USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Gloucester > The book of the three hundredth anniversary observance of the foundation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony at Cape Ann in 1623 and the fiftieth year of the incorporation of Gloucester as a city > Part 4
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But really our smile at the quaint doings of those days is almost exchanged for tears when we think of their hard lot. How often the minister is called upon to break the news of a husband lost at sea, or to condole with a family for the shipwreck of its stalwart sons. And then, oh, the sorrow of it, was the dying of little children in great numbers, and continually, from hideous diseases which touch us of these days only occasionally. Do not speak of the "good old days." They were days of hardship, want, cold, sickness, untimely death. Religion was the one source of com- fort. Out of the dreary present they looked into the brightness and peace and home-gathering of God's heaven.
To be sure, the terrors of the Almighty were too often preached, but this was less frequently done as the years passed. Minister Chandler seems to have been guided by a kindly common sense. He began his ministry here with the avowal that he "adheres to the church platform for substance," and "so far as agreeable to Scrip- ture." This is the way those affected with liberal tendencies ex- press themselves in all ages. You will hear it today from "progres- sive orthodoxy" as it was heard over a hundred years ago from those equally weary of Calvinism. First Church has had no minister with
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so much of pathos in his life as Mr. Chandler. He had domestic trials such as fall to the lot of few. His long ministry, though for the most part peaceful and successful, was laborious and ended in tribulation. There came into it a sad disturbance while his life was ebbing away in mortal illness. At the urgest invitation of a mem- ber of First Church, visiting Boston, the Rev. John Murray went to Gloucester, Nov. 3, 1774. He was received, he writes, by a few very warm-hearted Christians. The deacons and elders of the church, he adds, called upon him, and by them he was conducted to the house of the sick minister. Readily, we may believe, he accepted Mr. Murray's offer to preach in his pulpit. On a longer stay, some weeks later, he preached there again, but after a few Sundays the pulpit was denied him. The heresy hunters were alert, and had discovered grievous errors in his discourses. Then, in "much soreness of heart," harassed Mr. Chandler wrote an address for delivery from the pulpit to his people, after which, at the desire of many of them, he sent it to the "Essex Gazette," at Salem, for publication. "As one draw- ing near the eternal world," he warned his flock against the pernicious teachings of "one who calls himself John Murray, who has declared the following things to be his settled opinion: That the whole human race, every one of Adam's posterity, have an interest in Christ, and are God's beloved ones; that the whole human race, every individual of mankind, shall finally be saved."
The majority of this church at that time considered it a calamity that ideas like these should be proclaimed. They thought it almost as dreadful a visitation as the Revolutionary War, then beginning. In- deed, while this controversy was being waged, it is a little hard to tell whether the references in the records to "the enemy" mean the Universalists or the British. But today the members of First Church consider it an honor that principles so sublime, so honorable to thoughts of God, should have been first promulgated in its meeting- house and by a reformer so gentle, unselfish, and high-minded.
The followers of Murray, although they assiduously attended his services, continued to be members of First Church until 1778, when they were suspended. Then, on the first day of January, 1779, they organized the First Universalist Church in America, under what their opponents called "the unheard of name of Christian Independ- ents, a solecism in nature."
The Rev. Mr. Chandler's struggle against the earliest doctrinal disruption in his ancient church was short. The end came March 16, 1779. Full of years was he, and infirm, when suddenly was brought about the first dislocation incident to that deep cleavage in religious thought which now for more than a hundred years has divided the old New England churches. Neither time nor strength was allotted him to effect readjustment, and, weary with controversy, he fell asleep. Of him, as of many another servant of God, whose faithfulest efforts proved futile, it may be said, "he entered into his rest."
The successor of Mr. Chandler, the Rev. Eli Forbes, who entered upon his work here June 5, 1776, had a great deal to contend with.
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In addition to the division in his church were the troubles brought upon the community by the war for Independence. Few places in New England suffered as much as Gloucester. Fishing was almost entirely cut off and there was nothing left for the inhabitants to engage in nor sufficient land among their rocks to maintain them. Many of the men enlisted, many went privateering, and the women and the children were left at home to suffer from want and disease. So bad was the state of things that it was feared the parish would be broken up.
