestra in, the choir loft, including usually a bass viol and a violin and a
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clarionet; and the anthems which were sung out of the old an- them books were in part this very music to which we have just listened, "The Heavens Are Telling the Glory of the Lord."
I am here as a relative of the first minister of this church and think that I cannot do better than to tell you something about that first minister whose life I know pretty well, not in order simply to give you a sketch of his career, but in order to set forth a story which brings us into conditions of life and of theo- logical thought that are of great interest. It is true that it is fifty years ago since my uncle came here and that his ministry was very short, only five years. He lived, however, a great many years afterward in the active service of the Master and died only last year at the age of eighty-five, having retired from service only two or three years before. I hope before I am through, also, to make some comparisons, if I may, between the ways of think- ing then, in the early period of this church, and now, theologi- cally.
My uncle was born in a small village in eastern Maine. The industries were lumber manufacturing and ship building. My uncle's grand father had started in the lumber business and had been quite prosperous in it. My uncle's mother married the clerk of the courts, and in his absences from home he used to write long letters to his wife, couched in the most respectful terms, many of which have been preserved and are very interesting reading. In this village was the county academy. That was before the day of high schools, or at least there were very few indeed, certainly in Maine. To this academy came the boys of the county, and of other counties, who intended to go to college, and there my uncle, as a lad, received his classical preparation and at the age of fifteen entered Bowdoin college. Boys were fitted for college, as a rule, much earlier than they are now. It was not because boys at that time were more precocious than
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now, but because the preparation which fits one to enter college today is about equivalent to the work of the sophomore year in college then. He went to Bowdoin college and the professor's there made but little impression on him. A recent graduate of Bowdoin college at that time was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He was an instructor in the college and he taught the modern languages, not only French and German, but Italian and Span- ish. My uncle, under Longfellow, acquired a reading knowledge of those languages, and all through his life was a very good stu- dent of Italian, especially of Dante. Then, having determined to be a minister, he went to Andover theological seminary. Then there were only three professors there. Already Mr. Har- ris must have been a young man who did his own thinking and was not very much influenced by others, which was characteristic of him throughout life. In fact, the only reminiscence I ever heard my uncle give about his three years in Andover theologi- cal seminary was that there came there a certain Dr. Muzzy, who told the theological students that they should live on a vegetable diet, should eat only one vegetable at each meal, be it squash or potato, and should exercise to the extent of four hours a day. Nearly all of them were fools enough to adopt the advice and some were broken down permanently in health thereby, but there was one man who said he would have none of it, he was go- ing to have three good meals a day, and that man was Dr. John Lord, the well known lecturer on history, whose massive frame showed that he was wiser in his day than his generation.
After that, my uncle taught in the academy where he had him- self studied for two or three years, and was long remembered there as a very excellent teacher. Then he came to Conway in this state, then as now a country town, but the people had not gone away from it. There was a homogeneous population, a great many young men growing up, and my uncle delighted in
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his work there as a preacher and a teacher. He has often spoken of the eminent men who were boys and youths when he was a minister in Conway. Probably the same story could be told about other country towns. When he went there he had some trouble with his eyes so that he was unable to do much reading or writing. His wife read to him, and, as she could, wrote for him, and he often said that his impaired eyesight was the great- est blessing of his life. He thought out his sermons and preached them extemporaneously. It was very unusual in those days for a Congregational minister to preach extemporaneously, but he was obliged to do so. He cultivated a style of preaching, which some of you here possibly remember, that for clearness of thought, finish of style and felicity of illustration, was almost matchless. And so, through all his life he continued to preach, even after he was not a parish minister; all through his life he was marked as a preacher in this respect. If you had closed your eyes you could not have told he was not reading a most carefully prepared manuscript. He was in Pittsfield five years, and there are a few who remember him and remember, doubtless, these characteristics of his preaching which I have mentioned. I have been told that he is still revered in this community among some of the older people of that time, although his ministry here was so very brief.
