USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Yarmouth > The celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of old Yarmouth, Mass., including the present towns of Yarmouth and Dennis. September 1 and 3, 1889 > Part 2
USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Dennis > The celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of old Yarmouth, Mass., including the present towns of Yarmouth and Dennis. September 1 and 3, 1889 > Part 2
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One of the earliest tasks in which their strong arms would be enlisted was the building of the meeting house, which was at the same time a fort, and was undoubtedly on the place known so long as Fort Hill, in the neighborhood of the ancient cemetery. It was not far from the marsh's edge, a log house, 30x40 feet, without glass, but in its stead oiled paper for windows, until the little diamond-shaped panes were introduced later on. There was no bell. Congrega- tions were summoned on Sunday morning by beat of drum. The men and women sat apart, the men on the east and the women on the west side of the house ; the boys in a place by themselves. At first every church had two ministers or elders. One did the preaching and administered the ordi- nances, and was the minister "par excellence." The other
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was a teacher, explained the scriptures, and shared in the discipline of the church, of which there was a good deal more then there is now-a-days. The sermons were about an hour long and measured by an hour-glass on the pulpit. The children were catechised between the services at noon. Ainsworth's metrical translation of the Psalms was used for singing till about 1700, when the Bay Psalm Book, one of the earliest productions of their Puritan printing press at Cambridge, came unto general use in the churches. They had no instrumental music, and only about five tunes were sung by most congregations. These were York, Hackney, Windsor, St. Mary's and Martyrs. As the records of the first thirty-five years were destroyed by fire, we have to infer from the practice of other neighboring churches what was the probable fact here. The only means we have of getting at the male membership of this church is by consulting the Colony Record at Plymouth to ascertain who were free men and had the right to vote. But this is not quite accurate here. In the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Connecti- cut it was the law that no one could become a freeman who was not in full communion with some church. But here it was only necessary to have a religious character. But, of course, in that day this was virtually the same. Our fathers had but little confidence in any character that, in their language, was not "orthodox in the fundamentals of religion." I am inclined now to fix the number of the original church at less than twenty, but the material, so far as we have the means of judging, was worthy of the Pilgrim name. They certainly had some excellent building stone for the founda- tion of a strong church. Mr. Anthony Thacher was the equal, if not the superior, of his pastor, both in ability and ed- ucation. He had been with the Colony in Leyden, and suf- fered almost as many vicissitudes by land and sea as the hero of the Odyssey. His own letter to his brother Peter, describ- ing his casting away off Cape Ann, on the island which has since borne his name, is full of natural pathos as it is of Christian faith. Whittier has told the story of the scene in
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the musical lines of "The Swan Song of Parson Avery," his cousin who was with him and perished with his eight children. The deliverance of the one was no less fit a theme for the poet than the loss of the other. He was one of the most valuable members of this society, faithful in every po- sition, representing the town for eleven years in the General Court at Plymouth. Mr. Thomas Howes, who settled in what is known as New Boston in Dennis, was scarcely less honored for his high character, not only in this town, but throughout the whole colony. His descendants have erected a granite shaft to his memory near his old family seat in Dennis. It is recorded to the praise of Mr. Andrew Hallet, another member and the first school-master, that he present- ed a cow to the poor of the town, which gift was properly recognized by the General Court in 1643. A donation of what would be valued now at $300 reflected honor upon the church of which he was a member. To these as specimen bricks, I must add the name of Richard Sears, the "Pilgrim" as he is sometimes called, whose massive monument of granite stands in the ancient cemetery yonder, and a picture of it hangs in this church. He came over with the last of the Leyden congregational, ten years after the first landing at Plymouth, and took up his residence here in 1613, settling at Sesuit, or East Dennis. For twenty-three years he identi- fied himself with the Yarmouth church, honored by public office as often as he was willling to accept it. Marrying Dorothy Thacher, a sister of Anthony, the descendants in both lines have reason to be proud of their Pilgrim stock. It was such as these of whom President Porter used this lang- uage in tracing the sources of character in one of the noblest of the children of this church (Dr. Joseph Eldridge) : "Cape Cod has been known for many generations as a nursery of men distinguished for high professional ability, for commer- cial enterprise, for large-hearted philanthrophy and for self- sacrificing piety. The neighborhood of the sea, with its sug- gestions of infinitude, with its restless motion and its stir- ring life, with the coming and going of its ships (bringing
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strange faces and various products, with its stories of adven- ture and escape), tends to liberalize and elevate and stimu- late the mind and to ennoble the character when it takes a good direction. In devout men it gives ardor and breadth and generosity and openness to their piety, and devout wo- men are trained by their frequent separation from their hus- bands to a constant sense of dependence on God, to a fervent faith in prayer, and to habits of self-reliance, circumspection and forecast."