It was set down in the call given to Mr. Forbes that if this event should occur "by reason of any inroads that may be made upon us by our unnatural enemies, then said salary to cease." Exposed as they were by their situation on the shore they already had had an intimation of what might befall them. The affair of the sloop-of-war "Falcon," Capt. Lindsay, commander, is so well known to the residents of Gloucester that it is almost needless to mention it. How often they have gloried in the defeat wrought upon him! How carefully this church preserves the cannon ball as evidence of the peril of those days, and of the rage of the British captain against the meeting- house whose bell would not cease its clamor of alarm arousing the neighborhood to be up and doing! What Minister Forbes says about it, however, is so full of the spirit of the time that it should be quoted. "Has not God wonderfully preserved this house," he wrote, "when in imminent danger by a sacrilegious attack made upon it by the 'Falcon' sloop-of-war, commanded by Capt. John Lynzey, who, without orders, just provocation, or previous notice, cannonaded this defenceless place from 1 o'clock till 5 in the afternoon, directing the weight of his fire at this house of God, Aug. 8, 1775."
Forbes was just the man for those days. Kind and wise, he did not go with his parishioners in their ingenious persecutions of Murray and his followers, and in the confusion and sorrow of the times, he proved a true counsellor and comforter. His parish did not break up. He held it together and strengthened it. Pews now gradually took the place of the benches upon which the men and women sat separate, and families worshipped together. The singing was im- proved by trained singers leading the psalmody, and it was voted to read the Scriptures in meeting. It is important also to note that in Mr. Forbes' day it was decided to do away with the relation of re- ligious experiences in public. At the same time, a new, probably the third, church covenant was adopted, also "the Covenant, called the Baptismal," and so First Church, recovering from the effects of the war, floated into the wider waters and increasing light of the nineteenth century.
Great, however has been its vicissitudes in this century. The waters were not smooth waters upon which it sailed, but troubled waters, heaving in swells from greater deeps of thought, and lashed to foam by winds of theological disputation. Throughout New Eng- land, at the beginning of the century, there was a remarkable quick- ening of intelligence and spiritual aspiration. Modern ideas were be-
1623 == 1923
CF CLOUCESTE OUCESTER.A The honor of your presence is ASS. respectfully desired on Sunday. Mon- : 1873. * SETTLE OR. 1642H * EDIC2 INCO CITY day. Tuesday and Wednesday, the INCORP 26th. 27th, 28th and 29th of August 1923. at the celebration of the zooth ANNIVERSARY of the first settlement of the Massachusetts Bay Colony at Gloucester. Cape Any, and the 50th Anniversary of the Incorporation of Gloucester as a city You are cordially invited as a quest of the Citizens of Gloucester to participate in the ceremonies of the occasion.
GLOUCESTER TERCENTENARY
R. S. V. P.
1623~1923
Charles W. Barrett Chairman.
Harold H Parsons Secretary.
Of the Anniversary Committee.
CARD OF INVITATION
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ginning to shape themselves. In their studies the ministers were talking about new interpretations of the Scriptures and new thoughts of the fatherhood of God and of the salvation of all men. And the pews, conscious that something was in the air, listened eagerly for every fresh utterance. An indication that Gloucester First Church had its face to the future and its soul awake is afforded in the choice of minister it made upon the death of Mr. Forbes. Perez Lincoln, of Hingham, was called to that office, Aug. 7, 1805. Bred in the church of Dr. Gay, of Hingham, the earliest of the Unitarians, he was one of the young and growing minds of the time. At his ordination, the Rev. Peter Whitney, of my own church in Quincy, preached the sermon. I count Mr. Whitney among the liberals, and his being chosen to take the most prominent part in the ordination is additional indication of the modern tendencies of Mr. Lincoln. But in the minister who followed him the liberals received a distinct setback. Mr. Levi Hartshorn, ordained Oct. 18, 1815, is described as one who dwelt much upon the awful degeneracy and ruin of man. He did not succeed, however, in bringing the congregation back to the old standards. Indeed, the effect of his preaching was just the opposite of this. The old doctrines were presented in such a terrible light that most of the people were confirmed in their dislike of them. One of the older ladies of the parish says she remembers when Mr. Hart- shorn chose a hymn with this verse in it :-
"Down in the deep, where darkness dwells, A land of horror and despair, Justice has fixed a dreadful hell, And thousands walk together there."
