USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The West Church, Boston; commemorative services on the fiftieth anniversary of its present ministry, and the one hundred and fiftieth of its foundation, on Tuesday, March 1, 1887, with three sermons by its pastor > Part 5
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How much this circumstantial or geographical infelicity and disappointment in the declination of the society in Christ's phrase to " go hence," and its resolve to stay on the old spot, had to do with my prostration twenty years ago I do not know or de- sire to learn. Other causes in part no doubt con- spired and tended to break me down. The Civil War had just ceased, to which seventy of our youth had been inspired to go, some to be buried in earth or sea, some to expire in hospitals, and some to have their lifeless bodies brought home. I lost some of my blood with theirs. The period of my incom- petency ensued. If you have read the classic fable of him who recovered strength by touching his mother-earth, you may surmise the secret of my recovery. Born in the country, accustomed to ex- ercise and toil of a sort -mowing, pitching hay, grinding tools - which for many years of my edu- cational and professional life I had been led to dis- use, and being as we say "run down," as I fell I instinctively stretched out my hand to the ground. Dr. Edward H. Clarke declared that when the
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hand does not work, a portion of the brain loses nourishment, suffers atrophy, and is undeveloped. But with me the long-neglected cerebral organ of constructiveness came into play. Unable to do anything else, I began to build and plant and engineer, to handle the axe, hedge-bill, and crow- bar, to pry out rocks, trim trees, cut away thistles and bull-briers; and in all this I felt, as I feel in memory still, like a famished child to whose cry you see a mother open by stealth, in the car, her breast. But whatever health I might thus get out of my purchased territory of rock and wilderness, it was thought in the neighboring village, and by shrewd merchants in Boston, that on account of the extravagant price I had paid financial ruin stared me in the face, - as one expressed it, I should not come off without a broken skin (my skin was improving all the time), while another said he " would not take my barren pasture as a gift, and pay the mortgages; " and some perhaps thought it ill became a minister to speculate in real estate. None of my critics and fault-finders, however, knew (and I did not tell them) what I was after: not any fortune, but my life, in no act of which have I ever been more moved by a power above my own will. One summer afternoon, - after my pen had be- come a horror to me, to shiver at and recoil from, and I could not have stood up in a pulpit with- out fainting, - I went into the shadow of a great rock (type of God) near the cliffs on Cape Ann, and
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I looked off on the surge and wide sparkle of the roaring sea, and felt a thrill from remembering how in my childhood I had been stirred and trans- ported by the billows of the same dear old Atlantic deep which God scooped the globe for a hundred miles away; and I said to myself, " There yonder, fifty-five years ago, was my cradle, and here will be my grave. The scene where I first woke, how like it is to this where I shall at last sleep, as only in- fancy on earth can!" Despite the weakness, from which I was convalescing so as to be able to begin a little work, and think of making sermons and books, how I lived and revelled in the beauty of the concentric spheres or circles of land and sea and sky, cut with the horizon-line afar! How by the infinite charm of Nature I was made aware of the immortality of the soul! How indeed I became conscious of God in myself! So I pitched with Him my tent. As the days passed by, the incre- ments of health gathered like particles to an open- ing seed or crystallizing gem. In the worldly way verily I was the fool I was supposed to be. I am not entitled to credit for the sagacity which, after the ravages of the Boston fire were repaired and ten years had rolled away, I was also charged with hav- ing shown. Reputation is a shadow I never looked after, more than my shadow on the street. I am willing to be accused either of prudence or impru- dence, by turns, but I was scarcely guilty of both sins at the same moment and in the same act. A
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dear friend, in his affectionate, winsome, and familiar style of speech, charitably told you last Tuesday that I had not slighted my duty looking after my land. But looking after the land alone qualified me or made me equal to any duty of a public kind. Gladstone prepares himself for Parliament by chop- ping trees at his country place. Lincoln, cleaving the rails, got the strength, all of which he needed, to wield the emancipation pen. But I do not merit the compliments lavished on me of foresight and the long head, - not so good as it were to have a high one, could we choose. As the habits of life and of giving in charity in my house have always consumed more than twice or thrice the sum of my salary, and as I am also of my grandfather-in-law Simeon Howard's mind to serve my people for any compensation or none, and really do not know what the stipend is, perhaps the prosperity which only by social influence and the prevailing need of a purer than city air has been reached, from whom- ever else it may fetch a smile or a frown, furnishes no occasion for regret on your part. On mine no deep calculation or piece of good luck, but a gracious Providence relieved mental stoppage, and returned to music the chords of every nerve. Blessed be business, all of it I have had !