While he was in Conway and Pittsfield he had become known for the qualities of which I have spoken, and through some printed sermons and articles. He was believed to be a man of very profound thought, and gifted as a teacher. He was invited, therefore, to become professor of theology at the Bangor, Maine, theological seminary. In 1855 he accepted a call to that insti- tution and taught theology for twelve years. Now Bangor, of which you have heard, is rather a remote place, certainly remote from Pittsfield and Conway, and the students had been
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drawn almost exclusively from the state of Maine, but the rep- utation which Dr. Harris gained as a theologian and teacher, as well as preacher, drew men during the time he was there, and for about the only period in the history of the institution, from nearly all the colleges of New England. What is of the great- est interest in respect to his residence in Bangor is that he was there during the Civil War and was very much inspired by the issues which were involved. When public meetings were held he spoke at them and soon became the favorite speaker in that State and in the region roundabout. It was said that he did as much as any person in Maine to arouse patriotism and inspire the people to maintain the principles of government. Indeed, after the war, a very strong effort was made to induce him to go as representative to Congress, but he knew that his fitness was not for that kind of work and remained where he was. Then he was called to be president of Bowdoin college. The college was in a very reduced state in numbers, in funds, in quality, and in standards. He felt that it was his duty to go. He went, but remained only four years; he was not suited to it. He said that worries over the pranks of the students gave him the jim jams. He was a very serious man. He did a great deal for the college; he brought in some fine professors, but after four years, being in- vited to teach theology in Yale, he accepted, returning to the de- light of his life. He remained at Yale twenty-five years, a teacher of theology, the greatest theologian in my judgment, and in the judgment of many others, that America has produced. Nearly one thousand ministers were taught by him in Bangor and in New Haven. He gave them a philosophy which was true and deep, and not only that, but a gospel which was Christian. Those young men went out into the churches inspired and il- luminated by this man who was your first minister, so that these hundreds of preachers say that they owe more to him than to
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any other man they have ever known. He kept thinking, think- ing, thinking, and reading and thinking. He was at my house once with his wife, and after he was gone my little boy was asked how he liked him. He had not seen him before. He said, "I like my aunt very much, but I don't like Uncle Samuel because when he was at the table he was always looking out of the win- dow." He was an absent-minded man. I remember once when I was a student in his family in Bangor. By the way, al- though he had no children, he had several nephews and nieces in his home during their education. He had been thinking and had not heard the call to dinner. He was called again and he sat down at the table and said grace without noticing that we had not just assembled, ourselves. He was not an easy man in con- versation. He had not any small talk, although once he was started on some great theme, all the others would be silent and he would do the talking. But it was this everlasting thinking. He used to tell me, "I have not read a great deal (he read ten times as much as you or I ever read), but I have done a lot of thinking." He did his own thinking. He was never very much in- fluenced by other men, but he worked out a theory, a system, a philosophy, a religion, which was his own and yet was most pro- foundly Christian.
So remarkable was his teaching that he was solicited by many of his pupils to write out his system of theology, and so rather late in life he published some books. He published the first book, entitled "The Philosophical Basis of Theism," when he was sixty-nine years old. Previously he had published no books except a little collection of lectures which he had given a few years before. This volume, which was published when he was sixty-nine years old, was eagerly read by all interested in theol- ogy, of various denominations, and was translated into Japanese, and I think into one other language, and was regarded, by those
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whose judgment was trustworthy, as the best contribution to theological literature that had ever been made in this country. At intervals during the next twelve years he brought out three volumes more, the last when he was eighty-two years old (he had been teaching nearly all the time), and in them all you will find that clearness of thought, that aptness of illustration, wonderful and fitting, and that breadth and sanity and convincingness which were his characteristics. Having reached the age of eighty years he retired from active service, living a few years longer in serenity, and ' fell on sleep' a year ago.