The choir refused to sing it, and so persisted in its refusal that the minister was forced to select another hymn. Mr. Hartshorn, on ac- count of illness, did not remain here long enough to witness the utter futility of his preaching. His last sermon was delivered Sept. 5, 1819, the year of Channing's famous Baltimore sermon, which summoned so many of the old parishes to range themselves as Uni- tarians on the side of rational Christianity.
With the departure of Hartshorn went forever, as we trust, the preaching of Calvinism in the pulpit of this ancient church. The people were determined they would have no more of it. As a consequence there ensued the clashing of opinions, and for about six years the church and congregation failed to call a minister. That the liberals were in the ascendency seems likely from the character of the ministers who most frequently supplied the pulpit. The Rev. Orville Dewey, the famous Unitarian divine, preached here some twenty months, and it was only by a small adverse majority that a parish call to the pastorate failed. There is no evidence of any action by "the church." Dewey's first ministerial experience was here, and it is said, that while here he became conscious his views were the same as Channing's.
At last, in 1825, the church and parish united in extending a call
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to the Rev. Hosea Hildreth, and he was ordained the 3d of August. This was a distinct advance toward pure and undogmatic Christianity, for Mr. Hildreth was of the new school which emphasized conduct in religion and contemned the creeds. He called himself a Bible Chris- tian, and gave the strength of mind and heart to the advancement of education, temperance, and righteousness. One of his first acts was to prepare a new and simpler covenant, which the church unani- mously accepted. He made no radical changes, however, being a quiet, scholarly man with no taste for controversy. The entire body of worshippers seemed united under him, and drifted calmly onward toward more bright and roomy latitudes. And it was a prosperous body, numbering about 600 members, despite the fact that many Gloucester men would persist in fishing on Sunday, and that some had been drawn away by the Baptists and Methodists, then newly in town and busy proselyting. Evidence of their prosperity is that a new meeting-house, the one we are now occupying, was built for the use of First Church, and was dedicated Dec. 25, 1828.
It was shortly after this, in May of 1829, that the first indica- tion was discovered of the existence of dissatisfaction in the church. The pastor stated to a church meeting that he had learned with surprise that the two deacons had complained to the Salem Associa- tion that they were not satisfied with their minister. Whereupon "it was voted unanimously that it is disorderly for a member, or members, of the church to go abroad and make complaints of difficulties in the church or with the pastor, instead of first endeavor- ing for a reconciliation at home." But the deacons would not be brought to countenance any latitudinarianism in their minister, and six months afterward, with five women of the church, asked to be dismissed. Mr. Hildreth, who was a very sensitive man, was much hurt by this request and in an affectionate manner tried to turn them from their purpose. None of them would avow that the minister had changed his sentiments since they called him. The fact seems to be that these seven had been toned up in their orthodoxy, and that they had changed and were siding with those in New Eng- land, who, under the lead of men like Dr. Lyman Beecher, were array- ing themselves against the liberal thought of the times. The dis- sentients were finally dismissed, and with Christian courtesy com- mended by First Church "to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the hope that they will be united with some other church in which they may be edified, happy and useful." But instead of joining some other church they organized a church of their own six days after- ward, on the 17th of November, 1829, and called it the "Evangelical Congregational Church."
This defection did not much trouble First Church, and its pastor, at the end of his fifth year of service, Aug. 8, 1830, could reckon five hundred and eighty-two souls belonging to his congregation, of whom sixty-five were resident members of the church.
Mr. Hildreth resigned in 1833. His successor, the Rev. Luther Hamilton, a more aggressive Unitarian, was installed Nov. 12, 1834.
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The congregation was so sure of its theological position that it gave him a call in parish meeting without first receiving the con- currence of the church members. Indeed, things had come to such a curious pass that five men could prevent concurrence, and it was very likely that the knowledge of this led the parish to ignore the inner circle of the church.