On Tuesday my Orthodox brother formulated my faith thus : " The letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive; " and he added that my creed would kill him. Doubtless, if I had one, it might. I have
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in my armory no such weapon. But the movement variously named Transcendental, Radical, or Free Religious, which began among us as long ago as 1830, has released us all from dogmatic bonds, and has disclosed the rock to build on in the human soul, showing that other foundations are but sand. With temporary struggle, as when a house is hauled to a better position by the building-movers, even so a church alters its position ; and there is some jar and wrenching on the way.
Not overlooking, rather supremely cherishing, the religious sentiment, I have preached truth and the moral law, "righteousness in the great congrega- tion," as David did. I have held forth honest poli- tics, social sincerity, temperance, purity, peace, and a piety which is joy, with a charity that rejoiceth not in iniquity, but in the truth.
As I am speaking of a fifty years' experience, I may be permitted to acknowledge my debt for fair and candid treatment to that Third Estate, greater than any French Assembly. I mean the Press, the lending of whose columns, stronger than any troops in arms, is the transcendent risk and responsibility of the present age. Every anonymous attack is a shot from ambush on a chosen victim in the eyes of a million men. The boast that gunpowder put all inequalities of physical strength on a level, is over- matched by the privilege of assaulting through the newspaper the honor dearer than life, and the good name to which one's purse is trash. Any plausible
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pretext suffices to authorize a writer to fire an arti- cle at one whom he might not presume to address openly, or even dare to face. That a power so vast, and that may be dreadful, is used on the whole so wisely and well is a marvel, and perhaps the chief mark of progress, as journalism is the prominent feature, in the civilization of our day. A sharp- shooter from the sacred desk, aiming at if he does not always hit the selfish sectarian or partisan shams and sins of his time, should pay his sincere respects to the knights templar of the editorial pen if the war on their side be honorable, or the en- counter of wits according to the fair rules of the game. Praise is not what any of the community's servants ought to desire. There is rather a refined pleasure beyond that from any flattery in finding oneself justly blamed, as the old warrior, if he means to fight again, is pleased to have the joints in his armor discovered even by a spear. I am happy, for a more solid and general reason of justice than any personal gratification, to confess that in controversy I have never received a foul blow. " Whose bull is gored ? " is a pithy proverb. In my little line of con- duct I must own the pulpit has not outdone the press in good nature, civility, wit, or equity. So should it be. The preacher and editor are not enemies, but coadjutors. They are not quits. They seek one object, in a right hand of fellowship; and though the hard-worked by night and day reporter has room but for an abstract, and the orator will be apt
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to think the best part of his performance is left out, I sometimes think more sense is printed or concisely suggested than the sermon contained. It is at once curious and encouraging when the daily sheet gives as much space and stress as does the clerical and lay convention, or the religious weekly, to a theologi- cal debate.
But enough of the past. As the people, publi- cans, and soldiers asked John the Baptist, " What shall we do?" a noble friend of whom I inquired, answered he would have the West Church to be preserved, but supposed it would become a memory. I do not wish it to die on my hands, or to have, like that in Sardis, only " a name to live." I trust it is not "ready to die." But its membership is depleted. The seed-corn of the Sunday-school is gone. It has become a ministry at large. I own the love that has kept me here and has kept me alive. But personal affection alone cannot maintain a society which declines and decays by a natural law, any more than it makes a tree flourish in an unfit or unfeeding soil.