These are specimens of such as we happen to know a little better than the rest. It is to be regretted that we have no records whatever of the lives of the women who equally with the men bore the brunt of the hardship of those earliest years. With the descendants of John Alden and the thrifty Priscilla among us to this day, it would be gratifying to have some definite memorials of the mothers that brightened the homes of the new comers - for it is love that transfig- ures the toils and privations of any lot, and casts a roseate glory over the dreariest landscape, gilding with hope ever so uncertain a future.
The three earliest ministers may be spoken of together, as they were all born and bred on the other side of the sea and brought to their task the discipline derived from their Puritan experience. The first was Mr. Marmaduke Mat- thews, the Welchman, the man of ardent temperament, elo- quent, though not always logical or worldly-wise. There is no good evidence that he was essentially unsound in his teachings, though he was complained of to the General Court, as were both of his successors. He probably let fall, as he says, some "weak and inconvenient expressions," for which he humbly apologized and promised to avoid all ap- pearance of such evil afterwards. So judicious a writer as Nathaniel Morton would not have pronounced him to be an able gospel preacher, in a day when they did not fling about flattering titles as readily as now, if he had been thought un- equal to or unfit for his position. Mr. John Miller, his suc- cessor, had trouble from the same free-thinking element,
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making it necessary to call a large council in 1647, but even so the trouble was only quieted ; the difficulty was not rooted out. Twenty years later it would appear to have been the same element that endeavored to prevent the settlement of Mr. Thos. Thornton, one of those godly and painful minis- ters who had been silenced by the act of uniformity in 1662. This time the matter was thoroughly sifted by the Governor and assistants, and the minister was completely exonerated, and the malcontents severely reproved. From that time to this, I believe this church has never been seriously disturbed by divisions. It may have been that the latter troubles were owing to some extent to the execution of the new law passed in 1657, laying a tax upon the inhabitants of each town for the support of the minister. Two years before, 1655, they had empowered the magistrates to "use all gentle means to upbraid all delinquents to do their duty therein," with authori- ty to use other means at their discretion with such as "resist through plain obstinacy against an ordinance of God." Now "distresse was to be made" on such as refuse to pay, and as there appear to have been a number of free-thinking settlers here from the very outset, this may have made the trouble more violent. Against Mr. Miller and Mr. Thornton noth- ing could have been alleged derogatory to their services or character. They were conspicuous for high character and superior education, and the work they did was in every way worthy of them. They stood on a level with the best of their cotemporaries in the pulpits of the old colony, and it might be said of them as in the quaint lines of a poet of one of them (John Cotton) :
"A living, breathing Bible-tables, where Both covenants at large engraven were ; Gospel and law in his heart had each its column ; His head an index to the sacred volume ; His very name a title page; and next His life a very commentary on the text. O, what monument of glorious worth When in a new edition he comes forth ! Without erratas, may we think he'll be In leaves and covers of eternity."