It would be an interesting matter to go into the details of this affair and show how it has been misrepresented to the disadvantage of First Church, but this already has been done so dispassionately, thoroughly, and scholarly, by your esteemed fellow-parishioner, Mr. Joseph L. Stevens, that nothing further need be said. I will simply remind you of the absurdity of the position of the five church mem- bers who tried to divert the stream of our history into the backward- trending channel which had been newly dug and named the "Evan- gelical Congregational Church."
That inner circle of covenanted members, called the church, was fast becoming a close and obstructive corporation. It did not repre- sent the strength, wealth, or the religion of the worshippers of First Church. Although more women than men composed the membership of it, it was customary when any important business was to be done for the "males" to meet alone. So it was a meeting of "the male members of First Church" which voted "that it was a departure from immemorial usage" for the parish to call Mr. Hamilton without first asking the concurrence of the church. And it was another meet- ing of "the male members," five in number, which voted, Nov. 8, 1834, "that all connection between this church and the First Parish in Gloucester be now dissolved."
To be sure there were sixteen women, to say nothing of one or two men, who were members of the church, and who were clothed with equal rights by law, and who would not have upheld the actions of the five dissentients. No matter, these five, who said imperiously, "We are the church," considered they had done all that religious controversy required, when they merely ordered their transactions to be communicated to the sisters. Furthermore, by their vote severing themselves from this church, they had cut themselves off like a branch from the tree which gave them life, and were in the eye of the law dead as to church relationship, yet they went on in their absurd course presenting the interest of the church fund to the Evangelical Congregational Church, distributing the fund itself, and borrowing the church records with no thought of returning them. And this exercise of sectarian prerogative is put forth as ground why the Evangelical church "has some claim to the history and the records of the mother church!" The records have been returned, and it is to be hoped, that in further acknowledgment that a false posi- tion was taken, nothing more will ever be said about a just claim to the history of the First Church.
From this controversy your church would have emerged unin- jured but for still another and deeper cutting conflict. Your unity
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in the liberal faith was enough to carry you triumphantly over dif- ferences in theology; but what can suffice to bear any organization succesfully through a political wrangle ? You could, without serious hurt, part with such as felt they would be better pleased with the ministry of Mr. Nickels, who "commended himself to his people from the beginning by his evangelical preaching, for his first sermon was on total depravity." But it was hard to lose those of the same faith with you who felt compelled to leave on account of the political partisanship of this same Mr. Hamilton, in calling whom you had stirred up the five zealous church members. This minister stayed with you only a year, but the church was shaken to its foundations. A lower point it had never reached. Still you did not lose heart. And though for two years without a settled minister, you carried on the appointed work of a religious organization, and the sixteen women and one man maintained the existence of the inner church which the five male members who withdrew declared had died by their fiat. The records had not yet been returned, and you were under the necessity of framing a new covenant.
In 1836 you took a new start under Rev. Josiah K. Waite, who was installed July 19, 1837, none but Unitarians taking part in the services. He reanimated you. His earnestness, faithfulness, and public spirit exerted an influence for good which was felt beyond First Church. He it was who in 1836 framed the organization of the Female Charitable Association, whose membership was almost wholly within this church, and whose first secretary was Mrs. Lucy D. Rogers. You began to prosper once more. Steadily you made progress, in- structed at a later day by that rare student, the Rev. William Mount- ford, and were carried still further on by the wise ministry of the Rev. R. P. Rogers, the quiet cheer and inspiration of the Rev. Minot G. Gage, the eloquence of the Rev. J. S. Thomson, and the practical leading and sound common sense of my good friend, the Rev. J. B. Green.
So comes this church to the end of its quarter millennial, its history during this period that of earnest, sensible people, honestly striving to live with God and to fashion their lives according to his laws. We gratefully remember them; we think of those of them we ourselves knew, gone now forevermore. How sturdily they labored in the times of their poverty and peril! How faithful to the light in hours of theological perplexity! Their influence for good in this community is not to be measured. All things pure and noble, patriotic and charitable,- the cause of education, of temperance, of good citizenship, of spiritual religion, have been supported by the people of this dear old First Church of Christ in Gloucester. The mother of six other churches, she is yet the youngest in spirit of them all. She is full of hope, her soul is open to new truths, she trusts the freedom of thought, her face is turned to where the day- light springs. As a Puritan she welcomed what was newest and grandest in that age; as a rational Christian she now welcomes the latest revelations of spiritual love and far-reaching science.