I shall not take it hard, but be thankful, if you can find another younger pastor, with entire release for me in that case from either service or support. Plenty of interesting and useful occupation I should have for the after-piece and remainder of my life. You have read the story of Washington at Mount Vernon, and of Cincinnatus at the plough and at eighty on the farm. I could emulate them gladly,
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however insignificantly. If any withdraw from or omit to observe this worship because they know what I will say, and have heard it all, it and I being old stories both, I demur not, -
" Against their reasons making no defence."
That by any possible worldly motive I can be re- tained here I am sure you cannot suspect. You will please to consider my resignation of ten years ago in reality now offered, though I do not propose by in- sisting to afflict you, or cause a tender heart to bleed with intruding its written form. But whenever you can secure a new shepherd, then from my so long speaking and directing I shall be glad to hush, and yield you to his crook. Yet may no bishop of yours need, more than I have done, aught but a word or look for your guidance, even as the hier- archy was dispensed with at the birth of this church, and in Mayhew's portrait, with its background as of cathedral walls, the mitre and crosier lie beneath the wreathed flowers and leaves.
As we grow old amid the shifting shapes, disap- pointments, and bereavements of this phantom world, we learn not to wish or say we wish : wishes cease. I might desire or implore one thing, that the church should be true to its traditions, and under whatever pressure never assume a lesser than the Christian name. Not the least reason for its continuance, as I judge, is in this banner of freedom which it has never failed to uphold. As an unsectarian and
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uncommitted body it has had the credit of sincerity, and of courage too. It has been a sort of mediator between opposing schools. It has had all the more faith for its lack of articles. It has never been re- tained by any party in politics or religion. It could not take the bribe of a retaining fee. Its ministers- and none more than the present one - have en- joyed a friendship and fellowship restricted by no denominational lines. Its constituency is in all the United States. It has been an organ of the Spirit, listened to as such far and wide through the land. May its voice still be heard when on earth our lips are silent and our ears are shut !
Let me close with this good omen. An elder brother bade me "hold the fort ; " and one sitting by him said, " There is nobody in it." But it is not quite unmanned. Fort Independence in the har- bor answers to this in the town ; and were there no men, it has pious and patriotic women enough for its defence. But independence is no personal pre- rogative, nor can liberty be the possession of any private individual, to do and come and go, exempt from obligation, as he or she may please. It is a common gift and investiture for concord in duty together, as of a flock or swarm in the field or air or hive; a membership which none are free to stray from or betray, else they break a law, and are false to a lesson which the crows and conies, bees and locusts teach, to go for mutual protection all one way. One person in his life or fortune is
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nothing but a breath or bit of froth compared to an institution, a nation, a church, any humane and holy cause. The individual should be willing to go on or down, like the captain in the " Ariel " in Cooper's novel, or like the sailors in the "Cumberland" in Hampton Roads; and when one heard she had sunk, knowing his friend would stick to the ship, he said, " Then Joe 's dead." If the citizenship, soldiery, and martyrdom of our religion and native land cannot so convince us, then in vain is every witness, and like waters spilled on the ground is the shedding of patient and heroic blood.
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Pur Fellowship.
TWO SERMONS
BY THE REV. CYRUS A. BARTOL.
PREACHED APRIL 3 AND APRIL 17, 1887.
OUR FELLOWSHIP.
I.
WHILE THEY COMMUNED TOGETHER, JESUS HIMSELF DREW NEAR, AND WENT WITH THEM. - Luke xxiv. 15.
A S in the Lord's Supper the table and silver vessels, with bread and wine, are but adjuncts, not the essence, it was a communion-service that the great assembly observed a month ago in this house, and of its elements clergy and laity of diverse per- suasions partook, - a Hindu Brahmin from the land which the sun first visits to burn the human skin, having his share. How did a fellowship impossi- ble a few years ago become a certain fact ? Partly from the disintegration of sects, weakening of de- nominational lines, and the power of elective affini- ties to dissolve old and form new bonds of sympathy. Despite multiplying dissensions in every branch of the Christian Church, - indeed in consequence thereof, as we cannot live without mutual affection, - our religion evinces a new and large growth of charity. Every conventicle becomes less sure of the absolute correctness of its creed. The divided host of believers reunites in the citadel as science
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besieges the outworks and breaches the walls. Then, besides, there is something indefinable because so deep in all our sentiments towards God or man. He does not love who can tell why he loves, and can put his heart into articles or his worship into form. In fine, the love-feast on the two great commandments which we had here at the dawn of spring was no doubt due in a measure to the interest attendant on the local calendar which marks the persistence of institutions through long lapses of time. The present ministry had lasted for fifty years. Thrice as long with its wooden temple and second edifice of brick the church had stood. When the almanac marks a century, or half that period, the ages them- selves seem to tell their coursing in the silent belfry of the stars, as of a clock or dial that registers passages though it do not strike. Still, the main cause of our spiritual concert and triumphant jubi- lee of faith and praise was the cordial and joy- ful acceptance by our guests of the invitation to our board, and the abundant provision in speech and song, smiling presence and hearty response, which they brought for the fare on which with them we fed.