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'And now let us glance rapidly at the forms of truth that were held forth in this church in the first decades of its his- tory. It is an undoubted fact that there were no formal confessions of faith for many years in these churches. They were united by a covenant that set forth the essentials of Christianity. When persons united with the church they made public avowal of their Christian experience. Even the churches at their first gathering had no formal creeds, but they began to be adopted by one after another after a few years. New England theology in the seventeenth century was largely moulded by three synods. The first, in 1637, at Cambridge had reference to the antinomian heresy. The second, in 1648, at the same place, formulated what was known as the Cambridge Platform. The third, in 1662, dis- cussed chiefly the question of the subjects of baptism and in- troduced the Half-way covenant. We associate the West- minister Catechism with the earliest years, but though that was the substance of their teaching it did not take form till seven years after the founding of this church, and was not adopted for many years after. Those were turbulent times in the churches of the mother country. The long Parlia- ment began in 1640 and Cromwell was making a great stir with his Ironsides on the bloody fields of Marston Moor and Naseby. It was only four years after that the Solemn League and Covenant was ratified in Edinburgh, cementing the Scotch and English Protestants for the overthrow of the Stuarts in England. But all this time the Pilgrim exiles were shut up as in a pavilion far from the strife. They "had had no defence," as Mather said, "neither beak nor claw, but a flight over the ocean." And here they were doing their quiet work of building while the struggle for liberty was going on among their brethren in the old home. But
their creed was essentially that of Calvin. The doctrine
around which all others revolved was the sovereignty of God.
Predestination was its corner stone. They emphasized the contrast of sin and grace, and fought antinomianism with ener- gy, and considered the church as no mere human organization,
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for the Lord God himself was its Head. Their ideal of govern- ment was a theocracy, and the magistrate was the medium of executing God's will. When carrying out God's authority the utmost deference was to be paid to those in authority. There was a stern aspect to their teaching and their charac- ters, but, as Fronde says, "for hard times hard men are needed." They had undertaken a mighty task and felt that the Almighty Ruler of the Universe was behind them. They were intolerant, always on the watch for heresy, regarding it as an "ill egg that might hatch a cockatrice," but why should they not dread and defend themselves from that which had been the cause of all their trouble ? Heresy as they under-
stood it was their deadly antagonist. It was simply a ques- tion which should hold the ground. Yet it is to the honor of the churches of the old colony that they were never rigid in their treatment of those who differed from them. "To the Plymouth Colony," says Dr. Dexter, "belongs the proud pre-eminence of a catholicity of feeling and a moderation of rule far in advance of its nearest contemporary colony."
I should be glad to photograph the men and women who were the makers of this ancient church. We are very apt to idealize them and picture them as colossal characters , and project into them a grandeur they knew nothing of. Theirs was the simple, rude pioneer life, of the same nature as the Western frontiersmen of to-day - only these have a model to work from just behind them, but they, as the Ply- mouth poet said the other day,
"They had no model, but they left us one."
Perhaps we should rub off a little of the glamour if we looked in on them in their round hats, blouses and short clothes, doublet and hose. The women with their homespun dresses, without a waist and gathered only at the neck, and their wooden-heeled shoes. How rude their surroundings ! There is no paint or paper on the rooms. Not even the small diamond-shaped glass, set in lead, at first, in their houses. Their trencher shelves " display only pewter ware,
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and near by, the iron candlestick, the ink-horn, Bible and hymn book. They have no clocks, but reckon their time by the sun dial on a post in front of the house. The men who had been brought up to more refined pursuits at home did not scruple to cut salt grass on the marsh or turn their hand to thatching the meeting-house. They had come into the wilderness to lay foundations, and their sturdy character had no element of daintiness in it. The demands of the outer man come first, and it was in these homely ways that they were making way for something outwardly noble, and like Saul, while searching for the asses they found a kingdom. They believed in hard work as a means of grace, and had no room for any drones in their hive. The two articles of their living creed were - work and worship. There was no non- sense about them. In the language of the day we should say they meant business. This was seen in their coming to meeting on Sunday, at the beginning, with their guns. They saw no incongruity in praying to God and shooting an Indian marauder on the way home. If any one denied the Scrip- tures to be a rule of life he was to receive corporal punish- ment at the hands of the magistrate (1655). Two men were fined ten shillings each for disturbance at the Yarmouth meet- ing house, and others five shillings, for smoking tobacco " at the end of the meeting house on the Lord's day in time of exercise." These are only waymarks.