I venture now, partly because I believe you will be interested in the history of any minister of this church, and because, as I have suggested, it reflects the conditions of life in his boyhood and early manhood, to say something about the religious move- ment and the theological changes which have occurred in fifty years. I enter upon it because there is a certain thing I want to say about this man's belief and system. I suppose we should say, speaking of a half century ago, that the religion and the preaching in the churches was individualistic on the whole. The aim of the preacher and the thought of religion was the salva- tion of the individual for the future; to be saved from some- thing; not from something here, but from something hereafter, and to be saved for and into a blessed life hereafter. Now when one makes a statement of that sort, it is to be taken with quali- fications. Any generalization is not altogether true. There was much good, every day virtue amongst the people, and the preaching was not altogether on that line, but I think it is on the whole a fair characteristic. Salvation was the salvation of the person, a salvation of or for the future. That is true and that is good. But we should not characterize our conception of religion and salvation in that way now. Then, one was to be
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saved in the future, with some incidental benefits in the present. Now, one is to be saved in the present, here and now, and that involves future salvation. As Jesus said, "He that followeth me shall have in this life a hundred fold, and in the world to come, life everlasting." We say salvation is of the present rather than of the future, or we say it is future because it is present. Our conception of religion today is not only that it is a present sal- vation, but that salvation is righteousness; not that which has been done for us, but which has been done in us, that it is right- eousness of character. Furthermore, we say now that it is not individualistic, but that it is social; that Christians are a so- ciety, that Christ came to set up a kingdom on earth, and that therefore there is a kingdom of heaven. In a general way I think perhaps you will agree with this also. Why I say it is this: that Dr. Samuel Harris was preaching that fifty years ago, that he was preaching what we call the modern gospel. If you should take some of his sermons, printed about the time he was here (and Mr. Smart was telling me that he had read a sermon printed in 1847 which has none of the old theology, but is as modern as if it were printed this year) and his lectures, you would find the same thing true. The central principle of his theology was "The Kingdom of Christ on Earth." I refer to a little volume of lectures published when he was about fifty-five years old. For a great many preachers that book marked an epoch. All men under the law of service, which was the princi- ple of the Master's life, is now to us a commonplace of our re- ligion. It was carried out, illustrated and enforced with clearness by him from the time he began to lecture, and I am very sure during all the time he was preaching. The latest German the- ology, which some look at askance, but which is having a great growth over there and which is accepted largely by evangelical people, is the gospel of the kingdom on earth, the latest, the
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newest, and I think the truest gospel, but this man, forty or fifty years ago, made that a central principle of his theology, the kingdom of God on earth; God the Father, we, His children, and brethren one of another. I might have gone into particulars to show how advanced, or rather, how true and how modern his reading of the gospel and the revelation was. Let me speak, how- ever, of only one thing. He said, from the time he was a young preacher, that the love of God is the motive in the redemption of sinners. The Bible says so. Ministers and Christians generally were not saying that; they were saying that the motive in the suf- ferings and death of Jesus Christ was to appease the wrath of God, so that He could consistently forgive repentant sinners. There is no such statement in the Bible. Now we all accept the truth that "God so loved the world that he gave his only be- gotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life." That is the true gospel, but the Puri- tans and Calvinists got into some false notions about God's jus- tice until they got away from the love of God in Christ. Your first minister never travelled on that bleak and barren path. He saw in the sacrifice of Christ, the revelation of God in his own Son, coming to sinners to turn them from their sin and bring them unto his love and into the service of their fellow men. Yet he was never regarded as a radical, nor a liberal, nor a revolutionist. What he said was not only sane, but was inspired by the spirit of Christ and the deepest reverence for God. I think one reason that he did not have the ear marks and the phrase- ology of the old theology was that he did not hear it in his youth. The minister in the country town from which he came was a man of great literary attainments, a clergyman who subse- quently became a Unitarian. Now a man who becomes a Uni- tarian of course takes the consequences, but he is not a man who thinks along the lines of what we call the old Calvinistic the-
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ology. My uncle was most intimate with this young preacher. They read Coleridge and Wordsworth together. Dr. Harris never came any nearer being a Unitarian than being a Mormon, but he did not have the cant phrases or forms.
Dr Bushnell said, more than once in his old age, that Samuel Harris was the greatest theologian in America.
It is natural, you know, to admire one's own family. Cer- tainly it is true that Dr. Harris made contributions to theology, that he inspired hundreds of men who have been preachers of the true, simple gospel.