What is or was, with but these natural lively em- blems, the Supper of the Lord? It is to recognize together and realize the continuing companionship of what is vanished from sight, hushed by death. It is to recall the friends we can no longer for the present touch, hearken, or speak to through any
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bodily sense and organ; not to hold them simply as memories in the brain, or, as the heathen fancied, shades to visit sometime in the underworld, but bright images in the breast for real contemplation, actual intercourse, and vital interview. It is to have sweet converse through our imagination with persons known to us only by tradition, in parental and ecclesiastical descent. So like old Samuel the prophet to King Saul, Hooper and Mayhew and Howard and Lowell returned, came down or back, and were greeted not only by their posterity in the West Church, but by those of every order of re- ligious thinking; and we knew not who was host or who stranger, whether we were hospitable to the crowd we had summoned, or they did the gracious honors to us. Indeed, genuine communion is al- ways somewhat more than voluntary demonstration ; it is unconscious attraction, a drawing in the bosom, which the understanding is but half aware of and wholly unable to comprehend. 4 It is the secret of the Lord in us, which lip or pen cannot tell.
Christianity, beyond any other influence, has cre- ated or unfolded this feeling of membership in mankind. What a long and glorious evolution it has been since four thousand years ago Rachel stole her father Laban's hewn and painted images, and hid them among the camel's furniture in her tent, and sat upon them and pretended her womanly condition was such she could not rise! What a space from that religious barbarism to this day,
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when deity has its figures and representatives in no idols of wood or stone or gems and gold, but our glowing ideas of the good souls whose mortal de- cease is but the signal for their vision in the ecstasy of the mind! What a development or transforma- tion of the pagan custom of penates or household- gods, shapes from the chisel or melting-pot, which had to be taken by hand from one to another abode, as compared to this latter-day glory, when our be- loved unseen, unhandled, go with us of their own accord whithersoever we go, lie down and rise up as we do, keep sleepless watch over our slumbers, and, like God, are acquainted with all our ways! What an alteration of destiny, forecast by us, when we think of them not as wrapt like Egyptian kings and queens in cloth of gum and linen to be brought forth from their cerements, preserved flesh and bones, after fifty centuries of years from the Pyra- mids, like the grain that has never sprouted in those crypts, not materialized terrestrially at all, but clad like the risen one, whose garments, we read, were white and glistering! What a better- ment of education in the prophetic and apostolic school we get from the lesson set by the angel's question, " Why seek ye the living among the dead ? " - as, though we pay all decent monumental respect to the ashes waiting to mix with their kindred dust, we yet do not associate them with epitaph or sod, mound or sepulchre, as if they could make of any tomb their haunt, having gone to
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some well-lighted chamber, and had presented to them in a finer than any golden box of earthly metropolis the freedom of the city of God! With whatever diversity of method or tenet, was not the throng in these courts on the first of March one This in perfect unison in this atmosphere of faith ?
conviction, this conception, is common in our spirit of an immortal life, and was cherished by every shepherd and all the sheep met in this their com- mon fold. Only this voicing or rhetoric of the spectacle is mine. The everlasting tune is played for a moment on my instrument; but the music is in all our minds, a harmony by the Supreme Artist performed. Has not the mental the same warrant of reality as the material order and state? We all agree that this earth has been evolved from crude conditions, once "without form and void," into the fair and balanced globe, that the darkness-covered deep has blossomed as the bright and laughing sea, and that out of fire and flood the blind dumb germs of Nature have opened as plant and flower, and beast and man. Is there aught less solid, or more by chance, in this other evolution of the soul into belief, hope, and pictures in fast colors, imaginations of a being without end ? Thus at least we talk like the disciples with Jesus on the way to Emmaus, of what together we remem- ber and aim after and expect. We agree with them and with the old ministers in their charge through the first century of this church. Does God care
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less for the intellectual evolution than for the ma- terial ? Is it accidental ?