They were builders more than fighters. They were rearing a commonwealth and at the same time they were carrying the gospel to the pagan Indians. For many years the southern side of this town was an Indian reservation, and it was the favorite work of these churches to bring them to the truth of the gospel. This was begun in Mr. Miller's ministry and carried forward with much success by Mr. Thornton, when there were said to be one hundred and ninety-one praying Indians in town, under two native teach- ers. In 1765 there were six wigwams in Yarmouth, belonging to the church and congregation at Potnumecutt. So, while missionary work was not formally organized for many years
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after, this church seems to have been forward in inaugurating such a mission and carrying it out to a successful result.
But while such an enterprise as this indicates that the church had a true idea of their mission as an evangelizing agency here, it was not in such fields that its greatest value is seen. The essential service of a church is seen in the in- spiration it givest o the life of the community, intellectual, so- cial, political and religious. This church, like so many others of those earlier days, was the centre of the best intellectual life of the people.
In the catechetical instruction of the children on Sunday noons, (1694) was a training of great importance. So it was also the social centre, for meetings of the people were very rare, except on Sunday at the church. A living historian has said that "the church in its spiritual work, the church in its intellectual work, the church in its work with the sword, with the plough and with the axe is the soul and spirit of all true civilization, of all true liberty, of all true knowledge."
One of the best illustrations of the truth of this wide- reaching statement is a glance at the history of a single local church like this, through all the vicissitudes of its life. It is a geologic section. It was the church that was the brac- ing power in those trying days when they were laying foun- dations. It was the church that inspired to public duty. The church went forward and stood behind all the great en- terprises of the day. In the French and Indian war of 1744 the pastors were among the first to go forth to the field. It was the church that held the people to the task of working out freedom by the revolution. "The principle of freedom," says Dr. Stubbs, of Oxford, "was brought into the world and pro- claimed and made possible by the church." The contribu- tions of the east and west precincts in 1774 for the suffering citizens of Boston of £5 and £7 respectively, though not exclusively from the churches, were due to the high motives they inculcated. So the committee chosen in January, 1775, "to see that all the resolves of the Continental Congress be adhered to" had a deacon in its membership. In raising
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money to purchase arms and ammunition "in this distressing day," as they call it, they needed and had the stimulus of re- ligion to steady their resistance to tyranny. The same pow- er was active as soon as the war was over in reviving the in- terests of education that had necessarily languished in the meanwhile, and was among the very earliest to arouse to the need of a temperance reform, being the second in the state to organize for the prevention of intemperance (1817). And then last of all, and most important of all, is the sending forth of its sons and daughters into all the land, to carry with them the Puritan ideas and Puritan characters, to mould the institutions of our country in harmony with the work of the fathers.
It is for such a career as this, now slightly outlined, that the children of the ancient church recognize her worth and gladly meet to do her honor on such an occasion as this. In the ongoing of our common life the past is soon forgotten. All that is real to us is what is going on now. The men and women of old and their work is visionary and far away; but, after all, the essential and permanent experiences were the same then as now. The words of Mr. Lowell, with a slight change, I can use to-day of the church :
"Eight generations come and gone From silence to oblivion, With all their noisy strife and stress, Lulled in the graves' forgivingness: While you unquenchably survive Immortal, almost more alive. "
You recall the legend of the seven sleepers of Ephesus. In a field, in the neighborhood of the city, a quarry was opened on the side of a mountain, some time in the fifth cen- tury. As they worked on they came to a cavern with its opening filled up with a pile of stones. As they took them away, they were surprised by the leaping up of a dog from within. Finding their way in, they saw just waking up from sleep, seven young men of such a strange appearance that they were frightened and ran away. But the young men