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In the two hundred and fifty years or more of her history what changes in thought, in population, in social circumstances, have taken place. You have been affected by these changes. Some five dif- ferent covenants have been considered and accepted. This does not prove that you have been unstable, but that you have been afloat as every good ship should be. It is evidence that you have met storms, that you have sailed into new latitudes, and with the in- telligence of those accustomed to the great deep have adapted your- self to your place and the high purpose of your voyage. Beneath you now there is a strange and wide unrest. It is the movement of a vaster ocean of human life with its profounder mysteries, its wilder perils, its unaccountable sorrows. Fear not. Sail on as bravely as your captains have sailed the salt sea, the sound of whose breakers we may hear in the pauses of our worship. You cannot miss God. He holds also this troubled deep of human life in the hollow of his hands. Shape your c course sympathetic to every aspiration of humanity. Employ new models and methods. Take your bearings by the central and eternal lights. Work hard; work together; love much; live in God; be obedient to the "captain of your salvation." So shall you prosper in your voyage, and having come thus far with safety and rejoicing, you shall go on and the desired haven in God's good time be reached.
[Note. In writing this historical discourse I received valuable assistance from Mr. Joseph L. Stevens, and in preparing it for the press I have been aided by his careful revision of it. This ac- knowledgment I make with pleasure to one who was long a member of the First Church, and a citizen of Gloucester, and who affection- ately cherishes the noble traditions of both .- Daniel M. Wilson.]
[Added by editor-Rev. Mr. Green resigned Jan. 1, 1892. Since then the pastors have been: Rev. L. Walter Mason, 1892-1900; Rev. Lyman Manchester Greenman, 1901-1904; Rev. George S. Anderson, 1904-1910; Rev. Elvin J. Prescott, 1910-1914; Rev. Bertram D. Boivin, 1915-1923; Rev. Robert P. Doremus, 1924- .]
123C112
TRINITY CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH Historical Sermon
by
Rev. Albert A. Madsen, Ph. D.
Note-Rev. Albert A. Madsen was born in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, November 8, 1876. He entered Moravian college of Bethle- hem, Pennsylvania, and graduated four years later, attending the Yale Divinity school and the Yale Graduate school receiving the degrees of B. D. in 1903, M. A. in 1904 and Ph. D. in 1907. His first pastorate was in Durham, Connecticut, in 1905 and during this period he took courses in the Yale Graduate school and lectured on Palestinian geography and for a time taught Hebrew in the Divinity school. He was pastor of the First Congregational church of Newburg, N. Y.
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THREE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY
for five years and came to his present pastorate in Gloucester in June 1915. In collaboration with Professor Charles Foster Kent, he com- piled and edited a series of maps for bible students widely used in Sunday schools. He also collaborated with Prof. Edward L. Curtis, of Yale Divinity School, in the preparation of a volume on "Chroni- cles" of the International Commentary (Scribner 1910) and, after Prof. Curtis' death, completed a commentary on the Book of Judges in "The Bible for Home and School" series. (McMillan Co. 1913.) In 1905 Dr. Madsen married Henrietta, a daughter of Dr. and Mrs. John W. Detwiler of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
The completion of three hundred years of the life of a com- munity is truly worthy of recognition. And the history of old Gloucester, situated on her rocky headland, is replete with the things men like to remember and record, struggle and danger, courage and faith. Scarcely a moment of these three hundred years when some of her sons were not facing the dangers of the great mysterious deep. Never a storm lashes the waters of the north Atlantic into a fury but some of her men must fight for life; not a year goes round when the great sea does not take its ruthless toll of her courageous fisher- men. The food-wealth of the sea is not purchased cheaply. There is a deeply human reason why Christ loved fisherfolk. The story of three hundred years of struggle to administer the bounteous gifts of God to men by securing the food of the sea that the hungry may eat, is a story of courage and strength, of manliness and heroism, of men who gladly face almost certain death rather than desert a com- rade in his hour of peril. It is meet and proper that we should com- memorate a history which has been from the first to the present a courageous struggle in the interest of a basic human need.
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