But on this canvas there are, besides our ecclesi- astical ancestors, some other figures I ask leave to paint, of those religious fathers and brothers who have been influences for many of you as for myself. First in the order of time, Channing the rationalist, - in this gallery of theology the form most sublime, his great spiritual presence lifting him above his scarce medium mortal height, and expanding his slender size into a commanding dignity, so that the captain of a vessel, seeing him once out of his pul- pit on deck, was astonished at his littleness, and cried, " I thought till now you were six feet high !" He had indeed an habitual elevation of thought. As truly to him as to the French Bossuet might the trope be applied of the eagle. He soared with- out effort into the upper air of contemplation ; he sailed in supreme dominion above the world with hardly apparent motion of his Platonic wings. A singular serenity, which I have never seen quite the like of, went along with his self-evident sanctity. In ascending the stairs of his desk in Federal Street he did not seem to be going up, nor to be coming down when he went to their foot. The private in him was square with the public man. In his ser- mon he conversed with the congregation, and in the parlor with a single caller he preached to that audi- ence of one. He listened as intently as he spoke ; but for one I found it difficult to get utterance of
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reply to such a formidable ear. In his ever-musing look he was so abstract he seemed like a planet roll- ing far off in the firmament, or a transatlantic shore. His eye was deep-set, half closed, and withdrawn. I always with him had the feeling I have now at the telegraph station, with the telephone, or at the ocean- cable, that my words must be well chosen, few, and to be conscientiously accounted for. I paused and hesitated before my syllables as those did who jour- neyed, in old Greek time, to the oracles at Delphi or Dodona; and I waited for what alone to me was of any concern, - the cavernous reply. As much as Isaiah or Ezekiel, Channing was a prophet and seer. But there was lowliness in his grandeur. My choice would have been that he should take part and be chief speaker at my ordination. But it was other- wise appointed. I could not claim the right, young as I was and retiring, to decide. He was not in- vited to speak, though known as among the clergy my nearest friend. But, with the lowliness that was in his grandeur, he came walking over the threshold and sat silent in a pew near the desk. It may have been feared, had he been asked to preach, he would have given some of his peculiar views. But they needed not his articulation or the charm of his tones, that made hymn or scripture new, to get into a thousand temples. He pleasantly criticised to me, in private, the good discourse on Christian per- fection that was actually delivered, as, with all its proper sentiment, not showing in what the per-
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fection expounded by the preacher might consist. Reason, not superstition, was his watchword; and the record he desired was that he might be judged to have done something to lighten or remove from the neck of the people a tyrannical dogmatic yoke. When a portrait of him was in hand he said, " I do not care for an intellectual expression on the canvas so much as I wish that my face should beam kindly on my fellow-men." In his old age he exclaimed, " I am always young for liberty !" His last years were spent in translating for the poor and the slave all his divinity into humanity.
I see his face now as of one that does not cre- atively imagine, but soberly reflects, - as, glass in hand, from some summit one surveys the plain. He had views rather than visions of truth. He was not a poet, but a thinker and saint. He main- tained a lofty table-land level, but did not shoot up into mountain-peaks. All his days were solemn as with an endless religious service, but seldom lighted with any play of fancy or wit. He was child-like in simplicity, but not in sport. He was always at a school, without recess, in which he sat as pupil and stood as master too. He was found once alone at a boys' bagatelle-board, trying rather awkwardly to push the little ivory balls with a long cue; and to one who happened in he slowly remarked, " I am desirous to find the principle of this game." A new dish having been offered him at table, he tasted and said, " It is not good; the perfect is what we are
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