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coming to their appetite sent one of their number into the city to buy something to eat. Everything was new to him. He and his companions had been driven away only yester- day, as he thought, by the persecutors, but he could not rec- ognize what he saw. Seeing two soldiers coming, he hid him- self and was struck with their fantastic uniform and unintel- ligible dialect. From the high ground he could look into the city, and, strange to say, the great temple of Diana was gone. When he came into the city streets everything was new. The people, the shops, the costumes of the passers-by - all sights and sounds were like those of a foreign land. When he offered his coin at a baker's shop, he was suspected, placed under arrest and taken to the city court. There he tells his story, that he, with a company of Christians, had hid them- selves in a cave to escape persecution under the Emperor Decius. Their persecutors had followed them and built up the entrance to the cave, thinking to bury them alive, and this morning the stirring of the stones by some kind stranger, had wakened them, and they had come out to find necessary food. And then the reality was reported to them, that it was two hundred years since Decius died. Things had undergone great changes since then. Christianity was the ruling religion now, and they were living under the protec- tion of the Christian Emperor, Theodosius. And when the clergy of Ephesus were conducted to the cave, they heard from the lips of the rest the story of their times, and having told it they gave their parting blessing to the listen- ers, and sunk into the sleep which knows no waking. So it has appeared to me if the fathers of the first century of this church were to appear to us of the third, there would be as much that would seem strange to them and even more. What different roads they would find in place of the soft sand they labored toilsomely through! How the sound of the railroad whistle would astonish them, and the rushing of the train at lightning speed over the meadows and through the hills ! What would they make of the telegraph wires that stretch along by it, and the fact that not only from town to
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town, but round the globe messages are transmitted with a rapidity they never dreamed of? Still more would they won- der to learn that the four little colonies huddled in small cen- tres on the Atlantic shore had expanded across the continent and spread along the Pacific through the width of the zone, and the handful of believers of all denominations had be- come more then twenty millions. I fancy they would stand aghast at the changes that had come over the spirit of the churches. They would think that the tolerance and liberal- ity of these times was but a letting down the bars to all li- cense of thinking and living; that the Sabbath they guard- ed so jealously was well-nigh wrecked by a return to the standard of the pleasure-loving multitudes from which they recoiled. And yet in their deep sympathy with the vital spirit of Christianity for which they stood, they would recog- nize the consecration of the church to-day to large, benevo- lent and missionary effort on the wide fields of the nation and the world, as only an outgrowth of the same spirit that led them to abandon friends and country to plant the king- dom of God in this howling wilderness. And so with the first superficial surprise once over they would find that in the great essentials of the spiritual life the church of the seventeenth was one with the church of the nineteenth cen- tury. It is only the forms that have changed, not the spirit ; and though they would seem as strange to us as we would have seemed to them, it is only the strangeness that is in- evitable in the different stages of the same life.
On a day like this, we seem to be given a glimpse from the highlands of the spiritual life. The richest and tenderest ex- periences of by-gone times come hovering back once more. We have gathered about the spiritual hearthstone of the generations. We almost feel the presence of the unseen throng of worshippers who gather with us here. The fathers live again and we are one with them in prayer and psalm. We are ascending on the same ladder to their God, and our God. The tender silence vibrates with the pulses of their spirits. Feet that once reverently walked these aisles, and
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others these have replaced, now tread the golden pavements of the New Jerusalem, and their prayers still float in benedic- tions above us. How they seem to draw towards us in closer fellowship as to-day we gather around the table of our Lord, who amid all the mutations of this earthly life is the same yesterday, to-day and forever! The old and the new are all one in the hallowed fervors of worship.
"Saints parted by a thousand years
May here in heart embrace."
And now one closing word for the present outlook. This church and those that have grown out of it -in nearer or re- moter relations, and some of different shades of faith and forms of worship-are in an important sense the result of what the past has been. There is an unbroken continuity of life thrugh all the stages of the history. Hardly a fea- ture of the early life can be touched without awakening some chord in the present. Most important of them is the fact that the old church life has been in touch with the great movements of the times all the way. The present paramount duty is still to keep in working relations with the Christian- ity of our day, inspiring and promoting every movement that looks to the upbuiling of the one immovable kingdom. We need no elixir of life from any foreign source injected into the veins of the church to rejuvenate its energies. It is for us only to continue to drink deep of the same foun- tains of Divine life out of which came the Christian Church, and which animated the founders of the church to carry on with strength and success the work they have left us. And when all the milleniums shall have completed their round, and all the links of the chain are complete at last, " un- to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations forever and ever. Amen."
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