When one of the brothers read to-night those two prayers in the Epistle to the Ephesians, I could not help remembering that my uncle so often spoke of those prayers as, after the Lord's prayer, the greatest prayers that ever were made; the last ending, "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations, forever and ever."
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DEACON HENRY MULFORD PEIRSON 1825-1894
TUESDAY EVENING NOVEMBER THE THIRTEENTH.
REMARKS BY MR. JOSEPH E. PEIRSON.
I have been wondering what is the proper age for an institution like this to attain in order to be called a young and vigorous church, and I have come to the conclusion that the proper age is just fifty years, and that we are to be congratulated to-night be- cause we have at last attained to the proud distinction of being both a young and a vigorous church.
We had read to us last Sunday evening the record of the ill's of our childhood days, much of which we knew, and a part of which we were. The very first summer of our existence, our youthful life was almost blotted out by the fever of fire, and not long after that we had a very severe attack of wind colic when our tall and graceful spire fell a prey to the elements. When our old organ was done away with and the new one, to which we have listened with so much pleasure, was substituted, we were, as it were, cutting our second and permanent set of teeth. When the old box pews, which some of you remember, were removed and these new furnishings came and the bare walls gave way to these beautiful colors and tints, it was as if the young man of the household had gone from his paternal home with his father's blessing and with a bright new silver dollar in his pocket to make his own way in the world. Thus we passed through the mumps and the whooping cough and the measles period of our existence, and we have come at last to-night to the full strength
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of manhood and we feel the vigor and the pulse of youth in our veins, and not yet have we felt one rheumatic twinge as a sign of coming old age.
In another sense, this church never had any infancy. The old mythology relates that Venus, the goddess of love, sprang fully developed from the foam of the sea; so, in the new theology, the one hundred and thirty charter members of this church came out from the old mother church, a new creation, indeed, and yet not attempting any new and untried philosophy of life. They came with that sense of responsibility and with that knowledge of the duties of the position which they had attained from the long teaching of their mother church, and it was only a changed con- dition, a new location, a new name; otherwise, it was the same old church reproduced in a new spot. It was an infancy only in externals; within was the same devotion, the same spirit of self- sacrifice, the same faith in the Father leading them on to better and nobler works.
My earliest recollections of this church go back something less than forty years to the time when in my very early youth (I think I was about six months old) my parents brought me down this long aisle for baptism. As I looked about into the faces of the congregation I felt very much as did those spies who came from the promised land of Canaan. It seemed to me that I was looking into the faces of giants and that I was as a grasshopper in their eyes, and not many years afterward, when Rev. Mr. Crowther announced as the subject of his evening discourse, "Og, king of Bashan, that three fingered old giant," it was nat- ural for me to suppose that he was referring to one of the early members of this church. It seems to me also that that was a very trying time in my experience, trying both for my parents and for myself. I had the impression that I was occupying al-
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together too conspicuous a position for one of my youth and in- experience, and I have therefore since that time endeavored to take a rear seat in the synagogue, waiting for the call to come up higher, until the call rather unexpectedly came and I am here.
It is one of the great truths of life that the older we grow in years, even though we look back reluctantly to the good old days that have gone and remember with sorrow the faces of those who have labored so valiantly and have passed on to the better land, we cannot help confessing that this world is, after all, daily growing younger and better. Such is the progress of science, such is the enlargement of the sphere of knowledge and its practical application to our every-day life, that it adds vigor and newness to life so that we ourselves have to keep growing younger and younger. As we look at the history of this church, it seems to us that while the giants of those days may have disappeared and while we may have lost something of that devotion to duty which they had and something of that faith which they seemed to possess, yet, after all, we are daily growing newer and younger in the enthusiasm of living and in the ability to perform worthy service. The new law of service has come into this newer generation so that, year after year, we are growing to be a younger and a more enthusiastic and zealous generation. I believe that is to be the outcome of this church ; not that we shall simply renew our youth, but that each decade shall find us ten years younger in the service of the Master, ten times more enthusiastic in his service.
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